#sunnysidebeach

The sand at Kew-Balmy Beach in the Beaches, was still warm from the day.

Toronto had settled into that heavy June evening glow where everything looked gold before the sun even touched it properly. The lake moved in slow silver-blue sheets beyond the beach. Cyclists rolled past on the Martin Goodman Trail. Music drifted from somewhere near the boardwalk. The city felt loose, hot, and restless.

Which meant, obviously, Alton wanted a game.

“Two on two,” he said, spinning the volleyball in one hand. “Coach and Wells versus me and Trey.”

Trey grinned. “Easy.”

Coach looked at him over the top of his sunglasses.

Wells was already smiling.

For the game, none of them wore shirts. No shoes. Just sand on bare feet, sweat on skin, and shiny metallic gold shorts catching the evening light. Wells’s gold shorts flashed every time he moved. Coach’s were simple and tight, practical but impossible to ignore. Trey’s had a black 59 on one hip. Alton’s had black side stripes and just enough shine to make him act like the whole beach was watching.

They probably were.

Coach tossed the ball to Trey. “First lesson.”

Trey caught it. “Already?”

“Control before power.”

Trey smirked. “Coach, it’s beach volleyball.”

Coach nodded once. “Correct. Unstable surface. Changing wind. Moving target. Bad place for ego.”

Alton leaned toward Trey. “He does this. Just let it happen.”

The first serve proved Coach’s point.

Trey launched it hard. Too hard. The ball cut high, caught the lake breeze, and sailed long past the back line.

Wells did not move. He only watched it land.

Coach looked at Trey. “Power without control is donation.”

Alton clapped once. “And we are already donating.”

Trey rolled his shoulders. “Again.”

The game tightened fast.

Wells was quick across the sand, reading angles before they happened. Coach barely seemed to move until he had to, then he was exactly where the ball needed him to be. Alton played loud, dramatic, surprisingly sharp when he stopped performing. Trey played like he wanted to crush every point into the lake.

That was the problem.

He had the strength. He had the speed. He had the instinct.

He just kept rushing.

A spike into the net. A save sent too wide. A serve that almost took out someone’s picnic blanket.

Coach caught the next ball before anyone served.

“Stop.”

Trey breathed hard, sweat running down his chest. “What?”

Coach stepped closer, gold shorts dusted with sand, expression steady. “You are trying to win the point before you play it.”

Trey frowned.

Wells stayed quiet.

Coach pointed to the court. “Look first. Breathe. Choose. Then move.”

Alton raised a hand. “Does this apply to life choices too, or just volleyball?”

Coach did not look away from Trey. “Especially yours.”

Wells laughed under his breath.

Trey looked annoyed for half a second. Then he exhaled.

“Look. Breathe. Choose. Move.”

Coach nodded. “Again.”

The next serve came softer.

Not weak. Controlled.

Trey watched the ball instead of attacking the moment. Alton set it clean. Wells shifted left. Coach stepped forward.

Trey waited.

Then he placed the shot exactly into the open sand behind Wells.

Point.

Alton threw both arms up. “Growth. Character development. Cinema.”

Trey grinned despite himself.

Coach’s mouth barely moved, but it was almost a smile. “Better.” "IF you want we can work more on control and focus while we are still here in Toronto or once we are back in the Golden City"

After that, the game changed.

Trey stopped swinging at everything like the ball had insulted him personally. He started watching Wells’s shoulders, Coach’s feet, the wind off the lake. He let Alton talk, but he did not let Alton’s noise pull him off rhythm. Point by point, he got sharper.

Coach and Wells still won.

Barely.

Alton collapsed backward into the sand like he had been betrayed by fate. “Robbery.”

Wells offered him a hand. “Scoreboard says no.”

Trey stood with hands on hips, breathing hard, looking at Coach.

“I was better at the end.”

Coach picked up the ball. “You were focused.”

“Same thing?”

“Negative.” Coach tossed him his shirt from the beach bag. “Focus comes first.”

By the time they left Kew-Balmy Beach, the evening had cooled just enough to make the walk feel good. They rinsed sand off, pulled shirts over sun-warmed skin, and put shoes back on, but kept the same shiny metallic gold shorts.

Wells wore a black fitted athletic shirt with a gold 58. Coach wore his black COACH shirt, cap back on, whistle at his chest. Trey pulled on a gold sleeveless 59 top, calmer now but still glowing from the game. Alton wore his gold KNIGHTS shirt and complained that beach sand had “no respect for luxury materials.”

They headed east toward the FIFA Fan Festival at Fort York and The Bentway, where Toronto’s World Cup crowd was gathering around live match broadcasts, food, music, and city energy under the Gardiner. Toronto’s official Fan Festival runs at Fort York & The Bentway during the 2026 World Cup, with live broadcasts and cultural programming tied to the city’s “The World in a City” theme.

By the time they arrived, the screens were bright, the crowd was loud, and flags from half the planet seemed to be moving at once.

Alton immediately scanned the food options. “Focus is important. I am focusing on fries.”

Trey watched the match on the giant screen, then glanced at Coach.

“Look. Breathe. Choose. Move.”

Coach nodded without taking his eyes off the game. “Now you are learning.”

Wells bumped Trey’s shoulder. “Careful. He’ll make you run drills at halftime.”

Trey smiled.

