Highlights

This is a story of love that can only be told through memories. Memories are the only thing that do it justice. It was a whirlwind of romance, a storm that never stopped. Until it did.

It started like every other great relationship started. With a green highlighter in History class. We were given a reading assignment and told to highlight the passages we thought were important. He sat in the row in front of me, next to a friend of mine. He pulled out a green highlighter, and I fell in love.

With the highlighter, not him. I didn't even know his name.

"Kirsten, I need that green highlighter," I whispered to my best friend next to me.

"Well then marry him," she suggested in response, basically ignoring me.

"Just for a highlighter? That seems a bit extreme."

Suddenly, Mr. MacAfee started calling out names to talk to people.

"Dylan, come on down," Mr. MacAfee shouted, drawing my attention.

The boy with the green highlighter rose from his chair and made his way out of his row. On his way past, he knocked my nametag off my desk. He picked it up and held it out to me, glancing away nervously.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to do that," Dylan stated.

"Its fine," I replied, smiling brightly.

He smirked back and continued walking down to the teacher's desk. Kirsten looked up from her reading and grinned at me evilly.

"He did that on purpose, you know."

I shot her a doubtful look, and she narrowed her eyes at my challenge.

"I looked up when he walked past my desk. He grabbed your nametag and dropped it," she argued.

"Well, what would the point of that be?" I countered, thinking I'd found the hole in her theory.

"He likes you."

I should've seen that coming. It was her answer for everything. If a guy even breathed in my direction, she automatically thought they had a crush on me.

"Of course," I agreed sarcastically.

Kirsten rolled her eyes and continued reading while I sat and stared at the clock. Dylan eventually came back to his seat and managed not to knock off my nametag this time. I looked at Kirsten pointedly. She shook her head, as if it meant nothing. The bell rang, signaling the end of class, and Dylan and I went our separate ways.

That's my very first memory of us. It's also my favorite. Why is that memory my favorite if we weren't even together? I couldn't tell you. Maybe because it's the first. Maybe because it was funny. I just love it. From there, everything happened quickly.

"So, Dylan, are you going to Winter Formal?" I asked, trying to picture him in a suit.

"I might," he answered vaguely, "Why do you ask?"

"I don't have a date still, so I'm asking around to see who's going."

I inwardly laughed at his reaction to my candid reply. His eyes went wide for a moment before he cleared his throat and returns to normal.

"If you're not going though, it's fine. I'm sure I'll find someone to hang out with while I'm there," I stated casually.

Unfortunately for me, Dylan is smart and didn't take the bait. I left class disappointed.

Now, you're probably a bit confused. In the last memory, I denied that he liked me, and now I'm trying to get him to ask me out? Crazy, I know. Have you ever had an idea put in your head by someone and you can't help but think about it all the time? That's how I felt with Dylan. Thanks to Kirsten, he was consistently stuck in my head like a jingle from a commercial.

"Were you trying to flirt with Dylan in History today?" Kirsten asked eagerly.

I had barely sat down at our lunch table and already she had begun interrogating me.

"Yeah. But, just like that class, my attempts are history," I replied moodily.

"Sure about that?"

I look up and see Dylan standing next to our table.

"Selena, can I talk to you?" he asked, not at all shy or nervous.

I wish I could say the same about me. I was practically shaking in anticipation and slight fear. I nodded and followed him around the corner to a slightly quieter area.

"So, about Winter Formal," he began.

I groaned inwardly and hoped he wasn't irritated by my embarrassing display earlier.

"Did you want to go with me?" he questioned.

I couldn't cover my shock. He stood in front of me, holding a single rose and asking the question I had tried to prompt from him two hours ago.

"Yes, of course," I responded, smiling shyly. "Where did you get the rose though?"

He chuckled and twirled it once before handing it to me.

"Let's just say, I have a friend, and it's her birthday today. She gave me one of her own free will when I told her what I was planning to do."

I almost swooned at the sweetness of his proposal. He walked me back to my table where I ate lunch with a huge smile on my face the whole time. Kirsten sat next to me, looking smug the whole time because she knew she was right.

I think it was at that point that I realized the whole thing was more than just an obsessive idea. It had escalated into something fatal. Attraction. Skip Winter Formal. Nothing significant happened, in fact, I hardly remember it. Fast forward a few months.

"Selena, do you want to go out with me?" Dylan asked, after several minutes of dead silence.

"Yeah, sure. Where?" I responded, only half-listening.

He sighed loudly and snatched my phone from me mid-text.

"Hey..."I whined but droned off when I noticed the serious look on his face.

"No, I meant do you want to date me?" he corrected, glancing up at me through his thick rimmed glasses.

I always used to tease Dylan about his glasses but I secretly found them cute. They made it a lot harder to look away when he looked up at me through his eyelashes like no boy should be able to do.

"Yes. Of course I do," I replied, in shock.

He grinned at me happily, and I stared at him I awe.

Those kind of things were only supposed to happen in movies. A girl meets a guy. The girl falls in love. The guy finally notices and asks her out. It's never real.

