Chasing Rainbows

Prologue

            I stood on the beach, the only sounds for miles being the waves crashing onto the sand and the pounding of my heart in my chest. It took the entire summer for me to muster up the courage to tell the sandy haired male with mesmerizing blue eyes how I felt about him. Now here I stood, watching that same boy's back retreat into the distance.

            Where did I misread the signs? How did a summer full of flirtatious exchanges equate to such a clear rejection? His entire stature had changed the second the words left my lips. His smile, creating the indentations on his cheeks that I had grown to love, disappeared, and was replaced by nothing. Nothing I could identify, anyways. It was a look I had not seen him bear before. It frustrated me to no end. Was he mad that I had ruined the friendship we had built? Was he disappointed that I crossed a line? It didn't take long before I had an inkling of an answer.

            "I don't feel the same way. I never will," and as if the feeling of my heart plummeting couldn't get any worse, he added, "Have a nice flight back to Pennsylvania." I still had another two weeks left in sunny California. His words solidified the fact that he didn't wish to see me in those remaining fourteen days. I could have handled him rejecting me. It would have been easy to put a smile on my face, grinning and bearing it, had I been able to see him at breakfast the next morning. I wouldn't be seeing him, though, and knowing the determination that can run through that boy's blood, he would do everything in his power not to catch a glimpse at me.

            That is why I went back to my sister's house with a broken heart. I had not only been rejected, but I had also lost a friend—a best friend. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that the next two weeks in California would be the worst two weeks of my life.