Before The Waves Crash

Some summers can change you. Not just in the obvious ways -like a new hair color, or a tan, or the kind of fling that happens in summer and is over as soon as the season is. Some summers can change you in irreversible ways, they can turn your world upside down.

The summer I thought I had everything, me and my lifelong best friend Conrad had been together for two years. Though I never expected to show up to Cousins with a secret growing inside of me. Just two weeks before we planned on heading to the beach house, I found out I was pregnant. When I had told Conrad I expected fear and hesitation, especially with the way he'd been acting lately. But instead he held my face between his hands, and said we'd figure it out together.

But that wasn't the only secret we carried.

Conrad had found out his mother's cancer was back, but worse this time. He tried to keep it to himself, but eventually he came out with it and told me.

There's also the added stress of knowing Belly doesn't like me, at all. Whether it's because I was ALWAYS there with Conrad, or because she feels I was taking something that was hers to begin with.

This summer truly was the beginning of everything, and the end of something else.