I.

we left off somewhere between who we were and who we couldn’t become. i walk down a familiar street, and the air is crisp with bitter apples. we sit on the edge of a playground that’s been abandoned since we outgrew it, sneakers brushing wood chips and damp earth.

she’s laughing, that kind of careless, honeyed sound.

lucy mae, with her chipped indigo nail polish and eyes like she’s already somewhere else..

sometimes i dream of that fall, but she never looks at me anymore.

II.

we are seventeen and invincible.

or at least pretending to be.

she tells me about her new city, the art school, the boy who paints her in his sketchbook and says she looks like a red carnation. the boy who calls her “muse” but never texts her back. i tell her i’m proud of her, even though she can’t hear the envy dripping from my tongue. she asks me to visit, says we’ll make coffee at midnight and talk about nothing until it becomes something.

i promise her i will.

we both know promises mean “until life interferes.”

then i notice, she’s a little taller now. it makes me happy.

III.

winter cuts through the calendar like a blade.

our calls turn from daily to weekly to “i’ll text you soon.”

i see her face sometimes on social media, her smile pixelated, her eyes caught mid-blink, and it feels like i’m watching someone else’s dream. she posts poems that sound like drowning. i leave hearts i don’t mean, and she doesn’t reply.

i type out a dozen messages just to never hit send.

sometimes i wonder if she even notices the void she’s left.

IV.

two years later, she finds me again.

by accident or by mercy, who knows.

she sends photos of the old playground, and types, “remember this place?”

and i do.

i type back, “yeah, i remember.”

and then nothing. she’s gone again. i scroll through the photos again, searching for some trace of the girl i knew, but all that remains is a ghost of lucy mae, and a ghost of us.

for a second, i believed time could run backwards.

V.

we meet again in the spring.

the wind smells like rain and cheap coffee. she’s wearing new lipstick but the same silver ring i gave her when we were fifteen. we don’t talk about the missing years. only the weather, the moon, how everything looks smaller now.

she stirs her tea slowly, eyes glancing at the dust on the windowsill next to our booth. i watch her fingers, the way they curl around the mug, and remember how they used to tug at my sleeve when she was excited about something tiny: a song, a book, a joke only we understood.

VI.

later, she says, “you know, i used to think losing you was my punishment.”

and i tell her, “maybe it was just practice. for finding things again.”

we sit on the old sofa in her apartment, side by side but not touching. the TV talks about a hurricane that hit the west coast of Florida.

“my boyfriend broke up with me,” she says after a period of silence.

i don’t move at first. i just let the words settle. and then i find myself saying, softly, almost instinctively, “i’m sorry, lucy.”

her eyes meet mine for the first time tonight. not with blame, just… tiredness.

VII.

the clock ticks somewhere behind the walls, indifferent. we don’t talk again for years. i am happily married to the love my life, charlotte, and lucy’s face quickly drifts from my memories.

sometimes though, i see her in the flower beds my wife planted in the front garden. i see her in the daughter of my nextdoor neighbour. i see her in the sun, the pond nine miles ahead, the blue chevelle that drives past our front door every tuesday evening after bingo night.

i wonder if she ever found peace, if her poems stopped sounding like drowning, if she’s laughing freely again somewhere.

VIII.

i had sent a letter to her the week before easter break. folded it three times, neat corners, handwriting small enough to hide between the lines. i didn’t expect her to write back. i just wanted to see if the address still worked, if maybe she’d still recognize my name on an envelope.

sometimes, i imagine she got it. that she read it on a peaceful Sunday morning, sitting by a window where the light turned her hair gold again. that she smiled, maybe frowned, maybe folded it back up without finishing.

charlotte asks me about her sometimes, but i don’t know what to say. “an old friend,” i tell her, though that word feels both too small and too heavy. because friendship shouldn’t ache like this.

in this version of life, i don’t exactly see her again. once or twice in a couple years. i don’t tell her i missed her. i don’t ask if she ever forgave me. i let her talk when we do meet, until the words fall apart between us. i let her exist, i don’t try to save her this time. i just listen.

still, whenever i walk past a mailbox, i think of sending another letter, just to see what happens. but i never do. life goes on, and love, like mail, sometimes just gets lost.