The Last Summer | Rafe Cameron

𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘

❝Whatever happens tomorrow,
we've had today.❞

CHILDHOOD ENDS ON GRADUATION day.

In the blink of an eye, as quickly as one throws their golden cap into the air, gone are the seemingly endless seven hours trapped in colorful classrooms, smelly gyms, and humid cafeterias. Gone are the unassigned—but still assigned!—wooden desks whose tabletops have endless initials carved into the withering wood, generations of children passing through the same narrow hallways year-after-year. Gone are the scary report cards and perfectly personalized lockers, and championship ball games under bright stadium lights. Gone are the teachers who cared for the future and the teachers who were only in it for the paycheck. And most importantly, gone are the students—the rambunctious classmates raised alongside one another for more than a decade, growing from tiny toddlers and up into young adults together who all had no idea what they were doing with their lives. Because in the blink of an eye, no amount of pitiful preparation can ever prepare these wide-eyed teenagers for the heavy responsibility and true weight of adulthood that comes rolling in on the cold tides of the merciless waves that surround their island hometown of the Outer Banks.

For Frankie Thornton, she thinks she knows what awaits her quickly approaching new life off the familiar coasts of her North Carolinian paradise. She thinks she cannot wait to go to college, and she thinks cannot wait to create a new personality for herself away from the watchful eyes of her best friends and her worst enemies. She thinks she can make it on her own. But just like any teenager, the thought of moving away from home and leaving all that she knows behind is still terrifying. And she is not quite ready to accept that her childhood has ended.

Or . . . so it was supposed to end.

Relentlessly told to figure her life out and start acting like an adult, a carefree and youthful Frankie stubbornly holds her ground despite the insistent pressure from her strict mother to move on to greater things. After all, whether any of the adults like it or not, there are still three fateful summer months left to determine the ways of these many freshly-graduated spirits before the realities of fall return to blow them away to all corners of the world. Whether the unforgiving island wants it or not, there is still one last summer of freedom and rebellion for Frankie and her lifelong friends. One last summer of love and joy, of tan lines and melting ice cream, of beach keggers and treasure hunts. One last summer of regret and betrayal, of loss and pain, of lethal trips and deadly sacrifices.

One last summer that twists as warmly and as violently as the tropical storms that threaten to swallow their darkening island for good, and once the burning orange sun finally sets on the innocence of these unsuspecting teenagers, there is no saying what lies beyond for them all in the dark. It is time to grow up, the universe whispers, but not just yet.

After all, Frankie Thornton's last summer has only just begun.

❝My dear,
we're slow dancing
in a burning room.❞

✩★✩★✩

Author's Note !

✩★✩★✩

Hi, everyone! Welcome to my newest story! The Last Summer! I hope you enjoy it! Now, to kick things off, I just want to make this very, very clear:

Yes, as you can likely see from the gif above, Rafe Cameron is the prominent character of this story. Ever since I watched Outer Banks I found myself very intrigued and curious by Rafe's character, and I could not help but love him. Something you should know about me is that I absolutely love villains. They're always my favorite character to follow on TV shows/movies/books because there is just so much to explore about them physically, mentally, emotionally, and so forth. More importantly, I love realistic and human villains. I love reading and writing about them, and I wanted to challenge myself and see what it would be like to write an OC that was primarily in Rafe's corner throughout this story. That's not to say that my character is going to condone the cruel and terrible actions that Rafe does in the show, and I will not confirm if there will be a romance or not (because I'm still entirely unsure) but either way, there IS going to be a bond established between Frankie Thornton and Rafe Cameron. They ARE going to be close.

I know Rafe Cameron is an extremely problematic and intense character, but we as viewers do not know everything there is to know about Rafe. That's the matter of the fact. Everyone is a villain in someone else's story. There was nothing that was blatantly confirmed or denied about Rafe in the show, other than that he's a very broken and unpredictable personality, and that he's got some insane daddy issues. But I want to believe that he was not always this way. I believe that there is more to Rafe's story, and I am going to build on that belief. Now, I am not going to turn Rafe into a 'good guy', but I am going to give him more layers than of what we got to see in the show. And I hope you're willing to be along for the ride.

So, buckle your seatbelts, kiddies. This summer is going to be very hot.