Somewhere across the water, a kid laughed. A duck cut a V through the pond. The city hummed at a distance like an old refrigerator—there, but softened.
We’d drifted without realizing it.
From the willow to the path.
From the path to wandering.
The garden had those little stone walkways that felt older than the rest of the city, curving past statues and benches and tiny fenced plots—old memorial markers tucked into corners like secrets. Names carved into granite. Dates a hundred years gone.
Not quite graves.
Not quite anything.
Just history, quiet and still.
She walked beside me, barefoot now, her heels looped through two fingers. Her dress swayed against her calves every time the breeze kicked up. The air smelled like cut grass and water and that coconut lotion she wore.
God.
That scent was going to ruin me.
Every time she moved closer, it wrapped around me like summer.
Our shoulders bumped.
Then stayed touching.
Like neither of us wanted to be the one to step away first.
“How long have you been single?” she asked casually, like it was nothing.
But her voice had that careful note. The one people use when they’re actually asking something bigger.
I shoved my hands in my pockets, watching our shadows stretch in front of us.
“Truthfully?”
She glanced up at me. “Always a dangerous start.”
“Forever.”
She snorted. “Please.”
“I’m serious.”
“Ethan,” she said, laughing, “no one like you has been single forever.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Okay. Fine. Last serious girlfriend—the kind where you meet parents and split rent and talk about the future—that was college.”
She stopped walking.
“College?” Her brows lifted. “That was what… ten years ago?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve been single for a decade?”
“I dated,” I said quickly. “Just… not…”
