Nobody mentions what you might have to sacrifice to achieve them. Nobody prepares you for the possibility that achieving one dream might mean destroying another.
Trying To Be Brave
Bella and I tried so hard to be brave about it. We sat in my beat-up Honda Civic outside her house.
The same car where we’d had our first kiss. Where we’d spent countless hours just talking about everything and nothing.
We talked about long-distance relationships like they were actually viable. Like two eighteen-year-olds with no money and an entire ocean between them could make it work through sheer willpower.
We both knew better. We just weren’t ready to say it out loud yet.
The weeks between graduation and my departure felt simultaneously endless and far too short. Every moment we spent together carried this unbearable weight.
This acute awareness that we were counting down to something irreversible and final.
Prom happened right in the middle of all of it. It felt less like a celebration than an elaborate funeral for the future we’d imagined.
We danced to every slow song. We took pictures with our friends, all of us dressed up and pretending everything was normal.
We laughed at jokes that weren’t actually funny. Every moment felt precious and painful in equal measure.
I held Bella closer than necessary during the last dance. My face buried in her hair, breathing in the familiar scent of her coconut shampoo.
Trying desperately to memorize exactly how this moment felt. The weight of her head on my shoulder, the way her hand fit perfectly in mine.
We both knew that prom night was probably the last time we’d see each other for a very long time. Maybe forever.
The Note I Couldn’t Face
At the end of the night, we stood in the high school parking lot. Glitter from the decorations littered the asphalt.
Deflated balloons tumbled across the pavement in the warm June breeze.
Bella reached into her small beaded clutch purse. She pulled out a folded piece of notebook paper.
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