What If

David Johnstone first meets Sarah Graham when they are seven years old. He is the shy new boy with unruly ginger curls; she is the artistic, black-haired girl who makes room for him at her table.Six years later, their paths cross again. Their friendship returns as if no time has passed, but Sarah is beautiful, confident and dating older boys. David is clever, awkward and convinced someone like her could never want someone like him.Years pass. Relationships begin and end. Sarah becomes a young mother to ginger-haired Abigail, and David joins them on long walks filled with coffee, laughter and conversations about nothing-ordinary afternoons that quietly mean everything.They kiss. They pull apart. They find one another again.Eventually, they make a pact: if neither of them is married by forty, they will marry each other.For Sarah, it is a promise made between two close friends.For David, it becomes something more.As controlling relationships, old fears and missed opportunities carry them down separate paths, forty draws closer-and David is forced to confront the life they might have shared, the choices he failed to make and the dangerous comfort of two small words: What if?A tender, bittersweet story of lifelong friendship, imperfect love and the moments that change everything-not because of what we do, but because of what we are too afraid to do.