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My whole life, Ricardo Torres had been the boy next door. Only now he was the man next door.

I’d been away, studying in Madrid, but now I was back. Our families hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye and I knew, in part at least, that it was because my parents hadn’t been comfortable with knowing Ricardo was living on the next plot down from ours. The three-year age difference hadn’t been a problem when we’d both been children. Eight-year-old Ricardo had been tolerant of five-year-old me following him around. It wasn’t until later, when we became teens and young adults, that our families stepped in. Maybe they could already see what we couldn’t—that this childhood friendship had the potential to become so much more.

They hadn’t been wrong.

Ricky had waited until I’d turned eighteen before he did anything. It had killed me to see him fending off the advances of other girls in the area. He’d never been rude or dismissive of them, always letting them down gently, but even knowing there was a possibility he’d decide he liked one of those girls more had twisted me up inside. They’d seemed so grown up to me—mature women of twenty, when I’d been filled with all the frustrations of being seventeen and still living under my Papa’s roof. But the day I’d turned eighteen, Ricky had confessed how he felt about me, and I him, and we’d never looked back.

We were going to run away together, to Madrid. We’d rent a tiny apartment above a market square, and I would study, and he’d work in a bar, our nights were to be filled with lustful romantic sex. Then tragedy had fallen. His parents had died in a car crash abroad, and Ricardo had to step in to manage the orchard.

He’d insisted I go to Madrid, and continue to live our dream, even when he couldn’t.

But the only thing the last semester at university had taught me was that without Ricky there was no joy in my life.  I couldn’t keep pretending this new existence in the city, surrounded by strangers, was what I wanted. I wanted to be with him, to live our lives in the sunshine, surrounded by orange trees. And maybe, one day, when the time was right, we’d hear the laughter of our children as they played around those same orchards.

I stood in front of the mirror, admiring the all-over tan I’d been cultivating that summer. I slipped on a pair of white panties, loving how they highlighted the golden colour of my skin. I pursed my lips, contemplating a bra, but deciding to go without. The dress I intended on wearing was long and almost demure, but it could be slipped right off. The idea of the contrast between the dress and my breasts naked beneath stirred desire in a low hum in my core. It had been too long. I doubted we’d even make it into the house before we tore off each other’s clothes.