summary: Childhood best friends in Bluebell, Wade and Y/N have always been almost something more. As August lingers, late-night bar closings and lakeside talks turn into a summer they’ll never want to let slip away.
warning(s): mild language, mention of alcohol
word count: 1000+ words
Georgia’s Playlist | masterlist
By August, the heat in Bluebell feels personal, a hand on the back of your neck steering you where it wants you to go. The lake wears a skin of light, cicadas chanting like they were paid to, and Wade Kinsella leans against his truck like the poster boy for bad decisions I keep deciding to make.
We were kids here first—mud on our shins, grape popsicles, a treehouse that kept all our secrets whether we asked it to or not. He taught me to skip stones; I taught him to make friendship bracelets that didn’t immediately fall apart. He called me “Trouble” because I wasn’t, and I called him “Wade” like a dare, because everyone else softened the edges. Somewhere between scraped knees and driver’s licenses, we learned the rhythm of each other: the way he laughs when he’s trying not to, how I get quiet when I’m telling the truth.
There’s a breeze off the water that pretends to be "salt air", and the dock still has "and the rust on your door" kind of charm. He kicks at the planks. “You’re thinkin’ real loud,” he says.
“I’m thinking you owe me a beer,” I say, because some stories are easier if you start in the shallow end.
He grins, same as when we were ten and he swore he could ride his bike with no hands. “Rammer Jammer’s got your name on a bottle.”
That’s the other piece of us: the bar and its neon heartbeat. He’ll close up late and we’ll linger later, counting tips and crumpling napkins into terrible free throws. Sometimes we don’t talk. Sometimes that feels like worship.
We drive—windows down, wrist out, small-town constellation of porch lights and gossip—until the Rammer Jammer’s sign hums us under. The kitchen smells like fryer oil and cinnamon pie, which should be illegal. Wade shoulders the door with a practiced shove, flicks on half the lights, and the room comes awake like a polite yawn.
He moves behind the bar with a confidence that makes me forgive him for everything I haven’t even blamed him for yet. Beer slides across to me; his fingers brush mine and heat spikes like it’s got nothing to do with weather.
We’ve always been almost. Almost a kiss in the back of a church hall after a dance when the band was too loud for our heartbeats to be heard. Almost a confession on the tailgate when the meteor shower refused to show. Almost an admission every time his hand hovers at the small of my back like it’s known the map all along.
He tosses me a rag, nods at the sticky table by the jukebox. We fall into the easy choreography of closing: wipe, stack, laugh, repeat. The radio behind the bar murmurs a summer song, and my memory plays its own, the private reel that runs only in August: "remember when I pulled up" to this very lot and he said "get in the car" like we’d never been anywhere but here; how I’d "cancel plans just in case you call", how I lived "to live for the hope of it all" and told myself it was a strategy, not a prayer.
We end up on the back steps, humidity hugging the night to our skin. Fireflies bob like someone sprinkled stars too low. Wade rests his shoulders against the door, tips his beer bottle to his lip, and looks at me the way you do when you finally decide to read the warning label.
“You ever think about leaving?” he asks, words lazy, eyes not.
“Sometimes,” I admit. “But I always think of how I’d miss this. The noise. The quiet. You.”
“You’d miss me?” He says it like a joke he might want to be real.
“I’ve known you twenty years,” I say. “I’d miss you like I’d miss my own name.”
There’s a long, brave silence.
“I ain’t always been the guy you deserve,” he says. “But I’m tryin’ real hard to be the guy you actually want.”
My heart clatters against my ribs, startled and eager. I can feel our history lighting up inside me like a row of porch bulbs: "I can see us lost in the memory", driving the long way around town because we liked the long way; late-night swims, clothes a wet heap, laughter echoing off the dock; the cheap, glorious drama of homecoming, his bow tie crooked, my lipstick trying to keep up.
He toes the step, scuffs wood. “Feels like 'august slipped away into a moment in time',” he says finally, voice low enough to barely be legal, “and I’m not tryin’ to blink.”
