The age of love

Flash Fiction-Ish Fridays

Every Friday, I’ll send out a short piece of fiction. Some weeks it’ll be pure imagination. Other weeks, it’ll a slightly altered memory. If you like what you read, leave a comment!

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A group of girls passed by, bright teeth, gleaming hair, giggles that sliced through the stillness of the park like a metal chair scraping across a tiled floor. They looked about twenty, though Helen knew they could’ve been forty. You stopped counting birthdays when no lines creased your face.

The group walked quickly, like they had somewhere urgent to be, until they vanished behind a towering oak.

Helen sat quietly on a weathered wooden bench near a rusted fountain, one that dribbled warm water. The air smelled faintly of dewy grass, and a soft breeze brushed across her cheeks. In her hands, she held a thermos of thick, sweet chocolate. It had cooled, but she liked having something to hold. A place to put her hands.

Nearby, the soft chatter of voices drifted over to Helen. A young woman lounged with her back against a tree, her white dress carefully tucked beneath her legs. A man lay across their blanket, propped up on one elbow, watching her as if he were trying not to.

“They don’t dare get closer,” Helen murmured to the man beside her.

He didn’t respond with words—just a quiet glance in the direction she was watching, his face unreadable, save for a small narrowing of his eyes. Not judgment. Recognition.

“They laugh, sure,” Helen continued. “But not the full-body kind. Their eyes don’t crinkle. There’s distance in every gesture. You can see it in how they lean slightly away.”

Two more people passed the bench: both men, shoulders nearly touching. Helen watched them, waited. They locked eyes, hovered in that fragile moment. But then both took a small, careful step away from the other and looked off into the distance.

She exhaled, not disappointed. Just not surprised. “Almost.”

For a while, people told themselves it was about boundaries. That closeness came with too much risk. But eventually, the pretense was dropped.

It wasn’t fear of getting hurt that kept them apart.

It was the fear of aging.

In Helen’s world, it was more than just emotional risk. It was biological.

On a person’s twenty-fifth birthday, time stopped. Literally. Cells halted, skin froze, muscles held sturdy. Like someone had pressed pause. No one knew why, only that it had been that way for decades. And there was only one trigger for time to resume: love.

Not lust. Not infatuation. Not a one-night stand or situationship. Not that person you kept around because it was easier than being alone. Real love—the kind that cracked something open inside you. Whether it was a slow burn or something fast, love kickstarted the aging process.

That’s why people avoided getting close to someone else. Because love meant giving up something most couldn’t fathom living without: youth.

When Helen was younger, the concept was almost laughable. Why would someone want to stay young forever? Why fear a few wrinkles here and there?

But beauty, as she later discovered, had become a currency. It bought you opportunities, attention, likes, and adoration. It earned you promotions, followers, kinder treatment. And over time, youth became not just desirable but essential. There were entire apps now built to help people avoid falling in love. Tips on how to emotionally detach. How to ghost kindly. How to flirt just enough to stay ageless.

Helen lived for a while believing that youth was a worthy trade-off. She assumed that if she never tasted love, never allowed herself within a hair’s distance of the real thing, she couldn’t miss what she didn’t know.

She kept things light. Slept beside men who left before sunrise. Kissed women who never asked for her name. No one talked about commitment. The only feelings discussed were about movies or the loss of a childhood pet. Vulnerability was avoided like an illness.

But one elevator ride would change all of that.

It was a Monday morning, clouds filtering out the sun. Helen rushed into a finance building downtown, hair sticking to her lipstick and hastily shoving files into her bag. She was two minutes late for her interview—not a great look. Her haste caused her to nearly collide with a tall, lanky man waiting at the entrance of the building. His hazel eyes looked at her with intent, a piece of his perfectly styled hair caught in a draft of the lobby’s air conditioning.

“Helen?” he asked, voice deep and unexpectedly gentle.

She blinked. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Great,” he smiled. “I’ll walk you up to the conference room for your interview.”

He gestured toward the elevators and, as she stepped forward, placed his hand lightly on the small of her back. A casual gesture. Forgettable, really. But Helen would never forget it.

The elevator ride lasted maybe twenty seconds. That was all it took.

His smile was crooked. His tie, askew. And even though she had spent her whole life avoiding it, Helen held his gaze. Sunk into the moss and honey of his irises.

If you told her the elevator had stopped, jammed for nearly an hour, she would’ve believed you. When the elevator eventually dinged, the eye contact broken, Helen walked off the elevator a different person.

She didn’t notice it at first, but her cells had resumed their work. As if love had flipped a switch back on.

The park grew fuller as the sun rose into the afternoon sky. People arrived in clusters but stayed apart, eyes flicking between screens and one another, half-listening. Their conversations moved quickly, only skimming the surface. Taut skin glowed, selfies were taken, but no one seemed to notice when the birds began to sing.

Helen turned to look at the man beside her.

George.

His face was marked with time— crow’s feet, laugh lines, soft jowls— but every crease was familiar. A story she got to be a part of.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

George smiled that slightly crooked grin Helen loved. “You bet.”

They each twisted the caps back onto their thermoses. George stood slowly, careful with his balance. Once steady, he turned and extended his hand toward Helen without a word. Her right knee had been acting up again, and standing could be tricky. But this was a routine that, with time, they had perfected.

Helen and George laced their fingers together, like they did every Saturday morning, and began walking toward the winding path that led out of the park. Toward the home they had built. The life that made aging worth it.