There are summers that blur into one another - sun, laughter, salt on your skin - and then there are the summers that stay. The ones that refuse to fade, no matter how many seasons pass.

This is the story of one of those summers.

I wasn't there, not at first. I only knew the way people spoke of it later - how the sea seemed bluer that year, how the wind carried the sound of music and possibility. I've since walked that same stretch of sand, felt the same hush settle in my chest at dusk, and I've come to believe that the place itself remembers. The beach keeps echoes, you see. Footprints may wash away, but the feeling never does.

Lily and Jackson were young, but love doesn't wait for age to grant permission. It finds you where you are - in laughter shared by a fire, in the courage to admit that something's changed, in the silence that becomes its own kind of language. What happened between them wasn't grand or tragic. It was something rarer: true in small ways.

And truth, when it begins in honesty and kindness, never really ends. It simply changes shape - like the tide.

If you've ever stood on the edge of a moment that might alter your world, this story is for you. Because all of us, in some way, have had our own summer we forgot... until we remembered what it meant.