A Story

I am going to tell you a story of love and loss.

Once upon a time, there was a guy and a girl, and they fell in love. He bought her a ring, she picked out a dress and early one evening in May, they promised each other forever. The next day, the guy and the girl got on a plane, and they spent seven lovely days together on a small, exquisite island eating incredible food, lounging in the sun and sight-seeing. 

One of their sight-seeing adventures took them to a neighboring island where the streets were teeming with cruise ship tourists. They wandered through stores and sat at a sidewalk restaurant listening to music and watching people as they passed by. He smiled at her as she browsed in the stores, content to watch her shop. He even helped her pick out a watch. On their last day on the island, the guy and the girl packed their bags and took the ferry back to the neighboring island where they would board a plane headed back to Real Life. They ate conch for lunch and while they sat there, the girl realized that she really wished she had bought the sunglasses she'd tried on while they shopped. They were expensive, way more money than she had ever spent on a single item of clothing before. The girl looked at her new watch and assured the guy they had plenty of time to pick the sunglasses up -- she knew exactly where the store was and just needed to run in to grab them and jump back into the cab on the way to the airport. The guy, because he loves her, said okay. So they jumped in a cab and sped down the road until they ran into dead stopped traffic. They crept along slower than they could have walked (and would have except for the luggage and the airplane) until finally, finally the girl saw the store. She jumped out and ran in, grabbing the sunglasses and throwing her credit card at the clerk with a smile, running out the door as the cab and the guy passed the store. They sped off for the airport, where the guy and the girl ran to their plane as the final call for passengers was being announced. 

The guy and the girl came back to Real Life, where nine months later they had a baby. Eighteen months later that little girl was riding on her Pops and Gran's pontoon boat at the lake on a lazy late summer afternoon. She was having so much fun that she jumped into her mother's arms, which knocked her sunglasses right off of her head and into the lake.

 

The End.