“Perfect time to start again,” Malik says. “I’m an excellent sandcastle engineer.”
“Of course you are,” Jalen says dryly.
“I have skills.”
“You have opinions about how everyone else is doing it wrong,” Dax corrects. “That’s different from skills.”
“I’ll show you skills,” Malik mutters, already heading toward the wet sand near the waterline.
Sierra watches him go, then looks at the rest of us. “Is he serious about this?”
“Extremely,” I confirm. “He once spent three hours building a scale model of the Taj Mahal on a beach in South Carolina.”
“Three hours?”
“It was very accurate.”
“And then a wave destroyed it.”
“He didn’t speak for a week.”
Sierra’s laugh is bright and genuine, and the sound of it makes my chest feel too full. “Okay, I have to see this.”
We follow Malik down to the water’s edge, where he’s already surveying the sand with the intensity of a general planning an assault.
“Here,” he declares, pointing to a spot.
“Whatever you say, Napoleon,” Dax says, but he’s already dropping to his knees to help.
What follows is possibly the most ridiculous and wonderful hour of my life.
Malik takes the engineering role seriously. Very seriously. Directing us on where to dig, how to pack the sand. Jalen backs him up with calculations that I’m pretty sure he’s making up on the spot. Dax provides the muscle, moving massive amounts of sand with efficiency that shouldn’t be possible.
And Sierra is having the time of her life.
She’s laughing as Malik gets increasingly bossy about turret placement. Making terrible puns about their “sand-tastic” creation. Deliberately sabotaging Dax’s moat efforts just to see him growl at her in mock aggression.
“Sierra, that wall is load-bearing!” Malik protests when she pokes a hole in his carefully constructed rampart.
“It was load-bearing,” she corrects, grinning. “Now it’s decorative.”
“You’re a menace.”
“You’re a control freak.”
I can’t stop watching her. The way the sun catches in her hair. How her whole face lights up when she laughs. The unselfconscious joy in her movements as she builds and plays and just... exists.
This is who she is when she’s not worried about appearances or competition or maintaining professional distance. This playful,warm, wonderful person who makes terrible puns and pokes holes in Malik’s sandcastles just to see him get flustered.
I’m so far gone for her it’s not even funny.
“Cole!” Jalen’s voice cuts through my reverie. “You’re supposed to be shaping the towers, not staring into space.”
“I was thinking.”
“Think while working.”
“Multitasking isn’t my strong suit.”
