Chapter 3

There was no huge drama. None of the usual angry bitter words that more often than not go hand in hand with a break-up. It was more both just sadly, heartbreakingly accepting this ending.
Their circumstances, their age, their timing................ just wasn't right I guess.

As the engagement presents were handed back, (well I mean what use would an electric carving knife, a crystal vase or a set of towels be to an 18yr old :) this was them, officially over.

She had offered him his ring back. (this time she would have handed it quietly over instead of chucking at him like she had done in the past. But believe her when she says, it was usually warranted!)
He told her to keep it, them, and so both rings went into a little box and were buried as deep as her young heartbreak was.
But she was determined to survive.

He was posted to the gulf and wrote her, asking if she would please send him mail. And so they exchanged photos, letters, cards, both ignoring the familiar pull they had always felt toward each other. Chatting about their lives and how he just wanted to come home.

Months and months passed. Contact became sporadic, and then stopped.

One night, sometime later, while she was getting ready to go out with a boy she had been dating a while, the phone rang...............
She picked it up and upon hearing that familiar voice............. (stretched that totally annoying curly 'can't get no privacy' phone cable up the stairs as far as it would go) felt her heart stop.

He was back in town and wanted to see her. And omg but she wanted to. So so wanted to.............. but she couldn't.
She had met someone else and wanted the chance to find out if it was going somewhere. She had cried all her tears, she had patched up her heart, and she knew that if she actually had to meet him............ that she'd be totally and utterly lost again.
She just couldn't risk it.

And so that would be the last time they ever spoke, or saw each other.............

......... for the next 20 years ..........