Innocence

All summer they dated. Sweet innocent friendship really, they were too young, but they liked each other so much. Day after day, under the hot humid southern skies, they hung out, sometimes at the pool, usually under the big maple tree in her gramdmother's front yard. Sitting in those awful white metal lawn chairs. The whole neighborhood was there. His sisters and brothers, her cousins, their friends. Stories were told, and secrets were shared.

The end of August came, and she went home. By the next summer, his family had moved away. She never saw him again. But she never forgot him.