The rest of highschool passed in a blur.
Almost every day after school Aidan and I would walk to a park near my house instead of going home, and we would kick off our shoes and play in the sun. Sometimes we'd even bring snacks and a blanket and lay out our picnic underneath the shade of one of the huge weeping willow trees. Aidan would sit with my head in his lap and run his fingers through my hair while we planned our escape.
Unable to imagine our lives without each other, we decided that Aidan would follow me to Ottawa for school after graduating. He could take animation courses at the college there and we would get a place together. We would lose hours planning the decor for our fictional loft, and over time those dreams became so detailed that they felt like memories. Together we had constructed a better reality that we could escape to when things became to much. Somewhere that was safe and comforting, where we would always be able to be there for each other.
Aidan sat in the stands with my family and watched me graduate, marching across that stage and feeling invincible. That night, when the parties were over and I said my last goodbye to Winnie as she prepared to head across the world for school, he held me while I cried.
We spent every possible moment together that summer, feeling as if somehow we could bank our time together to make the impending seperation less painful. Aidan and I travelled to my grandmother's house on the lake for a week's vacation. We spent that time laughing and enjoying the beach, but at the same time it felt like a cloud of sadness was hovering over us. When the sun was going down we would walk together down the beach and talk about the amazing future that was waiting for us. After the sun had dipped down beneath the horizon line, we would grow quiet and avoided each other's eyes.
The truth was, no matter how much we planned, or how much we wanted our future to include the other, we had no idea how the next year was going to unfold. We used a rock to scratch our intials onto a boulder, but like our relationship, we weren't sure if that mark could weather the storms ahead.
The night before I left, Aidan and I went for our usual walk after dinner, but this time, he wanted to bring me some where special. We walked down a path I'd never seen in a park near his house. We came to a bridge over a river and walked to the middle. It was dark, and all of a sudden it was like a hundred tiny lights shone in the blackness.
Fireflies.
We held each other on the middle of that bridge, and shared the kind of kiss that makes you feel pain deep in your heart. We were stuck between what we knew and where we were going, and we both shared an unspoken understanding - once we crossed that bridge, we might never be back to this place.