Friday night football games were the week’s biggest social event. The local diner served as the unofficial town meeting place.
The future seemed like it would naturally continue from the comfortable present.
Bella Martinez was the absolute center of that world for me.
We met when we were thirteen years old. Both of us awkward and unfinished, still figuring out who we were supposed to become.
She was the girl who sat two rows over in eighth-grade English. She always had paint under her fingernails from art class.
Her laugh was contagious enough to make everyone around her smile. Dark curly hair that constantly escaped whatever ponytail she’d attempted that morning.
Brown eyes that seemed to see straight through whatever front I was trying to maintain.
We started officially dating at fourteen. But honestly, we were best friends first and foremost.
She knew me in ways no one else ever has. She could tell when I was lying about being okay.
When I was scared but pretending to be brave. When I needed someone to just sit with me in silence instead of trying to fix things.
Planning A Future That Would Never Come
We planned our futures the way teenagers do. Vaguely, optimistically, with no understanding of how fragile those plans really were.
We talked about going to the same college, maybe somewhere in New York City. About getting an apartment together after graduation.
About building a life that included both of us, always.
Then, in the span of one dinner conversation, everything changed completely.
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