Attended school plays.
Worked long hours.
Celebrated birthdays.
Buried parents.
Raised families.
And somehow, fifty years disappeared.
Robert died first.
Thomas’s wife passed away several years later.
I thought that was the end of the story.
Then one Saturday morning, I went to a church bake sale.
I was standing near a table of homemade pies when I heard a man’s voice behind me.
“You still wear your hair the same.”
I turned.
And my heart stopped.
Thomas.
Older.
Grayer.
Thinner.
But those eyes were exactly the same.
I stared at him.
“You still talk too smoothly,” I said.
He laughed.
And suddenly I was seventeen again.
We talked for almost two hours.
Then two more.
After that, he started calling.
Sometimes we talked for ten minutes.
Sometimes three hours.
We talked about everything we had missed.
Our marriages.
Our children.
Our mistakes.
Our regrets.
And one night, Thomas said something that frightened me.
“I think I spent fifty years trying to convince myself I hadn’t lost you.”
I didn’t know what to say.
So I said the only thing that felt safe.
“We were young.”
“I know.”
“We had lives.”
“I know.”
“It’s too late now.”
There was a long silence.
