The Long Goodbye

“It was that moment that every lover dreads, the end of summer. The coloured umbrellas and lettini were being rinsed of the salt, sun, and sea that had plummeted them over the last three months. I watched as they were folded one by one and carefully piled away to await another summer a year from now. I sat with him, shoulders touching, watching the very last shard of the Italian sun dance across the inky blue waves set out in front of us. We sat in silence, knowing there was nothing more to be said. I was going home to start my degree and he would be staying in the sleepy town where he grew up. It had been the summer of stories, the kind that belong to books and he was the kind of boy that belonged on pages, the kind I always loved to read about and the one I would write into all the chapters of my life. More than that though, he belonged to Italy.”