Her hands were always cold, but I’d held them so long I didn’t mind it anymore. I brought her up the same abandoned cabin near the shore where we’d had our first kiss. Nobody was there, the area was trashy and small, something two teenagers might see as secluded and romantic.

She’d been accepted to Princeton, I’d stay and work for my dad. It wasn’t all bad, I could be running the business someday. She could be running the world.

It was quiet. The door creaked open, the floorboards were pulled up, the walls were covered in graffiti, it had a sense of home that I don’t think it should have had. She dropped my hand.

“Wow, it’s so dark in here,” she said as she pulled wooden boards from off the empty window frames. “Okay, why are we here?” She smiled at me.

“Because it’s where it all started, the start of the summer- three years ago. I figured it should end in the same place, at the end of the summer,” my voice kept steady, and my words felt practiced.

“What?” Her smile dropped. “We haven’t even talked about that yet,” she seemed confused, but not angry.

“You have a world to get to, and I have a world to stay at.” I didn’t flinch, I wasn’t talking to her. I was just reading a script in my head. She, on the other hand, had to face this in real time. She hesitated, choked on her next words, but she knew I was right. “Instead of letting it fade, we can be in love for forever.” She was more confused, but her tears disappeared from her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“We, these two teenagers,” I started as I pulled off my backpack and started to go through it. “Who are immature, and innocent, and young, will always be in love. These versions of ourselves, will always be together.” I pulled out a black spray can. “And it’s here where they will live forever, so why don’t we add our own addition to our home.” I walked her down to the room where everything started. On the wall I wrote _We were in love here. _The same room where we had our first kiss, we had our last kiss, to seal what was once ourselves in that love for forever.

The day after the love of my past life left, the cabin on the shore was torn down.