“Sharks” is a deeply personal story for me because much of it was adapted from my own experiences.  And while some of the story has been fictionalized, the crux of the story, the nature of friendship and human fallibility, was very much an awakening that summer.

I return often to the sandy beaches of Cape Cod to study the history of my first foray into adulthood. When I realized that the person I believed myself to be was different from the person whom I discovered I was.  And it’s during these periodic moments of after-the-fact self-examination that I understand my moment of fallibility was not an end, as I had thought it to be, but the moment that would help transition me from the past into my burgeoning future.

Falmouth, Massachusetts lies on the southwestern tip of Cape Cod, a stone’s throw past the Bourne Bridge and the launching point for people taking the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard.  Falmouth retains its old world charm; Main Street is lined with trees and many of the shops are owned and operated by locals.  The nearby beach is an arc of sand backed by Nantucket Sound with small cottages and bed and breakfast inns dotted throughout.  It’s here that I had my first and most memorable character defining moment in my life.  It’s here that serves as the backdrop of my first story in my collection Why People Do What You Do.

I’ve often contemplated what “friendship” means and what are the criteria of being a good friend to someone, and vice versa.  All throughout college, I prided myself on being the type of person who didn’t try to have the most friends, only the best ones.  Likewise, I saw myself as an extremely reliable friend as well. Need a ride?  Here, take my keys.  Need ten bucks for the pizza pub on campus?  Here you go, what’s mine is yours.  Going through a rough break up? I’m here to talk. I was always a firm believer in an unspoken code amongst my friends.   And in this way, I thought of us as an elite club whose members were the type of people that would drop anything at a moment’s notice to help a friend out; the type you’d make that first call to if you ever got arrested; the type who would skip a test to pick you up in the next state.  Not many people in college or out have demonstrated that sense of loyalty.

Tops on this unspoken code had to do with girlfriends.  Current, past, she broke up with him, he broke up with her, it didn’t matter.  Never, ever, ever was it okay to date, hook up with, kiss, whatever, a friend’s ex.  That simply wasn’t done.  Not among my group of friends.  And for the highly charged world of college, where casual make-out sessions were commonplace at keg parties, dances, late night library study sessions, or just about any place mutually-attracted members of the opposite sex came into contact with one another, that type of commitment was a sense of pride.  It’s what separated you from the rest.

And I liked that separation.  I leaned on it.

But then we graduated and spent the summer in a house on the beach in an area whose population quadrupled during those months.  And when my best friend, my brother, asked out a girl I wanted to ask out, things took a different turn.

In my defense, I respected the rules for the most part, even when overtures were made, even when she wanted to do things with me when my best friend was away.  I held the line as long as it took… day after day, week after week, until an accident at the place we both worked broke more than the bottles of bourbon we were trying to stack in the storeroom.

And then I realized I couldn’t hold the line anymore.

Published by Deer Hawk Publishing www.deerhawkpublications.com

Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency https://loiaconoliteraryagency.com/authors/emilio-iasiello/