Summer Love

Sometimes summer romances can bloom into what feels like the greatest love of your life. Maybe it's the heat, maybe it's the fact that summer is so short and sweet, or maybe it is just plain true love when you're not looking, but there's something about love in the summer that makes it unique.

I remember my first summer romance as if it happened yesterday. I was 15, she was 16, and I was totally smitten. It only lasted three weeks, but it was three weeks I will never forget. We met quite by accident. Her family had rented a cabin next to the cabin my family was staying in for the month of August. I was sitting by myself watching the lake when she literally stumbled over me. She was flying a kite with her sister and they hadn't even noticed me sitting there. "Story of my life", I thought as she offered her apologies and told me her name - Sophie. What happened after that is like a dream.

We spent every waking moment of the next three weeks together. I had always been a little shy around girls, but Sophie was so easy to talk to that I forgot to be tongue tied. I told her about most of the girls back home who rarely gave me a second glance, and she acted as if the girls I went to school with were crazy not to notice me. She put her arm around me and told me she would be honored to be seen with me. My self-confidence went through the roof.

She first kissed me five days before she was scheduled to go home. That kiss was amazing. It was a turning point in my boyhood journey. I suddenly felt special, wanted, like a real guy. I had had girlfriends before, nothing serious, I wasn't a loner. Yet, there was something very special about what happened between me and Sophie. That summer romance changed the way I expected to feel about the girls in my life. I no longer wanted a girlfriend just so I would look "cool" to other guys, I wanted a girlfriend who meant something special.