Page 4 of The Truth About Love

She takes another palmful of sand and drains it. “It’s one of my favourites.”

That surprises me.

The smile she gives me is soft and shy, but it doesn’t hide the sadness that I know is simmering away inside her. She may not be giving me the same fuck-off-and-leave-me-alone glare that she was sporting in the school halls earlier, but her monsters are still there. They’re still as real as they were when I saw her losing herself in the thunderstorm three days ago.

So, for one of her favourite poems to be ‘O Tell me the Truth About Love’, a piece that is so light and playful compared to some of Auden’s other work, is so at odds with the image I’ve painted of her that for a moment I think I may have been reading her completely wrong.

“Why?” I can’t help but ask.

“I don’t know really. It sounds like it should be a happy poem, but I’m not really sure it is. I don’t see how it could be, anyway.” She lowers her eyes to stare at her feet. “The guy basically spends his entire life searching for the meaning of love and never finds it. Sounds like a waste of time to me, to look so hard for something we don’t even know exists.”

“You don’t believe in love?”

“No.” She shakes her head.

“You don’t believe that maybe you could feel it for yourself one day?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I just don’t think anyone will ever feel that way about me.”

She doesn’t think she’s loveable? I frown, my heart breaking for her that she could even think that about herself. It makes me furious at whoever has led her to believe such bullshit.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re mad at me.”

I shake myself free of my thoughts and reschool my face into a wide smile. “I’m not mad at you, Summer-Raine.”

“Just Summer,” she says quickly.

I roll my eyes, but perk up as a thought comes to me. “I’ve had an idea. I’m going to take you under my wing and prove to you that love exists.”

Her eyes narrow. “Are you hitting on me?”

I smirk. “Summer-Raine, if I was hitting on you, you’d know it.” I shoot her a wink. “I just think that maybe if you see that love exists for others, you’ll realise that it’s possible for you too.”

She doesn’t respond, but her mystified gaze falls over me as I stand and dust the sand from my jeans. “Oh, and by the way,” I pause. “Summer-Raine suits you just fine. Prettiest name I’ve ever heard for the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”

Her eye roll is instantaneous. “What a line.”

“Not a line,” I call over my shoulder as I make my way back up the beach. “See you around, Summer-Raine.”

Chapter Two

Summer-Raine

Islamorada is a tiny whimsical village that stretches across six islands and is supposedly pretty famous for its sportfishing. I’m not entirely sure what that means exactly, except that the ocean surrounding the village apparently has quite a lot of fish. And clearly, from the copious number of signs hanging above every small-town business declaring Islamorada to be the “Sportfishing Capital of the World”, it’s a detail that the locals are pretty darn proud of.

That, and the dolphins.

My god, do the people around here love their dolphins.

There’s museum exhibits and research centres and boat tours that leave every hour of the day. And I’d get it, I would, if there weren’t dolphins playing with their prey or gangraping each other in every coastal town up and down the state. But from my brief experience living here, there isn’t anything more special about the dolphins in Islamorada than the ones in Cape Coral.

But whatever. It’s fine. If people wanna brag about the fish in the sea or obsess over creatures that look cute but are actually pretty barbaric, then so be it. Live and let live, I say. Besides, I’m sure the people around here would have a multitude of opinions about me. People always do.

My parents more so than anyone.

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