“You don’t look so bad yourself,” I smiled.
For a few hours, everything felt normal.
We danced, laughed, took pictures. Our friends joked about how we would probably end up married someday.
Until reality caught up with us.
“You’re leaving after graduation. End this now.”
That was what his father told him.
Ethan repeated it to me one night while we sat on the hood of his car.
“He’s serious, Izzy,” he said. “We’re moving to Europe.”
I held his hand tightly. “We’ll figure it out.”
He looked at me with something close to fear.
“I’m not giving up on us.”
That promise carried us to the last slow dance at prom.
The lights dimmed. The music softened. He pulled me closer.
“I’ll find you,” he whispered.
I just didn’t know how much it would cost.
He was gone two weeks later.
No goodbye at the airport. No closure. Just absence.
“I’ll call you,” he had said.
“I’ll be waiting.”
At first, I believed in us.
I wrote letters. Long ones. I told him everything. I checked the mailbox every day.
Nothing.
Weeks turned into months. Months turned into silence.
“I miss you. Please call me.”
“I told you,” she said. “These things don’t last.”
Something inside me cracked.
But I didn’t stop.
For thirteen years, I searched.
Social media. Old friends. Anything.
I became a nurse. It gave me purpose. It kept me moving.
But it never replaced what I lost.
Some part of me stayed behind.
Still waiting.
Until the day everything changed.
It was an ordinary morning.
I stopped at my usual coffee shop before work. The place buzzed with quiet conversation.
“Can I get a medium latte? Two sugars.”
My heart stopped. “That voice,” I thoguht to myself.
And there he was.
Older. Changed. But unmistakable.
His head snapped toward me.
