He stopped in front of a storefront he went to decades ago. Back then, it was a soda shop he remembers with red tables and chairs, a jukebox playing the hits of the day, and high school kids gathered around talking about Friday night football and who was in love with who.
It was a simpler time when your television set had three stations, and your telephone had a twenty-foot cord so you could go into a closet and talk in private.
He remembered her like it was yesterday, meeting at the soda shop, eating a hamburger and fries, and washed down with an ice-cold Coke. You were as shy as any kid could be, but you swore you wouldn't mess this up. When a second Coke was ordered, you felt like you'd known her forever.
Throughout high school, you were inseparable. You carried her books and walked her home every day, talking and holding hands, planning your futures together, and finding love for the first time.
School dances, football games, movies, and quiet nights sitting on a park bench in silence, hoping nothing would ever change, but it did. It wasn't that they grew apart on purpose. It was two lives going in different directions, trying to meet somewhere in the middle with beliefs that they would be okay but they never were again.
Now, as he stands here looking through the window of a cell phone store that once gave his young life meaning, is as gone as those red tables and chairs. He wonders where she is now and if she has found love and happiness. He tries to manage a smile, but his heart says no.
He slowly walked away from the old soda shop, his hands in his jacket pockets, and only looked back once.
Mike 2024.
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