When love first found me, everything was still.
I remember it, I remember it all.
I had been hoping and praying all my life for a love this pure to find me. The kind that sweeps in quietly, like the last golden hour of the day, and leaves everything in its light looking a little more beautiful. I remember how he made me feel – when he would hold me, kiss me, and love me. Like the world finally made sense. Like the ache I didn’t even know I carried had finally eased.
It all started on one fateful day.
February 20th, 2024.
Exactly nineteen days after I had turned twenty-three.
I was curled up in my bedroom, the soft hum of rain tapping against the window like a lullaby. My world was still dressed in the soft haze of post-birthday reflection. The fairy lights I never got around to taking down from December still glowed above my headboard, casting tiny golden flecks across the room like scattered wishes.
Everything about that night felt a little too cinematic—like it had been written for me.
My phone buzzed.
Ethan.
I had never heard his voice outside of the little speaker on my phone, never seen him move beyond the frame of our late-night video calls. But now, here he was.
Outside. Waiting.
I stood up slowly, smoothing the creases from my oversized sweater, my heart pounding so hard I was sure he could hear it from the street. I took a breath, the kind that tries to anchor you before everything changes.
I didn’t know it then, but this was the beginning.
Not just of us.
But of everything that would follow.
On my way to the front door, I stopped and glanced at myself in the mirror—just for a moment, just to breathe.
My kinky hair, usually wild and free like my thoughts, had been tamed into soft goddess locs that framed my face like poetry. Each strand felt intentional, like I was stepping into a version of myself I had only imagined before tonight.
My makeup was warm—earthy tones swept across my lids and a peachy blush that hinted at spring. It wasn’t loud, but it made me glow. Like I had been kissed by the sun and knew it.
My outfit was sweet—soft fabrics that clung just enough, a little off-the-shoulder detail that felt like a quiet kind of confidence. I wasn’t trying to seduce him. I just wanted to be seen. Really seen. Not as a girl playing dress-up in someone else’s idea of desire, but as the woman I was becoming.
I tilted my head slightly, studying the girl in the mirror.
Was she enough?
She looked like someone who still believed in fairytales—but maybe the grown-up version. The kind where love didn’t have to be perfect, just real.
I wasn’t trying to be the girl next door anymore.
But I also didn’t want to be the “slut next door” either.
There had to be space between those two things—somewhere soft and beautiful where I could just be me.
I inhaled deeply, smoothing my hands down the sides of my dress. My fingers trembled a little. Not from fear. From hope. From the terrifying possibility that this night might be the one I’d always dreamed of… or the one I’d never forget for entirely different reasons.
And then I reached for the door.
There he was.
He was tall, bursting with the kind of energy you could feel before he even said a word.
Dark hair, perfectly tousled like he’d stepped out of a slow-motion scene. But it was his eyes that caught me off guard—green. Not the soft kind, either. They were sharp and clear, like fresh-cut glass or spring leaves after a storm. They didn’t just look at me… they searched me.
For a second, neither of us said anything.
The porch light above cast a golden glow on his skin, and time did that strange thing where it folds in on itself, where seconds feel like whole lifetimes. His lips parted slightly, as if he was about to speak, but stopped, just to look at me.
And I stood there, frozen. Not because I was scared. But because something in me knew.
Knew that everything was about to change.
He smiled, slow and sure. The kind of smile that made you feel like you were the only one in the world who had ever made him smile like that. And just like that, the nervous flutter in my stomach turned into something warmer, deeper. Like the very idea of him was something I’d been waiting for without even realizing it.
“Amber,” he said, like he already knew me. Like he’d been saying my name for years, just waiting for me to show up in his world.
I nodded, unable to stop the shy grin that crept onto my face. “Ethan.”
It felt like a movie—the kind where the music swells and two people step into a frame that had been waiting just for them.
He took a step forward, and I stepped aside to let him in, my heart thudding like a drum under soft velvet.
That was the first night.
The first moment.
The first time I ever let someone in—body, heart, and soul.
And even though I didn’t know it yet… it was also the beginning of the end.
Because sometimes love doesn’t come to heal you.
Sometimes, it comes to teach you how to survive.
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