My dearest,

Tonight, the chapel is quiet.

The candles have burned low, and the faint smell of incense still clings to the air, just enough to remind me that tomorrow, I will stand on the altar and officiate your wedding as if my hands were never the ones that held yours, trembling and young, under the old acacia tree. I don’t know if writing this is wise. But then again, love has never been wise with us.

I want to tell you a story, our story, one last time. That way, when you marry her tomorrow, I can finally put it down, gently, like a book I’ve been afraid to close.

Do you remember that summer when we were eight? You dragged me to the river even though I was terrified of deep water.

“You won’t drown,” you said, grabbing my wrist.

“As long as I’m here, you won’t drown.”

And I believed you.

I always did.

We grew up side by side—muddy shoes, bruised knees, laughter echoing down the little road behind the chapel. You were the fearless one, the boy who always ran toward the world, and I was the one who followed, content to live in your wake.

On Sundays, we were altar servers together, pretending to be solemn while secretly nudging each other behind the priest’s back. You’d whisper jokes during the Gospel reading, trying to make me laugh, and I’d pinch your arm just to keep you quiet. I still remember the time you almost tripped while carrying the candles, and afterward you blamed me, saying my smile distracted you. I laughed, but inside, something warm and unfamiliar bloomed.

Somewhere between childhood and whatever came after, the way I looked at you changed. I didn’t even notice it at first—how my stomach fluttered when you smiled, how I memorized the sound of your voice, how I grieved the moment each time you walked away.

I think you knew before I ever said a word.

Do you remember the night of your seventeenth birthday?

We snuck out to the hill overlooking town. You brought cheap soda; I brought the blanket. The sky was too cloudy to see any stars, but you laughed and said, 

“Who needs stars when I have you?”

You said it teasingly. I pretended it didn’t pierce me.

There was a silence, that kind of silence that feels like the whole world is holding its breath. And then you asked, so softly I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be heard:

“Do you ever wonder… if maybe… we’re meant to be more than this?”

I wonder now how my life would have changed if I had been brave enough to say yes.

But fear is a quiet, persistent thing.

Fear convinced me that loving you would break us.

Fear whispered that choosing you would cost me everything.

So I lied. I said, “No. We’re just friends.”

I watched your shoulders drop. Just a little. Enough to tell me I had hurt you.

And yet you still smiled. You always smiled for me.

When I told you I was entering the seminary, you tried to joke about it.

“It figures,” you said.

“You always liked talking to God more than talking to me.”

But I saw it—that brief, raw flash in your eyes before you hid it. That small, aching crack that formed because of the decision I made.

What I never told you was this; I wasn’t choosing God over you. I was choosing the only place where it felt safe not to love you. I thought distance would make the feelings fade.

It didn’t.

Even while I memorized Scripture, even while I bowed my head in prayer, even while I buried myself in vows and silence—you were there. The curve of your smile. The warmth of your hands. The echo of your laughter in every hallway of my memory.

I thought time would make it easier.

It only made the truth clearer; You were the great love of my life, even if I was never meant to be yours.

And now here we are. Years later.

Both grown. Both changed.

Tomorrow, I will look at you standing at the altar, your eyes full of joy, your hands steady, your future bright, and I will say words that will bind you to someone else.

Words I once wished I could say for us. 

It will hurt. God, it will hurt in ways I am not ready for.

But it is a holy kind of pain, the kind that reminds me that love is not possession—it is release.

Your bride is kind. She loves you beautifully. I can see that. And you… you look at her the way I once looked at you: with a tenderness that asks for nothing but a future.

So I will stand there.

I will smile. I will bless you both with hands that once shook just from touching yours.

And when I say, “You may kiss the bride,”

I will finally let go of the story we never got to finish.

This letter, his quiet goodbye, is my last confession that will never be spoken in a booth.

Thank you, my once-love, for the boy you were.

For the man you became. For the memories that shaped me. For the love that stayed with me even after I walked away.

Tomorrow, when you kiss her, I pray the world becomes softer for you both.

And I pray that somewhere in the gentle turning of life, you will remember that I once loved you so deeply

I chose to lose you rather than let you drown with me.

Farewell, my heart’s oldest prayer.

With all the tenderness I am allowed,
The boy who loved you in silence.