We became friends before we became anything else.
Long conversations after school turned into walks through town.
Walks became dates.
Dates became dreams.
By the time we graduated, we believed our future was already planned.
Or at least I thought we did.
Two Different Dreams
Life changed the day college acceptance letters arrived.
Mine came from a university nearly five hundred miles away.
Thomas never applied anywhere.
His father had suffered a heart attack, and the family hardware store needed someone to help keep it running.
"I'll stay," he told me.
"You should go."
But every time he said those words, sadness filled his eyes.
One evening he took my hands beneath the old oak tree where we'd shared our first kiss.
"Stay here."
"I'll build us a life."
"We don't need some fancy city."
"We just need each other."
I wanted both.
Love.
Education.
Opportunity.
Adventure.
At eighteen, I believed there would always be time to come back.
I kissed him goodbye believing distance could never erase real love.
I was wrong.
The Goodbye That Lasted Fifty-Five Years
Letters became fewer.
Phone calls became shorter.
Eventually...
Silence.
Friends told me Thomas buried himself in work.
I built a nursing career.
Neither of us married.
Not because we couldn't.
Because somehow...
Nobody else ever felt like home.
Years became decades.
Our parents passed away.
Friends moved.
The little town we once knew slowly changed.
Yet every now and then I'd wonder...
What became of Thomas?
