Stanford was your dream, at some point in life. You can still feel the happiness you felt the day you got your acceptance letter, how tight your parents hugged you. You enjoyed it, at the start. But slowly, you started to miss your old hometown. You missed the seasons, the simplicity of life before college. You wanted to move back, change your plans, try walking down another path.

The only thing holding you back, was Art. Your best friend, Art Donaldson. Your sweet, loyal, kind best friend that made life in California bearable from the second you arrived. The blonde boy that's been begging you to stay since you mentioned leaving. Now that it was near enough happening, Art was trying everything to get you to stay. To stay with him, here in California. It's too hard to find reasons to stay, you'd tell him, not that it didn't break his heart every time you said it. Was he not enough? Was his love not enough?

Art had been trying to work up the courage to tell you how he felt essentially all year. He fell in love with you the first day he saw you, trying to lug your bags up the stairs to your dorm room. Only for Art to come over, laughing at you as he explained there was an elevator the other side of the stairs. He knew the first day of college was not the time to fall in love, he was meant be here to study, to better his tennis. So, he settled for being your best friend instead. That was enough, for a while. But now, knowing you're leaving, he had to tell you. Art couldn't let you leave him, especially without telling you he had been in love with you since the second he saw you.

"Please, just- don't go." Art pleads, for the hundredth time, sitting together in your dorm room. Class notes and books aimlessly sprawled out over the floor, not that Art had gone so far as to read a sentence. No, he'd been studying you. Drinking in every furrow of your brow, how you fiddled with the pen, how you pushed your hair behind your ear as you leaned further into your book. "Please- I mean it. Don't leave me."