The crowd roared as the attack built on screen. A player paused instead of forcing the shot, waited one beat, then slipped the ball clean through the defense.

Trey saw it.

Coach saw Trey see it.

Control first.

Focus next.

Then movement.

The goal came a second later, and the whole Fan Festival erupted.

Alton jumped like he had personally coached the team. Wells laughed. Trey shouted with the crowd. Coach stood steady in the noise, satisfied and silent.

The lesson had landed.

On the sand.

Under the lights.

In gold.

Control wins the point. Focus wins the match. Stand with the brothers who turn every game, every crowd, and every golden moment into training. Join the Golden Army. Contact our recruiters: @alton-gold77, @polo-drone-125

The sun hung low over Sunnyside Beach, turning Lake Ontario to molten gold. The boardwalk behind Wells was alive with the easy drift of late 60s summer, laughing voices, radio music spilling thinly through the air, the smell of cigarettes, weed, and lake water all tangled together in the fading heat of the day. But out by the shore, where the wet sand cooled beneath his bare feet, it felt quieter. Far enough from the city to breathe. Far enough from everyone else to think.

Wells sat with his guitar across his lap and a dog-eared notebook beside him, one page already crowded with scratched-out lyrics and half-finished lines. He had been chasing the same melody for what felt like forever, circling the same chords until even they seemed tired of him. Every time he thought he was close to something real, it slipped away. Too obvious. Too shallow. Too pretty without meaning.

He played the progression again anyway, fingers moving automatically over the strings. A soft, sun-warmed sound rose into the evening air and disappeared beneath the hush of the waves.

“No,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring out over the water. Behind him, the city still existed in its usual weight of streets and expectations, but here at the lake it felt farther away, blurred out by the breeze and the light. He wanted the song to sound like this moment felt—open, searching, a little lonely, but beautiful for it. Something honest. Something bigger than the usual noise.

Instead, all he had were fragments.

He picked up the notebook and looked at the latest attempt.

I want the light, Crossed out.

I hear the sky, Crossed out harder.

Wells laughed under his breath and let the notebook fall back into the sand. “Brilliant,” he said dryly. “A real poet.”

He strummed once more, softer now, then let the chord ring until it dissolved into the sound of the water. Around him the beach was beginning to turn amber and violet. Couples wandered the shoreline. A group farther down the sand passed around a bottle and laughed like the whole evening belonged to them. Somebody had brought a blanket, somebody else a transistor radio, and the music drifting over from that direction sounded dreamy and far away, as if it had already started leaving the ordinary world behind.

Wells watched them for a while.

Then, slowly, he reached into the pocket of his faded denim jacket.

He had not meant to use it so soon. Maybe not at all. It had been more of a possibility when he’d come down to the beach—a small paper square tucked away like a dare to himself. A way past the wall if the wall refused to move. He turned it over once in his fingers, looking at it in the last wash of sunlight.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he was still trying to write from inside the cage of everything he already knew. Same thoughts. Same doors. Same careful limits. Maybe if he stepped outside them, even just once, the music would finally find him.

He sat very still for a moment, feeling the breeze move through his hair.

Then he placed the tab on his tongue.

For a while, nothing happened.

The lake kept rolling in. The gulls still cried overhead. The guitar still rested warm against his thighs. Wells played a few more chords, slower now, watching the light drain lower and lower across the surface of the water. He almost convinced himself he’d imagined the whole thing.

Then the sound changed.

Not louder. Not stranger, exactly. Just deeper. As if the strings were no longer making music alone, but pulling it out of the air around him. The note lingered longer than it should have, shimmering faintly. Wells frowned and played it again.

This time he could have sworn the water answered.

He lifted his head.

The sunset had become impossibly rich, as though someone had turned up the color of the world by hand. Gold deepened into yellow so bright it seemed to glow from inside itself. The violet clouds above the lake stretched longer than clouds were meant to stretch, curling like brushstrokes across the sky. The breeze against his skin felt warmer, then cooler, then warmer again, each shift carrying its own rhythm.

Wells sat motionless, his hand resting on the neck of the guitar.

A laugh escaped him, small and disbelieving.

“Well,” he murmured.

The notebook pages fluttered though there was hardly any wind now. The crossed-out lines no longer looked dead on the paper. They seemed to pulse faintly, like they were waiting for him to come back and hear them properly. Even the city behind him no longer felt heavy. It felt distant. Softened. As if Toronto itself had stepped back to let something else come forward.

Wells strummed again, and this time the chord bloomed outward in color.

Not metaphorically. Not in the poetic sense he’d been trying and failing to capture all evening. He could actually see it, warm yellow spilling through the air like a ribbon, rippling out over the sand and across the edge of the water. The wave that answered it rose with a shimmer of impossible gold, and for one strange, breathless second Wells had the overwhelming sense that the lake was listening.

His pulse kicked hard, but not from fear.

From wonder.

The world around him was beginning to loosen. The shoreline no longer felt fixed. The sky seemed to open wider with every breath he took. Somewhere behind him the distant beach music stretched itself into something brighter, stranger, almost playful. The ordinary rules were slipping, quietly and completely, and Wells could feel himself slipping with them.

He looked down at the guitar in his hands, then back out at the glowing water.

The last thing he saw of the real world was the sun melting gold across Lake Ontario.

Then the yellow began to spread.

To be continued...