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“I did what anyone would’ve done.”

Her attention stays on the page balanced on her knees, the pencil moves, but her eyes don’t. “No. You didn’t.”

For some reason, I don’t understand why my chest feels warm. She shades her flower, petal by petal before speaking again. “I don’t remember much after I fell.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I remember your voice.” The pencil pauses for a second and I tap the ash off the cigarette, “So clearly.”

I close my eyes then. Of all the things she could have carried away from that night she chose to keep this.

“I kept thinking,” she says, a faint smile touching the corner of her mouth. “He’s going to be so annoyed at me calling him.”

“You got drugged, and it was not your fault,” the words left my mouth without permission.

She doesn’t look at me and I don’t look at her. For a while, there’s only the scratching of the graphite against paper and the waves breaking beneath our feet.

Eventually I cleared my throat and spoke again, “If anything like that ever happens again, I won’t be far.”

She smiles without lifting her head, “I’ll count on it, Damien.”

The pencil moves again and I let her disappear into it. Minutes pass without either of us feeling the need to talk. Every now and then, she reaches toward me without thinking, taking the cigarette between my fingers before passing it back again a few drags later.

And I become absurdly aware of it. Of the cold her fingers leave behind against the filter, of the fact that she’s no longer asking for it, of how slowly she’s drawing now. As if one wrong movement might collapse the entire thing if she’s not careful enough.

The flower looks different now. The petals folded inward instead of opening toward the light, the stem twisting against itself, growing in impossible directions.

Stubborn enough to survive but incapable of blooming.

It’s beautiful.

“You press harder when you’re overthinking.”

The pencil stops as she blinks at the page. “You’re studying me, again.”

“It’s noticeable, you’ve been doing it for the last ten minutes.”

She studies the unfinished flowers, missing a few petals and sighs. “It doesn’t feel finished.”

I look from the drawing to the ocean existing angrily beneath us and take my lighter out of my pocket. I open it then shut it down again. “It doesn’t have to.”

She closes the sketchbook, rubbing her hands against the cover before replying softly, “I keep leaving things unfinished.”

“You’ve got a year,” I say as she turns toward me.

“A year?”

I nod, “Yeah, a year of classes.” The wind catches a free strand of her hair. “A year of coming here if you want.” I keep my eyes on the ocean as I continue. “A year to finish one drawing.”

She watches me for a long moment, then her gaze falls back to her hands. “It’s way too dark in my head sometimes.”

I stare at her, memorizing something I have no reason to memorize and reach into my pocket, pulling out the lighter.

“Good thing I have a lighter, then.”

She smiles genuinely for the first time as I turn it over once in my head before holding it out. “Take it.”

She hesitates before taking it. “Why?”