He showed up on a Monday, carrying a skateboard, a chipped thermos and a camera with no strap. Then, very seriously – as though we weren’t already standing on a sandpit of seagulls – he asked, “Where’s the beach?”
I pointed over my shoulder at the waves shuffling up and down the shore like an indecisive waiter. “Just past the seaweed. If you reach your childhood memories, you’ve gone too far.”
He blinked. “That’s oddly poetic.”
“I moonlight as a metaphor,” I said. “Want a strawberry?”
They were warm from the sun, packed into a plastic container on my lap. He hesitated – just the appropriate amount, I thought – before choosing the least suspicious-looking one.
“I’m Sunwoo,” he said, mouth full.
“Kira.”
The beach town wasn’t mine. I’d arrived burnt out from a job that wanted too much and a breakup that left me echoing. Sunwoo rented the beach house next to mine. He wasn’t loud, exactly, just kinetic. He moved like a hummingbird - door opening, music playing, camera clicking. Like someone had whispered “go” into his coffee every morning. He wore mismatched socks and sang to inanimate objects.
I asked if he was on holiday.
“I’m between things,” he said.
“Jobs?”
“Expectations.”
I laughed. “That’s suspiciously deep.”
He grinned. “I try.”

On Tuesday, he asked if I wanted to come skateboarding with him.
“I bruise easily,” I said.
“That’s okay,” he said. “Falling is an art form to me.”
We rolled down an empty stretch of coastal path, both of us wobbly and wind-blown. I hadn’t laughed that hard in months. We ended up on the ground, breathless, and he took a picture of me.
“You’re laughing with your whole face,” he said.
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s a miracle.”
That night, we started a game: One Truth. One Lie.
“I once dated someone who thought pigeons were government spies,” he said. “And I make a better curry than my mom.”
I guessed the birds were the lie.
“Wrong,” he said. “She believed it passionately. Made tinfoil hats for her budgies so they weren’t brainwashed.” He looked proud.
“My turn,” I said. “I once got stuck inside a photo booth with a llama. And I hate strawberries.”
He raised an eyebrow. “The llama?”
“Nope,” I said. “The strawberries. I’m allergic.”
He looked at me, horrified. “You gave me poison on day one?”
“It was a test. You passed.”
We couldn’t stop laughing. It felt like summer had opened its arms to us.

At night, we’d sit on the front steps of our rented houses, both barefoot, talking into the night. He told me he used to want to be a storm chaser. I told him I used to be in love with someone who wrote poems about plumbing.
He told me about his job. His ex. His fear of velvet. How he never unpacked his boxes even after three years. He didn’t know I was listening as hard as I was falling.
I told him about my ex. The one who said I loved too cautiously. That I was always halfway out the door, even when I said I was in. That I made people feel like borrowed furniture. He didn’t comment. Just slipped his hand into mine, warm and wordless.
He would draw lines on my back with his finger. Shapes, symbols, words, maybe maps. He never said what they were. I never asked. Some things are better left untranslated.
I wasn’t in love, not at first. Not even after we almost kissed behind the shuttered surf shop. Or when we stayed out all night to watch the sunrise, huddled on a pier with a shared hoodie pulled over both our heads.
But the thing about summer is... everything blurs. It makes time skip like a scratched record. It loops. It slants. It makes everything taste like maybe.
We made lists of things no one but us found important.
Best things about the sea: He said salt. I said secrets.
Worst flavour of ice cream: We agreed – garlic.
Words that sound like feelings: “blur”, “ache”, “evanesce”, “maybe”.
What purple would taste like: He said forgiveness. I said the last note in a sad song.
On Friday night, he said, “I’m leaving Sunday.”
I blinked.
“This was just a pause. I’m moving to Tokyo next week.”
I nodded like that was fine. Like that was always part of the game.

Saturday arrived, awkward and apologetic. We woke up early, drove out to a hidden cove I’d once found during a very misguided attempt to become a jogger. The rocks were smooth, and the water smelled like unsent letters. The sun was shy that day, slipping in and out of clouds.
I brought strawberries. He brought sea salt in a little jar.
“Trust me,” he said.
He dipped a strawberry in salt and handed it to me. It tasted strange… briny and sweet all at once. We ate the whole box like that, quietly.
“Can I take a picture of you?” he asked.
I nodded.
He didn’t pose me. Just let the moment hold me – knees drawn, face tilted toward the sky’s grey poetry.
“Click,” he whispered.  
“What would you do if we met again next summer?” he asked.
“Bring more strawberries.”
“Salt?”
I smiled. “Always.”
The next morning, he was gone.
A note taped to my door read: “Don’t stop laughing with your whole face.” Underneath, a photo of me, wind-blown and bruised, laughing from the skateboard path.
I didn’t cry. Not until the next Sunday.

It’s been two summers.
I still come back to this beach. I bring strawberries and sit in the same spot. I dip them in salt and think about hummingbirds and blurry photos and that stupid skateboard that gave me a scar I secretly love. I watch the boardwalk, the musicians, the wild-haired girls with paint on their shirts.
I still remember the weight of his hand on my back. The sound of his laughter. The list we never finished. So I keep drawing his name in the sand. And every day, the waves take it.
I don’t know where Sunwoo is now. Maybe Tokyo. Maybe orbiting expectations somewhere new.
But the thing about summer love is this – it doesn’t need to stay. It just needs to land somewhere in you and linger, like the aftertaste of something sharp and sweet.
So I laugh. With my whole face. Just in case he’s watching.