My new adult life is going as planned ... until my boyfriend gets drafted. Luckily it's just baseball, not war. Although I'm fighting pretty hard to make a long-term relationship transition seamlessly into long-distance. One minute Nate and I are headed to college. The next he's joining a minor league team in Atlanta. The only part of my life not changing is my family's apple orchard and good old Apple Cart, Alabama. Mary's Diner and Piggly Wiggly are still the hub of downtown, and the General Store is still selling "everything from a cradle to a coffin." (A rather morbid marketing tactic if you ask me.) Part of me is ready to spread my wings and see what the rest of the world has to offer. Like the chocolate coffee Nate and I discovered recently. But Nate’s the other part of the equation—the solution to the "x" that was missing in my life. One that I pray never becomes an "ex". When we were only sixteen, we made a promise to love each other forever. That's a promise I know I can keep. But can that promise outlast us chasing separate dreams?
