love-I spent four months planning my husband’s 50th birthday, bringing together old college friends, his estranged brother, and even his childhood baseball coach. He hugged me and whispered, “I don’t deserve you.” But just before the cake, he handed every guest an ivory envelope—except me. When they opened them, my mother-in-law covered her mouth, my father whispered, “Oh my God,” and I saw three letters on a page that made my blood run cold…

I spent four months planning my husband’s 50th birthday, bringing together old college friends, his estranged brother, and even his childhood baseball coach. He hugged me and whispered, “I don’t deserve you.” But just before the cake, he handed every guest an ivory envelope—except me. When they opened them, my mother-in-law covered her mouth, my father whispered, “Oh my God,” and I saw three letters on a page that made my blood run cold…

When my husband turned fifty, I wanted to give him something no amount of money could buy.

Not another watch.

Not another golf club.

Not another expensive jacket that would hang in the closet with the tags still attached.

I wanted to give him his people.

My husband, Paul, had always said that getting older didn’t bother him nearly as much as watching the people he loved drift away.

Friends moved. Families argued. Parents died. Everybody got busy.

One Christmas, after looking through an old photo album, he said something I never forgot.

“If I could get everybody I love in one room again, I wouldn’t need another birthday present for the rest of my life.”

So I decided to make that happen.

My name is Claire. I was forty-eight then, and Paul and I had been married twenty-three years.

We didn’t have a perfect marriage. Nobody does after that much time together.

We argued about grocery bills, whose turn it was to call the plumber, and why Paul believed every cardboard box in the garage might someday be useful.

But we had built a good life.

He was the kind of man who remembered how everybody took their coffee but routinely forgot where he’d left his own glasses.

He called his mother every Sunday.

He still owned the baseball glove he’d used in high school.

And when somebody needed help moving a couch or repairing a porch step, Paul was usually the first person to show up.

He was also terrible at asking for help himself.

At the time, I thought that was just his personality.

I didn’t realize how much it was about to matter.

Four months before his birthday, I started making calls.

I tracked down his college roommate, Eddie, who had moved to Arizona fifteen years earlier.

I found a couple we used to live beside when we were first married. They had moved across the country, but they agreed to come.

I contacted former coworkers, childhood friends, distant cousins, and neighbors Paul hadn’t seen since we sold our first house.

The hardest call was to his older brother, Frank.

They hadn’t been in the same room for nearly ten years.

Their relationship had fallen apart after an argument about family responsibilities when their father was ill. Neither man could remember the disagreement without remembering what the other had said afterward.

Pride did the rest.

When I called Frank, he was quiet.

“Does Paul know you’re asking?”

“No.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

“Because he’s turning fifty, and I think he misses you.”

There was another long silence.

Then Frank said, “I miss him too.”

He bought a plane ticket that afternoon.

I cried after we hung up.

The next person I found was Coach McKenna, the retired baseball coach who had taken Paul under his wing when he was a teenager.

The man was seventy-eight and still living in the same small town.

When I explained my plan, he laughed.

“That boy still got that terrible batting stance?”

“He still talks about how you fixed it.”

“Well, tell him I never managed to fix his stubbornness.”

Coach McKenna agreed to come.

Every week, the guest list grew.

I reserved a ballroom at a local hotel, arranged dinner, ordered flowers, chose a cake, and tracked down photographs from different parts of Paul’s life.

I asked guests to send me old pictures.

Eddie found a photograph of Paul asleep on a college dormitory couch with a textbook over his face.

Frank sent one of the two brothers fishing with their father.

Coach McKenna mailed a faded team picture with Paul’s name written on the back.

I had everything made into a slideshow.

It took four months.

Four months of secret calls, spreadsheets, deposits, seating arrangements, hotel reservations, and little white lies about why I was spending so much time on my phone.

I did it happily.

Mostly.

Some nights I was so tired that I fell asleep on the couch with my laptop open.

Paul noticed.

“You’re working too hard,” he’d say.

“Just a busy season.”

He would kiss the top of my head and turn off the lamp.

Looking back, there were things I should have noticed about him, too.

He had become quieter over the summer.

He sometimes sat alone in the garage long after dinner.

Once, he dropped a coffee mug while taking it from the cabinet.

