Splash

15 • in which myles goes on a date

Hope you guys like it.

It's official.

I was falling for Serena.

And I was scared out of my fucking mind.

I wasn't supposed to fall this fast, or this hard. It wasn't supposed to go like this. I didn't expect it to go like this.

I really, really, liked her, and I had no idea what to do.

Just spending the day with her in a friendly setting is more enjoyable than hanging out with most people for me. Add a date element, and I couldn't be happier. It didn't help that she looked damn good today, those long tanned legs shown off in that skirt.

God, every time she looked at me, all I wanted to do was grab her and kiss her breathless.

We had walked and talked for so long that we ended up on the beach, dipping our feet in the tide. We eventually sat down on a patch of sand, and while Serena stared out at the enormity of the ocean, I couldn't help but stare at her. It's like every time I saw her she got more and more beautiful. From the side, you could really see the way her long eyelashes framed her eyes, the way the wind blew around her hair and she constantly had to push it away from her face, the way the sun hit the bridge of her nose and cheekbones perfectly, the way she smiled so hard her eyes squinted just the tiniest bit. I couldn't help but notice everything about her. It was just her natural pull, like nature was telling me that this girl, is here for a reason.

"True love. Do you believe in it?" I asked her.

She turned her head to face me. "You're breaking out all the deep questions today, aren't you?"

The corners of my lips curled upwards. "Yeah, I am. I guess there's just something about you that makes me want to talk to you about everything, you know, especially the deep stuff, the stuff that you can't talk about with just anyone." She blushed at my hidden compliment and looked down at her lap.

"Well?" I asked her again expectantly.

She thought about the question for a moment before turning to me.

"I think that true love exists for everyone. I think it's just whether or not you're open to it that dictates the way you're gonna feel."

"Explain?" I wanted to hear more.

"You know how some people are just completely pessimists, and others are the exact opposite? Like nothing could ever be as bad as it seems? I think that there's two types of people in this world: the romantics and the anti-romantics. The romantics are the people who look for love. It's not about grand gestures, or cliche love stories, or about falling in love with your soulmate, it's about finding love in even the smallest things. It's about trying to find that love in the people you meet, the things you see, the places you go. And I think that the anti-romantics are people who have a little harder time finding it, so they've started to think that it doesn't exist anymore. You know those people who just are so against love and they think that every relationship ends in bitterness and heartbreak? Maybe those people are just people who haven't been able to find that love, and so they've become angry because of it."

I wasn't sure I really understood, but she kept going. "True love. Well," she began, "I think that love is about loving someone for the best reasons and with the purest intentions. I think that true love and regular love aren't all that different. I think that everyone you love should be loved with true love, you know?"

"I just think that love is about loyalty to someone because of their flaws, not despite them. Everyone looks for that one true love in their life. And some people find that, and that's great. But some people don't, and they get turned off of love. They start to think that true love is a fluke. But true love is just love. All love should be like that. And love isn't something that just comes to you spontaneously. And I think that if people looked at love like something that's a choice, not something that they can't control, everyone would be a lot happier."