Love, Lost and Found

Summer grew up next door to Shawn and spent seven years wanting him without saying so. The two of them lived in a permanent almost, until a night of drinking ended in a kiss. Shawn told her they were only friends. His parents' marriage had gone badly and he had learned to back out of anything close. To make her give up completely, he brought a girlfriend, Nina, to meet her family when they came to visit, and he set Summer up on a blind date with a man who thought highly of himself. He called it looking out for her. Summer decided she was done and stopped waiting. Away from Shawn, she ran into Julian, another friend from childhood. He had thought about her since they were kids and had come back to the country partly for her, and this time he made his interest obvious. Shawn noticed and started inserting himself into it. Julian was patient and paid attention to details, and Summer found herself answering him without meaning to. He also pushed her to keep writing, which her mother wanted her to drop, and the writing began to go somewhere. She said yes to him under a fireworks display. Shawn broke up with his girlfriend the moment he heard, then used the childhood-friend position to needle the two of them and tried to get Summer's mother, who had always controlled her, to force them apart. Summer fell apart for a while and tried to talk him out of it, and the conversation ended badly. Julian did not take the bait. He turned up at her parents' door with gifts three separate times and won them over, and Shawn had to watch the four of them get along before leaving. Then word came that Shawn had gone missing.