Love in the real world means saying you're sorry 10 times a day.

Host: The rain fell in steady threads, each drop tracing silver lines across the café’s wide windowpane. The city outside blurred — lights, faces, umbrellas dissolving into a soft, endless motion. Inside, the air carried the smell of coffee, wet coats, and something else — the faint hum of tired hearts.

At the corner table, Jack sat with his jacket draped over the chair, his hair damp, his eyes shadowed. Across from him, Jeeny cradled a cup between her hands, steam rising like a fragile veil between them. The rain’s rhythm filled the silence they didn’t yet know how to break.

Host: A small radio played in the background — a talk show rerun, the voice of Kathie Lee Gifford floating through the static: “Love in the real world means saying you’re sorry ten times a day.”

Jack: (half-smiling) “Ten times a day, huh? Sounds exhausting. Love’s starting to sound like an apology marathon.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “Maybe it’s not about the number, Jack. Maybe it’s about the willingness. The idea that love isn’t about being right — it’s about being kind.”

Host: Her voice was soft, but the weight beneath it pressed like an ache. Jack leaned back, the chair creaking beneath him, and stared out into the rain, the streetlights flickering across his grey eyes.

Jack: “Kindness is easy when things are easy. But saying sorry ten times a day? That’s surrender. That’s giving up your ground till there’s nothing left.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe it’s the most courageous thing we do — to admit when we hurt someone. To lower the shield and just say, ‘I’m sorry.’”

Jack: “You sound like a saint. Or a masochist.”

Jeeny: “Maybe I’ve just lived long enough to know that pride kills faster than pain.”

Host: Her words hung in the air like smoke, curling through the tension between them. Jack said nothing, but his jaw tightened, and his hand drifted toward the chipped rim of his cup.

Jeeny: “You remember my parents, Jack. Thirty years of marriage — and my father never said sorry once. Not once. He believed it made him weaker. And do you know what it made him instead?”

Jack: “Lonely.”

Jeeny: “Yes. Lonely in a room full of people who wanted to love him.”

Host: The rain struck harder now, a quiet violence against the glass, as if echoing her words. Jack’s fingers tapped once against the table, slow and measured, a habit of deflection.

Jack: “Maybe he was just trying to hold onto something. Some dignity. The world’s rough enough — you start apologizing for every little thing, and soon you forget who you are.”

Jeeny: “Dignity isn’t the same as distance, Jack. Sometimes people confuse the two. They hide behind pride because they’re afraid to be seen as wrong — as if being human is a flaw.”

Host: The waitress passed by, setting down a new pot of coffee, her reflection fractured in the window’s surface. Jack stared at it — at the half-faces and ghosted outlines — before finally speaking.

Jack: “So you think love’s just about saying sorry all the time? What happens when sorry doesn’t fix anything?”

Jeeny: “Then it’s still worth saying. Because it means you tried. You cared enough to try.”

Jack: “And what if you’re not the one who’s wrong?”

Jeeny: (quietly) “Then you’re saying sorry for the silence that built between you. For the space that shouldn’t have grown so wide.”

Host: A long pause fell. Outside, a man and woman passed by, walking under a single umbrella, arguing quietly. The woman’s face turned away, the man’s hand reached out, hesitated, then fell.

Jack watched them as if they were ghosts of something he once knew.

Jack: “You know, I used to think love was supposed to make life easier. Two people against the world — all that movie stuff. Turns out, it’s just two people trying not to hurt each other while everything falls apart around them.”

Jeeny: “That’s exactly it. Love isn’t the absence of pain — it’s the promise to come back after it.”

Host: Jeeny’s voice trembled slightly, a thread pulled tight. Jack’s eyes flicked to hers — those deep brown eyes that had seen through him more times than he’d admit.

Jack: “And if you don’t come back?”

Jeeny: “Then it wasn’t love. It was comfort. Or need. Or fear of being alone. Love doesn’t run — it limps, it stumbles, it bleeds, but it always turns back.”

Host: A bus passed, splashing through puddles, light spilling across their faces like a broken reflection. Jeeny looked away, her thumb tracing the rim of her cup.

Jeeny: “Do you remember the fight we had in Florence?”

Jack: “Which one?”

Jeeny: “The one where you walked out because I said you never listened.”

Jack: “I remember the part where you threw my notebook into the river.”

Jeeny: (smiling through a sigh) “And you said I’d regret it.”

Jack: “And you said, ‘Maybe, but at least I’ll remember it.’”

Jeeny: “We were both right.”

Host: They both laughed then — soft, hesitant, the kind of laughter that trembles with old wounds but still reaches the surface.

Jack: “I didn’t say sorry that night.”

Jeeny: “No. But you came back the next morning with coffee and two croissants. That was your apology.”

Jack: “Yeah. Words have never been my strong point.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s why you keep trying to argue your way out of feelings.”

Jack: “And maybe that’s why you forgive too easily.”

Host: Their eyes met — steel grey and earth brown, two colors of the same storm.

Jeeny: “Maybe forgiveness isn’t easy. Maybe it’s the hardest thing. But if love means saying sorry ten times a day, forgiveness is saying, ‘It’s okay,’ eleven.”

Jack: “And if both keep saying it long enough, maybe they start meaning it again.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what real love is — two people practicing being wrong for the right reasons.”

Host: The rain had softened now, a gentler rhythm tapping the glass, like a heartbeat calming after a long run. The streetlights outside shimmered in puddles, their reflections merging and breaking apart, like two lights that couldn’t quite stay separate.

Jack: “You know, Jeeny, sometimes I think all of this — the fights, the apologies, the coming back — maybe it’s just people trying to find a way to stay.”

Jeeny: “It is. Staying is the bravest thing anyone can do.”

Jack: “And saying sorry — that’s the price of staying?”

Jeeny: “No. It’s the proof you want to.”

Host: The café had grown quieter, the last few customers gathering coats, coins clinking softly at the counter. Jack and Jeeny remained, the table between them now scattered with empty cups, a small island of memory in a sea of rain.

Jack: (after a long silence) “Then I’m sorry, Jeeny. For all of it. For Florence. For every time I made you feel unseen.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “I’m sorry too, Jack. For thinking love meant winning instead of understanding.”

Host: The rain stopped. The world outside was rinsed clean, every streetlight reflected perfectly in the water below. Jack reached across the table, his hand brushing hers — tentative, fragile, but real.

Host: And for a moment, the café, the rain, the world seemed to pause. Not in perfection, but in truth — the kind that comes after long storms. Because love, as Kathie Lee said, isn’t about grand gestures. It’s about staying, trying, saying sorry ten times a day, and meaning it just once enough to heal.

Host: Outside, the clouds parted just enough for the first faint glimmer of moonlight to touch the wet street — a thin, trembling silver line, like forgiveness finding its way home.