I Met My First Love Again | Learn English Through Story Level 1 | English Story With Subtitles

My name is Paige Holloway, and for most of my adult life, I believed some people were meant to stay in the past. I had been wrong. I was 34 when I saw my first love again. By then, almost 16 years had passed since the last time we had stood face to face. I had imagined that moment

before. Usually when I could not sleep in those old daydreams, I looked beautiful and confident. Maybe we met in a coffee shop. Maybe we laughed about how young we had been. Maybe he told me he had never forgotten me. I never imagined I would be lying in a hospital bed. I would be wearing a thin gown waiting for

heart surgery. And I definitely never imagined he would be the surgeon standing beside me. Before all of that happened, my life was quiet. I owned a small flower shop called Morning Bloom on a street filled with cafes and family businesses. It was not a fancy place, but I loved it. I opened the shop at 7

every morning. I swept the floor, changed the water in the buckets, and cut the ends of the stems. I filled the front window with whatever looked best that week. Flowers made sense to me. People did not always say what they felt, but flowers did. Red roses said love. White liies said goodbye. Sunflowers said happiness. Small

wildflower bouquets often meant, "I saw these and thought of you. I liked being part of those moments." I lived alone in a second floor apartment about 15 minutes from the shop. I had dated several men over the years. Two relationships became serious enough that I wondered if marriage might happen. Neither one lasted. For a long time, I

told myself I was simply independent. Maybe that was true. But there was another truth I rarely admitted. Some small part of my heart still remembered a boy named Reed Callahan. My health problems began so slowly that I almost ignored them. At first, I was only tired. Owning a shop meant long days, so I blamed work.