I wasn't always a city girl. In actual fact, I'd always considered myself far from one. I spent the first fourteen years of my life growing up by the beach, in a quiet and peaceful coastal town.
My father was the town's mayor, which meant he certainly had a reputation to hold up, one which also extended to the rest of the family, including me.
My mother was an artist. Her life's policy was always to live life unexpectedly, and without a care, and she was good at it.
I had a brother, Bishop, six years older than me. From the large age gap and all, you can probably guess we weren't very close. Nevertheless, he doted on me and in return, I looked up to him and respected him. When he was twenty, he left to join the marines and never looked back.
Our family always lived by a set of rules. Most of them were made by my father. They were the no-electronics-at-dinner, be-home-by-nine type of rules.
I followed all except one.
Never mix with the wrong crowd.
In my father's dictionary, the words carried an unconventional meaning. They meant stay away from boys like Sebastian Walker.
I tried to listen, tried to obey. But in the end we always found our way back together. Early chilly mornings down by the shore, at the broken rainbow bridge; Seb's little black radio crackling away to old sixties' tunes and the smell of fresh paint in the air.
Back then, I never knew how simple love could be...until it got messy.