Every Beginning

1

"Sawyer, you're being childish."

My eyes shifted from the half-packed suitcase that lay on my bed to see my mother standing in the doorway to my bedroom. Her dark green eyes were narrowed as she took in the state of the room, which currently looked like my closet had thrown up. "I didn't raise you to run away from your problems."

At this, I rolled my eyes. I grabbed a sundress off the back of my desk chair and shoved it into the open suitcase, not bothering to fold it. My mom lunged forward and snatched it out, neatly folding it before handing it back to me. We were silent for a few more minutes before she let out a deep sigh. "If you need to get away we'll take a vacation, but leaving for the whole summer is ridiculous."

Ever since I had suggested the idea of me staying at my dad's beach house for the summer, my mom had been trying to talk me out of it. My parents had been divorced since I was in sixth grade, a nasty and brutal divorce that resulted in him moving to North Carolina and my mom retaining full custody of me in Massachusetts.

Not much about my life changed after the divorce. We stayed in the same house I had grown up in, I went to the same school and had the same friends. I just didn't have my dad anymore.

When I was little, before divorce had pulled us apart, my dad and I had been close. I was an only child, which meant all the attention, love and dreams had been pushed on me. My dad had wanted a son and when I took an interest in sports he had been thrilled.

Of course, a few years after the divorce my dad got the son he always wanted when he married Julie. She was a widow and had two kids of her own--Dylan and Natalie.

My mom had been so upset, angry that he was the first to move on, that she didn't allow me to go to the wedding. All these years later and I could still count on my fingers the times I had seen my step-siblings. I doubted they even had one picture of me hanging up in their house.

So why was I going to live with him, you may ask?

The answer begins and ends with Ethan Walker.

Ethan came into my life on the first day of junior year. He had just moved to our town and he had been so quiet and shy on that day; I liked him immediately. At lunch I asked him to sit with me and we instantly became friends.

We started dating a few months later. I felt like there was nothing that could break our relationship. A great friendship had led to this and I thought I knew everything about him. Of course, when he decided to breakup with me two weeks before graduation because he wanted to "explore other options in college", I realized just how little I knew about the shy boy from junior year.

Despite him being the one who moved here late, everything about this town reminded me of Ethan. The diner off our highway exit was our first date; the football field was our first kiss; even my own house was plagued with memories of how it used to be.

Three weeks since the breakup and I felt like I was suffocating.

"My flight leaves tonight, mom," I reminded her gently, "I think the decision is final by now."

My mom huffed and sank down onto my bed. "You haven't spent more than a weekend at your fathers since the divorce."

"And?"

Staring at me, my mom's sharp features softened a bit as she realized I wasn't going to change my mind. We were so similar, she should've known that once I made a decision I stuck to it. "If you want to come home, call me, no matter what."

My mom left me to finish my packing, which was a bit of a last minute effort. My dad and Julie lived in a house on the beach and besides bathing suits, I wasn't sure what to bring.