In high school, I ghosted my boyfriend. After 17 years, we reconnected and have been together ever since.

“Cyndi is now friends with Chris. ” The single line stopped my mindless Facebook scrolling. High-school classmates reconnecting was the norm, but Chris wasn’t just any old classmate — he was my first love.

I hit the friend-request button, imagining what his profile would reveal — if he accepted. The way things ended between us 17 years before hadn’t exactly been ideal. And while I believed that time heals most wounds, I wasn’t sure Chris agreed.

We dated my junior year, stealing kisses after spring-play practice and spending summer nights on the phone. But as the clock ticked away and the new school year loomed, my uncertainty eked in. I was a senior, and Chris was a sophomore.

My overly sensitive, shy, and awkward psyche couldn’t handle the scandal of being a senior girl dating a sophomore boy. So, I did the only thing that made sense in my 17-year-old brain. I ghosted him.

For one, it was a hell of a lot easier. In a world before the internet and smartphones, you only needed to ignore the mailbox outside your house and the phone inside it. You screened every call, yelling at your mom to let the phone go to the answering machine before she picked it up.

No social media meant no chance you could keep tabs on each other. The only time I heard how Chris was doing post-breakup was when his sister said, “My brother listens to this on repeat,” when Exposé’s “I’ll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me” came on the radio. I avoided him like the plague senior year, and our story ended .

I eventually married, had three kids, divorced, and started over at the age of 34. Chris accepted my friend request, but his profile gave me little to go on. And while I investigated and read way too much into what I saw — two kids and an undefined relationship status — and what I didn’t see — pictures of a woman — I got a private message from Chris asking for my number and if he could call sometime to catch up.

Maybe my day of reckoning had finally arrived. Maybe the profile was a front. Maybe my ghosting led Chris to the perfect life.

He deserved to be happy — and I deserved to hear all about it. Chris called right away. His voice boomed over the phone, not the squeak of a teenage boy but the bellow of a grown man, wiping out the 2,000 miles and 17 years between us.

As it turned out, he was also recently divorced, and the similarities and coincidences in our parallel lives were wildly uncanny. It was all more than we could fit into a single call, so we talked regularly, conversations vacillating between our high-school days and all the ones in between. And so, our story began — again.

We’ll celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary in January, and life is pretty amazing. While our past made connecting easier, nothing about it was easy. Should we have worked? Probably not.

But maybe in the gap between heartbreak and healing, all the bad stuff scorched a path for the love to grow fresh and strong. I don’t remember at what point in our reconnection I apologized to Chris for ghosting him. But I know he laughed and swore he would never let me live it down.

He kept that promise. And while I roll my eyes when he starts telling the story about the girl in high school who ghosted him, I love hearing it. Because it’s our story.

And it’s perfect. .