I was watching a series today.
There’s a scene where a woman, who has just survived a heartbreak, is shown riding her bicycle at night.
Attached to it is a small setup — at first glance it looks like she’s selling tea.
I remember thinking,
Who drinks tea after 8 pm?
The scene shifts.
She is inside a house where she works as a maid.
She pours a drink into small glasses and says it’s called kava.
She smiles and asks them to taste it and tell if it’s good.
Then the scene returns to the bicycle.
This time she has stationed her setup and there’s a line of people waiting to buy her drink, and she looks happy.
When I heard the word kava, something inside me paused.
I knew I had heard it before.
For a few seconds I couldn’t place it.
And then it came back.
More than a decade ago, I met someone online.
We were young.
It was long-distance.
And we had a habit of giving each other names.
One day she told me, excitedly, that she was drinking something called kava.
She said it was special.
She said I should visit her country one day and she would make one for me.
At some point in the conversation, she addressed me by the name “kava.”
I remember laughing and asking,
“I’m your kava?”
We broke up a long time ago.
Life moved on.
We haven’t spoken in years.
But today, on Valentine’s Day of all days, a word from a show brought that memory back — not painfully, not dramatically — just softly.
It’s strange how some stories don’t end the way we imagined.
They don’t get the big closure scene.
They don’t get the airport reunion.
They simply become part of who we are.
I don’t know if I’ll ever drink real kava.
But I know that for a brief time in my life, I was someone’s.
And that feels enough.
Not all relationships are meant to last.
Some are meant to leave a taste.
Like tea !