The Lost Love That Found Its Way Back

The Lost Love That Found Its Way Back

I didn’t expect to see her again—especially not on a rainy Tuesday when the city felt like a tired song on repeat.

I was seated near the window of Café Del Mar, the same corner spot where we used to sit two years ago, back when her laugh was still my favorite sound and coffee tasted sweeter with her across the table.

Now, I mostly came here for habit. For ghosts.

And then she walked in.

Anna.

She wasn’t supposed to be here—not in this city, not in this season of my life. But there she was, shaking rain from her coat, eyes scanning the room like she was searching for something.

Or maybe someone.

She didn’t see me at first, and I took a moment to study her. Her hair was a bit shorter, the smile slower to form. But she still had that soft presence that felt like autumn wrapped in a person.

When her eyes finally met mine, time cracked open like an old book.

“Eli?” she asked, almost breathless.

I nodded, standing before I realized what I was doing. “Hey, Anna.”

God, my voice sounded different—older, maybe. Or nervous.

“Mind if I sit?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. And honestly, I didn’t want her to.

We talked like strangers who knew too much. About work, family, the pandemic, her new life in Boston. We danced around the past like it might explode if we touched it.

But silence eventually caught up to us.

“I still think about you,” she whispered, eyes locked on her untouched cup. “More than I should.”

I didn’t know whether to speak or scream. So I breathed, slowly. carefully. Like the wrong exhale might send her running again.

“Why did you leave?” I asked.

She closed her eyes for a moment. “Because I was scared. We got too close too fast, and I didn’t know how to handle the weight of it. You...

you made me feel everything.”

“And that was a bad thing?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It was the most real thing I’d ever felt. But real scared me.”

The truth sat between us. Unapologetic. Heavy. Familiar.

“I thought I’d moved on,” I said quietly. “I tried. God knows I tried.”

She smiled, sad and small. “Me too.”

Another silence.

But this one felt different. It didn’t ache. It waited.

She reached into her coat and pulled something out—a small, worn notebook.

I knew it instantly.

“You kept it?”

“Every page,” she said. “Every terrible poem you wrote me.”

I laughed, shocked. “They weren’t that bad.”

“They were. But they were mine.”

We sat there, hearts thumping in some old rhythm we’d tried to forget. And in that coffee-scented stillness, I realized something:

Love doesn’t vanish. It hides. It waits. And sometimes—if you’re lucky—it finds its way back.

She stood slowly, placing the notebook on the table.

“I’m flying back tomorrow,” she said. “But if you want... maybe tonight we could just walk. No past, no promises. Just you and me.”

My chest burned in that beautiful way it used to. I nodded. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

She smiled. The real kind. The kind that made me believe in things again.

As we stepped out into the rainy street, side by side but not quite touching, I couldn’t help but feel like the story wasn’t ending.

It was starting over.

Closing Reflection :

Sometimes love leaves not because it wants to—but because it needs time to grow. And if it’s real, it doesn’t knock twice. It lets itself in.