The party the next evening was the first family function at which I was treated officially as an adult. I had recently come back after studying abroad, and so I held my glass of wine and talked with relatives about Florence and London and Paris, and my plans after graduation. I’d move to New York. I’d work at an art gallery. I’d find a boy who wrote poems. It all seemed not only possible, but fantastically so.

The next day, my parents dropped me off at the airport, and when I arrived at the gate, the boy was there. We smiled at each other, and I sat down.

It turned out we were on the same flight, and this time we were seated next to each other on the trip back to Vermont. He played in a band and studied English and had been home for the weekend as well, visiting his family in Greenwich, Conn.

We talked about music and art. His first name was the same as my father’s. It was the sort of thing that seemed magical, preordained. It was the sort of thing that made girls near their 21st birthdays use words like “destiny” and “fate.”

He walked me to my car, and we kissed in the parking garage, under orblike yellow lights. It was a still kiss, a postcard kiss, a Disney princess kiss, the kind of kiss that makes blue cartoon birds chirp and swirl in the sky, their beaks holding garlands.

And this is exactly where the story should end. It should cut to credits, and the music should be triumphant but soft. Your last image should be of the young girl and the handsome poetry-writing boy frozen in a movie kiss. You should brush the popcorn off your lap and leave the theater smiling because everything worked out the way you knew it would. You can leave remembering that time when you were young and lovely, and things like that could happen.