Another time, I noticed his fingers trembling slightly while he buttoned his shirt.

He said he had a pinched nerve.

He had been seeing doctors about some weakness in his right hand.

I asked what they said.

“Still running tests.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No need. It’s probably nothing.”

I believed him.

We had been married long enough that I knew when Paul wanted space.

I thought I was respecting it.

The morning of the party, he spent almost twenty minutes looking for his good shoes.

I found them exactly where he’d left them.

He laughed.

“What would I do without you?”

“Walk around barefoot, apparently.”

He smiled, but something about his eyes looked tired.

I assumed he was feeling the approach of fifty.

By six o’clock that evening, the ballroom was ready.

Ivory tablecloths.

Small arrangements of white flowers.

A slideshow playing silently on the far wall.

A table displaying photographs from his childhood through our marriage.

And nearly seventy people waiting for him.

When Paul walked through the doors, everyone shouted, “Surprise!”

He stopped.

Completely.

His eyes moved across the room.

First to Eddie.

Then to Coach McKenna.

Then to Frank.

When he saw his brother, Paul put one hand over his mouth.

Frank walked toward him.

Neither said anything for several seconds.

Then they hugged.

Not one of those quick, awkward hugs men sometimes give because other people are watching.

They held on.

I watched Paul press his forehead against Frank’s shoulder.

And I knew every sleepless night had been worth it.

A few minutes later, Paul found me beside the dessert table.

He wrapped his arms around me.

“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered.

I smiled against his shoulder.

“Well, you’re stuck with me anyway.”

He held me a little tighter.

At the time, I thought he was simply overwhelmed.

Dinner was wonderful.

People told stories I’d never heard.

Eddie described the time Paul accidentally showed up to a college exam on the wrong day.

Coach McKenna talked about Paul’s determination after an injury almost ended his baseball season.

Frank stood and raised his glass.

“We lost some years we can’t get back,” he said. “But I’m glad we’re here tonight.”

Paul wiped his eyes.

My own parents were there.

His mother sat beside Frank, smiling at her two sons together for the first time in years.

I looked around the room and felt something close to perfect happiness.

Just before the cake was supposed to come out, Paul stood.

He tapped his spoon against his glass.

“I have one surprise, too.”

I laughed.

“You weren’t supposed to plan anything.”

“I know.”

He smiled, but it was a strange smile.

Almost nervous.

“I wanted to give everyone something.”

A waiter appeared carrying a polished wooden tray.

On it were dozens of identical ivory envelopes.

Paul took the tray himself.

Then he began walking around the room.

He handed an envelope to Eddie.

One to Coach McKenna.

One to Frank.

One to his mother.

One to my parents.

He moved from table to table until everyone had received one.

I watched, amused.

Paul had never been a man for elaborate surprises.

I figured he’d written thank-you notes or included photographs from our wedding.

Finally, he came to my chair.

I lifted my hand.

He stopped beside me.

For one second, he looked directly into my eyes.

His expression changed.

Then he walked past.

I turned in my chair.

“Paul?”

He didn’t answer.

He handed the last envelope to a coworker near the ballroom doors.

Then he returned to the center of the room.

I was the only person without one.

An uncomfortable feeling began spreading through my chest.

Paul looked around.

“Please open them now.”

Dozens of envelopes tore open.

At first, there was only the sound of paper.

Then silence.

The kind of silence that makes you look around because something has gone terribly wrong.

My mother-in-law raised one hand to her mouth.

Eddie stopped smiling.

Coach McKenna took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

Across the room, my father whispered, “Oh my God.”

Then one by one, people turned toward me.

I felt exposed in a way I had never experienced before.

“What is it?” I asked.

Nobody answered.

I looked at Paul.

His eyes were wet.

“Claire,” he said, “there’s something I’ve never had the courage to tell you.”

My mother was sitting closest to me.

I reached toward the paper in her hands.

She hesitated.

Then she gave it to me.

At the top was my husband’s name.

Below it was a letter addressed to everyone in the room.

And in the second paragraph, three capital letters stood out.

ALS.

I knew what those letters meant.

I had heard about the disease.

I knew enough to be frightened.

I read the paragraph beneath it.

“Six weeks ago, I was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Claire doesn’t know yet. I have been afraid to tell her because I don’t know how to put this burden on the person who has carried so much of our life already.”