“It’s still August,” I offer, even though the calendar has never cared to save anybody.
He huffs a smile. “Yeah. Guess it is.”
I picture every “almost” we’ve ever survived and suddenly I’m tired of manners. I set my beer down, move haltingly, like I’m approaching a skittish thing I want to love right. “We were kids, Wade,” I say. “And then we weren’t. And I kept waiting for someone to hand me permission. But I think—” I swallow, scare easy, keep going. “I think I’ve loved you since your dad’s truck broke on County Road 6 and we walked three miles in the heat and you sang to me so I wouldn’t notice my blisters.”
He looks stunned, then something steady arrives in his face, like a boat finding dock. He steps closer; the night breathes with us.
“Trouble,” he says, and I can hear the boy he was inside the man he is, “I been in love with you since you beat me at a cannonball contest and then let me win the next one ‘cause you said my pride was more delicate than your ankles.”
We are both laughing when our mouths find a way to stop. It isn’t a dramatic kiss. It’s the kind you offer when you are very sure and a little scared: careful, curious, home. My hands go to the warm line of his jaw; his thumb draws a reverent arc at my cheekbone like he’s making a wish.
When we breathe again, the uselessness of words makes us bold. He presses our foreheads together. “I don’t want 'so much for summer love and saying “us”',” he says. “I want summer, and fall, and… whatever’s after that, long as the calendar’s got.”
“Okay,” I say, and it’s holy.
The night unspools. We clean the rest of the bar with the giddiness of thieves. He locks up; we walk Main the long way, Bluebell tucked in and dreaming. He takes my hand because of course he does. At the lake, the dock waits, always patient. We lie on our backs, dew threatening our clothes, stars negotiating with the pines, and I think of all the ways wanting brought us here: "wanting was enough", sometimes; "back when we were still changing for the better", always.
He turns on his side, props his head on his hand, studies me like a route he’s memorized and is still delighted to take. “Tell me something true,” he says.
I tell him how every August I used to steel myself for "because you were never mine", like the month was a test I kept failing. I tell him how I hid in the Rammer Jammer’s noise so I wouldn’t hear my own heart. I tell him I’m done negotiating with the version of us that was scared.
He kisses my knuckles like he’s signing a contract and says, “Mine,” soft, like a promise we both get to keep.
Summer doesn’t bow; it just leans toward September. There will be mornings he burns the biscuits and blames the oven. Afternoons when the whole town needs him and I wait on the tailgate with a book and a smug smile. Nights when we argue about the Braves and make up with the kind of apologies nobody teaches you in school. There will be days that feel ordinary and, because of that, perfect.
We walk back to the truck in a hush that’s not empty. The dashboard light makes us look younger; the rearview is a quiet witness. I tuck my feet up, shoulder to him, his hand on my knee—the geography of us finally mapped. He drives slow. Home is a short distance, but we lengthen it anyway, not hoarding, just savoring.
I think of all the summers we let slip through our fingers and feel no grief, only gratitude for the one we finally caught. Tonight, there is no almost—only the simple fact of him and me, Bluebell breathing easy, the road curling toward everything we were brave enough to ask for.
Outside my place, he walks me to the porch like we haven’t known this route all our lives. He kisses me goodnight in the doorway and it tastes like beer and peaches and the relief of finding what you didn’t know you’d been holding your breath for. When he pulls back, his smile is a slow sunrise.
“See you tomorrow,” he says.
“See you tomorrow,” I echo, and tomorrow doesn’t feel like a gamble; it feels inevitable.
Inside, I lean against the door and listen to the world I love settling into itself. My phone lights with his name and a message that reads: “Open your window.” I do, and he’s there on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, grinning like a fool. He mimes a phone call to his ear, then mouths, "meet me behind the mall", which in Bluebell means behind the Rammer Jammer, which really means anywhere I am.
