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, who I dated before I met her dad.
I thought I had gotten rid of it.
“I know him,” she responded, pointing at him. This is the guy who gave me the bracelet at the fair.
My stomach dropped. The fair?
It had been months since we had been to the small summer fair outside of Millersville. It was an old, run-down pop-up carnival with rides that had faded from being outside and cotton candy that cost a lot. I mostly remembered it because she had won a big stuffed banana at one of those games that are too hard to win.
What about the bracelet?
I only had a vague recall of it. She hurried up to me and screamed, “A man gave me this!” while showing me a blue-and-white beaded bracelet. He was really wonderful to do that! I assumed the booth vendor gave away the bracelet to get more people to visit. I just nodded and said thank you because it looked cheap and safe.
But I hadn’t seen Nico, the man in the image, in almost seven years.
I hadn’t spoken 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.
I was supposed to be with him forever. He was creative and caring, and he regularly drew things 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. It wasn’t the right time. And I talked myself into believing it was enough of a justification to let it all go.
But now my daughter was saying that she had met him by coincidence, as if fate had tossed him back into our lives like a boomerang.
I took a good look at the picture. He looked the same in the old picture. I felt good when I saw his silky brown skin and the way he smirked like he was about to laugh at a joke only he knew. His long fingers touched my shoulder lightly.
“Are you sure, honey?” I asked her.
She nodded with the kind of wide-eyed honesty that only a five-year-old can show. “He had on a blue hat. He also knew my name. He said to her, “You look just like your mom.”
I stopped moving.
He said that?
I had never used my daughter’s real name in public before. That meant a lot to me. No shirts or name badges manufactured particularly for you. He would have had to know me to know her name.
I called my sister Diah that night.
I said, “Don’t freak out,” even though I knew she would. “But do you remember when I told you about Nico, the college guy?”
“The one with the art?” The one you thought you were going to marry but then stopped talking to? She talked as she was eating.
“Okay, well… It seems that he met my child at the fair in Millersville.
No one said a word.
Then, “Wait, WHAT?”
I told her everything. She paused for a time and said something that stuck with me.
“Maybe he wasn’t just running into her.” He could have been seeking for you.
That idea kept coming back to me. Why would he want to find 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 jewelry box. It was too well-made to be a random prize at a fair. On each bead, there were small, hard-to-see symbols. Like little clusters of stars. I remembered that Nico used to make and sell bracelets like this on Etsy to make money for rent.
I sat down and looked for his name. Not a thing. Not on Facebook or LinkedIn, not even old ones.
But then I thought of his mom’s bakery. Rye and Jasmine.
I searched for it on Google. Still open. Still in Charleston.
I told my ex-husband that I wanted him to take our daughter for an extra day the next weekend. He didn’t ask. I put my things in a rucksack and drove five hours back to the city where I had ghosted.
I parked across 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. As soon as I stepped inside, memories flooded back to me.
A woman behind the counter looked up once and then again.
“Is Liyana there?” she asked.
I blinked. “Mrs. Reyes?”
She stepped 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 every now and then. He is now helping to run art workshops all throughout town.
It sounded like she knew more than she was saying because of the way she spoke.
She wrote something on a piece of paper. “Go see him. He is at the warehouse on Jameson Street. They’re painting a mural this week.
I thanked her and departed, shocked.
Finding the warehouse was simple for me. There were drop cloths, ladders, and a big wall being built. There were colors, patterns, vines, and faces all over it, like a living dream growing from bricks.
And there he was.
He looked a little more worn out and had aged seven years, but it was definitely him.
He stopped and looked down from the ladder.
“Hey, Liyana?”
I almost forgot how to breathe.
“Hey,” I said.
He carefully climbed down. He cleaned his hands on a cloth that had paint on it. He looked at me like he was trying to solve a problem he thought he had lost years ago.
“You came.”
I nodded.
We sat on paint buckets that had been turned upside down. For a beat, it was uncomfortable. Then, as if nothing had happened in the years since, the conversation started to flow.
“I saw her,” he said in a quiet voice. “Your daughter.” I didn’t want to scare her. Or you.
“She told me you gave her a bracelet.”
“I wasn’t sure if I should talk to you.” I also saw you at the fair. From the other side. You seemed happy.
I didn’t know what to say about it.
He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot. A year ago, I made the bracelet. I just put it in my wallet. I know it’s stupid.
I stared at him. “You did it before you saw her?”
“Yes.” I just—something told me to keep some of that hope. I didn’t know you were a parent. But I knew right away when I saw her. She looked a lot like you.
We didn’t say anything.
He then remarked, “I never stopped wondering why you left like that.”
I had to swallow hard. At the time, I thought leaving was the right thing to do. You had your own life, and I had mine. I was scared 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, brushed off his clothes, and turned to face the wall. “Isn’t life strange?” How it brings everything back to where it started.
I didn’t know what I wanted from this. Done? Could it be a second chance?
But I felt better once I left the warehouse. It felt like a knot in my chest had come undone.
We stayed in touch over the next few months. Texted. Called. He even came to meet us and met my daughter again, this time in person.
She loved him immediately away. People called him “Mr. Star Beads.”
One day, she looked at me and said, “Let’s keep him.”
Kids, man. No filter.
I thought it was funny, but the idea stuck with me.
As time went on, we all started spending more weekends together. We’d go to little neighborhood diners, parks, and museums. These were just real moments, nothing important.
And the twist?
My daughter was quite sick one night. I lost it. My ex wasn’t in town. I called Nico without even thinking about it.
He got there in ten minutes. He brought her to the Emergency Room and stayed with us all night. He made her giggle while they drew blood. My family held my hand when the nurse said it could be appendicitis. It was just a bad illness, but at the time, I saw something I hadn’t seen in years.
He was still that guy. The person who loved with all their heart. Who showed up?
When we got home and she was asleep, I looked at him and said, “I think leaving was a mistake.”
He smiled, but it was a sad smile.
“We both made mistakes. But we’re here now.
That night, we didn’t promise anything. We just lay on the couch as she slept in the other room.
We rebuilt our friendship over time, one emotional block at a time.
It wasn’t fast. 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 aren’t married yet. We are just us, in the most honest and authentic way I’ve ever known.
Sometimes life sends back things you lost, not to hurt you, but to see if you’re ready to hold them in a new way.
If you’re reading this and thinking about the person you left behind or the person who left you, ask yourself: was it really over? Or was it just waiting?
Because certain chapters aren’t finished yet. They are just waiting for a better pen.