I’ll never forget the summer I turned eighteen.
It was a summer of firsts. It was a summer of self-discovery, and it was the summer I met Zachery Taylor and fell in love for the first time.I had just graduated from my senior year of high school, and while my friends were planning to backpack through Europe, my parents were torturing me by making me go with them to our annual summer vacation spot.
Every single summer, for as long as I could remember, my parents would drag my baby sister, Molly, and me with them to the same summer beach house in Waverly, North Carolina. While I had to admit it was a beautiful beach town with the ocean just feet away, it would get boring after the first couple of days. That year, I had wanted nothing more than to join my friends experimenting and visiting Paris, Rome, and Amsterdam. However, my parents had made me a deal: if I would spend this last summer with them as a family, every year after, I would be free to do as I pleased. Sure, I was eighteen already, but I knew how much this meant to them and how much they had always looked forward to our summer getaways; I just wished that we could have done something a little more spontaneous once in a while.
Little did I know back then, spontaneity was waiting for me where I was least expecting it: in the bungalow a few doors down from our very own beach house.