When Summer Sounded Like You

I met you the summer everything turned golden.

You had grass stains on your knees, a sunburn peeling on your shoulders, and music leaking from your headphones like it couldn’t bear to stay quiet. You walked like the world belonged to you and talked like every word mattered. I was seventeen, cautious, quiet. You were eighteen, chaotic, bright. A comet crashing into my slow orbit.

Our town was a dot on a map—population small enough that everyone knew where you were before you did. We had one grocery store, one gas station, and a lake so still it felt like a mirror. You worked at the diner just off Route 6. I pretended to need milkshakes far more than I actually did.

“Are you stalking me or just really into strawberry?” you said on the third day, leaning over the counter with that crooked grin that made my heart forget how to beat in order.

I blushed. “Little of both?”

You laughed. That was the first time I heard it, and even now, I can still hear the echo.

The first kiss came two weeks later.

We were lying in the back of your truck, staring up at a sky freckled with stars. Fireflies blinked lazily through the air, and a breeze carried the scent of honeysuckle and grass.

“Do you think this town is small,” you asked, “or are we just too big for it?”

I thought for a moment. “Maybe we’re just loud enough to shake it a little.”

You smiled at that. And then your hand found mine, tentative but warm. Your lips tasted like lemon soda and nerves. And I swear the world tilted just slightly, like it was adjusting to us.

We didn’t fall in love like the movies promised.

There were no swelling violins or perfectly timed rainstorms. We fell in love in fragments—quiet mornings and chaotic nights, long drives with windows down and songs we couldn’t agree on. You hated sad music. I lived for it.

You showed me how to drive stick shift. I taught you how to fold paper cranes. We carved our initials into the old oak by the lake and pretended that meant something permanent.

But all summers end. That’s their secret.

You got into a college four states away. A place with old brick buildings and dreams the size of city skylines. I didn’t ask you to stay. You didn’t ask me to come. Some things are too big for asking.

The night before you left, we sat on the hood of your truck, shoulders brushing, neither of us speaking. The crickets were louder than us.

“When you think of me,” you said, “I hope it feels warm.”

I wanted to say something beautiful back, but all I could manage was, “It will.”

You kissed my forehead. I watched your taillights disappear into the dark.

That fall, the lake looked smaller. The diner felt emptier. Your absence filled the spaces you used to take up. I still went every Friday for a strawberry milkshake, out of habit or hope, I’m not sure.

We texted for a while. Then less. Then not at all. You posted photos of your new life—friends with high cheekbones and film cameras, coffee cups and crowded dorm rooms. I double-tapped but never messaged.

And that’s okay.

Now, a year later, I write more. I write about us—not in the way we were, but in the way we felt. Like sunlight through leaves. Like music on repeat. Like something too big to hold but too beautiful to forget.

I saw your name last week in someone else’s story. It didn’t sting like it used to. Just made me smile a little.

You were a season. A bright, bold, breathtaking season. And I was lucky to have known you at all.

Some people are meant to be stories. Not chapters. Not whole books. Just stories you return to sometimes when the air smells like honeysuckle and the radio plays something soft.