The piano called to her from the corner in those first new and lonely days, but she hadn’t really felt like playing without him there. The cold and the rain laps at her windows, but the blankets they’d wrapped themselves together in didn’t feel the same anymore. His smell had already left them.

She hadn’t been ready for the rose she found when she finally opened up their favorite piano book again. The rose he’d given her the first night they met. Dried now, so withered compared to what it had been then. Still there, a reminder of the beginning of what would be her forever love.

“A rose for a Rose.”

“My name isn’t Rose.”

“Well, you look like a Rose.”

Her fingers closed around the stem, twirling the flower between them to make the petals dance. Much the same as she had the first night before he took it back only to put it in her hair. This time, it’s her hand that places the rose there, dried but still vibrant colors standing out against strands that had long since bled from brown to silver.

The keys are like old friends beneath her fingertips as she plays the first few chords since his passing. She isn’t happy, but it’s the closest thing to it she’s felt in a while. Because as she plays there with the flower in her hair, she can almost feel like she’s playing for him again.