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Summer will forever be Sunset Bird’s most perfect season.
Tropical beaches, friendly locals, and a bustling marketplace for tourists. It’s someone’s dream vacation spot, especially for teens who are looking to vacation after school.
You, however, have lived here with your moms for years now, and it has been your home ever since they’ve adopted you.
Growing up, you’ve had classmates from all sorts of places. You study at a public middle school right in-between the city and your hometown, so you’ve seen children your age from the city sporting various stuff and toys that you used to think only exists in television. The huge difference in culture and lifestyle between you and city kids only made you jealous of the latter.
While, sure, you would never trade Sunset Bird for any other place in the world, the thought of getting to live in the city one day made you reluctant to fully embrace life here until Cove Holden entered the picture.
Cove hasn’t been here that long, but he warmed up to the place faster than your little local heart. His genuine interest and wonder towards Sunset Bird’s beaches and local culture even after two years later always managed to catch you off-guard and make your heart flutter for no reason.
It was confusing. Didn’t Cove used to be a city kid, after all? Wasn’t his former life more interesting? You briefly recall his unsuccessful attempt at running away from Sunset Bird and his dad, but that was more of an attempt to get back home to his mom—not to get back to the city.
And, speaking of the devil, he sits close to you on the sand and looks on at the ocean with sparkles in his sea-blue eyes as if everything in life is just as calm and clear as the Pacific Ocean. He just keeps on stirring up more and more confusion in your head like a—you mumble to yourself—”A green-haired witch casting a hex…!”
You grit your teeth, furrow your brow, and sigh. You’ve had enough of this spellbinding curse.
“Cove, you’re from the city, right?” You ask.
Cove doesn’t look at you, but you can tell he already heard you the first time so you wait for him to process the buffer in his mind. After a few seconds, he finally responds: “Um, yeah, why?”
Simple, but effective, you think. But you don’t relent, you must get to the root of this problem like the cool detective from your favorite cartoon. “Don’t you miss it? There’s a lot of cool new toys and music there!”
“Not really…”
“Why not?”
“It’s loud and too much for me. Plus the air smells so weird…”
“Weird how?”
“Um, I don’t feel comfortable about this…”
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” You rub the back of your head with your hand sheepishly and frown. “I just… I’ve always wanted to know what the city is like, you know. So many of the kids from our school comes from Prism Vista and they always have cool new merch of the coolest cartoons on TV.”
“I…never really understood that.”
“Never understood what?”
“Having to follow the cool new thing and have stuff from that cool new thing. I think I’ll stay right here, away from all those stuff.”
“But… isn’t it boring?”
“It’s peaceful. Being around people I like and not having to deal with loud people all the time is what I like about Sunset Bird.”
“Huh… I never thought of it like that…” You lean back as you soak in the waves lapping the shore and tickling your feet. It retreats back into the ocean, carrying the weight that has been filling your chest the entire time.
Maybe Cove has a point. Your life in Sunset Bird has been relatively simple, full of fun and laughter with Lizzie and your moms, and now, Cove.
And maybe it’s not the most exciting life full of adventures you only see in action movies and you might not be up to date on the latest trends that everyone’s been following, but as the sun starts to set and the sky slowly turns orange, you feel relief wash over you.
Maybe you’ve been quiet for way too long or another buffer has finally lifted in Cove’s mind because when he finally looks at you, his eyes are wide with confusion and he says, “You’ve been here longer than me and you still don’t like it here?”
“Pfft,” you snort. “Of course I like it here! I have ma, mom, and Lizzie with me. And now,” you look into Cove’s eyes and poke his nose, “I’ve also got you, Cove.”
Cove’s eyes light up with sparkles—an achievement you will be bragging to your moms later when you get home because it isn’t often his eyes light up like this for something that isn’t the ocean—and he flushes red in the face before stammering, “Y-y-yeah… I’m— uh, I have to get back home soon. Do you want me to walk you home, Y/N?”
You wonder when your charmingly nervous seawitch has become such a gentleman and you can’t help but smile wide.
“Sure! But I wanna collect some more seashells before we go.”
At the mention of their shared hobby, Cove relents. “Sure.”
“Alright, let’s see who can get the most seashells in their pockets before going home!”