My first love

I was fifteen the summer my life quietly changed, though I didn’t realize it at first. Back then, my world was small—just school, the park, and the street where I’d lived my entire childhood. Then one warm June afternoon, a moving truck pulled up to the empty house across from mine, and with it came a girl who altered everything without even trying.

Her name was Lena.

I saw her first from my bedroom window, balancing a cardboard box against her hip while trying to push a strand of hair out of her face. She looked up, caught me staring, and instead of pretending she hadn’t seen me, she waved with the brightest grin I’d ever witnessed. It was such a simple gesture, but somehow it made the day feel warmer.

We met officially the next afternoon. I was shooting baskets in my driveway when she walked over, hands shoved into the pockets of her denim shorts.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m new. And incredibly bored. Can I play?”

She couldn’t shoot to save her life. But she laughed every time she missed, and I found myself laughing too, louder than I usually did. By the end of the game, which she lost spectacularly, she asked if I wanted to hang out the next day. I said yes before she even finished the sentence.

From then on, summer became ours.

We spent our mornings biking through the neighborhood, racing down the steep hill near the old railroad tracks, trying to see who could reach the bottom without crashing. In the afternoons, we’d get ice cream from the corner shop—she always chose mint chocolate chip, even though she insisted it tasted like toothpaste. And at night, when the sky turned purple, we’d sit on the small fence between our yards and talk about everything that mattered and everything that didn’t.

Lena had this way of looking at the world that made it feel larger and more hopeful. She wanted to travel everywhere, learn everything, meet everyone. I had always thought my town was enough, but she made me wonder what else might be out there.

One evening, as we lay on the grass in her backyard watching fireflies blink in the warm darkness, she said, “Do you ever feel like people meet for a reason?”

I turned my head toward her. “Yeah. Sometimes.”

She smiled, soft and shy. “I feel that about us.”

I didn’t answer, mostly because I didn’t trust my voice not to shake. But my heart felt like it was glowing, full and unfamiliar. I didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning—the moment my life shifted, the moment first love quietly rooted itself inside me.

Days grew longer, warmer, sweeter. Every moment with her felt like something golden I wanted to gather in my hands and never let slip away. We made stupid inside jokes, shared music through the same set of headphones, and talked about dreams we were both too scared to admit out loud to anyone else.

But summer doesn’t last forever. I learned that too soon.

It was late August when her father announced they would be moving again. His job demanded it, he said. This town was just a “temporary stop,” though she had never told me that part.

The night before she left, she came over wearing an oversized hoodie and carrying a shoebox. Inside were small things that made no sense to anyone but us—ticket stubs, notes, a plastic bracelet she had made for me, a photo booth strip of our faces squished together as we tried to fit into the frame.

“This is so you don’t forget,” she said, her voice trembling.

“I couldn’t forget if I tried,” I told her.

She stepped closer, wrapped her arms around me, and for the first time, we held each other like we knew something important was ending.

“You were my first real friend,” she whispered. Then, quieter: “My first real love, I think.”

I wanted to say it back. The words were right there. But fear held them in my throat, and by the time I found the courage, she was already stepping away.

The next morning, she was gone.

The house across from mine stayed empty for weeks. The fence felt taller, the nights quieter, the world bigger again. Yet even now, years later, when I think of my first love, I don’t remember the leaving.

I remember fireflies. Laughter. Mint chocolate chip. The soft glow of a summer that still lives inside me, warm and unforgettable.