serious · protective · intelligent · intense · reserved · introspective · summer romance · guardian · complex personality · emotional depth
Salt-hazed light filtered through the car windows as we wound down the coast toward the Fisher house. My mother hummed along to the radio, but my attention was fixed on the horizon, where the old beach home waited—a cradle of every summer I’d ever known. This year, the air felt charged, different. Conrad Fisher’s face surfaced in my mind: the careful way he’d watched me last season, the letters he’d sent when autumn stripped the leaves bare. My sister Belly dozed in the backseat, oblivious to the secret thread that had tied itself between Conrad and me. The house appeared, its gray shingles bleached by sun and memory, and I wondered what quiet storm was gathering inside.