This isn’t special. It’s something you could find in an airport gift shop. A colorful illustration wraps around machine-made ceramic so you can travel—from a fairytale castle to a sphinx to a pirate ship—by turning it in your hands. In case the pictures are too subtle, Las Vegas is printed in a stylized cursive, on top of a mod diamond shape, next to a casino, a rollercoaster, and a toucan. Above all that, typewriter letters spell out the name Brian. This is a mug for tourists. Nothing special. No one expects it to be loved.

I pour my morning coffee.

Years before I met him, Brian lived in New York City. He met a woman in a garden, in the shadow of the UN building. She was taking photos—of flowers, of birds, of bees—and he asked to see them. He was a photographer, too, he explained. Two of a kind.

Across the city in Hell’s Kitchen, I returned from a trip, and the man I lived with met me at the door. His suitcase was packed. He said the time that I was gone was the time he needed to decide to leave. We had been together for seven years. My friend came when I called. I poured her water, served snacks, talked about the weather, smiled, nodded, talked about the news, talked about the clouds, smiled, nodded, refilled her water. She stayed still until I ran out of things to say. When she placed her hand on my arm, I cried.

I pour whole milk into my coffee.

Brian and the woman he met followed butterflies back and forth across the UN garden to photograph them. One flew between them and their eyes met as their heads turned to watch it. They kissed for the first time next to 195 fluttering flags, each one a different nation.

They explored the city all day and stayed up in the clouds. Glided over the East River in a tram, held hands in the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum, watched the sun set from the top of the Empire State Building. When the day was over, they spend the night together, twisted in Brian’s red plaid sheets. When she looked up, she saw he had covered the walls and ceiling with photographs. Closeups of weeds, gravel, people. Details that would have been easy to miss. She spread her body out across his bed and told him that she planned to see the whole world. The next morning, it was time for the next city in the next country, on her way to something else. Brian stayed where he was.

Like the base of a snowglobe, I stayed still while life swirled around me. I wandered quiet Brooklyn streets alone, in between loud rumbling subway rides and humid house parties where amber bottles and sticky plastic cups piled high on chipboard tables. I ate bodega-toasted bagels with too-thick slabs of cream cheese, pizza by the slice, and disco fries served late at night inside 24-hour diners. I would drink and drink and drink.

One day, I came to and stared at a mug my friend had placed in my hands. My name on the handle and illustrations of craggy mountains, intensely blue skies, and a deep river-carved ravine. My friend had gone to the Grand Canyon, her boyfriend had proposed, and she was asking me to wake up and be in her wedding. I rubbed my thumb over the raised lines of ink. There were countless copies of this mug, but this was the one she gave me.

The milk shoots to the bottom and the coffee remains dark.

Brian met another woman who wanted an adventure. They went on a road trip across the country and saw Stonehenge built in foam, Stonehenge built in used cars, a giant fiberglass cow, a giant potato, a false pyramid, and the world’s largest ball of twine. When they reached California, she kept going and he stayed there.

I kept dating and dating and dating until there was no one left for me in New York. I left my furniture on the sidewalk. Then I moved to California with my life in one suitcase and watched the fog roll in over Ocean Beach. Light wisps drifted together as I watched, thicker and thicker, until they covered the sky, the water, the sand.

After the milk hits the bottom, it blooms back up.

Brian got a job in San Francisco. He clicked buttons on a keyboard and moved a cursor around on the screen. One day, he went to the kitchen to get coffee and opened the cabinet above the sink. Inside, he found the mug of Las Vegas with his name on it. No one else at the office was named Brian. He was the only one. It felt like magic to discover something meant for him.

Across the bay, I moved into an apartment in Oakland. It was empty and echoed when I walked in. It was all mine. I filled the kitchen with dishes I picked out, danced to ‘90s jams, and built a bookshelf because I had never built one by myself. It had a gap at the top but held together strong. I cooked the meals I wanted and ate them alone. An echo remained.

The milk forms a cloud in the coffee and the edges begin to merge.

Brian and I met at a bar on the border of Oakland and Berkeley. Beyond a patio filled with echoes of heat from electric palm trees without leaves, through a black-painted doorway, past shadows of people at silhouettes of tables, I found him inside. The lights draped his kind face in warm gold as we sat together on a red vinyl banquette.

The milk and coffee swirls into shades of cream and brown and tan. The shapes are beautiful.

When I moved in with Brian, he placed our mugs side by side in a kitchen cabinet and said they looked the same. Two tacky mugs that shouldn’t mean anything to anyone. They moved on and off their shelf, held our coffee, touched our lips, withstood cycles of the dishwasher, and watched seasons pass until one day, Brian took my mug. So I drank from the one with his name. It felt like pressing my lips against the warmth of his skin.

The next day, I chose his mug again. And on and on, until what was mine was his, and his was mine. Like it was meant to be. Forever one of a kind.