“Who would have thought you’d be back in London?” Taylor muttered as she pulled her black and white striped bikini top over her bare chest. Europeans seem to be a lot more open with their bodies.
“Yeah I know it’s crazy,” I answered as I tied my red bottoms over my underwear and then pulled them off from underneath.
“Why do you do that with your knickers?” she asked me.
‘Ha knickers,’ that’s why I love visiting my British friends.
“Well are you excited to see Ethan?” Taylor asked. I coughed from her self tanner that was contaminating the room.
“Um yeah, I actually really am.” As we walked outside, I remembered why I never wear this bikini anymore.
“You’re boobs look GODLY!”
“Ha thanks, Tay.”
We walked along the pool side where her parents were enjoying cocktails in the water. Just then, I heard a voice that I could never mistake for anyone else. It was Ethan Marcus.
“Hey Jenna,” he spoke causally in his adorable British accent as if it hadn’t been a year since I had seen him last. His hair was longer and darker than I remembered and he grew quite substantially, but he was still the adorable bloke that I fell in love with last summer. I ran over and gave him a bear hug- American style. “God I missed you.”

I couldn’t help but think about where I was exactly a year ago- cruising the Mediterranean with these guys. The sun was setting on the ocean as we sailed out of the Tel Aviv port. My eyes were as wet as the ocean below us.
“I can’t believe he cheated on me,” I cried and recalled earlier that day in Tel Aviv, when my boyfriend of a year told me that he kissed a girl from Canada.
“He’s the stupidest boy in the world,” Ethan told me. With determination to make me feel better, he dared me to jump into the pool that was netted off for the night.
“Only if you do it first,” I responded, and to my surprise- he did. Ethan took off his shirt and cardigan and jumped right into the netted pool. He struggled to swim between the netting and the pool water. I knew what he was trying to do, and it worked… it made me laugh.
“You’re crazy!” I yelled as I jumped in after him, he didn’t seem to mind. There I was, fifteen year old Jenna from New York, somewhere in the Mediterranean ocean, with the most adorable boy in the entire world.

Later that night, Ethan held me as I shivered into his sweater.
“Maybe jumping in there wasn’t the best idea,” he joked. I shook my head and grinned at him. My watch read ten to two and I realized I should probably go since curfew was in ten minutes.
“I’ll walk you.”
“Thanks,” he knew that my parents loved when he walked me back so I wouldn’t have to wander the ship alone at night. We were almost at my room when Ethan stopped and leaned in to kiss me. It felt more right than anything I’d felt in the last year, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right because at fifteen you can’t have a trans-Atlantic relationship. I felt like Juliet in a story where instead of the Montesques and Capulets forbidding us to be together, it was the Atlantic Ocean.

“Jenna, why are you so quiet?” Taylor asked, waking me up from my daydream.
“Oh sorry,” I responded. “So tell me about your girlfriend, Ethan.”