Page 42 of Five Summer Wishes

I just wanted to be seen.

I didn’t tellanyone about the beach when we got back. Not Harper. Not Willa.

But I saw something shift in both of them that night over dinner.

Harper set her phone aside before dessert. Willa didn’t make a single joke during clean-up. Lily hummed softly to herself while she colored at the table, completely at ease.

And I realized something.

We were still a little broken. Still figuring it out.

But we were doing ittogether.

And that mattered more than I’d ever let myself believe.

Later,I sat on my bed with Iris’s journal in my lap. I hadn’t written in days. Hadn’t had the energy. Or the clarity.

But now…

Now I felt something different.

Not a sense of direction, but a pull toward honesty.

Dear Iris,

I think you’d like him.

He doesn’t flinch when I’m quiet. Doesn’t need me to be shiny or certain. He just listens. And stays.

You always said love wasn’t a lightning bolt. It was a house you build slowly, board by board, even when the weather’s bad.

I used to think I’d never even find the lumber.

But maybe I was just too busy holding everyone else’s roof together to notice someone was offering me shelter.

I’m not sure where this goes.

But I’m not running from it.

And that feels like enough.

12

WILLA

Ididn’t expect to see him at the farmers’ market.

I was just there to get figs and sketch the people buying overpriced bread like they were starring in their own French indie films. The light was perfect. The air was thick with the smell of cinnamon and wood smoke and a little salt from the harbor. I was already halfway through drawing a couple holding hands and sharing a crepe when I heard someone say my name.

Not the casualhey, Willa!kind of way. Theslow, disbelieving, still-wrapped-in-a-history-we-don’t-talk-aboutkind of way.

I looked up and there he was.

Sawyer.

Of course it was Sawyer.

Same green eyes. Same lopsided smile. Same everything that made my chest twist when I was twenty-four and pretending I didn’t believe in roots.

---