Red light turns green at the corner of the High school. Colton has a three-car length gap to the next vehicle and now he must leave. He spent the last-minute yelling a question through his passenger window at Heather. She couldn’t hear him, and people started to honk at them. Being forced to leave Colton sent a text message later that night. Heather responded and the conversion didn’t stop. Over the years, Colton and Heather went to the same middle school and high school. They had several classes together and even did pole vault together junior and senior year, but they never talked seriously until the week of their senior year prom. Every day that week they slowly grew closer, every night they sat in the parking lot and talked longer and longer. When prom came, they couldn’t stop dancing together. Couldn’t be separated all night until they drove home. Prom was now behind them and the question of, “what’s next?” transpired. Less than one month of school left, and then they were going to opposite sides of the state for college. Texts slowed down. Conversation became stiff. Questions started to pile up. What was worse, not taking this experience, this relationship, or trying to make it work? To make everything worse the last home meet, possibly the last time for each other’s friends and family to see them compete was coming up. A lot was on the line, on their minds, and school was ending sooner rather than later. The track event was off, starting early on Friday evening. Colton competed first and took gold. Heather was next, it was clear that she had nothing else on her mind but to win. Going blow for blow against her own teammate. The one-hour straight competition in the dark ended with her victory, the first time ever. The team was amazed at the spectacle and after having pizza, the two escaped to the classic hang out spot, Sonic. Heather on the drive over was cool, collected like the world’s worries washed away as the anticipation of ice cream filled her mind. Colton was nervous and struggled to make sentences with ice cream being the last thing on his mind. As the car pulled up to the stall, Colton turned to Heather, finally ready to say it. He smiled at her and, with a force equal to that of a rocket going into orbit, Colton’s nose exploded with blood. Both panicked as blood was going everywhere and, with Heather shoving some napkins into Colton’s face, the bleeding was halted. Over an hour went by and Colton finally stopped bleeding out. Unfortunately, Sonic closed by then and they left empty handed as it was now a little past midnight. What felt like a walk of shame for Colton as he drove Heather back to her car across town. She laughed and laughed and laughed, almost the whole car ride. They pulled up to her car in an empty parking lot under a glorious star filled night sky. They both got out into the cold and reminisced of prom one week ago walking to her car. With both of them smiling, they began to dance and twirl around their cars until stumbling to a stop. There they gazed to the sky where Colton pretended to know about constellations. As he confessed, they both laughed the embraced, and in that moment, Colton said it. “Heather, will you be my girlfriend?”