love—the kind that imprints on you forever, that becomes the standard by which you’ll measure every relationship that comes after. I was his first love too, or so he told me countless times. When he smiled at me across the crowded high school cafeteria during lunch period, when he reached for my hand in the hallways between classes, the entire world felt safe and secure and exactly as it should be.
Source: Unsplash
The accident that changed absolutely everything
Michael was driving to his grandparents’ house on a snowy December evening to drop off Christmas presents. It was one of those treacherous winter nights where the temperature drops suddenly after a brief thaw, creating conditions that are deceptively dangerous. A patch of black ice on a rural road. An oncoming truck whose driver couldn’t stop in time despite slamming on his brakes. The specific details of what happened were always
