It Began with Childhood Sweethearts, but the Future Is Still Unwritten

This book is one grand love letter. Pixels may blur, but memories stay crystal clear. The cicada-filled summer days, the faded tin box, the Polaroid with its chipped corner... Against those backgrounds blurred by time, you are the one coordinate that remains perfectly clear. We were once reflections of each other, sharing a secret language. Even after we each set off for faraway places, that familiarity had already been carved into our bones.

From fighting over a piece of candy in our little-kid underwear to exchanging a ring in our finest clothes, our story has never had a single full stop.

He saw me looking silly with my hair in pigtails, and I counted the times his palms got scraped from basketball practice. Later, the hem of my wedding dress just brushed the sneakers he wore as a boy.

When we were little, you took the blame for me. When we grew up, I shielded you from the pressure to get married. It turns out that “growing up together” had secretly written the script for “growing old together.”

The old locust tree at the end of the alley remembers: at ten, he chased away a dog for me; at twenty, he twisted open a bottle for me; at thirty, he held the elevator for me. This time, he asked if he could open the door for me for the rest of my life.

When people ask how we got together, we both smile: It wasn't that we “got together.” We simply “never parted.”