Started When We Were Younger Novels & Stories

It’s strange, how time has a way of making things clearer. When Adrian and I first started this journey—this whirlwind of love, ambition, and uncertainty—I never would have imagined it would come to this. The days of sleepless nights spent wondering if we could survive the distance felt like they were miles behind us now. What once seemed like an insurmountable challenge had become a part of our story, something that we’d learned to navigate together.

My person. And I had been his too. We had watched each other’s backs, shared secrets, shared fear, and had shared dreams too big for the tiny life we had been born into. Back then, it was us against everything. Us against schoolyard cruelty. Us against unpaid rent. Us against disappointment. Us against the quiet humiliation of always knowing there were better lives happening somewhere else. If I let myself, I could still see us clearly.

As I looked around at all of them, Eli’s hand warm in mine, I knew. This was our family. This was our beginning. And tomorrow, on that old cracked court, we were going to make it forever.

"We're really doing this?" "We're really doing this." That night, we started trying. Officially. Intentionally. Building our family. Expanding our love. Creating more of what we'd built together. More life. More joy. More of us.

“It’s awake.” I nodded grimly. And deep down, I knew the truth. This wasn’t the end. It was the beginning of a war older than any of us. And we had just been named its center.

“The origin dates back to the 1600s when our founding fathers understood that community was a better way to keep our blood lines alive..” “Not yours..ours” she interjected, clasping her hands together and settling them on her thighs as a few people had started mumbling behind me. My brain had begun to hope that it wasn’t what I was thinking. “Pardon?” I asked, awaiting an answer with my eyes squinting to find the audacity she just summoned to try to bully me. “Oh she knows..” one giggled softly. “Who doesn’t?” Another retorted but I didn’t turn to look at them

It was only the beginning of my new life and that of the children. This was supposed to be our fresh start. Turns out fresh starts came with ghosts that didn’t stay buried.

And I missed it. Beside me, Crystal linked her fingers with mine. She always seemed to know when my mind drifted too far, as if we shared some unseen bond. "Remember when we were little? How we used to hold hands like this all the time?" She swung our hands between us, and a wistful smile played on her lips. I smiled. "Back then, we didn’t have to worry about politics. Or betrayals. Or being hunted like animals. We just... lived." Crystal hummed in agreement. "And we had too much time to come up with ridiculous plans."

Too normal to investigate. Too perfectly average to be extraordinary fugitives. It was insane. It was brilliant. It was our only option. So we took it. Together. Always. Starting Saturday. With dinner. And friendship. And the beginning of the end. Or the end of the beginning. Time would tell. But we'd face it together. That was enough. It had to be. Because it was all we had. And we'd make it everything. Starting now.

my dad was saying nostalgically, and my mom gasped in excitement. "Yes, I remember! How did it start? It was… Be young…" she tried. "Be stylish, be young forever, be Josh Carter," Joshua said, and my parents also joined in by chanting an announcement from decades ago, and then the three of them laughed as if they were remembering that good time. "My God, you guys are a bunch of old people," I commented, since those things had happened before I was even born. "It was a good time, babe," Joshua replied, and my parents agreed.