Clara stayed longer than she thought she would. Days turned into weeks, and the rhythm of the coastal town wrapped around her like a loose-knit sweater—soft, imperfect, comforting. She woke early now, usually before the sun, and took long walks along the shoreline with only her thoughts and the occasional call of seagulls for company.
She was no longer trying to escape something. That had changed.
Now she was simply listening.
Listening to herself. To the quiet that lived beneath her old anger. To the voice that hadn't had space to speak when everything was crumbling around her.
One morning, she found herself sketching a figure from memory—a girl with tired eyes and a guarded expression. She didn't recognize it at first. But as the strokes became sharper, more defined, she realized it was a version of herself. One she had carried for far too long.
Clara stared at the sketch for a long time.
Then she tore it out.
She didn't crumple it, didn't burn it. She folded it carefully and placed it in the drawer of the desk in her room. It wasn't who she was now, but it had been. And it deserved to be acknowledged.
At the café, she began seeing familiar faces. A woman who always ordered tea with lemon and left half of it untouched. A man with ink-stained fingers and a typewriter ribbon poking from his coat pocket. They didn't talk much, but there were nods, small smiles. The beginnings of something like presence.
There was one young man—maybe a little older than Clara—who sometimes sat outside playing guitar. He wasn't loud, wasn't trying to draw a crowd. Just a few soft chords and a worn notebook balanced on his knee. One afternoon, she passed him and hesitated. He looked up, nodded politely.
"You draw," he said. Not a question.
Clara blinked. "How did you—?"
He shrugged. "Your hands. Ink on your fingers. And the way you stare at things before you look away."
She couldn't help but laugh. "You're observant."
He smiled. "I write songs. Kinda comes with the territory."
His name was Eli. They didn't become fast friends, but over the next few days, they shared a few conversations—about music, about favorite books, about how quiet places could make loud hearts feel heard. Clara didn't think too hard about it. It wasn't romantic. It was just human. Easy. New.
One evening, she showed him one of her drawings. A cliffside tangled in wind and fog.
"It's sad," he said, not unkindly.
Clara looked at it, then back at him. "Yeah. I guess it is."
He didn't ask her why. She was grateful for that.
That night, Clara walked back alone along the darkened shoreline, the moon casting a silver trail across the waves. She thought of Lena. Of Jace. Of the girl she'd been and the woman she was trying to become. There was still pain. Still confusion. But there was something else now, too.
Possibility.
Clara stopped and looked out over the water. The tide was pulling back, revealing pieces of the shore that had been hidden all day.
She smiled softly.
Some things only surface when you stop trying to hold the tide back.
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