One of the great ones

I met her when I was sixteen. I had just started at a new school. From the first moment there was something about her that I could not explain. I remember getting home that afternoon and telling my brother about this girl who felt different. I was shy. I was angry at life. I had just been expelled from my previous school and I walked through the world with that mix of embarrassment and teenage fire. She was the bright part of my new beginning.

I started working the following year and our paths separated. I never saw her again for twenty seven years. Life moved. I lived. I failed. I built. I changed. She became a memory that felt like an unfinished chapter.

One day I added her on Facebook. She shared one of my blog posts on her page. Something small. Something gentle. Still, it caught my attention. One night I was replying to messages and I saw that she was online. I greeted. The conversation flowed so naturally it pulled me right back to sixteen.

She popped in to see me one afternoon. First time in twenty seven years. She walked in holding a bunch of red roses and she looked like she had stepped off a magazine cover. Same smile. Same presence. Same spark. She stayed only a few minutes, yet her energy stayed with me long after she left.

Yesterday I picked her up for our first proper time together. We went for coffee. We walked around the mall for a while. Simple. Calm. Real. When we left I opened her door. I walked around the back of the car and saw her lean over to open my door for me. Something clicked in that moment. I felt it right in my chest.

We drove quietly for a while. I asked her if she had ever watched A Bronx Tale. She said she had not. We took a slow Sunday drive through the city and ended up in Parkhurst. I found a parking spot and we walked again, this time without any rush. No agenda. No plans. Just two people sharing the same beat.

We eventually landed in a restaurant and ordered cocktails. I had an Old Fashioned. She had a French seventy five. We sat for hours and spoke as if no time had ever passed. It felt like I had gone to bed at sixteen, lived an entire life, and woken up with her sitting across from me again.

The restaurant closed. We stepped outside and walked back to the car. We had our first kiss under soft streetlights. When I turned around I saw a cupid weather vane directly across the road from the parking spot. The timing felt unreal. The moment felt placed by something bigger than coincidence.

It was the perfect ending to a beautiful night. It felt like the beginning of our story.