I MARRIED MY HIGH SCHOOL SWEETHEART — ON OUR 10TH ANNIVERSARY, I OVERHEARD HIM SAY, “NOW I CAN FINALLY TAKE BACK WHAT BELONGS TO ME.”
Grady was my first love. He still is, if I’m being honest, even after everything that happened on the night I’m about to tell you about.
We met in eleventh grade at Averyville High, assigned as lab partners in Mr. Pruitt’s chemistry class, and something about the careful, patient way he measured out reagents made me decide, somewhere around our third lab together, that I wasn’t letting this boy get away. We were inseparable after that. Same lunch table, same college — Halsted State, two hours from home — same everything, right up through graduation.
“One day, I’ll put a ring on your finger,” Grady told me the summer before senior year, both of us sitting on the tailgate of his cousin’s truck out by Sable Lake, the water going gold with sunset behind him.
