Summer Days

Epilogue

After the weekend Dakota and I spent together, we both knew this was something we wanted for the rest of our lives, despite being so young. 

Throughout the course of the rest of our high school careers, we had fights here and there, even broke up twice, but only for a week each time. He visited me as much as he could, but it was only 3 times, one of which was to be my date to prom. I also got a chance to visit him twice in Minnesota.

Going away to college, we tried to go to the same school, but there was no college that offered good programs for film for him, and good programs for my major. Not even colleges close to each other. We had no choice but to be apart again. We figured if we've managed for this long, we'd be able to manage for a few more years. Around the same time in our sophomore year in college that Dakota got a chance to work on the set of a real movie, I was signing up to study abroad in Ireland. International was the true test for us, especially since I'd be in Ireland for 3 months. We broke up again while I was there, this time for 3 weeks, but both of us knew it wasn't really over. We got back together, and he surprised me by picking me up at the airport when I returned to the states. 

After we both got our college degrees, we never spent time apart. We had to make up for all the time when we had no choice but to be apart. He stayed with me in my apartment that I had during college for a while, until we rented our own apartment in Los Angeles. We needed a big city for his career, and it was a toss up between New York City and Los Angeles. We ultimately decided Los Angeles because we were both tired of long winters. 

We managed to get a big apartment for a reasonable price. As time progressed, he got a lot of offers for movie sets, and was even the producer of some movies, so we had more than enough money to maintain our large apartment. Soon after, we got a dog together. We adopted a chocolate lab puppy from a local shelter and named him Ollie.

On my birthday, Dakota trained Ollie to hold my last present in his mouth and drop it when he got to me. What Ollie dropped was a note that said "come to the bedroom." I remember the moment perfectly. 

"A piece of paper, thoughtful" I joked and yelled to him. I walked into our room to see rose petals scattered around our room, everywhere. On the bed, the floor, the dressers, everything. There were also candles lit, and "will you marry me?" was spelled out in photos of us on the wall our bed was against. He started playing the song "Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran, got down on his knee, and proposed. I said yes with no hesitation. We got married in fall of the following year, and everything was perfect. 

And tonight, the vision I had at homecoming so many years ago is reality. My husband, Dakota Laden, has been nominated for an Oscar for the first film he directed, and we were getting ready to walk the red carpet together. When I said big dreams for him, and bigger dreams for us, I meant it with everything I had.