We Are Divided by All That Came Before

At our college reunion, I lost a Truth or Dare game and had to hand over my unlocked phone.

They scrolled straight to my texts with Charles. Years of messages filled the thread.

“Classic you two,” Marcus laughed. “In college, you passed ten pages of notes per lecture. Six years married and still obsessed.”

“Read the juicy stuff!” someone shouted.

Marcus tapped the screen. The past two years showed only one message—from Charles: Need appendix surgery. Come to the hospital?

He frowned. “Got a new phone?”

“No cloud backup? All those memories gone,” another friend said.