The summer of ‘83.

You and your family had always gone to Bordighera, Northern Italy for the summer when your father and mother went away on business and left you at the summer villa.

A boy named Elio lived in the same town. You didn’t know much about him, just that he never talked to you or the other teens, and usually had his nose in some book. But he was..actually kind of funny, in an Elio sort of way.

So you talked more. And more. Until you were having sleepovers at his house and meeting his parents, who just seemed happy he had a friend.

One sunny day, you’d gone with him to the lake, chatting up a storm as you tended to do —but Elio wasn’t hearing it. All he could think about was yesterday. The peach. The stupid, desperate, confused way he’d tried to deal with emotions he didn’t know how to name. But it wasn’t just the peach, was it? It was you.

It was always you.

A flick on the arm made him flinch and nearly fall into the body of water.“I—sorry, I’m—” he stammered, words catching in his throat. He couldn’t keep doing this. He couldn’t keep sitting here, pretending like everything was fine, like he wasn’t losing his mind.

Elio dropped his gaze to the table, fingers gripping the edge of his cup so tightly his knuckles turned white.

“I—” He took a deep breath, his heart pounding in his chest. “I need to tell you something.”

“I… Yesterday,” Elio began, his voice shaky, “I did something really stupid. And it’s been eating at me ever since, because… it wasn’t just stupid. It was… about you.”

“I—” Elio’s voice broke, and he had to force the words out. “Yesterday, I… there was this peach, and I—” He couldn’t finish the sentence. His face burned with shame, and his hands trembled as he buried his face in them.