But Dylan and I, we weren't real. We were better. Fast forward again one year.

"Selena, I don't know what I did wrong! Why are you mad at me?" Dylan argued, as calmly as possible.

I glared at him harshly, and he backed away hesitantly.

"You forgot!" I accused. Fighting back tears.

He looked at me, confused, and then realization hit. His eyes widened but the corner of his mouth turned up into a smirk.

"Come here," he said, holding his arms out to me.

I reluctantly stepped towards him into his embrace and laid my head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around me tighter and chuckled softly.

"Walk with me," he whispered.

We walked around the wall and turned the corner to see a table with another single rose sitting on it. Next to the rose was a handwritten note, which was nearly illegible.

"Selena,

I know how much you hate roses because they're cliché so I got you one anyways. I asked all your friends (even Kirsten) and even your family what to do for you but no one could give me any ideas. So, just for you, I went for the most cliché and overdone things I could think of.

Happy One Year Anniversary.

Love, Dylan"

Now, at this point, I was bawling, and I probably looked like a mess. But, ever the gentleman, Dylan didn't point that out.

I turned around and there he was, holding a heart shaped box of chocolates with a small black box on top of it. I laughed at the cheesiness of it all but I hugged him tightly and sobbed out my thanks. He carefully detached the small box from the chocolates and held it out to me.

"I was going to get a heart shaped one but that was too much, even for me," he stated, right as I opened the box.

Inside was a necklace with a tiny charm of the letter D. I pulled it out gently and raised an eyebrow at him in exasperation. He grinned devilishly before taking the necklace and spinning me around to put it on me.

That is one of my happiest memories, not only of Dylan and I but in general. We had gone through so much together, and it had all been wonderful. However, like all good things, it was about to come to an end. Less than a week later, Dylan was in a car accident.

I sat in the waiting room, impatiently tapping my toes, much to the annoyance of my mother sitting next to me.

"Ms. Mavell? The parents said you can come in now," the nurse at the front desk drawled, looking at her computer screen.

I shot up out of my seat and bolted down the hallway to room 314. As soon as I stepped in, I wished I hadn't/ Dylan's face was covered in dozens of tiny, deep cuts, sewn together with stitches, and his head was still wrapped in bandages. I started crying when I thought of how he would quip that the stitches made him look rugged. His parents shot me a look of disgust mixed with slight concern.

See, Dylan's parents had never liked me. They only tolerated me because they realized I was sticking around. But they never accepted me. I wasn't surprised by their response to Dylan having amnesia even remotely.

"You want me to leave him!?" I cried, appalled by the mere thought.

"Selena, sweetheart. We're just saying that if he doesn't remember you on his own, we don't want you to put extra stress on him by trying to make him remember," his parents reasoned with false concern.

I thought about disagreeing with them. Arguing my side until they accepted that Dylan was my life. I was disgusted by them and the fact that they thought I wasn't good enough for him, as if I didn't already think that. I hated them for being right. So I didn't argue. I agreed weakly for Dylan. I wasn't going to force my affections on him if he couldn't remember my name. So I said my goodbyes.

I walked up to the side of his bed and bent down next to his unconscious figure. I waited until his parents left the hospital room and then began my heartfelt speech. I took his hand in mine and looked at him tearfully.

"I wish I didn't have to do this, Dylan. I never wanted to break up this way. Actually, I didn't want to break up at all. But I want to do what's best for you. I can't force you to date me again. I can't pester you into remembering me. But know that I'll always remember us. You are and always will be the love of my life. So, if you forget me, I'll remember for the both of us."

The tears streamed down my face as I leaned forward and kissed his bandaged forehead gently.

"Goodbye, Dylan," I whispered before walking through the door and out of his life.

I looked up as I left and saw that his parents had heard the entire thing. They looked at me, their faces a mix of hesitant regret, slight disgust, and grudging respect.

Of course, that's not where the story ends. Two weeks later, Dylan came back to school with all his wounds healed but only half of his memory regained. Guess which half that was? The half without me. But I survived. Sitting next to him in class was torture, hearing him say my name lie it was something foreign was torture, seeing his beautiful green eyes stare at me without knowing who I was was torture. It was all worth it when, one day, he did something extraordinary.

I dug through my backpack but to no avail. I still couldn't find my highlighter. Suddenly, a throat cleared and I looked up, only to come face to face with a green highlighter.

"You can borrow mine," Dylan said, smiling brightly in a heartbreakingly familiar way.

It was one simple sentence. But it was a lifetime of memories. So, ladies and gentleman, Dylan and I's story never really ends. Instead, it started, it ended, but then it began again. It's still going now. Does he remember us? No, but I do. That's enough. Now he can make new memories and I can relive the old ones. Will he ever love me again and, if he does, will he love me the same as before? No one can really say. It's something you hope for but never something you can know for certain. Hope is all you need to keep going though. It's what I live on.

Hope is and always had been the basis of Dylan and I's relationship.

Just like every other great relationship.