Expiration Date

In 8th grade we snuck down to Yogurtland before Spanish class. It was closed, because it was 10am, so we grabbed some muffins from Vons and scurried back to school, all giggles and crumbs. I put the receipt in my back pocket.

The day before winter break I asked you to come to the new library with me. We got coffee, laid on the carpet of the second floor, and watched the people down below out the window. I mostly looked at you though, and wondered if you’d let me kiss you.

On New Years’ Eve, we Skyped right through midnight just so we could say we’d been talking since last year.  

In the spring, my mom drove us up to LA and you played Everlong more times than I could count.

Freshman year, you came with me to Idyllwild and we spent 4 golden days of Thanksgiving break getting lost in the woods and watching SNL reruns until 2am.

Sophomore year, you played Chopin at every holiday party we went to, and that New Year’s, I reached over and woke you up to watch the first sunrise of the year with me.

Just this November you drove to my house with three red roses for no reason and kissed me like you didn’t want to do anything else for the rest of your life.

Over the last couple years, we’ve been on a lot of dates. Little did our 8th grade selves know that when we sat on the concrete steps next to our middle school and held hands, something happened. Like a stamp pressed on a carton of eggs or milk before it hit the shelves, the ink on the packaging of our relationship spelled: Best by September 2018. Best before graduation, best before acceptance letters, best before we have to be adults.

I know the future is the thing that scares us both the most.

There comes a time when it’s tempting to be idealistic, to say “I can love you from New York! I can love you from Chicago, I can love you from Irvine! Our love can stretch across the ocean if it has to!” But we’re smart. We know that we’ll never be the kind of people who can subsist solely off of Skype and round-trip plane tickets every 6 months.

People always call college the next chapter of their lives but it might just end up being a whole new book. Different characters entirely.

So if our story has to come to an end, if the pages of this book are quickly approaching the back cover, let’s use them wisely. Let’s make this the kind of book that leaves you exhilarated, the kind of book where you can’t do anything but sit in awe, maybe read the author’s bio on the back flap to learn what kind of person could have brought such a beautiful thing into existence. We’ll be the kind of book that you wish you’d never finished.