June

The thing about summer love is that no one tells you it doesn't always end with summer.

They tell you the heat breaks. The evenings come earlier. The fireflies disappear from the fields, and life quietly folds itself back into routines. They tell you autumn has a way of making everything feel distant, like whatever happened beneath June skies belonged to someone else.

No one tells you that years later, the smell of rain hitting hot pavement can still undo you.

It always begins the same way.

The air grows heavy enough to promise a storm. Cicadas scream from the trees. Somewhere, someone is mowing their lawn, and the scent of fresh-cut grass drifts through an open window. I wrap both hands around a cup of coffee that has long since gone cold, and before I realize what's happening, I'm twenty-five again.

Back before life became something measured in calendars and obligations.

Back when I met him.

He was twenty years old, all crooked smiles and easy laughter, with a guitar that never seemed very far away. He drank his coffee black, though I never believed he actually liked it. I suspected he only wanted to look like the kind of person who drank coffee without cream or sugar. I never asked. Some mysteries are more fun when you leave them alone.

We worked together that summer.

At first, he was simply another face in the building. Someone I nodded to in passing. Someone who made everyone laugh a little louder than usual. I couldn't tell you the exact moment he became different.

Maybe it was the way he remembered the smallest things I'd said in conversations I'd forgotten we'd even had.

Maybe it was the way he smiled before he spoke, as if he'd already decided whatever came next was worth sharing with me.

Or maybe it happened so slowly that there was never a single moment at all.

Just hundreds of tiny ones.

Coffee cups left on carts.

Late afternoons that stretched into conversations in empty parking lots.

The sound of his guitar drifting through warm evening air.

The feeling that every day was just a little too short.

Summer has a funny way of convincing you there will always be another tomorrow.

One night in particular, neither of us wanted to go home.

It wasn't that there was anything left to say. We had already talked about work, music, our families, old relationships, the places we wanted to see one day. We had laughed until our cheeks hurt and sat through comfortable silences that somehow said just as much. Going home simply meant admitting the night had to end.

So we drove to a little inlet along the river.

We sat on the concrete steps with our feet stretched toward the water, listening to it lap softly against the bank. The moon hung impossibly full above us, turning the river into rippling silver. We talked about nothing at all until I stood, kicked off my shoes, peeled off my jeans, and dropped them into a messy heap on the steps.

"Come on," I said.

The water stole my breath when I stepped in. It was cool against the day's lingering heat, curling around my calves as I wandered toward the middle of the river.

A second later, I heard a splash behind me.

I turned to find him grinning as he followed me in, cowboy boots abandoned on the shore, moonlight catching in the ripples around his legs.

He looked different out there.

Softer somehow.

The kind of beautiful that only exists when someone isn't trying to be.

The current tugged gently at my feet, and I reached for his arm to steady myself. Instead, his hand found my waist.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

The river kept moving around us. Crickets sang from somewhere beyond the trees. The world continued exactly as it always had, yet it felt impossibly still.

I looked up at him.

He looked back at me.

Our foreheads nearly touched before our lips did, brushing together so softly they were almost a question.

And somehow, standing ankle-deep in a quiet river beneath a full summer moon, it felt as though the whole world exhaled.

As though it had been waiting for that moment as long as we had.

But, like summer, that night eventually ended.

There would be other nights.

The kind that blur together until all that's left are the feelings they carried.

The night we stood beneath a single umbrella while rain poured around us in sheets, thunder rattling the sky above. We were soaked from the knees down, laughing so hard neither of us cared.

The night after the river, when we sat in your car with two giant concretes from Andy's Frozen Custard melting faster than we could eat them. We danced around what had happened the night before, both of us smiling too much to pretend it hadn't changed something.

There were long summer days spent shoulder to shoulder at work, sweat clinging to our shirts as we changed oil, joked with each other between customers, and silently survived the rude ones. No matter how chaotic the day became, I always knew where to find you.

You were the constant.

Always ready to lend a hand.

Always ready to make me laugh.

Always asking, "What are we doing after work?"

One evening we played pool until the place was nearly empty. Afterwards, we sat in your car with the windows down while you handed me your phone.

"You've got to hear this one."

Song after song filled the warm summer air. Some I'd never heard before. Others I knew but suddenly sounded different because they were yours.

Before any of those nights, before the river and the rain and the frozen custard, you had asked if I wanted to go see Creedence Clearwater Revival at an amphitheater.

I didn't hesitate.

That night we danced without caring who was watching. We sang lyrics we barely knew. When the concert ended, you grabbed my hand and we ran across the parking lot, trying to beat your friends to the dive bar down the road.

I remember laughing so hard my cheeks hurt.

Years have passed since then, but every time that one song comes on, I'm back in that parking lot.

My hand in yours.

Summer still stretching endlessly ahead of us.

Believing, if only for a little while, that moments like these could last forever.

Maybe that's what summer love is.

Not a love that only lasts for a summer.

A love that teaches you how a season is supposed to feel.

Years later, the cicadas still sing.

Thunderstorms still roll in on humid evenings.

Coffee still grows cold beside me.

Every June arrives carrying little pieces of you.

And every year, without meaning to,

I find them.