We had just finished eating dinner with some friends at my house. It had been a perfect way to end this part of it, I thought almost happily. He tightened his arms around me and brushed a strand of my then-long hair out of my face.
"What are you thinking about?" he whispered softly.
I smiled and looked up at him sadly. "I can't believe it's here. It doesn't seem real that all of this is ending tomorrow. Not just "us," but high school, our friendships, being children ... all of it." Against my will, one of the tears that had been welling up in my eyes fell. "Why did we wait so long for this?"
He wiped away my tear and looked up at the stars. "I don't know."
"You get so used to being happy that you start to feel like it's a constant occurrence, that you can expect to always feel that way. Then, you remember that there are really very few moments where you are truly happy and you have to appreciate that we got to live these months of happiness."
I kissed him and sighed. He smiled at me and asked: "Why does it seem the best things you've ever had always have time limits?"
We broke up forever the next day, moving to different colleges, different parts of the country, and moving on in our lives.
I have to wonder if he was as wonderful as he seemed that night or if memory has just made it seem that way.