Olive Wells

From childhood, I spent every summer in Sandbar Bay, a small and beautiful coastal town. The beach was gorgeous and the sea… simply divine.

I was never much of a social person. I never had many friends. So, when I was eleven and completely bored, I decided to go to the lake.

That's where I met them.

Sam and Alex.

Sam was two years older than me and Alex was four. They started talking to me, and before I knew it, I was spending every summer with them. Over time, Sam and I began spending more and more time together. We just clicked.

Gradually, Alex faded into the background and it ended up being just Sam and me for years.

Everything was going well… until I started to feel something for him.

The summer I remember as one of the best of my life was the one in which Sam confessed that he had feelings for me. I was fifteen years old when we started dating.

And we were together for several years. The best years of my life.

We had been in a relationship for four years when, that summer, everything changed. I was nineteen.

Sam broke up with me because we barely had any time for each other due to university. He did it via text message.

Out of anger, pain, or simply wounded pride, I ended up sleeping with a boy from town, maybe a friend of his. When Sam found out, he confronted me. We argued. We said too many things to each other.

And that was the last time we spoke.

I never returned to the village.

Six years have now passed. I am twenty-five, with a life I can't call happy, but it is stable.

One night, Alex called me to invite me to his mother's funeral.

And I accepted.

I didn't know how Sam would be after all this time.

What I didn't expect when I returned to Sandbar Bay were the memories.

I don't even want to see him.

See Sam.

God… he looked more attractive. Was being twenty-seven the best time for men or what?

One afternoon, driven by nostalgia, I went to the lake. When I decided to leave, I was so distracted that I didn't pay attention to where I was walking and ended up bumping into someone.

Sam...