Six Moons Later

I remember the comfort that creeps in when familiarity turns your bones warm. It is a feeling that slips in quietly, like a hot cup of tea between cold hands. Soothing. Undeniable. That is how it felt when I saw him again. Dash.

His smile had not changed—could not have. It took over his entire face, like joy had muscle memory. The way his eyes crinkled and sparked at once, the flicker of white teeth, the nose that always twitched when he smiled sincerely. And this, this moment of seeing him again, gave me that ridiculous blush that blooms from your collarbone to your cheeks before you can hide it with indifference.

It had been six months since I had last spoken to him.

Six moons, maybe more.

We had first matched on Find Her, Find Him—a dating app I downloaded more from curiosity than hope. It was October then, and we bonded over pumpkins. He was growing one for his boys, a sweet detail that imprinted itself on me harder than I expected. It gave his masculinity a softness I was not used to.

Our dates followed, and I liked him. Really liked him. Which scared me more than I care to admit. I had been raised on dysfunction. So backwards that when a good thing came, it felt like a threat more than a gift. I did not know how to accept being seen without flinching.

He did not understand me, not fully. And I did not know how to explain what I needed without sounding like a burden. His hesitation around my medical marijuana was not hostile—it just lingered quietly between us. Same with my crutches during a CRPS flare. He didn’t say anything, but his silence made me feel like my pain unsettled the air. Slowly, I felt myself withdraw—not because of something he did, but because I didn’t feel safe staying visible.

So I left. No big fight, just quiet absence.

But six months later, history—with all her flair for repetition—nudged us back together.

I reactivated Find Her, Find Him. The loneliness crept in one random evening, and there he was. Dash. Just sitting behind that glossy profile like it had not been half a year and a thousand thoughts since we had last touched base.

We matched again.

We talked. Nothing too heavy at first. Then he offered to be my beta reader. Classic Dash—disarming with gestures instead of declarations. The idea of him reading my work felt intimate in a way that was not physical, but maybe even more personal. So we agreed to meet.

Same bar as our first date. Full circle.

It was an evening soaked in low-lit bar charm, full of ambient clinks and warm voices. The drinks did not come before—no, they were poured right in the middle of our rekindled laughs and half-serious confessions. One straight tequila. Two espresso martini chasers. Liquid courage, maybe. Or just a gentle lubricant for whatever was waking up between us.

The bar staff asked how the first date was going.

I laughed. It was cheeky—how we must have looked from the outside. Like two strangers finding sparks for the first time. And in a way, we were. He had changed. I had grown.

Dash walked me to my car. No assumptions. No pressure.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked.

I paused. Not from doubt, but disbelief. Permission with intention. And then he kissed me—slow first, then deep. His hand grazed my jaw. My hip. My shoulder. Each touch peeling off layers I didn’t know I’d been wearing.

And somehow, the backseat of my car became the centrepiece of a night neither of us had planned for—but both leaned into willingly. The windows fogged, the air inside thick with breath and whispered laughter, blurred like memory when you try to hold it too tightly.

All I could feel was him—Dash—his lips tracing the slope of my collarbone like they were spelling something soft across my skin. His fingertips moved with purpose, slow and steady, like he was piecing together a puzzle he used to know by heart but had forgotten the corners of.

But this was not just physical.

Just weeks before, a man did not take no for an answer. The date ended with me feeling itchy in my own skin, like I did not belong in it anymore. It was hollow and wrong and left me rattled in ways I could not name. My body became something I did not want touched, did not want looked at, did not want claimed. The trauma settled like static across my nerves—invisible, but loud.

Dash shifted that.

He did not just kiss me—he asked to. Softly. Genuinely. Like my comfort was the prerequisite for his desire. And when he touched me, he did not take. He gave. Space. Time. Breath.

I looked into his eyes and saw something surprising. Myself. Not through the lens of illness, or through someone else’s hunger. Just... me. Isabella. A girl re-learning how to inhabit her body without apology. And somehow, Dash met me there—not perfectly, not knowingly, but present enough that I could breathe.

His touch unfurled me. His kisses calmed the crawl beneath my skin. And the way he pressed his forehead to mine between gasps—it felt like he was telling my scars, “You are safe now.” There were puffed breaths between us, cheeky smiles that curled at the corners, a moment stitched with skin, warmth, and quiet magic.

No, we had not been in love. Not even close.

We dated for four months. Just enough time to feel the pull. Enough time for confusion to masquerade as care. Lust, mostly. With a twist of nostalgia.

But somehow, that night did not just belong to lust. It belonged to memory.

I remembered how Dash used to make me breakfast—crepes, always. My favourite. Folded with lemon and sugar waiting patiently beside them, because he remembered even the tiniest details. He would hand me coffee before I could ask,

He never said much in the mornings, but it was always enough.

And that night—fogged windows, lips on skin, laughter in between breath—I let myself remember those things not with ache, but with warmth. They did not stab. They shimmered.

Dash’s body did not feel new. It felt rewritten.

That night he became the last to touch me. The last to kiss me down to my collarbone. And unlike before, I did not flinch. I welcomed him in—not just his hands, but the safety behind them. The pause. The permission. The presence.

There was no regret the next morning. Just me tangled in sheets and wrapped in a feeling that was not heavy, just quietly bright.

And when I checked my phone, I smiled.

One message from Dash:

“I have missed your bite marks.”

I laughed into my pillow—soft and surprised. My lips still tingled from memory.

And for once, I did not just remember that moment—I felt it.