It could be a beach ball or a flotation device-companion, neat!!
My first real (gay) crush was on my brother's straight best friend. I was like eleven to thirteen at the time, and this guy was fifteen to seventeen. I always tagged along with my brother and his friends, because my friends were anti-social weirdos that never liked fun, and thought reading books all days or watching documentaries was exciting. We were really only friends because we excelled in academics. But outside of school or doing homework, I didn't give a shit about any of that. So I always went along with my brother's friends for fun, even if it meant staying out until 1 AM on school nights, and getting by on barely five hours sleep. And some nights I had to take a taxi home, alone. Mostly we went to the mall, the arcade, the cinema, etc. After 2, almost 3 years of crushing on this guy, I was at the beach at his graduation party. He was seventeen, practically eighteen, I was thirteen/almost fourteen. I was a tense mess, because he'd be moving away for university, and I'd presumably never see him again. I stood by a washroom building, just moping about, and playing in the sand with my shoes. After awhile, he came to visit me, because I was the only one in that group who was not actively participating in the beach shenanigans. He admitted he knew I "really liked" him, and he was "cool with it", and gave me a hug. I devolved into a sobbing faced mess, hugged him, and essentially had my heart exposed and crushed before me. My brother and their friends and families looked on like..what the hell? The guy told them I was just sad because I couldn't swim, and the surf was rough, so I wasn't going out. I mean, I couldn't swim, but I usually went into the water anyway and splashed in the shallow, but that cover-lie was nice and less embarrassing than had he outed me.
It's been more than a decade and I still daydream about him, even though he lives 1,700 miles away, and has a family.
