"Empire Apple"

Nostalgia. Jumping on my trampoline in my backyard left me feeling nostalgic. I felt like a child again. No worries. Just jumping and laughing to myself. It sounds sad and even lonely but it really wasn't for the first time in a long time, I felt comfortable being by myself.

Moving is a scary thing to do, especially when you have nobody to comfort you physically. Sure, I have my parents but that's it. My brothers are already gone and moved out. I don't have someone who will be there with me and who understands the pain of being the new kid. My friends tell me that I'll be fine but what does that entail?

Whilst jumping on my trampoline, I remembered my ex boyfriend. We had our first kiss on this trampoline. It was a dare. A stupid, god-awful dare. I wish our first kiss never happened on my trampoline because now that we've broken up, it brings me incessant and unwanted memories, which I wish I could just forget. Wake up with amnesia, get them fully out of my head. It may sound stupid, trying to forget a high school relationship but I don't care. I wish I could forget him.

Instead, I'm really good friends with my ex. I still have our pictures of us together while we were dating. We talk almost every day. We face-time sometimes. It doesn't matter though, he doesn't like me anymore. He's the one who split us up in the first place. He still cares about me, however, I wish he didn't because if he didn't care about me as much as he does, it would be so much easier to get over him.

Today, I'm going to see him for the last time before I move. We're going apple picking. This girl that we're both friends with, whom also likes him, would've went but she decided to say that she was sick. She wasn't sick. She told me that she felt that it would be inappropriate of her to disrupt my last time with my ex. I never really liked her but I have to be honest, it was pretty big of her to do that for me. Then again, she will probably try to date him after I move.

I got off the trampoline and went into my house to get ready to go apple-picking. Thankfully, they were picking me up to go. His mother insisted that she'd drive us and then she would bring me home.

I put on a sweater and jeans. I put on hoop earrings and a pretty necklace that my mother had given me. I straightened my hair because the trampoline kind of destroyed it with the static. My makeup didn't involve doing much-kept it natural. I tried to be cute but not too cute. I didn't want him to think that I was trying too hard.

His mother pulled into my driveway and the butterflies flew straight into my stomach. I opened the door to the backseat, where he was sitting. When I realized that I had opened the wrong door, he slid over, as if he knew I was going to do that accidentally. I watched him just laugh and I saw his smile. My ex will never know how charming he truly is. I wish I had told him that more when we were dating. We aren't though, so I should stop regretting the past. They asked me how I was doing with the moving process and I just gave a basic answer, which I will sum up as: "Moving is the easy part but leaving is the hard part,"

My ex looked at me after I said that and he put his hand onto mine and squeezed it and gave me a smile that told me he was sorry for me and that he'd always be there for me. I just looked at his brown eyes and smiled warmly.

His mother stayed behind for the apple-picking part. She wanted us to be normal with each other. So, she decided to stay in the farmer's market until we got back. She insisted that she needed to pick out the right peaches to make her famous peach pie.

"I'm sorry for being all sad-sacky," I said with a hesitant laugh.

"Don't be sorry, if I were moving I'd be sad too," He said.

We went into the granny smith section. It's my favorite apple. My mother hates it because it's too tart for her taste.

"Go ahead, pick one," He said to me, while I was trying to analyze which one I fancied the most.

"Fine!" I said, picking the brightest one.

"Ahh you got the good one," He said, grabbing another one, close-by to where mine was.

We joked around for awhile and ate a lot of apples. We even talked like food critics on TV shows and gave a silly report on each apple we consumed.

"God, you're beautiful," He said to me while we were laughing about my "criticism" on Empire Apples.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?" I asked, genuinely confused by how sweet it was for him to say that and how weird it was.

"I said, 'God, you're beautiful,'" He repeated himself.

"Wow, I just-I never thought you'd say that to me ever again, but...thank you, I mean that," I said, "really convincing".

He looked down at the ground and smiled. I just wanted to kiss him. I wanted to give him my very own goodbye kiss. I just didn't know how to come about doing it. That's when he took me by surprise and kissed me.

He grabbed me gently by the waist and put his other hand on my face. The first kiss was quick and almost seemed apologetic.

"I'm sorry if that was-" He said and then I cut him off to kiss him again.

I could feel his smile through the kiss and needless to say we were both smiling and kissing. It was kind of hard to keep the kiss going while we wanted to laugh from happiness.

"I love you," I said.

He looked at me and seemed very confused. I couldn't understand why he looked so perplexed.

"You do?" He asked me.

"Yeah, why?"

"I just always thought that you lost feelings first and that's why I broke up with you," He said, backing away a little bit, to give us space.

"You told me that you didn't love me anymore and then broke up with me, so now I'm confused," I said.

"Well, I love you too," He said with a silly smile but I was kind of upset that he ever thought that I was the one who fell out of love first. I never stopped loving him.

"I think about you every day from the moment I wake up to the moment I shut my eyes. I reminisce every memory we've ever shared. I've never deleted a single photo of you. And I've never stopped loving you," I said, beginning to cry.

He just looked at me for a solid thirty seconds and then walked closer to me and just gave me a long hug.

Then he whispered into my ear and said, "I will always love you, Delilah,"

I gave him another kiss.

We went back to the farmers market and his mother explained to us how to make her famous peach pie. Maybe we will always have love for each other but like it or not, I have to be in Colorado in five days. Maybe he will love me forever and maybe I'll love him forever but that won't stop our path. We might not hold on for each other. We might put our love for each other in the past and try to forget each other's name. Now, I have to hit the dirt road.