Cashiers offered him children’s menus.
Security guards questioned whether he was old enough to enter places even when he showed identification.
Dating was worse.
Women treated him like a joke, a curiosity, or someone too fragile to reject honestly.
He rarely talked about it.
For years, we were inseparable.
Then life became busy.
I left our hometown for college.
Noah stayed and completed an online computer science degree while working for a software company.
We still spoke often, but not every day.
Then weekly calls became monthly ones.
I dated.
He dated a little too, though none of those relationships lasted.
At 26, I became engaged to a man named Evan.
Noah congratulated me without hesitation.
He never mentioned the pact.
By then, the purple crayon promise felt like a sweet piece of childhood, nothing more.
My wedding to Evan was supposed to happen in early June.
Three weeks before the ceremony, I was hit by a car.
I had been crossing at a marked intersection when a driver ran a red light.
I remember the horn, the impact, and the sky spinning above me.
Then I woke in a hospital with a shattered pelvis, a fractured leg, and nerve damage that made my left foot feel as if it belonged to someone else.
The doctors were careful with their words.
They said I would likely walk again.
They could not promise how well.
Evan visited twice.
The first time, he brought flowers and spent most of the visit staring at the machines around my bed.
The second time, he asked how long rehabilitation might take.
“Months,” I said.
He went quiet.
