I’m excited to start a series on here called “Not My Love Stories,” inspired by The New York Times’ “Tiny Love Stories.” I’ll be sharing short stories and poems I have written over the years. Writing has been a very important creative outlet for me since I can remember. Even if I was writing something completely fictional, I noticed that putting a pen to paper and seeing where it took me helped me process my emotions.

Without further ado, to kick off this new series on FTBF, here is a short story I wrote my sophomore year of high school.

“Let’s build a sandcastle,” he said, with such finality and determination as to dare me to disagree. For a few seconds, I debated the scenarios in which I opted not to participate in the creation of a fleeting masterpiece, and, with a touch of resignation, I followed him down the beach to the slightly darker sand where high tide had reached earlier that day. I watched his brows furrow as we simultaneously realized that neither of us had a bucket. To my surprise, he plopped himself onto the sand and began building a castle of sorts with his bare hands.

He squinted up to me as the sun’s rays glared into his hazel eyes, silently beckoning me to help him. I chuckled and sat down next to the mound of sand he was readily passing as a sandcastle on the side opposite to him. I dug my fingers into the sand and began outlining around his precious pile as he began attempting to give it a shape. We laughed as we toiled over our sandcastle and began joking around about it being a home of our own. I marveled as the blue sky faded to purple, then pink and yellow and red, lastly to black. We fell in love with the way we felt that night; we had never felt more at home than with each other.

On a bed of sand, blanketed by love, we fell asleep under the stars. He dozed off first, and I couldn’t help but smile as I looked up from him to the sky full of stars shining from all different galaxies, feeling oh so lucky.

I woke up with the sun, and let myself lie awake, eyes still closed, listening to the mighty, yet soft-spoken ocean crashing gently just twenty feet away. I reached out to him to wake him before taking a dip in the ocean. I, instead, picked up a handful of sand. I opened my eyes to find he was gone, and our beautifully messy castle had been trampled out of existence. I realized that there are kinds of love that have the capacity to move oceans, and there are others that can move sand. There are loves that build lives together; there are loves that build houses out of sand together.

Whatever he and I were, sandcastles are tragically temporary. They are also easily lost in the wind. Sometimes love silences all else so it can scream with a mere whisper. Other times, love follows the melody of waves. He came and went with the tide.

“My mom always warned me about people in glass houses, but no one ever told me not to live in a castle made of sand.”