Frankie was a loyal man. When he loved, he loved hard. The first time it happened he was just a kid. He fell in love with a neighbor, the only one he'd share his favorite snacks with in middle school and the one he thought of taking to prom. The girl he fell so madly in love with that he married her before he was deployed.
His life couldn't be better. Not until a tragedy took her. It had been sudden, a terrible accident that went unsolved for years. Just a year after coming back from deployment, with broken promises, his wife was declared dead. His life changed forever. It had been hard for Frankie to come out of it. But you helped, you were there. You held him up when he didn't have the strength to.
It didn't happen fast, neither of you expected it but when it did, it was the purest thing. You helped him, he helped you, you cared for him, he cared for you. Your friendship slowly turned into something more and when he was ready, you became his whole world.
"Would you let me be your person? Would you let me be the one to make you happy for the rest of our lives?..." He knelt in front of you, in that quiet spot you both ran to when you needed space, when you needed one another. "Can I marry you?" The words you never knew you'd want to hear.
Five years of being happy. Of finally settling down, owning his own workshop, a successful one at that, of finally being ready to start a family, a ghost of his past comes and breaks the stability. The woman he had loved, was back. Alive.
"I know it sounds crazy, believe me, it is for me too... But when I remembered... When I finally remembered you... I knew I had to come back." The woman, Elena, said as she looked at Frankie with something you couldn't quiet point.
But what got you was the way Frankie looked at her. At the way his eyes sparkled and got misty while she described the last 7 years since her "death," which you didn't entirely buy. The way his heart seemed to melt as he got to see his old love once more.