PROLOGUE

Not all stories begin with an encounter.

Ours began with a hug that came too late to save anything, but just in time to understand everything.

I still remember how it was. Not because it was perfect, but because it was honest. There was no music, no memorable phrases, no "everything will be alright" that we truly believed. Just two bodies recognizing, for the last time, a place that had once been home.

That hug didn't try to hold on.
It didn't ask to stay.
It didn't demand explanations.

It was a simple, almost everyday gesture, and for that very reason, devastating.

That's when I understood something that took me years to accept: that first love doesn't always come to last, but to leave its mark. To open a door that can never be closed again. To teach you what it feels like to love someone before you even know how to take care of yourself.

We were taught that true love is the kind that survives. But no one talks about the love that, even when it ends, leaves something alive. Something that isn't erased or replaced, it just finds a new place.

This story isn't about two people who love each other and stay together.

It's about two people who loved each other as best they could, with the tools they had, and who learned—not without pain—that sometimes that's not enough.

First love has that gentle cruelty: it arrives when you still don't know who you are, it touches you completely, and it leaves before you can fully understand it. It leaves you with questions that aren't answered quickly. It leaves you with memories that don't always hurt, but they don't disappear either.

And yet, it's worth it.

Because after it, you never love the same way again.

You love again with memories.

This book is for that exact moment when you understand that not everything that ends was a mistake. That there are goodbyes that don't break things, but rather bring order. And that some hugs aren't meant to start something new, but to close the chapter on what was real.

If you've ever hugged someone knowing it was the last time,
this story is yours too.