It wasn't a professional shot. It was grainy, slightly overexposed by a setting sun, and framed poorly. It showed a wooden pier stretching into a lake that looked like liquid gold. In the bottom left corner, a blurry hand was held up in a peace sign—belonging to Sarah.
He didn't remember the date at first. August 29, 2022. It felt like a lifetime ago, buried under years of newer memes, work screenshots, and blurry photos of grocery lists. He clicked "Download," and the progress bar crawled across the screen with agonizing slowness, as if the internet itself was reluctant to dig up the past. Download IMG 20220829 WA0007 jpeg
He realized he had never actually saved the photo back then; it had just sat in the cloud of a forgotten chat thread, a ghost waiting for someone to call it back to the physical world. It wasn't a professional shot