I don’t know if you know what I mean by “the one that got away,” but a lot of people have them. “The one that got away” is a love interest that you were very invested in, but things didn’t work out and you really regret it. My mom had a “one that got away,” her high school sweetheart, whom she kind of regretted breaking up with.
After my mom died, I found an obituary for someone that I think was him, and it wouldn’t’ve worked out. He became a pastor, and, well, how do I make this read smoothly? I’ve reworked this part three times now.
Near where I grew up, there was a church. I’m a Christian as was my mom, but this church had some, not really doctrinal (though there were those, as well) but . . . business-related activities that my mom disagreed with.
The obituary I found said that he worked at that church. Everything else matches up — his (fairly common) name, his age, he was even in the state where my mom was while they were dating. And, well, the pictures of him I found do look like this pastor was her “type.”
So, yeah.
In my dream last night, my “one that got away” was Keith Habersberger from the Try Guys. Why him in particular? I don’t know. The real life Keith is young enough to be my son. So we were never in school together, but in my dream, we had been classmates.
I got a chance to go back in time and fix what had gone wrong between us. I walked up to him and when I made eye contact with him, his career with the Try Guys and his relationship with Becky, his wife, all came flooding back to me and I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t know what kind of life he and I would’ve had, but he seems really happy with Becky and the whole Try Guys thing, so I told him that I had a feeling that he would get everything he wants and deserves from life and he offered me his friendship and promised that we’d keep in touch.
At some point, I attended the wedding of Zach Kornfeld and his fiancee Maggie. She was a beautiful bride. I don’t know if I was, like, there because I knew the Try Guys from my friendship with Keith or what.
Time to get back to Gratuitous Amazon Links. This is another favorite — A Deadly Education, by Naomi Novik. A Deadly Education is the first of a series about El, short for Galadriel, who is a student at a school for witches and wizards. El is a natural dark wizard (called a “Maleficer” in this series) who is determined not to go down that path. The school is well drawn and I enjoy the supporting characters. The second book comes out in just over a month and I’m really excited for it. I also bought a copy of this for a friend and will buy her the next book, too.