Member-only story
The Summer Love I Think of Every Year
But not for the reasons you might think
I met him when I was 13. It was Labor Day weekend, at a weekend camping event with a bunch of bikers. My parents and his parents both rode motorcycles and despite living 90 miles apart, we came together this one hot summer weekend.
We met in the pool. He in swim trunks, me a bikini. A couple of teenage kids, who felt something that we were barely old enough to understand, much less identify. He was about a year younger than me but he lied and said he was my age.
We spent the whole weekend hanging out together, except for the one evening I spent babysitting a friend’s kids. We spent a lot of time holding hands and pretending that we knew more about exploring each other’s bodies than we really did.
We also fooled ourselves into thinking we were in love by the end of the three-day weekend. We had no idea what love was or what a relationship was, yet we were convinced that we could make a long-distance relationship work.
Strangely enough, we actually did make it work. Sort of.
Summer romance turned into high school sweethearts
We met long before the internet. There was no email yet. Cell phones were barely a thing — big, clunky, and…
