I wake to the smell of fresh bacon. My mouth waters, and I sit up. I’m alone in bed, but the crumpled bedsheets describe the night before. The scent of Sophie’s perfume still lingers on my skin and her side of the bed. I imagine her figure. My body remembers the sensations and floods with a satisfied warmth. I smile.

It’s quieter here than at my apartment; quiet enough to hear the sound of a bird chirping outside. Its song blends with the sound of Sophie humming in the kitchen. I close my eyes and let the smells and sounds sink in. I am utterly relaxed.

I twist on the mattress and place my feet on the floor, finding my pants and stepping into them before I head into the kitchen to find her. I appear at the kitchen doorway right as I’m closing the button on my pants. The tiles are cold against the soles of my feet.

Sophie doesn’t notice me straight away, so I take the opportunity to watch her. She’s wearing an oversized gray T-shirt as a nightshirt, her long, slender legs entirely visible. Her blonde hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail; she’s wearing no make-up. I can make out the silhouette of her slim, feminine frame beneath the gray fabric. When she stretches to flip the slices, the hem rises above her buttocks, showing off her perfect behind.

Bacon is sizzling in the frying pan, and Sophie sings to herself as she pokes it with a fork, swaying her hips from side to side in time to her tune.

She’s beautiful.

I fold my arms across my chest and enjoy watching her. As she dances, she knocks the salt over with her elbow, and it spills all over the eggs in the next pan. I bite my lip to hold back my laughter as I watch her attempt at damage control.

“Shit!” She tries to spoon out the oily heaps of salt without getting burned by the spitting pan, then looks around sneakily to see if she’s been caught. She spots me, and her lips curve into a grin. “Eggs may be a little on the salty side.”

I go to her and wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her close. She giggles when I sweep her into my embrace and press my mouth against her neck to kiss her. Her fingers tighten around my forearm, and she bites her lip, looking up at me with affection.

“I didn’t notice you sneak out of bed this morning.”

“I wanted to cook you breakfast.”

“It smells amazing.”

“I can’t vouch for the taste. Me and my clumsy elbows.”

“They’ll be perfect. Can’t be worse than Tokyo.”

She laughs. “You remember!”

“How could I forget?”

* * *

We’re sitting at a small table for two in a breakfast bar in Tokyo. Outside, the city is more than a rival for New York. Lights and cement high-rises make up a concrete and neon landscape, bustling with life even at nine in the morning.

Despite not a word of Japanese between us, we somehow manage to order eggs and bacon, craving a taste of home. It arrives, smelling like heaven. My mouth waters and I eagerly pick up the cutlery brought just for us Americans, for our American food.

Sophie picks up the brown sauce from the center of the table and pours it liberally all over her breakfast. “I love that they have brown sauce. It was my favorite in London! I thought I’d never see it again. Must be for the tourists.”

She digs into her bacon, but as soon as the first forkful touches her lips, her face crumples into a grimace. She gags, then starts to cough, her eyes watering. “That’s not brown sauce.”

I look at the label, but the symbols mean nothing to me. “Let me try some.”

Sophie holds up her hand, laughing and heaving at the same time. “You don’t want to. Trust me.” She pulls the bottle away.

“Let me have a taste,” I insist. I grin at her, then lean across the table, pulling her in for a kiss.

Our lips touch; her tongue crosses over mine. Bile rises in my throat. I jump back and cover my mouth to stop the vomit from rising. “That tastes like fish guts, Sophie!”

She looks at the bottle herself. “I think it’s some kind of fish sauce.”

“It burns.”

We make eye contact, both our mouths stinging with the vile flavor. Then we burst into laughter.

“Quick! Stuff your face with bacon before the flavor sinks in.”

“I’ll never taste anything but fish again.”

* * *

“It’s the only thing I can think about when I smell bacon.” I chuckle. “Even now.” The memory of the potent fish sauce tingles on my taste buds, and I almost gag again. Instead, I shudder.

“I couldn’t eat it for years,” Sophie tells me. “Took a while to get over the trauma of the fish sauce incident.”

“Ten years later, here we are—eggs and bacon again.”

“Here we are.” She turns to me with a warm, affectionate smile. The sunlight from the window catches her hair, a beam of light cast across one side of her face, giving her an angelic glow. I want to photograph her. It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to photograph a woman simply for the sake of her beauty.

Sophie serves the thick-cut bacon and eggs sunny-side up on two plates, then sits beside me on a stool at the breakfast bar. It’s a cluttered kitchen, even more so now that Sophie has left mayhem in her wake. Sauces and seasoning litter the counters, along with splashes of bacon grease and broken yolk from an egg she couldn’t quite scoop onto a plate.

There are magnets on the fridge, the assortment of them as cluttered and sentimental as the shelves in her living room. I can see several pictures of her and Lena pinned up with I love NYC magnets. There is a wooden rack above one cupboard. The shelf is crammed with well-thumbed recipe books; underneath, a number of non-matching mugs hang from little hooks. It’s very Sophie.

I look back to her. Her toes are pointed to reach the bar at the bottom of the stool; her legs go on for miles.

I laugh when she reaches for the brown sauce. “Really?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I can’t believe that you go the effort of importing that stuff. It tastes like a mixture of barbeque sauce, sherbet, and onions.”

She picks it up and squirts it liberally all over her breakfast. I make a face, remembering the fish sauce. She offers it to me, and I’m quick to turn it down. “I’ve learned to live without.”

I smile, then dig into my own breakfast. Sophie sits next to me making exaggerated noises of appreciation as she devours her eggs. “God, this is good!”

With all the hours she spends in that coffee shop and how much she enjoys her food, I wonder how she stays so slim.

She takes her last bite, and I stand. I go to Sophie and spin her whole stool around so she’s facing me. I place my hands on her sides, feeling the slim inward curve of her waist under my palms.

A content smile spreads across her face. “Yes?” Her sky-blue eyes are bright and full of life.

“I can’t remember the last time I woke up and felt this happy. Right now, I feel like the luckiest man in the world. A gorgeous woman makes me a delicious breakfast, and now I’m about to have some wild morning sex.”

Sophie laughs, raising her eyebrows. “Oh, are you?”

I slip my hands underneath the hem of her T-shirt. “I think so.”

I press my lips down to hers, and she reciprocates. We sink into a deep, hot kiss. Sophie wraps her legs around my waist, and I pick her up and carry her to the bedroom.

We make love all morning, only stopping for coffee and to reminisce about old times. We laugh, we kiss, we lay in each other’s arms. It’s like something out of a movie.

I can’t believe that there was a time in my life when I was foolish enough to let Sophie go.

What in the world compares to her?