My hands went cold.

He had been diagnosed six weeks earlier.

He had known.

And now nearly seventy people knew before I did.

I lifted my eyes from the page.

Paul was crying.

“I thought if I told them first,” he whispered, “they could help me tell you.”

I looked around the ballroom.

Every face was waiting for my reaction.

The people I had spent four months bringing together were now watching me learn that my husband had been living with a devastating diagnosis.

I placed the letter on the table.

“Paul,” I said, my voice barely steady, “you should have told me first.”

Then I stood up.

And walked out of the room where I had planned the happiest night of his life.

3. Full story continuation

I made it as far as the little hallway outside the ballroom before my legs stopped cooperating.

There was a bench beneath a painting of a sailboat. I sat on it and stared at the patterned carpet.

Behind the ballroom doors, I heard the low murmur of people trying to decide what to do.

Nobody had prepared for this.

Not even me.

Especially not me.

I kept seeing that paragraph.

Six weeks ago.

ALS.

Claire doesn’t know yet.

I thought about the coffee mug Paul had dropped.

The buttons he struggled with.

The nights he spent in the garage.

All those times I had asked if he was okay and he had kissed my forehead and said he was fine.

I wasn’t angry about the illness.

I was angry that he had carried it alone and then handed the truth to an entire ballroom before handing it to his wife.

The door opened.

My mother came out.

She sat beside me without speaking.

For a while, we simply watched people move through the hotel lobby.

Finally, she asked, “Do you want me to get Paul?”

“Not yet.”

She nodded.

Then she said something I needed to hear.

“He shouldn’t have done it this way.”

I looked at her.

Mom wasn’t someone who usually criticized people in public.

She was especially careful about marriages.

“He was scared,” I whispered.

“I’m sure he was.”

She put her hand over mine.

“But you were entitled to be scared with him.”

That undid me.

I started crying so hard I couldn’t speak.

Mom held me until I could breathe normally again.

About ten minutes later, Paul appeared.

He was carrying the ivory envelope that should have been mine.

His face looked ten years older than it had when he first walked into the party.

“Can I sit?”

I nodded.

He sat at the other end of the bench.

Neither of us spoke.

Finally, he said, “I ruined your surprise.”

I shook my head.

“Paul, this is not about a birthday party.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

He stared at the envelope.

“I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“So you told everybody else?”

His eyes filled again.

“I thought if everyone knew, we wouldn’t have to face it by ourselves.”

“We?”

He looked up.

“You’ve had six weeks to know what this means. I’ve had about fifteen minutes.”

He lowered his eyes.

“You’re right.”

“And you made me find out in front of my parents, your coworkers, and people I haven’t seen in twenty years.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“No,” I said. “You weren’t.”

It was the first time that evening I had raised my voice.

I didn’t apologize for it.

Paul put the envelope on the bench between us.

“I wrote you a letter, too.”

I looked at it.

“Why didn’t you give it to me?”

His answer was so quiet I almost missed it.

“Because yours was the one I was afraid to open.”

That was when I understood something.

Paul had not planned a cruel joke.

He had not tried to humiliate me.

He had been so frightened of speaking the words to me that he had built an entire public announcement around avoiding one private conversation.

Understanding it did not make it right.

But it made it human.

I moved closer.

“Paul, I can’t promise I’m going to handle this perfectly.”

He nodded.

“Neither can I.”

“But you can’t make decisions about what I can bear without asking me.”

“I know.”

“No more medical appointments you hide from me. No more pretending you’re fine when you’re not. And no more telling a ballroom before telling your wife.”

A sad little smile crossed his face.

“I think I’ve learned that one.”

I took his hand.

It trembled slightly in mine.

For the first time, I did not pretend not to notice.

The morning after

We went home before the party ended.

My parents stayed behind to help the hotel staff with the arrangements.

Frank and Eddie quietly told guests that Paul and I needed privacy.

Nobody followed us.

The cake never came out.

The hotel boxed it up, and somebody delivered it to our house the next morning.

I found it in the refrigerator when I woke.

Three layers of vanilla cake.

Blue icing.

A little sugar decoration shaped like a baseball.

I stood looking at it for so long that Paul eventually came into the kitchen.

