Until The Last Leaf Falls

It was the last autumn at Maplewood before the town’s oldest bookstore was to be shut down. Emma, a quiet librarian in her late twenties, found herself working overtime cataloging the final inventory. It wasn’t just a bookstore to her — it was where she had fallen in love ten years ago.

She was only seventeen then, flipping through dusty classics, when a boy with tousled black hair and ink-stained fingers handed her a copy of The Little Prince. “It’s not just for children,” he’d said with a half-smile. His name was Leo.

Leo was a writer, always scribbling in the margins of used books, always chasing ideas. Emma was the reader, quiet and careful, someone who found entire worlds in single paragraphs. They were opposites, but somehow, they fit.

For three years, they met under the golden light of the bookstore’s reading nook. Emma would bring coffee, Leo would bring poems — always written on napkins or the backs of receipts. Their love was not loud or impulsive. It was slow-burning, like a candle that never flickered in the wind.

But life, as it often does, had other plans.

Leo got a chance to study writing in New York. It was his dream — the one he had whispered to Emma under the creaky shelves and behind dog-eared novels. “Come with me,” he had asked. But Emma’s father had fallen sick. She couldn’t leave. “We’ll write letters,” they promised. “We’ll call. We’ll wait.”

The letters started strong — two a week, sometimes more. Then one a week. Then one a month. Then silence.

Years passed. Emma stayed, worked at the bookstore, and buried herself in pages. She didn’t blame him. She had known from the start that Leo belonged to words, to stories, to skies too wide for this small town.

Still, she waited.

And now, the bookstore was closing. She was boxing up old romances when a folded piece of paper fell out of a novel. It was yellowed with age, but the ink was unmistakably Leo’s.

"If you find this, Emma… it means you’re still here. I’m sorry I stopped writing. I thought I could forget you, but every line I write finds its way back to you. I left the letters I never sent inside the books you loved. Maybe one day, you’ll find them." — L

Her hands trembled as she searched through the shelves. In Pride and Prejudice, another letter: “I passed by the coffee shop we used to visit. The barista still remembers your order.”

In Wuthering Heights: “I hate how much I miss you. I hate that missing you is the only part of me that feels alive.”

Over two dozen letters — confessions, regrets, memories — all tucked away in the spines of books. All waiting.

Emma didn’t cry until she opened the last one, hidden inside The Little Prince.

"I’ll be at Maplewood’s park on the last day of autumn, under the big oak where we carved our initials. I’ll wait until the last leaf falls. If you’re not there by then, I’ll go, and this time, I won’t look back."

It was dated this year.

Emma’s heart raced. The last day of autumn was today.

She ran — through streets that knew her name, past memories that clung to corners. She reached the park just as the wind picked up. The oak tree stood tall, golden and proud, a few leaves still holding on.

And under it, a man with tousled black hair and a notebook in hand looked up.

Leo.

He looked older, a little thinner, but his eyes — they held every unwritten poem of the past ten years. When he saw her, the notebook fell.

“I thought you might not come,” he said.

“I almost didn’t,” she replied, breathless.

They stood in silence, both searching the other’s face for the years they had lost.

Then the wind blew gently.

A single leaf detached.

It hovered for a moment — danced, twirled — then drifted to the ground between them.

And they stepped over it, into each other’s arms, just before the last leaf fell.