(untitled).

Her heart was racing, pounding so hard inside her chest she thought it might burst. The night was warm, but not overly so. And yet, her hands were sweating. She sat in the parking lot, her car packed full of every last thing she had left in her apartment. The trunk and backseat were a hodgepodge of all sorts of things she had collected over her time at away at school. She was about to leave. She would never go back to that city as a student. Her college years were done and she had to move on.
She was tired. It had been a long weekend. It had been a long day. She had spent almost all of it cleaning every last nook and cranny of her apartment. Vacuuming baseboards and blinds, wiping down doors and counters, and scrubbing the life out of stains on the oven. There had been one highlight to the day -- a three-hour ballet class where she could dance freely and not think about how everything was changing so quickly. She thought there would be two. But that dinner -- the last time she would see him for months -- was awkward. The conversation jilted. Small talk. Pitiful, meaningless small talk unlike any conversation they had ever had. Words had always flowed so easily between them, their conversations lasting far into the night.
When he said goodbye, he hugged her. She started to cry. A tear slipped down her cheek and she quickly wiped it away, locking all the others away, pushing her emotions down and trying to hold her composure.
"I'm going to miss you," she whispered into his chest.
"I know. I'll miss you, too," he said, lifting her chin up to look at him. "And just because I act like I'm okay doesn't mean I am. My heart is breaking, too."
"I know," she said, a tear slipping down her cheek.
"It'll be okay," he said. He leaned toward her and gave her an eskimo kiss. Their noses touched. Their lips, so close, but so far apart. It reminded her of the first night he had said I like you.
"You're a jerk," she said, trying to smile. She was trying to hard not to cry. She couldn't give into the tears yet. She refused to let his last memory of her be one of her crying. He gave her one last squeeze and she walked out the door and back to her apartment.
For the next two hours, she scrubbed the life out of her oven, taking out all her emotions on the stains that refused to go away. Her friend came over to say goodbye. They talked. She let her emotions pour forth -- how angry she was, how frustrated she was, how scared she was, how much she was going to miss him.
She decided to do something daring. Something impulsive. Something like she had never done in her life.
So there she sat, two hours later, in the parking lot of his apartment building. Heart racing, palms sweating and her mind running a million miles an hour. She opened the door and slowly got out. She tried to calm herself down -- slow her heart, steady her breathing -- as she walked across the parking lot and up the stairs.
She stood outside the door for what seemed like hours. This was crazy. Why did she think this was a good idea? She raised her hand to knock several times, each time pulling it back down and nearly walking back down the stairs and out the door. Finally, she knocked. Timidly, to be sure, but loud enough that he would hear. And even after she knocked, she still almost ran away.
She heard noise from within. He got up slowly from the couch and walked toward the door. She heard the lock click and he opened it.
The look on his face was one of shock and confusion. He had no idea what was going on.
People would say she was crazy. People might judge her. People might tell her that she was wrong, that she was an idiot. But she didn't care. For once in her life, she was doing something not because it was expected of her, or because it was the logical or right thing to do. For once, she was doing something because she wanted to. Because she wanted to, and so she didn't care what people would say.
"Please don't hate me," she said, "but I just had to do this one last time."
And with that statement, all her fear and anxiety fell away. She stepped forward, put her hands to his face and kissed him with all the passion and love that had been building over the last week and months before that. She didn't want it to end. She didn't want to let go. She knew this would be the last time he would hold her in his arms like this, drinking her in like a man dying of thirst. She knew this was the end. In her heart, she hoped it wouldn't be, but in her head, she already knew.
He stepped back and smiled. And in that moment, she knew it was worth it. It didn't matter what anyone else said or thought. He looked down at her with those eyes, those big, beautiful, blue eyes she had stared into a hundred times and cupped her face.
"I was waiting for you to do that," he said. And he kissed her again.