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One

Every time I walked by little children, I got jealous. 

There was something about being young and naive to the pain of the world that I wished that I could go back to. Imagine how nice it is to only have to worry about what light-up shoes you were going to wear or hope that Santa got you the toy that you wanted.

Truthfully, I was naive and oblivious to the pain of the world until I was sixteen years old.

Life was sweet. 

My life was full of shopping trips to expensive stores, vacations to exotic destinations, no worries in the world. I used to complain about etiquette classes or not liking anything on the menu of the fancy steakhouse. 

The highlight of my naive years was going to spend the summer in The Hampton's with my Nonna and Nonno (my dad's parents a.k.a my grandparents). The annual trip to East Hampton was everything to me.

It was when my dad would finally spend time with us instead of work, my mom would cook Veneuzlean dishes for my Italian grandparents, and my sisters got to roam around without supervision.

My sisters and life always called ourselves 'the An girls' since all our names ended with -an. 

There was me, Ryan.

The oldest, the one who got away with the least amount of shit. I was the leader who keeps everyone in line.

Then in the middle was Logan.

She was right in the middle of three girls. She got away with the most amount of shit. Since we were only two years apart, she tried to argue with me and we did fight a lot.

But Dylan was the mediator. 

Dyl was the true arbiter. practically the glue that kept us together. 

We all had boy names because my mom claimed that she liked unisex names.

Looking back, I really think it was because my dad hated that the fact that he had no sons and when he talked about us, he wanted it to sound like he did.

Spending time with my sisters wasn't the only reason why I liked escaping to the beach. It was because next door was a really cute boy who was my age.

I still remembered his name, how his freckles reminded me of the constellations, and how his hair curled. I also remembered how much he hated being the younger brother of two boys followed by a little sister.

He was the main highlight of the summer.

I missed riding our bikes to the beach or the ice cream shop.

In hindsight, I would've appreciated those moments longer.

Sometimes you never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.

I remember the moment that life got sour.

"Ry and Lo!" my mom shouted over the intercom, "the food is going to get cold and your dad is tired of waiting!"

Logan was sitting on the counter of the bathroom we shared with concealer in hand.

"Mom and dad will kill me if they see this." I panicked as I looked in the mirror.

There was a huge purple mark on my neck.

A hickey was given to me when I was supposed to be at yoga with Lauren and Mia. Instead, I was in the family restroom of a movie theater with Benjamin Oliver.

"I'm almost done." Logan patted my neck with a beauty blender. "You probably need to borrow Dyl's color corrector."

I shook my head. "Hell no. She'll snitch."