Note: This story reflects on the mental impact of aborting a child.

The direct flight was long. My eyes watched the sky pass by, as music played in my ears, a playlist reflecting on a time long gone, in a language only I can understand. I sat listening to lyrics that carried me back to moments with him, and sometimes, moments without him. He had always held a place in my heart, in my mind, a presence that brought comfort, companionship, friendship, and a passion that extends beyond the boundaries of this world. It must be what it means to be soulmates: it is not simply someone who “fits” with you…it is someone who exists within you, not only when present but always.

Standing outside the airport, I spotted him in his white SUV, hazards blinking. Somehow, those flashing lights felt like more than a warning to drivers, they pulsed in rhythm with my racing heart. He opened the passenger door with a simple, “Hey, you,” and a smile. Sliding into the seat, I caught him in the side mirror, loading my suitcase and walking around to the driver’s side.

We fell into small talk. “How was the flight?” “How was traffic?” We touched on the weather, realized we were hungry. Dinner was at Driftwood Cove, a quiet beachside bar. We shared a meal, a couple of drinks, and conversation that flowed easily, though it remained polite and distant. I was not nervous about the night, only tired from travel, we headed toward the hotel, we booked one room, two beds, wanting time together, but not to rekindle what once was. Just two old friends catching up, face-to-face after twenty-five years.

We took turns in the shower and climbed into our separate beds. We said goodnight, and as I drifted off, my mind replayed not the conversations from tonight, but the ones from long ago.

When I woke up, the room was quiet. A note lay on the pillow beside me: At the gym, second floor. Last night, I texted Daryl, my husband, to say I had made it safely and was heading to bed. Now seemed like a suitable time to call and check in with the home front. No answer. I left a message.

Daryl knew I was meeting a friend for the weekend. What he did not know was that my “friend” was not Shelly, as I had said, but an ex, one I had never quite stopped caring about. He would not have understood. Telling him I was taking a weekend with Shelly was easier, and I filled her in. She understood. She knew I needed closure on things left unsaid—and undone.

Breakfast was simple: fruit and a Danish on the balcony. Once he returned, our conversation picked up where it had left off, easy, unforced. Later, we walked along the beach, stopping now and then to examine shells, compare them, and return them to the sand. We reminisced about old times, some difficult, others filled with love and adventure. We spoke of forgiveness, of scars that had healed…and some that never would.

Far down the shore, we spotted another bar, a small place with music drifting toward the waves. We walked over, found a table, and ordered drinks. The day stretched before us like a scene from a movie: two people suspended between past and present, trying to make sense of both.

It was easy to be next to him again. He carried a quiet warmth, a sense of safety and unconditional care. As the sun sank into the water, I wished time would slow, that the day, this feeling, could last a little longer. I knew I needed to speak, to say what I came to say, but I did not know how to begin.

The beer went down easily, loosening my restraint but tightening the ache in my chest—not just for what we had lost back then, but for what I knew we would never have again.

“I need to say something… ask something,” I began.

“Okay,” he said, eyes soft. “Shoot.”

I turned toward him fully. Our eyes met, and from head to toe I felt a wave of peace, the kind that only ever came from him. My heart whispered questions my mind could not form: Why am I here? Why now? Why does this feel like coming home?

Before I knew what I was saying, the words slipped out.

“I miss you. I have always missed you.”

Silence. His eyes searched mine, and in that silence, a thousand words passed between us. Then the bartender broke it with a simple, “Y’all want another?”

We both nodded, awkward, a little dazed. The next drink came and went mostly in silence. We were both lost in thought, each retreating to the same place, that thin, fragile line between what was and what still lingered.

When he finally said, “How about we head out?” I agreed.

The night was dark but warm, the glow of beach bars lighting our path. Shoes in hand, we walked along the surf. The water lapped cool against our feet, the sand gritty beneath. I felt the ache of knowing I would miss this man for the rest of my life, this man who would, tomorrow, fly home to his family, as I would to mine.

Somewhere between the bar and the hotel, we stopped on the sand, beneath a sky scattered with stars. The waves crashed softly around us. He told me he missed me too. I told him how special he was, then and now. He said what we had, he had never found again.

I told him about the playlist, the songs that had been ours once. He wanted to hear it. Somehow, we both knew the night would last if we let it. After midnight, we left the beach, still untouched, still talking, but my heart longed for more.

While he showered, I packed for the flight home. Clothes pressed, coffee set for the morning. I lay in bed, scrolling through endless posts from friends—vacations, birthdays, dinner plates, the ordinary world waiting for me. I wondered how I would share the playlist if he even wanted to hear it at all. I had listened to the same songs for years, each one carrying me back, letting me relive moments long gone. When he stepped out, bare-chested in pajama pants, that old spark stirred, the familiar pull I had buried long ago.

“How about that playlist?” he asked.

“Now?”

“Sure,” he said, dropping onto the bed beside me.

As I pulled it up, I realized it was almost two in the morning. Time was running out. I started the first song, explaining when I had added it and why. Then the next, and the next. He asked questions, recalled moments I did not. I remembered things he had forgotten.

Whatever we had, we still had, different, but deeper, shaped by the years even though we were apart.

Then came the song Red Rag Top.

No pause, no stopping, here it is, ask and I did, “Do you remember? Does it bother you? Do you regret it?”

He remembered, but not the way I did. The decision, the date—they blurred for him. He did not carry the loss, did not feel it in the quiet corners of life the way I did. Sometimes I imagine the child, he would have been twenty-one now. In my mind, he is a boy with brown hair and freckles. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I see him standing there, a presence I have carried through every year, every choice, every imagined tomorrow.

Anger crept in, quiet but sharp. How could he not remember? He held me as I cried, and I am not sure if the tears were for that loss, or for the years between us—or for the ones ahead we would never share.

But in that moment, I knew one thing for certain: for this night, we would be us again.

There was no sleeping in those early hours, as we crossed back into a place we’d never truly left, not in our hearts, not in our minds. It felt like a gift from the universe, to relive and to live again the most remarkable and unexplainable sense of belonging and love — breathtaking and bold, beyond measure or comprehension. The place of us.

His flight was early. I stayed behind, saying I would take the hotel shuttle. The past forty-eight hours blurred into something that felt almost unreal, a dream I would carry and ache for, forever.

I once heard a line from a movie: “A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets.”

I understand that now, more than ever, standing at the edge of the sea, aching for moments held only between him and me.