“I suppose we should have some for breakfast,” he said.

I almost laughed.

Then I looked at his hand resting on the refrigerator door.

“How long?”

He knew what I meant.

“The weakness started about eight months ago.”

“Eight months?”

“At first I thought I’d hurt something at work.”

He sat at the kitchen table.

He told me about the appointments.

The blood tests.

The nerve studies.

The specialists.

The weeks spent ruling out other possibilities.

Six weeks earlier, a neurologist had finally given him the diagnosis.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

ALS.

A progressive neurological disease that affects the nerve cells responsible for voluntary muscle movement.

There was no cure.

Treatment and supportive care could help, and the course of the illness varied, but the future we had always pictured could no longer be taken for granted.

I sat across from him.

“Did they tell you how much time you have?”

Paul rubbed his forehead.

“They said it’s different for everyone. They wouldn’t give me a number.”

“Good.”

He looked surprised.

“Good?”

“I don’t want us living by a number somebody can’t promise.”

He reached across the table.

I took his hand.

Then I asked the question that had been sitting in my chest since the night before.

“Why didn’t you trust me?”

Paul’s face changed.

“I trust you more than anybody.”

“Then why?”

He looked toward the window.

“Because you’ve spent twenty-three years making sure everybody else is okay.”

“That’s marriage.”

“No, Claire. Sometimes you take care of everyone until there’s nothing left for you.”

I wanted to argue.

But I thought about four months of birthday planning.

All those nights arranging flights and menus while telling Paul I wasn’t tired.

I thought about how proud I’d been of doing everything myself.

Maybe we had both been keeping things from each other.

Mine had been a surprise party.

His had been a medical diagnosis.

The consequences were not remotely equal, but the habit underneath them was familiar.

We both believed love meant protecting the other person from anything difficult.

And neither of us had noticed how lonely that could make a marriage.

That morning, we finally talked about fear.

Not logistics.

Not treatment.

Fear.

Paul admitted he was terrified of losing the use of his hands.

He worried about needing help dressing.

He worried about becoming dependent on me.

More than anything, he worried I would stop having a life of my own.

I listened.

Then I told him what frightened me.

I was afraid of losing the man who knew how I liked my coffee.

I was afraid of our house growing quiet.

I was afraid of becoming so focused on appointments and medicines that we would forget how to be husband and wife.

And I was angry that he had already spent six weeks imagining those futures without letting me stand beside him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

This time, the words were not delivered in front of an audience.

They were spoken across our kitchen table.

That mattered.

The first appointment together

The following week, I went with Paul to see his neurologist.

I brought a notebook.

I had filled two pages with questions before we left the house.

Paul looked at it in the car.

“You made a list?”

“Of course.”

“You’re frighteningly organized.”

“Somebody has to be.”

He smiled.

It was the first easy smile I’d seen from him since the party.

The appointment was difficult.

We asked about treatment, physical therapy, occupational therapy, breathing assessments, clinical trials, and how his care team would monitor changes.

The doctor answered patiently.

Some things had clear answers.

Others didn’t.

I learned that uncertainty would become part of our lives whether we welcomed it or not.

In the parking lot afterward, Paul sat behind the steering wheel without starting the car.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“No.”

I nodded.

“Me neither.”

We sat there another few minutes.

Then he reached for my hand.

That became our first new rule.

We were allowed to answer honestly.

The people in the envelopes

The first person to call after the party was Frank.

He didn’t ask Paul to explain everything.

He didn’t offer a miracle cure he had found online.

He simply said, “I can come down next Thursday. Do you need a ride anywhere?”

Paul said no.

Frank replied, “Okay. I’ll come for lunch instead.”

He showed up with sandwiches.

For years, the brothers had let one old argument stand between them.

Now they sat on our back porch discussing baseball, their father, and whether the old family fishing boat had ever been worth repairing.

Not once did Frank mention who had been right ten years earlier.

That was a gift neither brother could have purchased.

Eddie called every Sunday.

Sometimes he and Paul talked for forty minutes.

Sometimes they talked for five.

One week, Eddie spent twenty minutes describing a disastrous attempt to fix his washing machine.

Paul laughed so hard he had to put the phone down.

I hadn’t heard that laugh in weeks.

Coach McKenna sent a package.

