a concert seven years from now

June 1st, 2011.

That was the day I first met Lana.

Summer had only just arrived in a small town in Southern California, but she was already wearing a light white dress, speckled here and there with red stains from the strawberries she’d been eating with her friend.

I saw her from afar — unexpectedly, even to myself. There was nothing remarkable about her at first glance: ordinary short light-brown hair, the familiar Californian features everyone seemed to share — and yet something inside me shifted almost instantly.

She stole my heart that very second. Stole it so effortlessly, as if it cost her nothing at all. I knew immediately it would lead nowhere good. Still, I couldn’t fight the thought that the only stars that would ever guide me were her striking blue eyes; the only land I would always return to like home were her peach-colored lips, smelling of sun-ripened berries; the only medicine capable of curing any illness or sorrow were those pale, almost “vampiric” hands gripping a jump rope as she spun it.

I was thirteen. We had just moved — the boxes weren’t even unloaded from the truck yet — but my mom sent me out for a walk to stretch my legs after the long drive. I probably knew nothing about real love. Though, to be fair, I had spent the entire previous year courting my deskmate Mia and had grown quite skilled at it.

Yet for some reason, I had no doubt that what I felt now was real — not imagined, not imposed, not confused.

My feet carried me toward her on their own. She and a few girls were jumping rope. Lana wore headphones. Not knowing how else to start a conversation, I stood to her right and asked:

“What are you listening to?”

She gave me a look that wasn’t exactly warm — as if I had dared interrupt something sacred — then slipped one earbud out.

“Twenty One Pilots,” she said, focusing her pupils on me. “Why?”

“Nothing. What’s the song called?”

“Parachute. You just moved here?”

“Two hours ago.”

“Ah.” She nodded and turned back to her game, clearly uninterested in continuing my interrogation.

We didn’t speak again that day. But that brief exchange was enough to leave me spellbound until nightfall, humming the song under my breath. I’d heard it before — it was popular enough to be played on the radio or slipped into commercials.

It had never stirred anything in me before.

But from the moment I learned it was her favorite, I listened to it on repeat. I fell in love with the lyrics, the idea, the melody — only slightly less than I fell in love with Lana.

As I settled into my new home, I learned more about my new friend. We were completely different — and yet we fit. Where I saw one thing, she found another, and together we made a full picture. Soon there were no topics left undiscussed, no places left unexplored. By August, I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

I confessed.

I’ll never forget how it happened.

I picked her up from her house, trying not to be seen by her father — he disliked me deeply — and we raced each other to our tree, the one under which we usually read or talked. I had a plan. I had gathered a bouquet of daisies and hidden it in the grass nearby, intending to give it to her after my speech.

But fate had other plans.

We hadn’t even reached halfway when it began to rain. At first it was light — playful drops landing on her straight strands of hair, shimmering. Five minutes later, it turned heavy.

I threw my black leather jacket — the one my mom bought me years ago — over both of us, and we stopped.

“God,” she muttered. “I didn’t expect weather like this.”

“Neither did I,” I laughed.

We looked into each other’s eyes.

That moment was different. It overflowed the cup of all my summer memories. I pulled her closer and gently pressed my lips to hers, giving her everything I was.

We shared one pair of headphones, and that same song played.

Take me, I thought as the kiss deepened. My soul, my heart, my body. Let me be yours. If not forever — then at least for now.

Rain ran down our sleeves and dripped from our temples. It was cold, but somehow pleasant — as if it were made not of water but of tears of happiness.

The world stopped spinning wildly. My breathing evened. The headache that had followed me for years disappeared.

Lana gave me not only her first kiss — but peace.

I never felt that with anyone else.

We stayed close for two years. It was hard to call it a relationship, but it was certainly more than friendship. Friends don’t look at each other the way we did. Friends don’t spend evenings on rooftops listening to Twenty One Pilots when one of them barely knows the band. Friends don’t tell each other a hundred times a day how grateful they are to have met. Friends don’t live for each other.

We broke up on June 1st, 2013.

Something stopped working. Something burned out. And the smell of smoke darkened the sky until it cried — no longer tears of joy.

We didn’t hate each other. We simply accepted it like adults who knew that staying still would destroy them both.

That summer was cruel. The sun hid behind clouds. The wind lashed like a whip. I barely left the house, spending days under a blue sheet, asking myself: Why?

Why do people who seem meant for each other end so foolishly?

Someone once told me that first love isn’t forever — it’s just a path into the strange world of human connection. But I kept believing she would appear at my door one day, knock three times, and shout, “Idiot, come out!”

She never did.

Months passed. I met other girls. Then more. I treated each as experience, as something new.

Everything was fine — until the kiss.

Every time I kissed someone else, I remembered Lana. And something inside my chest tightened painfully, dragging me back to our summer.

I could barely listen to Twenty One Pilots. Their songs irritated me, wounded the organ I was trying so hard to make numb, filled me with something strange — nostalgia. But what’s the point of missing something that never truly existed?

Seven years I avoided those melodies.

Then I saw a poster: they were coming back to my old town.

For the first time, I smiled.

I had nothing to fear anymore. Beside me was the woman I intended to spend my life with — light-haired, slightly bold, strangely reminiscent of Lana in her youth. We were expecting a child in a few weeks.

And still, the thought of the concert wouldn’t let me rest.

On September 27th, I broke.

I dialed Lana’s number, hoping she hadn’t changed it. The long rings sounded distant, carrying away my fear.

She had to answer.

After thirty seconds, I regretted it. What are you doing? You have a wife, a family— But then she picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” I whispered, clinging to the phone like a drowning man to driftwood. “It’s me.”

“I know.” She sighed. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes. You?”

“More or less.”

Silence stretched between us — and yet I could feel how much she missed me.

“‘The Pilots’ are coming to Solvang,” I said casually. “Maybe we could go? If you want.”

It sounded stupid even as I said it.

“Yes. I’d like that,” she replied.

We didn’t hang up immediately. It felt physically impossible.

“I miss you,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“No matter who I’ve dated, I can’t forget you. You were my first love.”

“But first love isn’t forever.”

“Not forever in duration,” she answered softly. “But you settled in my heart so deeply I doubt I’ll ever forget us. And I don’t think I want to.”

I had no words.

We did go to the concert. I barely remember the music. I watched her the whole time — white dress, two light braids.

Only during “Parachute” did I look away.

“You stole my parachute,” I sang quietly, “but I’m not sure I even want it back…”

And then she did it again.

She stole my heart — even easier than the first time. She looked at me the way she had in the rain years ago, and before I understood what I was doing, I kissed her. As if it were still summer. As if we were still those honest, trembling children.

We never spoke again.

Maybe we just needed one last meeting — to say goodbye properly, to admit that we would never stop loving what we once began that August.

A few days later, my daughter was born.

Beautiful. With expressive blue eyes.

When my wife asked what I wanted to name her, the answer had been sitting on the tip of my tongue for seven years.

“Lana,” I said clearly, kissing first my child — then her mother.

First love isn’t meant to last forever. You can’t preserve what you once sparked by accident.

But if you watch from a distance… and sometimes add a piece of wood to the fire… the embers never truly die.

And in the end, that’s not even the point.

The point is this:

At some time, somewhere, in some brief, fragile stretch of life…

One person once replaced the entire world for you.