Keely was silent, yet the tears in her eyes flowed like a stream. "Why does this have to happen?" Phil was as still as she.
"I'm sorry, Keel. If I were the one to decide..." He was interrupted.
"If you were the one to decide, we would be married by now." She smiled weakly. "And we would probably have a house away from here, maybe in Burbank. And we would have a baby on the way."
"I know that somehow, someway, we'll be able to keep in touch. Remember? Love has no boundaries?" The man says while pushing a strand of blonde hair from her face to behind her ear.
"I was most likely drunk at the time. I never thought those words would lead us up to this." The girl whined. Then she stood up, hugged Phil, and whispered in his ear: "I never thought those words would ever apply." He embraced Keely, and then let go. She let go as well, and he walked off slowly, with Keely on his heels. They walked to her house.
"You know, when I first saw your house, I didn't think anything about it." He stepped through her front lawn and looked at a small shrub. "And then I saw this. I didn't say anything about it before because I thought it wouldn't matter."
"What wouldn't matter?"
He rubs one of the small, waxy leaves between his thumb and index finger. "What this means. When I was smaller, around 2114, when I was eight, I used to see this huge hemispherical, chrome house. When my parents would let me, I would walk 2 blocks down and make a right, and I would be at this house. I would go into the backyard, and there was a huge bush, smack dab in the middle of the property. My friends and I would play around this bush so much. Now I realize that we would play in what was your yard." He laughed. "I can't believe it's lasted almost 100 years."
"Wow. But does that have to do with anything?" Keely was confused.
"Of course. One time, my buddy Jason accidentally threw a giant stone into the window of the house. I went into it to apologize, but it turns out it was abandoned. So I toured the place, and I took an elevator up to the second floor. I went into a small room, and I found a greyed shoebox. I opened it, and there were two folded papers. One, I threw away. I didn't know what it meant. It was either a poem or a song. And," he pulled a folded note out of his back pocket. "this one, I just so happened to save. It's a list called, "Reasons He's Not Allowed To Leave".
Keely gasped. "I...I wrote that yesterday. And you have it, and it was there, but it's here, and..." Phil put a finger to her lips and began to read. "1. Because I love him. 2. Because he loves me. 3. Because he'd make me smile even if the sun could never shine and the stars could never amaze us. 4. Because I say so." There were tears in Phil's eyes now. " I can't read anymore. I have to leave." Keely threw herself against her love and sobbed. She looked up at him with moist, green eyes. "You can't. I love you!"
"Goodbye, Keely. I love you, too." Phil's gaze never met Keely, and he watched his feet as he went to the time machine where his parents waited for him.
Phil leaned against a giant, chrome, hemispherical house as he looked at thefour foot tall bush. He went up to it and found a stone. A giant stone. He pitched it against the side of the dome and a hollow sound echoed. He remembered, then walked inside the house. He came up to the elevator and rode it to the second floor. Phil walked to the closet and opened the door. There were 16 shoeboxes in it. He picked one up, and flipped the lid off. Inside was paper after paper, telling about every month Keely and Phil have known each other. He ran through the second box and found an school prompted essay, Keely's again, about what the future meant to her. He skimmed through it. The next thing in it was a diary. He flipped through the pages, only to see Phil's name many times in sequence. The third box had a poem:
"My heart was lonely, still as deep as is,
But you crash landed into my arms.
You found my weakness, and that's why I cry.
You dried my tears, and that's why I live.
"You showed me new worlds, you showed me purpose.
You show me new things every meet.
And once I met you, I had to see you,
I had to find you, I had to seek you.
"That's why I know you,
That's why I love you
That's why I find you everywhere that I see.
That's why I care
That's why I cry
That's why I live for no one but you.
"And then you leave me.
And then you dropped me.
And now I see this in a whole new light.
And now I miss you.
And now I want you.
And I can only hope that you love me as much as you do."
Phil could do nothing but smile.