last summer

six

"You're still all over me like a wine-stained dress I can't wear anymore"
- Clean by Taylor Swift

I still remember it all too clearly. I had been young the year Niccolo Baker started coming to stay in the Charleston home. I was five and he was turning seven that September but we were the same height.

"Don't be shy, Nico," his mother would whisper down to him as he attempted to hide behind her, clutching her long, white and blue sundress in is hands.

I remember thinking it was a one time thing. I'd only see this little freckled boy one summer, one time, three months, 92 days give or take and that was just fine with me then.

All until he just kept showing up.

I had never thought of him as anything else other than a friend until I just had, and it was so sudden.

"You need help with that, Stassie?" That summer was fun. Everyone was still coming around, every cousin, every aunt, every uncle. My mama still alive, my mother still coming along, her sister coming and even more cousins.

Then he looked at me as he reaches around me to take my bag from the trunk. He was almost two years older than me and he had been at least two feel taller than I remembered him being the summer before.

"Uh yeah," I smiled and my cheeks must have been bright pink because he laughed a little. "Sure." I added like it made me seem like less of a dork.

"I gotcha kiddo." He brought my bags up to his room and while I was behind him, carrying my backpack on my front, I was suddenly aware of every small detail of him from behind.

The way his dark hair laid over the nape of his neck and just underneath was a bigger brown freckle. His skin was tan but a shade of olive and his nose had more bridge this summer, it had to. His hair had been trimmed but dry from the pool water and ocean that he must have gone swimming in already.

And I had never felt that way for someone before and I had never paid more attention to someone before. I never looked at someone so close.

Niccolo was my very first kiddy fantasy and my twelve year old self was very convinced I'd been in love with him.

That all lasted for about two years. My feelings had started to seem weird by the time I'd gotten older and more mature. He was still calling me things like kiddo and buddy and by then he would go on to have real girlfriends and real friends back home.

But for a while I thought maybe he'd been just as obsessed with me and was just in denial.. (delusional, I know) and that lasted until my thirteenth summer, when things all changed for me and I'd been snapped back to my reality.

All before the year we didn't come to Charleston, my thirteenth summer had been the worst summer of my life.

Niccolo came back more quiet and angry and I had no idea of why. He didn't say a lot to me that summer and he would only talk to Sonny and occasionally his mom.

One night I asked Sonny "What's wrong with Nico?" and he looked at me, smirked and said "He's gonna ask this girl he's been obsessed with to Summer Sun." and there was just no way (absolutely none) that had been the only reason he'd been a jerk to me all summer long.