Work Text:
A brief history of the thin gold bracelet:
The day that the thin gold bracelet was lost in the sandbox of the elementary school playground was a Tuesday. The boy always remembered this because Tuesdays were the days his mother picked him up in her old powder blue Jeep so she could take him to his grandmother's house straight from school.
It was a normal, sunny day and the little boy was drawing on the asphalt with the colorful sidewalk chalk that had been left outside for recess. There was a little girl playing in the sandbox, her eyes focused on the sandcastle she was making. Her nimble fingers working details into the turrets of the tallest tower. She was so enraptured by the swirls she designed that she didn't feel the thin gold bracelet as it slipped off her wrist and into the pile of sand.
When the recess bell rang, the boy and the girl put away their toys and went inside, slipping into their separate classrooms. After the afternoon period was over, the boy headed towards the parking lot to his mother's car. As he passed the sandbox, he saw a bright glisten coming from the sandbox. He glanced at the jeep in the drop-off area and at his mother inside it, energetically rapping along with Missy Elliott and Ludacris. He figured he could give her a minute.
The boy ran to the sandbox and located the shiny object. It was a small gold bracelet. He looked back at the school, contemplating if he had time to run back to the school to drop it off at the lost and found or if his mom would get worried that he hadn't come out. He looked at his mom in the car again and figured it would be better if they left for grandma's before she got really enthusiastic with the rapping and everyone heard her swearing.
He climbed into the car's backseat and put the bracelet in the pocket of his shorts, swearing he would give it to the teacher tomorrow. That night, when his mother turned out out the pockets of her son's shorts (a habit she had picked up after washing her husband's badge with his pants and almost breaking the machine), she found the gold bracelet. She looked at it curiously for a moment, deciding that it was too small to belong to anyone but a child. She threw her son's shorts in the machine and decided that she would leave it in the car's glove compartment, so she could ask him about it on the drive to school the next morning.
The girl would only notice the missing bracelet when her mother called up to her, telling her to come down for dinner. That grandma was there waiting for her. The thin gold bracelet had been a gift from her grandmother on her birthday and she was expected to wear it. Panic set in as she realized that it was gone. Within minutes, the room was turned on its head as she threw everything aside looking for the bracelet.
The next week, her father left for the first time.
The morning after the bracelet was lost in the sandpit, the little boy's mother did not remember to ask her son about the bracelet or take it out of the glove compartment.
The bracelet lay in the glove compartment of the old jeep until the boy inherited it, years later, when he was looking through his late mother's CD collection. He took the bracelet and put it in the drawer by his bed. He thought seriously about selling it, or giving it away, but there was a feeling in his gut that the bracelet would find its way back to the original owner some way or another.
The boy and his girlfriend lay on his bed after a particularly grueling night of research for a chemistry project. The moon outside was already setting when the girl, wrapped in the boy's arms, asked if he had an extra pair of socks she could borrow.
"First drawer. Bedside table." He mumbled into the pillow, without much consciousness.
The girl opened the drawer and fumbled around in the dark for a pair of socks that didn't have holes in them when her fingers trailed over a cold piece of metal. Curious, she turned on the light, ignoring the boy's mumbled complaints about the light being too bright, and found the glistening gold bracelet at the bottom of the drawer.
Her eyes widened in awe. "Where did you find this?"
The boy mumbled something unintelligent about it being too early for this before turning on his back. "Find what, Lyds?"
She turned around and showed him the strip of gold in her hand and his eyes widened in recognition. "I swear I'm not cheating on you."
She rolled her eyes. "I know that, you idiot. But where did you get this?"
His eyebrows furrowed. "Kindergarten or first grade? I found it in the sandbox. I thought I'd lost it or something till I found it in the Jeep when I was fixing it up."
"The Jeep?" She asked. "Why would it be in the Jeep?"
"It was my mom's car, back in the day." The boy ran his hands through his hair. "I guess she found it in my stuff? I don't know. My mom wasn't doing super well then..."
The girl ran her thumb over the bracelet, still shiny like the day she lost it. "I thought it was the end of the world when I lost it."
His eyes widened. "Wait." He shot up from the bed, shifting to sit next to her. "It's yours ? Lydia, I am so sorry. I should've just given it to the Lost and Fo--"
"No." She interrupted. "It's fine. It got back to me eventually. Just like you."
He chuckled and grabbed her hand, bringing it to his lips and pressing a light kiss into her palm. "I was always yours. Just claimed by other people for a while."
"Well it seems that things I thought were lost were really just not meant to be found yet."
"Something like that." He smiled softly.