Chapter 2

The town always made a big deal of the Fourth of July picnic.

Barbecue smoke, kids with sticky faces, a local band playing slightly off-key.

Mark was back from his first year of college.

I saw him across the park, by the lemonade stand.

He looked different. More confident, wearing a crisp polo shirt I' d never seen.

My heart did a stupid little flip.

This was it.

He' d see me, walk over, and that old, familiar feeling would wash over us.

I smoothed down my sundress, my palms sweating.

I waited.

He was talking to a group of guys, laughing.

Then, he turned.

His eyes scanned the crowd.

For a second, I thought they met mine, but it was too quick.

He started walking, not towards me, but towards the makeshift stage where the mayor was about to give a speech.

My breath caught.

He was going to do something.

Maybe he' d dedicate a song to me, a public declaration. My mind raced with romantic possibilities from our past.

He stepped up onto the low platform, took the microphone from a surprised Mayor Thompson.

A hush fell over the crowd.

"Excuse me, everyone," Mark said, his voice clearer, stronger than I remembered. "I have something important I want to do."

He smiled, a wide, charming smile.

But it wasn' t directed at me.

His gaze found Tiffany Anderson, standing near the front, looking radiant in a yellow dress.

Tiffany, the town's golden girl, pretty and popular, always the center of attention.

"Tiffany," Mark said, his voice ringing out. "Will you be my girlfriend?"

The words hit me like a physical blow.

The crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

Tiffany blushed, nodded, and Mark jumped down to sweep her into a hug.

I stood frozen, the lemonade I was holding slipping from my numb fingers, splashing onto the grass.

It wasn't me.

It was Tiffany.

The world tilted, sounds became muffled.

My perfect reunion, our golden love story, shattered into a million pieces right there in the middle of the town park.

I don' t remember walking home.

One minute I was watching Mark kiss Tiffany, the next I was stumbling through my front door, tears blinding me.

Mom found me on my bedroom floor, curled up, sobbing.

She didn' t say anything, just sat beside me, stroking my hair.

Her presence was a small, warm anchor in the storm raging inside me.

"He... he asked Tiffany," I choked out between sobs.

"I know, honey. I saw," she said softly.

There was no surprise in her voice.

Just a deep, quiet sadness that mirrored my own.

I cried until I had no tears left, until my throat was raw and my head throbbed.

The image of Mark and Tiffany, smiling, surrounded by cheering people, burned into my brain.

How could this be?

How could he not remember? Or worse, what if he did remember, and this was his choice?

Later that night, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, the pieces started to click into place, sharp and painful.

Mark' s sudden ambition, his drive for college.

It wasn't just a random change.

I remembered things from our past life, things that had seemed like sweet coincidences at the time.

Mark asked me out right after Tiffany got a new boyfriend, a popular jock from a neighboring town.

He proposed to me not long after Tiffany got engaged to her first husband.

His biggest regret, he' d often said late in our marriage, was not going to college, not being a "college man."

I' d always thought it was just a general wistfulness for a path not taken.

But now, a sickening realization dawned.

Tiffany' s first serious boyfriend, the one before her jock boyfriend, the one she talked about for years?

He was a college man.

All those romantic milestones with me, were they ever truly about me?

Or were they just reactions to Tiffany' s life, attempts to keep up, to have what she had, or what the men she chose had?

The thought was a cold dread spreading through my veins.

My seventy-year marriage, my golden love story, felt like a lie, a carefully constructed illusion I had mistaken for reality.

And this new Mark, he wasn' t trying to rebuild our past.

He was trying to get the life he always felt he missed, with the girl he always secretly wanted.