Inside was an old baseball scorebook and a photograph from Paul’s final high school season.

On the back, he had written:

You were always more than what your hands could do.

Paul read it several times.

Then put it on his desk.

My mother-in-law started bringing groceries every other Wednesday.

At first, she tried to reorganize my pantry.

I told her politely that I appreciated the food but did not need a new system for storing rice.

She laughed.

Then she stopped reorganizing.

Even kindness needs boundaries sometimes.

Not everybody who received an envelope remained involved.

A few people called once.

Some sent cards.

Others disappeared because serious illness frightened them or because their lives were complicated.

That hurt Paul.

But the people who stayed did something more valuable than make promises.

They kept showing up.

I began to understand what Paul had been reaching for that night.

He wanted us surrounded by people.

He simply hadn’t understood that support must begin with honesty between the two people at the center of it.

The argument we needed to have

Three months after his birthday, Paul’s right hand had weakened enough that some ordinary tasks were becoming difficult.

Buttoning shirts took longer.

Opening jars frustrated him.

He had started working with an occupational therapist on practical ways to make daily tasks easier.

I was trying to manage everything.

Appointments.

Insurance calls.

Medications.

Meals.

Household repairs.

My own job.

Somehow, I had turned his illness into a project with a calendar and color-coded folders.

And I was exhausted.

One Thursday evening, I came home to find Paul standing in the kitchen beside a broken drinking glass.

He had dropped it.

He was holding a dish towel.

“Don’t move,” I said.

I grabbed the broom.

“Claire, I can clean it.”

“There are pieces everywhere.”

“I know.”

“You could cut yourself.”

He stepped aside.

I swept.

Then I wiped the floor.

Then I checked under the cabinets.

When I finally stood up, Paul was looking at me.

“What?”

He shook his head.

“Nothing.”

“Paul.”

He took a breath.

“I need you to stop treating me like everything I touch is an emergency.”

That stopped me.

“I was trying to help.”

“I know.”

“You could have gotten hurt.”

“I know.”

“Then what do you want me to do?”

He looked down at his hand.

“Ask.”

I stared at him.

“Ask?”

“Ask if I need help before you take over.”

I wanted to tell him how much I was carrying.

How frightened I was.

How every dropped glass reminded me that the disease was moving forward.

Instead, I heard the echo of what I had told him outside the ballroom.

You can’t make decisions about what I can bear without asking me.

I sat at the kitchen table.

“You’re right.”

He looked startled.

“That easy?”

“No. It took me three months.”

We both laughed.

Then I started crying.

Paul sat beside me.

“I don’t want to become your patient,” he said.

“You’re not.”

“Sometimes I feel like one.”

I leaned my head against his shoulder.

“I don’t know how to do this.”

“Neither do I.”

We stayed there until the kitchen floor was dry.

After that, we made another rule.

I would offer help.

He would be honest when he needed it.

And neither of us would pretend that accepting help meant losing dignity.

The letter he meant for me

Six months after the party, I finally opened the ivory envelope Paul had carried into that hallway.

I had put it in my dresser drawer.

I knew it was there.

I simply hadn’t been ready.

One rainy afternoon, while Paul was visiting Frank, I sat on the edge of our bed and opened it.

Inside was a handwritten letter.

The writing was uneven in places.

His right hand had already begun weakening when he wrote it.

I recognized every curve of the letters anyway.

Claire,

I don’t know how to tell you this without making you afraid.

For twenty-three years, you’ve been the person I come home to. Every good thing in my life has your fingerprints on it, even when nobody sees the work you did.

I know you think I don’t notice.

I notice.

I notice the way you remember birthdays. The way you always make sure there is enough food. The way you call people who are lonely. The way you turn an ordinary room into somewhere people feel welcome.

I have spent six weeks wondering how to tell the person who makes everything feel safe that I am frightened.

I wanted to give you a future I could promise.

Now I don’t know what I can promise.

But I can promise that I love you.

And I want you to keep living, laughing, seeing friends, and making plans, even when I can’t do everything with you.

Please don’t let my illness take all of you.

Love, Paul.

I read it twice.

Then a third time.

I cried for the man who had been so frightened that he’d hidden the truth.

And I cried for the wife who had not noticed how scared he was.

But I also felt angry again.

