There was a small field that just appeared out of nowhere. You’d never know about unless you did. I couldn’t remember who showed me the place first. It wasn’t Night. That much I knew. Unless it involved drinking, girls, or fighting, Night never gave a shit.

It was a field where these white flowers would grow. They were really low to the ground. I had no clue what kind of flowers they were. There were also sprinkles of blueberries in there. Actually blueberries. Where you could just pick them up off the ground and eat them. Super sweet. Juicy. It was crazy.

I took her there plenty of times. We’d stand and hold hands. She’d put her head on my shoulder. We’d talk, flirt, laugh, kiss. Sometimes our conversations were deep, and we’d talk about the future, our dreams, the hint that maybe we were going to have a future together. There was no reason to hold back. We were old enough. We could pack up and leave town, and nobody could do a thing to stop us. That was the beauty of it all. When times felt hard, there was always a way to change everything.

I didn’t realize that her version of change was drastic.

Other times, we would sit in the field and talk about the most random stuff. Animals. Look at the clouds and argue over what we saw. Count birds or airplanes. Or just stare at each other. I’d study her eyes. The bluest of eyes. The color blue that changed throughout her eye. Seriously. Shades of light, dark, in between, eyes I had never seen anything like before.

Today was…sort of different.

It was a week ago that she started acting different.

It was like a switch had flipped. She kept her head down when she saw me. Like she was guilty of something. She spoke soft, quiet, almost scared. I held her, kissed her, asked her if everything was okay. She always said yes. I asked her if anything was wrong. She always said no.

But she always showed up. She never bailed on me.

Not even today.

When I asked her to meet me on the trail for a walk.

She was there, listening to music. Standing next to the gate that led to the creek. She looked so pretty, with the way the wind stole her hair and whipped it around wherever it wanted.

I hugged her, kissed her, took her hand, and led the way.

When we got to the field, we stood at the edge of it. I wanted to walk into the field, but she said she didn’t want to. She just wanted to stand on the edge and admire it.

“I don’t want to crush anything,” she said. “You know?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll stand here forever with you. You know that, right?”

She turned and faced me. She grabbed my other hand and started to draw circles in the palm of my hand. It made me shiver in a really weird way. The way it made me feel. I wanted to gently lay her down in the flowers. Take her…

“I know, Maddox,” she said. “I know you stand here forever. I love that about you. But I hate it.”

“You hate it?” I asked, laughing. “Why?”

“You’re wasting your time. This is your time. To find yourself.”

“I find myself in you,” I whispered to her. “I mean that. We’ve been doing this for a long time. You know? We’ve gone through so much together. And we have so much left.”

“I know that,” she said. She kept making circles at the palm of my hand. “Do you ever wonder…just why people do things?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Never mind.”

“Hey, talk to me. You seem like something’s bothering you. Did I do something? Did something happen? I mean, whatever it is, you can talk to me. I swear to you. You can always talk to me.”

Just like that, her eyes glistened. She turned to face the field again. Her hand slipped into mine, our fingers interlocking tight.

“I mean it,” I said.

“Maddox. I don’t want to talk anymore,” she said. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

So we stood there. We stood there for so long I actually watched the sun move, slowly making its mid to late day descent, getting ready to press itself against the horizon and splash another sunset for everyone to see.

Finally, hours later, she said, “I want to go now. I have to go now.”

“Okay. Let’s walk back together. I’ll walk you home.”

“Walk me to the end of the trail,” she said. “I’m sorry, Maddox. But I have to walk alone after that.”

“Why?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Are you breaking up with me?” I finally asked, just getting to the point.

“No,” she said. She touched my face. “No, Maddox. No.”

“So I can still kiss you?”

“Of course,” she said with a smile.

It was a relief to see her smile.

Even if it turned out to be a fake smile.

I touched her face and pulled her close.

I kissed her.

She tasted the same as the first time I ever kissed her.

We wasted another hour of our lives away by kissing.

Which was fine by me.

Although I didn’t know it then—the last kiss was indeed just that our last kiss forever…