I laugh, loud and unafraid, and think: I will remember this—the night August stopped slipping and started staying, the moment we decided we were ours. Not a moment borrowed; a life chosen. And when the heat finally backs off and the leaves consider their exit, I know the memory won’t sting. It will glow, steady and sure, the kind you return to the way you return home.
♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ. Now playing... You Are in Love (Taylor's Version) - Taylor Swift
It was always him. You just didn’t realise it until a quiet night on the Cousins beach house porch — knees brushing, tea shared, words you never thought he’d say. A soft, slow burn about the moment friendship quietly becomes something more.
warnings: none
word count: 500+ words
Georgia’s Playlist | Masterlist
The thing about Cousins is that the days stretch long, like taffy. Sticky and sweet and golden at the edges.
It’s late — past midnight, maybe. The kind of quiet that only exists when the world is asleep. I’m barefoot on the porch of the beach house, sweatshirt tucked over my knees, watching the waves roll in like they’ve got nowhere else to be.
Conrad’s next to me. He’s quiet too. Not unusual — Conrad’s quiet in the way that still water is quiet. Calm on the surface, but you know there’s a pull underneath.
He tosses me a glance. “You tired?”
I shake my head. “Not yet.”
He nods. Then hands me his mug of tea without saying anything, like it’s instinct. It’s chamomile. Warm. I hold it with both hands.
We’ve always done this — existed near each other like it’s the most natural thing in the world. No declarations. No labels. Just… this.
The porch creaks as he shifts, pulling his hoodie sleeves over his hands. I peek at him from under my lashes. His hair’s a little messy from the salt air. His profile’s all soft lines tonight — not thinking, not brooding. Just existing.
You can hear it in the silence, silence, you can feel it on the way home...
Something hums in my chest.
I look down at the mug.
“I heard Belly talking to Jeremiah earlier,” I say, voice light. “She said she thinks we’re in love.”
Conrad turns his head slowly. “Oh yeah?”
“She said we look at each other like a couple in a rom-com.”
He huffs a laugh, but it’s quiet. Nervous. “And what do you think?”
I shrug. “I think she watches too many movies.”
He doesn’t say anything.
You can see it with the light out, lights out...
There’s a pause, filled only by the ocean.
“I look at you like that.”
My head snaps toward him.
He’s not smiling. Not teasing. He’s just looking — straight at me, like I’m something he’s never let himself study this closely.
“What?” I say, breath caught somewhere between my ribs.
“I look at you like that,” he says again, softer. “And I have for a while.”
My heart thuds, slow and heavy.
“You’ve never said anything.”
He shrugs, and for once, it’s not dismissive — it’s vulnerable. “I didn’t want to mess it up.”
I’m silent. My fingers tighten on the mug.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he adds quickly. “I just… I wanted you to know. In case you ever wondered.”
And I had. All the time.
I turn toward him fully. The porch light flickers behind us, casting his face in the kind of shadow that makes you want to lean closer just to see better.
I set the mug down. My voice comes out softer than I expect.
“I think I look at you like that too.”
Conrad blinks. “Yeah?”
I nod.
He smiles — and it’s the kind that’s all crinkled eyes and relief and something golden behind it.
Then he shifts closer.
Our knees touch.
He doesn’t kiss me — not yet. He just leans his shoulder into mine and lets it stay there.
And it’s so simple. So right.
And you understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars...
We sit in silence after that.
And it doesn’t feel like nothing’s happening — it feels like everything is.
Because suddenly, I know.
I’m in love with Conrad Fisher.
And he’s in love with me, too.
And you can hear it in the silence...
So get ready for a lot of Conrad because the new season is out, meaning... NEW WHITE BOY OF THE MONTH!
Every song has a story. Every story starts with a song.
Georgia’s Playlist is a series of one-shots, each inspired by a different song. They don’t connect — just snapshots of characters, moments, and feelings that came from hitting play. Think of it like a mixtape of stories I needed to write.
