august
synopsis You meet a boy named Steve near the end of May. Fall in love in June, July becomes August, and as it slips away, you lose him in the memory of it all.
notes friends to lovers + fem!reader, they don’t define their relationship, Steve is very high-school him + has residual feelings for Nancy (which are complicated by his feelings for reader), tw for inevitable angst, drinking, skinny dipping, p in v sex (18+!) and loss of virginity
Hawkins, Indiana is an odd pick for summer break.
It has several small supermarkets and a large skate-park. The public pool is an abundance of chlorine and plastic, a yawning basin that substitutes greater bodies of water. Dirt paths loop the forest that spans the perimeter. When it rains, the entire county bathes in petrichor.
The nearest beach is two hundred miles away. Lover’s Lake, a lacuna near Mirkwood, lacks the mineral deposits that fortify the ocean with sodium. Instead of salty, the air is earthy and fresh. Instead of sand, rich soil coats the pocket of your fingernails.
You suppose there are worse things than a small town summer — idling the same, walking trails you’ve known off by heart since you were twelve, pretending not to see those girls in your graduating class as you pass them. Hawkins is artless and callow where your hometown is stale, like coming up for air after months submerged in ennui.
And it isn’t as though you’re downgrading, either; the salt box your father inherited is large, far larger than the bashful house you grew up in. It’s in the heart of upper middle class suburbia, boasts the purlieus of nature without letting it overgrow. You can tell, by the neat hedges and lifetime supply of weed killer in the shed, that your late, Great Aunt took great pride in this. She never had any children. Maple Street, the narrow cul-de-sac that ends at her picket fence, is full of them.
