The wind was playful that evening, like it knew a secret. A soft hush blew across the Sandestin shore, twirling grains of white sand around our feet, and somewhere between the laughter and the saltwater kisses, we promised forever - even though we were just kids pretending to know what forever meant.

Back then, everything felt like a dream dressed in sunshine.

We were seventeen. Young. Wild. Free. He had this laugh that could melt even the hardest day, and I had a heart that skipped like a pebble across the ocean whenever he looked at me. His name? Let's just call him my first always. We met right there - on this very beach - chasing a runaway kite. I was barefoot, ankle-deep in the tide, and he came running out of nowhere yelling, "Catch it! It's got a mind of its own!" I caught it. And maybe, in that same moment, he caught me.

That whole summer was ours.

We ran under fireworks and whispered secrets under stars, building sandcastles and dreams at the same time. We took silly pictures with sunscreen on our noses, sang off-key in the car with the windows down, and danced under the boardwalk like no one was watching. We carved our initials into the trunk of a palm tree, swearing we'd come back every year.

And then we had her - our little sunshine with those same mischievous eyes and that dimpled smile. Our daughter. The moment she giggled, we knew joy had multiplied. She'd toddle through the sand with him chasing behind, the both of them giggling like best friends in matching footprints. Her first word? "Da-da." Her first wave? Right here. Her first kite chase? A perfect reenactment.

But life... life has a way of changing tides.

Time, distance, choices - they all crept in like quiet waves and washed us to separate shores. He's no longer here, not in the way he used to be. But you know what still lingers? The memories. Those warm, glowing things that fill the spaces he once occupied.

Now, I sit on this same beach with our daughter curled into my lap, her curls wild in the wind, her cheeks kissed by the sun. She giggles when the waves tickle her toes, and I tell her stories. Not just any stories - our stories. Her daddy and me, two wild-hearted kids who fell in love under this very sky.

I tell her about the time he tried to build the biggest sandcastle ever and it collapsed right before the final tower. We laughed until we cried. Or the night we slow danced in the shallow water with nothing but moonlight and waves for music. She doesn't understand it all yet, but she watches my face light up - and she smiles, too. Like she knows it's special.

I look out into the water and let the crash of the waves carry me. The salty breeze wraps around me like a memory, like his arms once did. The scent of ocean and sunscreen drifts up and suddenly, I'm seventeen again, chasing a kite across the sand with him laughing beside me, calling my name like a promise.

And even though he's not here now, I'll keep telling her.

Because love like ours doesn't just disappear. It lingers - in the wind, in the tide, in the soft whoosh of the waves that whisper, *"We were here. We loved hard. We laughed more."*

And that... that's a story worth passing on.