She was my first love. That kind of ridiculous, all-consuming, laugh-until-you-can't-breathe love. We were stupid and sweet and thought we were invincible. I never really got over her. She left, and it hurt. A lot. But I buried it under years of work and routine. Until now.
When we had breakfast the second time, something inside me cracked.
We were sitting across from each other in that quiet corner café downtown. The sunlight hit her hair just like it used to when we were seventeen—golden, soft, warm. She was talking about her job, something funny her coworker said, and I was smiling, nodding. But I wasn't really listening. Not fully. I was somewhere else—somewhen else. I was seventeen again, flushed with the kind of love that made you feel infinite. That dizzy, ridiculous, hopeful kind of love. I remember looking at her and thinking,What if ...
That's when the guilt started crawling under my skin. I couldn't keep lying to June so I would avoid her calls. The guilt was louder than anything Selene was saying. It was screaming. So I made up my mind. I thought,If I just confess. If I tell June the truth. If we press pause on the wedding—just pause—I'll have time to sort myself out. To figure out what this mess inside my head really is.
But June didn't pause.
She left.
She looked at me that night like I was a stranger—like I'd reached in and pulled out the sun from her chest and left her cold. And when I couldn't stand the silence in that apartment anymore, I went to the only place I thought I could go. My grandmother's house.
She opened the door, saw my face, and just said, "So you did it."
"I didn't mean for it to go like this," I muttered.
She folded her arms. "You're a fool, I swear, you've got the brains of a squirrel in traffic." Grandma said before I could explain anything.
"You threw away gold," my mother added. "And for what? A high school crush?" I sat down, head in my hands, and I couldn't even argue. I just said, "I'm lost."
That night, I drove to Selene's. I told her everything. The studio. The debt. The panic. The proposal. June's eyes when she realized the truth. How I felt like I couldn't breathe anymore. Selene listened quietly, then leaned in, touched my face, and said, "You're not alone, Aaron. I felt it too. That thing between us? It was real. We owe it to ourselves to see what it could be now. For real."
It sounded logical. Safe, even. So I stayed.
The first weekend with Selene felt like opening a time capsule and breathing in the air of a life long buried. It was warm—not the heat of passion, but the quiet comfort of nostalgia. Like slipping into an old hoodie that still smells like the teenage version of yourself, back when love was simple and hearts were reckless.
We laughed—deep, belly laughs that came easy, like no time had passed. We talked about high school, about the days when we thought the world ended with a failed test or a missed text. She teased me about my awkward braces and the way I used to flip my hair like I was in a shampoo commercial. I teased her about her obsession with glitter gel pens and how every notebook she owned was covered in doodles of hearts and lyrics.
It was silly. Easy. A slow drift into something that once felt safe.
We watched old movies, the ones we'd snuck into theatres to see. She curled into my side like it was muscle memory, like we hadn't lost over a decade in between. Her fingers traced lazy shapes over my chest and in a voice just above a whisper, she said,"This feels right, doesn't it?"
And for a moment, it did. For a moment, I forgot the weight of everything else.
I was back to that puppy love. Pure, foolish, untouched by real life. It was first kisses in the back of cars, and late-night phone calls where no one said goodbye first. It was what we were before we knew what love would cost. I stayed because the past has a way of lying to you. Dressing up in warm light and soft voices, making you forget that it ended for a reason.
In that moment. It was a warm, glittering bubble. Floating. Fragile. Perfect if you didn't look too closely.
But bubbles don't last.
By the end of the second week, she started getting impatient. Moody.
"You're barely here," she snapped one morning while I was on my laptop checking numbers.
"I'm trying to fix my life," I replied, too tired to sugarcoat.
"By ignoring me?" Her voice was sharp, and I knew the look in her eyes too well—disappointment dressed in anger.
"It's not about you, Selene. It's about everything. The debt. The guilt. I just—I need time."
She scoffed. "Time? Aaron, we've been cuddling like middle schoolers. You won't even sleep with me. You won't even kiss me until I initiate it. Are you still in love with her?"
I didn't answer. And that was the answer.
We fought. Then made up. Then fought again.
The reality of sharing space, sharing life, without the glitter of nostalgia, felt suffocating. The flaws that used to be endearing now felt like walls. Her habits, once charming, became irritating. I saw the small things I had ignored—her impatience, her inability to take a step back, the way she demanded constant reassurance. We hadn't grown together, I realized; we had merely been two people trying to make a past fit into a future that didn't exist. The illusion of her, the fantasy I had clung to, started to crumble.
