Spotlight: Some Love Lasts and Getting to Yes by Tim Hunniecutt
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Two different stages of growing up frame Some Love Lasts and Getting to Yes by Tim Hunniecutt. One centers on a teenage girl encountering first love; the other follows a young man trying to make sense of his evolving understanding of intimacy.
Some Love Lasts
Set during a summer on the Florida coast, fourteen-year-old Madi anticipates calm days with her grandparents. Instead, she becomes captivated by Matthew, the older boy next door whose swimmer’s build and steady courage make him both admired and quietly intriguing. He is accustomed to being watched, yet when he looks at Madi, something shifts.
Their connection grows as the season unfolds, deepening from curiosity into an intense emotional bond. When a hurricane barrels toward shore, Matthew steps into danger during a rescue that forever shapes Madi’s sense of what love means. The memory of that moment stays with her long after they part. Years later, when they meet again in college, the past resurfaces, raising questions about whether their story ever truly ended.
Excerpt
From Chapter One: The First Save
Though it was still early morning, warm humidity saturated the air. Billowing white clouds with dark spots drifted across the sky. The foaming waves gently crashed on the sand. Tiny sandpipers darted in and out. Seagulls squawked while circling.
Her eight-year-old sister edged into the water until it covered her feet. “It’s really warm.”
Madi joined her, and Roe grasped her hand firmly as they ventured farther until it reached their chests. Madi crouched and helped her sister float. “Yeah, it’s so warm, like being in a bathtub.”
She allowed her sister to do what she wanted as they were the only ones on the beach. Grandpa sat on one of the chairs, watching them from the shore. Her sister practiced swimming while Madi held her hat.
Roe tried to ride the waves as they broke, but they barely rippled, and she moved little if at all. She stood upright. “I’m bored.”
Madi put her hat on. “What do you want to do?”
“I’m going to hunt for seashells.” Roe scooted around in ankle-deep water, digging her toes into the sand to locate them.
Grandpa shouted, “I’ll be back to fetch you girls for lunch.” Madi waved goodbye, but Roe ignored him and continued to hunt for shells.
Madi suggested, “Let’s go read some.”
Roe pouted. “I don’t want to read yet. Can I keep looking for shells?”
“Sure, but stay on the beach. Don’t go into the water.”
“Okay.”
Madi sat and opened her book, dutifully checking on Roe before becoming absorbed in the story. The book she read enthralled her, and she failed to check on her sister until she finished the chapter.
When she did, however, she did not see Roe.
Alarmed, she stood.
No sign of her on the beach.
She looked at the Gulf and was shocked to find Roe hanging onto a man swimming toward the shore. Madi dashed forward, still wearing her hat and sunglasses, but she tripped and her hands smacked hard into the sand. Jumping up, she scrambled to the water as he carried Roe through the mild waves. It was the same guy she had seen swimming next door.
The tall young man put Roe down and smiled. “She got in too deep, and the tide began pulling her out. She isn’t a good enough swimmer to handle the deeper water. She’s okay. She’s a good floater and held on tight while I brought her back.”
Madi reached Roe and gripped her in a hug. She choked out her words. “What were you thinking? I told you to stay near the edge!”
Her sister hugged her back and began crying. “I’m sorry! I wanted to practice floating. I didn’t know the water would pull me. I’m okay. Matthew saved me.”
Madi still wore her hat and sunglasses, but her tears cascaded down her face.
Madi, the reliable.
Madi, the dependable.
Madi, the responsible one, had been reckless with her sister!
The bitterness and shame of this thought filled her tears. The fact that the guy she noticed in the morning had saved her made it worse. She did not want him to see her face, so she left the now fogged sunglasses and hat on, dropped her head, and mumbled, “Thank you so much.”
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Getting to Yes
In 1978 Florida, nineteen-year-old Chris searches for authenticity in romance. A hopeful observer of his own emotions, he reflects on the women he dates and the lessons each relationship leaves behind. Through lively and revealing episodes, he attempts to understand both himself and the expectations placed upon him.
Some encounters are playful, others complicated, but all contribute to his evolving view of intimacy. As he grows more self-aware, he begins to recognize what he truly wants. Then he meets Chloe, and the connection feels different from the rest. The story explores innocence, longing, and the complicated path toward commitment as Chris learns what it means to move from attraction to something enduring.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Dazzled by Chloe
On a hot and humid afternoon in mid-June 1978 in Brandon, Florida, I approached JB’s pizza restaurant where I had worked the previous summer. I had just returned home from my first year at Florida State University. Nineteen years old, I stood a thin six feet. Skinny described me accurately. I had been a distance runner on the cross country and track team in high school and continued to run enough to keep myself thin. I had light hazel eyes and light brown hair, which I had cut in a short, feathered-back style popular in the age of disco.
Alas, I did not possess flawless skin. I had been plagued by freckles when I was young, and that had been replaced by bad acne in my teens. Most of it had retreated, but it had left some small permanent scars on my face, and my oily skin still contained a few pimples. I would call my looks neutral, neither ugly nor handsome. In my defense, some girls I dated in high school had described me as cute, so I accepted that I could be attractive.
Sonia, my shift supervisor, had encouraged me to come in this afternoon to find out my work schedule for next week and to meet some pretty, college-aged girls they had recently hired. An immigrant in her late thirties from Brazil, Sonia treated me like her own kid and always wanted to set me up.
I admit to wanting to meet new girls and would take any opportunity to seek the pleasure and intimacy they could bring. I could talk to them and was always dating someone new.
I hesitated, looked across the parking lot toward the door, and wondered about the girls working inside. Sonia thought one especially would interest me. She called her sweet.
The clouds in the sky had begun to build into the usual afternoon thunderstorms, and a distant rumble of thunder warned that they would be here soon. The damp heat already soaked me with sweat. I set off over the asphalt to the door.
I entered a new world by walking through that glass door and meeting her. She stood behind the counter where they made the pizzas in the center of three girls dressed in red aprons and bandanas. On her left stood Sarah, who had started last summer. I did not know the other girl on her right with black hair and a thin face. It didn’t matter; I ignored the others and only looked at her.
The red bandana framed her round face, and I focused on it. She had shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes—“Cow brown,” she would describe them to me later. She had high, plump cheeks like a child that, combined with her radiant, flawless skin, gave her a look of innocence. She looked fifteen, not nineteen or twenty. I recognized a barely perceptible warm haze coming from her dewy skin, like a warm glow off the fluorescent lights on the room’s ceiling. How could such a thing even be possible? I wanted to doubt what my eyes detected.
Astonished by what I saw, I could not tear my gaze away. She looked up at me, and it provoked my only possible response: I started smiling, and I could not stop. I stood transfixed with only my smile speaking. It announced that she had dazzled me. She smiled in return and seemed to share the same inability to stop. We stood silently, smiling at each other. Our attraction became so evident that all the other girls and customers noticed, and the smiles spread.
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About the Author
Tim Hunniecutt has loved words since childhood, writing poems and stories for family and friends from an early age. Lifeguards have played a meaningful role in his life, from the rescue of his younger brother to several of his own children who later worked as lifeguards. He studied psychology and English at Florida State University, where the emotional spark for this story began after he fell in love during his first summer home from school. He now lives in Lithia, Florida, with that same girl, now his wife, and enjoys traveling, escape games, ballroom dancing with her, and time with his grandchildren.