Because he had written these words before the party.

He had known exactly what he needed to say.

He just hadn’t trusted himself to say them while I was looking at him.

When he came home, I was waiting at the kitchen table.

The letter lay between us.

He stopped.

“You read it?”

“Yes.”

He sat down.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Then I said, “You should have given me this first.”

He nodded.

“I know.”

“It might have been the hardest conversation of our marriage.”

“I know.”

“But we would have had it together.”

Paul reached across the table.

“I wish I could do that night over.”

I thought about the ballroom.

The faces.

The envelopes.

The terrible shock.

Then I looked at him.

“You can’t.”

His eyes filled.

“But we can do tomorrow differently.”

And we did.

One year later

By the following summer, our lives looked different.

Paul was still at home.

He continued receiving specialist care and therapy, and we adjusted daily routines as his symptoms changed.

Some days were good.

Some were discouraging.

We had learned not to judge an entire future by one difficult afternoon.

We installed a few grab bars, rearranged cabinets, and made practical changes around the house.

Frank became a regular visitor.

Eddie still called.

Coach McKenna occasionally sent postcards with terrible baseball jokes.

My mother-in-law had finally accepted that I organized my pantry perfectly well without her.

And I went back to meeting my friends for breakfast once a month.

The first time I left Paul alone for a few hours, I checked my phone so often that my friend Nancy finally turned it facedown on the table.

“Claire, he’s an adult.”

“I know.”

“Then let him be one.”

I needed that reminder.

Paul needed time that belonged to him, too.

We were learning that a marriage could make room for illness without letting illness become its only subject.

On our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary, we decided to have dinner at home.

No ballroom.

No speeches.

No surprise guests.

I made chicken piccata, Paul’s favorite.

He put on the old record we used to play when we were first married.

After dinner, he brought a small ivory envelope to the table.

I looked at it.

He saw my expression and laughed softly.

“Bad choice of stationery?”

“Terrible.”

He placed it in front of me.

“This time you get yours first.”

Inside was a single folded page.

No diagnosis.

No medical announcement.

No request for the room to turn and watch me.

Just a list.

Things I still want to do with Claire.

Go back to the little diner where we had our first date.

Watch the sun come up at the beach.

Teach Frank how to make Mom’s Sunday gravy.

Finish the photo albums in the closet.

Sit on the porch during a thunderstorm.

Have more ordinary Tuesdays.

I looked up.

“Ordinary Tuesdays?”

Paul smiled.

“Those were always my favorite.”

I moved my chair closer.

We sat there listening to the record until the music stopped.

Then he asked if I wanted to go for a slow walk before dark.

I did.

We walked down our street, past the same houses we’d passed hundreds of times before.

He took his time.

So did I.

For years, I had thought the greatest gift I could give my husband was to bring everyone he loved into one room.

I still believe that night gave us something precious.

It brought Frank back.

It reminded old friends to call.

It surrounded us with people who would later help us through days we couldn’t have managed alone.

But it also taught me something I wish neither of us had needed to learn so painfully.

A room full of people can love you.

They can carry groceries, drive you to appointments, make you laugh, and sit beside you when words don’t help.

But they cannot replace the honesty that belongs between two people who have promised to share a life.

Paul thought he was protecting me by telling everybody else first.

I thought I was protecting him by doing everything myself.

We were both wrong.

Love wasn’t supposed to be a competition over who could carry the heaviest burden without speaking.

It was supposed to be the place where we could finally set some of it down.

I still have the envelope from his fiftieth birthday.

I keep it beside the anniversary letter.

One reminds me of the night I learned how frightening the future could be.

The other reminds me that the future is not the only place a marriage lives.

It lives in breakfast.

In bad jokes.

In doctor appointments.

In apologies that take time to become meaningful.

In the courage to ask for help.

And in quiet walks down the same street, holding hands with the person who knows you best.

Sometimes I think about those seventy people turning toward me in the ballroom.

I remember how alone I felt, standing in the middle of everyone I had worked so hard to bring together.

Then I think about our anniversary.

Two plates on the table.

An old record playing.

One ivory envelope.

And Paul looking directly into my eyes as he asked what I wanted to do tomorrow.

That time, he waited for my answer.

And that made all the difference.

THE END.
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