I was showing my kid some pictures from when I was in college. She was about five years old. We found a picture of myself and my ex, the person I dated before I met her dad.
I thought I had gotten rid of it.
She said, “I know him,” and pointed at him. This is the guy who gave me the bracelet at the fair.
I felt my stomach drop. The fair?
We hadn’t been to the small summer fair outside of Millersville in a long time. It was an old, broken-down pop-up fair with rides that had faded from being in the sun and cotton candy that cost a lot. I remembered it largely because she won a big stuffed banana at one of those games that are too hard to win.
What about the bracelet?
I only remembered it very vaguely. She raced up to me with a blue and white beaded bracelet and said, “A man gave this to me!” That was so nice of him! I assumed the booth worker gave away the bracelet to get more people to visit. It looked cheap and safe, so I just nodded and said thanks.
The man in the picture, Nico, was someone I hadn’t seen in almost seven years.
I hadn’t talked to him since I broke up with him and left our modest apartment in Charleston with just a suitcase and a plan to move to Atlanta.
He was supposed to be the one for me forever. He was an artist and a thinker. He regularly drew pictures in the margins of his notebooks. We had been together for three years, but when I got a job offer in another city and he couldn’t leave his sick father behind, everything fell apart. The time wasn’t right. And I convinced myself that it was a good enough excuse to give up everything.
But now my daughter was telling me that she had met him by coincidence, as if fate had sent him back into our lives like a boomerang.
I looked at the picture quite closely. He looked the same in the old picture. His silky brown skin and the way he smirked like he was going to chuckle at a joke only he heard made me feel good. His long fingers rested softly on my shoulder.
“Are you sure, sweetheart?” I asked her.
She nodded with the honest look in her eyes that only a five-year-old can express. “His headgear was blue. He also knew my name. He said, “You look just like your mother.”
I paused.
He said that?
Before, I had never used my daughter’s real name in public. That meant a lot to me. No name tags or shirts tailored particularly for you. He would have had to know me to know her name.
I called my sister Diah that night.
“Don’t freak out,” I said quietly, even though I knew she would. “But do you remember when I told you about that college guy named Nico?”
“The one with the artsy look?” The one you believed you were going to marry but then disappeared? She answered while she was eating.
“Okay, well…” It seems that he met my child at the Millersville fair.
No one said anything.
“Wait, WHAT?”
I told her everything. She paused for a bit and spoke something that stuck with me.
“Maybe he wasn’t just bumping into her.” He may have been trying to find you.
That thought kept coming back to me. Why would he want to see me after all this time? And why not just get in touch?
I started to think about the bracelet. I got it out of my daughter’s box of jewels. It was too well-made for a random prize at a fair. Each bead had minuscule, hard-to-see symbols on it. Like little groupings of stars. I remembered that Nico used to make and sell bracelets like this on Etsy to help pay his rent.
I sat down and searched for his name. Nothing at all. Not on any social media, not even Facebook or LinkedIn.
But then I thought of the bakery his mom owned. Jasmine and Rye.
I used Google to find out. Still open. Still in Charleston.
I begged my ex-husband to keep our kid for an extra day the next weekend. He didn’t say anything. I packed a bag and traveled five hours back to the city where I had left.
I parked on the other side of the street from the bakery, and my heart raced like a drumline.
The yellow trim, navy awning, and smell of cardamom and fresh bread coming from the door were just how I remembered. Memories came flooding back as soon as I went in.
A woman behind the counter looked up and then looked again.
“Is Liyana there?” she asked.
I blinked. “Mrs. Reyes?”
She came around the desk and hugged me like it was the first time.
She said without being asked, “He’s not here right now.” “But he still comes by from time to time. He is now helping to run art workshops all throughout town.
There was something in her voice that made it sound like she knew more than she was saying.
She wrote something down on a piece of paper. “Go see him. He is in the warehouse on Jameson Street. This week, they’re painting a big picture.
I was shocked and thanked her.
I had no trouble finding the warehouse. There were ladders, drop cloths, and a big wall going up. It was like a dream coming to life from bricks, with colors, shapes, vines, and faces all over it.
And there he was.
He looked a little older and more worn out, but it was still him.
He stopped and looked down from the ladder.
“Hey, Liyana?”
I almost forgot how to breathe.
I said, “Hey.”
He climbed down slowly. He used a rag with paint on it to clean his hands. He looked at me like he was trying to solve a riddle that he thought he had lost years ago.
“You came.”
I nodded.
We sat on buckets of paint that had been turned over. It was uncomfortable for a moment. Then, as if nothing had happened in the years since, the conversation started up again.
He said in a quiet voice, “I saw her.” “Your girl.” I didn’t mean to scare her. Or you.
“She said you gave her a bracelet.”
“I didn’t know if I should say anything to you.” I also saw you during the fair. From the other side. You seemed quite happy.
I didn’t knew what to say about that.
He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot.” That bracelet is a year old. I just kept it in my wallet. I know it’s not smart.
I looked at him. “Did you do it before you saw her?”
“Yes.” I just—something made me want to cling on to part of that hope. I had no idea you had a kid. But I simply knew when I saw her. She looked a lot like you.
We were quiet.
Then he continued, “I’ve always wondered why you left like that.”
I had to swallow hard. At the time, I thought that leaving was the right thing to do. You lived your life, and I lived mine. I didn’t want to ask you to pick between your life and mine.
He shook his head. “You never gave me a chance.” That hurt.
I looked at my hands. “I know.”
He stood up, wiped off his clothes, and looked at the wall. “Isn’t life strange?” How it brings everything back around.
I had no notion what I wanted from this. End? Is this a second chance?
But I felt better when I left that place. I felt like a knot in my chest had come undone.
We talked to each other throughout the next few months. Texted. Called. He even came to see us and met my daughter again, this time for real.
She fell in love with him immediately away. They called him “Mr. Star Beads.”
One day she looked at me and said, “Let’s keep him.”
Kids, man. No filter.
I chuckled, but the thought stuck with me.
As time went on, we all started spending more weekends together. We’d visit parks, museums, and little diners in our neighborhoods. These were just real moments, nothing important.
And the plot twist?
One night, my daughter was quite sick. I lost my mind. My ex wasn’t in the area. I called Nico without thinking.
He got there in ten minutes. He took her to the ER and stayed with us all night. He made her laugh when they took her blood. My family held my hand when the nurse said it might be appendicitis. It turned out to be just a bad illness, but at the time, I saw something I hadn’t seen in years.
He was still that man. The one who loved with all their heart. Who came?
When we got home and she was asleep, I looked at him and said, “I think I made a mistake by leaving.”
He smiled, but it was a sad smile.
“We both did something wrong. But we’re here now.
That night, we didn’t make any promises. We just lay on the couch as she slept in the other room.
We rebuilt our connection, one emotional block at a time.
It didn’t happen quickly. It wasn’t easy.
But it was worth it.
He started making bracelets with her. They opened an Etsy store together. I still tease him that she’s better at marketing than he ever was.
We haven’t gotten married yet. In the most honest and authentic way I’ve ever known, we are just us.
Sometimes life sends back things you lost, not to hurt you, but to see if you’re ready to hold them in a different way.
If you are reading this and thinking about the person you left behind or the person who left you, ask yourself if it was really over. Or was it merely on pause?
Because certain chapters aren’t finished yet. They are just waiting for a better pen.
