SUMMER LOVE (but it's golden)

Originally a part of my LITG Writer's Room series, but I love this one and want to give it it's own spotlight, and well - it's Bobby's Character Spotlight month, isn't it?

🎵 and i can still see it all in my mind, all of you, all of me, intertwined. i once believed love would be black and white but it's golden 🎵

The church bells were ringing; a piano was playing softly within. The sky was clear blue, like even the weather couldn't find a reason not to celebrate today. The day was as full of sunshine as the faces of the welcoming party outside the church.

How was that for a Thursday in November.

Bobby rode up with Noah and a few other of the lads from the show. The whole group had been invited. Bobby had apparently been extremely close to being shafted off the guest list, and he wasn't all that surprised. Not when he and the bride had spent the entire summer in the Villa together, even exchanging the 'I love you'. At the time, Bobby could see them exchanging a different set of vows; vows she'll now be exchanging with someone else.

If it wasn't for the guys, Bobby might never have come. He had half a mind to run still, to escape the church grounds, never looking back, as he dashed between the rose bushes. Long before he'd first dropped those three little words he knew he felt them, and even now, long after he had first let them fall from his lips, he knew he still felt them. He was as certain now as he had been back then.

The unnatural heat of today was almost as strong as it had been back on that challenge platform; the sound of the distant birds chirping away in the background; the smell of the breeze carrying warmth and fresh country air. He closed his eyes and it was like he was back there, back before everything fell apart.

Neither of them had known her ex boyfriend had been waiting for her to come out. He laid it on thick, never letting up, a never-ending train of apologies as he begged for forgiveness. No doubt she had never looked as good as she had winning Love Island.

Bobby had seen it coming before it happened. Just a month after they left the Villa, she sat him down and ended things, saying she was going to give things another go with Levi. They had history, a past, all this time invested in each other already. From what Bobby knew of their past relationship, that history was full of Levi cheating on her with some cherry lips and a mountain of shining red hair.

From the moment Levi appeared back in her life, Bobby knew she would leave to go back to him, giving Levi the chance and the ammunition to hurt her again. Bobby wasn't bitter, and he wasn't hanging about waiting with an 'I told you so', and nor was he hanging on to welcome her back sobbing into his open arms. It just was. This was reality and he wasn't spending forever imagining the different realities where she ran back to him. For all Bobby knew, she might even end up forgiving Levi again if - when? - if - he cheated on her once more.

But all that breaking up was just five months ago. She had come to him a month after the split to tell him Levi had proposed, and she had said yes, and that it was happening soon. Bobby was still adjusting to it until the very morning the day came.

And that day was today.

Bobby woke up; the fog that had sat in his head in the months building up to today was dissipating, clearing the way to really think straight; his bad mood, his sullen air, was all blowing away like the clouds in the sky, leaving his sights clear.

His stomach was still in knots, but he was entering a church to watch the woman he loved get married to some douchebag who never treated her right. Was he going to say anything? Was he going to rudely barge in, find her, tell her what a mistake she was making, that if she did this she could be regretting it for the rest of her life? Surely, if he did that, made her call the whole thing off, that could be what she regrets for the rest of her life.