“Keep it,” he said. “You might need rescuing again.”
I laughed so loudly that our teacher looked over his glasses at us.
From then on, we were rarely apart. We studied at the library, shared french fries at Henderson’s Diner, and spent summer evenings talking about places we had never seen.
We were not the loudest couple at school. We were not crowned prom king and queen, and our photograph never appeared in the center of the yearbook.
We simply fit.
Daniel understood that I became quiet when I was worried. I knew he whistled whenever he was trying to solve a problem. He could make me laugh without making me feel foolish, and I could settle his nerves with a look.
At our senior prom, we danced beneath silver paper stars in the high school gym. Daniel wore a dark suit borrowed from his cousin and a white carnation on his lapel. I wore the ivory dress my mother had made.
“You look like the rest of my life,” he told me.
It was an awkward sentence from an eighteen-year-old boy, but I remembered every word.
Two weeks after graduation, Daniel received orders to serve overseas.
And the night before he left, I made him a promise that would shape the next fifty-five years of my life.
