At a professional low point after a breakup and a demoralizing magazine request to digitally slim ordinary women, photographer Alice Everly learned her beloved grandmother, Nan, had shattered her hip. Determined to lift Nan’s spirits, Alice secured their old friends’ Barry’s Bay cottage for the summer, recalling a formative teen photograph she had once taken of a yellow speedboat carrying two brothers and a girl. Upon arrival, caretaker Charlie Florek had already made accessibility upgrades and left a teasing note; soon, the sound of that same yellow boat and a passing, handsome stranger jolted Alice’s memories and creative hunger.

In town, Alice collided—literally and figuratively—with the stranger in the produce aisle, then later ran her skiff aground and discovered he was Charlie, the cottage caretaker and their across-the-bay neighbor. Their banter turned flirtatious as he towed her home, and Nan promptly invited him for tea. Charlie charmed Nan, revealed he worked in Toronto, and accepted an invite to Alice’s birthday. Gossip painted him a heartbreaker, yet he taught Alice the lake’s safe routes, coaxed her to cliff-jump, and gently folded himself into Nan’s routines. Alice drafted a “seventeen-year-old summer” list to reclaim boldness—skinny-dipping, flips, kissing a cute guy—and Charlie promised to help. A near-hookup after Nan tried a legal edible stopped short when Charlie insisted on friendship; he later opened up about his mother’s illness, and their trust deepened. As they kept testing boundaries—playful swimming, late talks, almost-kisses—Alice recognized Charlie as the older brother from her iconic teen photo, and he became both muse and collaborator in her creative reawakening.

Charlie coaxed light back into Alice’s days: he built a railing so Nan could swim, ferried her to choir and euchre, and encouraged Alice to defy the magazine’s retouching demands. They sewed with Nan, made Sue Florek’s dill pickles, and danced around their attraction until Alice proposed a clear boundary: a summer-only, no-strings arrangement. Their first night together took place in the lantern-lit tree house Charlie was secretly finishing for Sam and Percy’s future child; soon after, he staged a dazzling reveal wrapped in twinkle lights that honored family love and loss. Alice publicly called them “just friends,” yet the pair grew inseparable, tender, and electric. When Alice’s family visited, Charlie carried Nan to the boat, taught Bennett to water-ski, and folded into the Everlys with ease. Under pressure about an upcoming group show featuring an image she disliked, Alice, with Charlie’s backing, withdrew from the exhibition and turned toward more candid, personal work that felt true.

Cracks appeared as old fears resurfaced. On an Ottawa day trip that reunited Nan with John Kalinski and mended a years-old rift, awkward questions about whether Alice and Charlie should be a couple lingered on the drive home. A sudden swerve to avoid a fox slammed Alice into the car, sending her for stitches. Shaken and guilty, Charlie hovered while Alice, replaying his “we wouldn’t be good together” remark, asked for space and fled his attempts to help. After days of distance and Nan’s gentle prodding, Charlie arrived with a plan: he had arranged access to his old high school darkroom so Alice could develop the summer’s film. Immersed in chemicals and red light, Alice felt a long-lost certainty return; a finished print the next day told her a turning point had arrived. Studying a photo of Charlie taken on pickle day, she recognized an unmistakable look on his face and invited him over; they tumbled into each other in the darkroom and, later, into a night that convinced Alice they could be more than a summer fling.

At dawn after a blissful evening—cooking pierogi, a sunset ride, and sleeping wrapped around each other—Alice asked to try for real in the city. Charlie, seized by old defenses, insisted he could not do long-term and claimed they were too different. Devastated, Alice left the lake early with Nan and rebuilt a life in Toronto: renting a darkroom, prioritizing family, reconciling with Willa, and securing a promised solo show from Elyse. When Percy reached out, she hinted Charlie was struggling with more than Alice knew. The truth arrived with urgency: Charlie had undergone a scheduled Ross procedure for congenital heart disease after a spring stent and months of quiet fear. Alice rushed to the hospital, refused his request to stay away, visited daily, stocked his condo, and challenged the belief that he was unworthy of love because of risk and pain. The day of his discharge, with Percy in labor, Alice brought him home.

On his doorstep, after opening an envelope of photos Alice had brought—each image revealing a man who could not stop looking at her—Charlie confessed he loved her and had tried pushing her away to protect her. Alice said she loved him too. In the week that followed, they were inseparable as he healed. On the birthday that carried him past the age his father died, Charlie felt finally unburdened; Alice listed the many ordinary and tender things she loved about him. With family gathering and the good news of baby Susie’s birth, he set a playful, romantic scene and pledged, without hedging, that he was fully in. A year later, at Alice’s packed solo exhibition, she and Charlie—now co-owners of the renovated cottage, with him recovered and working at a heart research foundation—stood before photographs that traced their crossings: Nan and John’s reunion, Percy expectant, Charlie as he truly was, and the teenage yellow-boat print tucked in the corner. Alice closed the circle with a vulnerable self-portrait and, meeting Charlie’s I love you across the room, began to speak.