The last time I saw my first love was on my 17th birthday—thirty years later, a woman who looked exactly like her stepped into my yard

worried expressions and call a “phase.”

We let them think that.

We had plans that felt more real than anything the adults around us were doing. A college acceptance I was giddy about. An apartment we’d picked out from a classified ad: third floor, big windows, a fire escape facing west.

A life that existed so completely in my head that even now I can continue reading …