When I was 17, Lucy was everything. We shared first kisses, secret notes, and one promise: if we weren’t together by 65, we’d meet at a park bench we chose as teenagers.
Life took us in different directions. I stayed, married, had kids and grandkids, while Lucy moved overseas. Yet every year on her birthday, I remembered her.
At 65, I returned to the park. The bench was still there—but occupied by a man named Arthur, Lucy’s husband. He told me she wasn’t coming. But moments later, she arrived, defying him. She had kept our promise.
We talked over coffee. No confessions or grand declarations—just closure. Or so I thought.
A week later, Arthur showed up at my door. Suspicious but trying, he invited me to a barbecue. Lucy wanted to set me up with someone—her friend Grace.
At the barbecue, Grace was warm, funny, and easy to be around. Over time, we grew close. It wasn’t a wild romance, but something real.
One day at the beach, watching Grace and Arthur laugh in the surf, Lucy turned to me and said, “You don’t have to cling to the past. But never forget what it gave you.”
She was right. Lucy and I weren’t meant to end up together, but we helped each other move forward.
As the sun set, Grace handed me a chipped seashell. “It’s imperfect,” she said, “but kind of perfect too.”
“So are the best things,” I said.
She took my hand and smiled. “I don’t need to be your first love. I just want to be someone who makes the rest of your story worth telling.”
I looked at her and felt peace.
“You already are.”
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