Chapter 201
Chapter 201
Stella:
I woke to sunlight and waves. For a disoriented moment I couldn't remember where I was. Then Noah's arm tightened around my waist, pulling me back against his chest.
Costa Rica. The beach house. The night we'd spent discovering exactly how freeing it felt to have no walls between us.
"Morning," he murmured, voice rough with sleep.
"What time is it?"
"Does it matter?"
It didn't. For the first time in my adult life, I had nowhere to be, no performance to maintain.
"I could get used to this," I admitted quietly.
"Good. That's the plan."
He made breakfast on the two-burner stove—scrambled eggs with peppers, toast with local jam, sliced mango that looked like it had been picked that morning—and carried it all out to the porch table. I settled into a weathered chair and just breathed. The beach stretched in both directions, wild and empty. We might as well have been alone in the world.
"What do you want to do today?" he asked.
"I don't know." The admission felt strange. I always knew what needed to be done. But here, now, I had no idea.
Noah was watching me with that too-perceptive gaze. "You don't have to decide right now. We have time."
Time. That was the gift of this place.
"I want to swim," I decided. "Right now."
His smile was brilliant. "Then let's swim."
---
The days developed their own rhythm. Mornings on the porch. Long afternoons on the beach or exploring the nearby village, where Noah's Spanish turned out to be surprisingly good. Evenings cooking together in the tiny kitchen, the radio playing something we couldn't quite understand but didn't need to.
On our fifth day, we ventured into the village for supplies. In the market, I found a small ceramic pendant shaped like a wave.
Noah took it from my hand without asking, negotiated quickly with the vendor, and fastened it around my neck.
"Now you have something to remember this by."
"I don't need a reminder," I said.
"Good." He kissed my forehead, casual and public in a way that made my heart race. Here, we were just another couple. No one knew our story.
We ate lunch overlooking the water, fresh fish and rice and cold beer that tasted like summer. Noah told me about his childhood, about feeling invisible next to Zoe's brilliance, about discovering art as the thing that was entirely his own.
"That's why the comic matters so much," he said. "It's mine. Something I built that has nothing to do with my family or their expectations."
"And yet you offered to give up school because of it," I said quietly. "To give us a way out."
"I'm not giving up anything. I'm choosing." He reached across the table, his fingers finding mine. "I'd choose you every time, Stella."
The weight of that settled between us.
---
That afternoon we got caught in a sudden rainstorm—the kind that appeared out of nowhere on the Pacific coast, violent and warm and gone in forty minutes. We'd been on the beach when the sky turned grey, and by the time we ran back to the house we were completely soaked, breathless and laughing in a way I couldn't remember being in a very long time.
Inside, Noah peeled off his wet shirt and spread it over a chair. I wrung out my hair. The power flickered once, twice, then held.
"So," he said, watching rain lash the windows. "Looks like we're staying in."
"Looks like it."
We ended up on the small couch with his laptop, watching a film through the spotty wifi, the storm providing its own soundtrack. He pulled me close, my back against his chest, his chin resting on my shoulder.
"Can I ask you something?" he said.
"Mm."
"After this. When we go back. What do we actually do about Zoe?"
I stiffened slightly. He felt it.
"Not asking you to decide now," he said quickly. "I just—she suspects something. You know she does. And keeping this from her is eating you alive."
"She's my best friend."
"Exactly. Which is why the lying hurts you more than anything else." His arms tightened around me. "What if we controlled the narrative? Told her ourselves, on our own terms?"
"She would lose her mind."
"Probably. But she'd also understand. Eventually." He pressed his lips to my temple. "I'm not saying tomorrow. I'm saying... we think about it."
I stared at the rain-blurred windows for a long moment. The storm outside, the warmth in here. The impossible, terrifying, necessary conversation waiting for us on the other side of these two weeks.
"Let me think about it," I said finally.
"Okay." He turned back to the film. "That's all I'm asking."
We stayed like that until the storm passed, the screen flickering occasionally, neither of us really watching anymore.
---
Christmas Morning
We spent Christmas on the beach, exchanging small gifts. He gave me a sketchbook filled with drawings from our time here—the porch at dawn, the fishing boats at distance, my profile while I read. I gave him a first edition of his favorite graphic novel I'd hunted down online before we left.
"How did you know?" He turned the pages reverently.
"I pay attention," I said. Then, after a pause: "Also, you mentioned it in a comment response on your own Patreon about eight months ago and I screenshot it."
He stared at me. "You screenshot my Patreon comment responses."
"I was a dedicated subscriber."
He pulled me into his lap, both of us laughing, the waves coming in around our feet.
"I love you," he said.
"I love you too."
We stayed like that for a long time, watching the horizon, not needing to fill the silence with anything.
---
New Year's Eve
A small beach bar, mostly locals, a few other tourists. Nobody who knew us. Nobody who cared who we were.
Noah pulled me onto the makeshift dance floor as midnight approached, his arms around my waist, and I let him. I'd stopped cataloguing the risks approximately four days into the trip.
"Ten seconds," someone called out in Spanish.
"This year is going to be different," Noah said quietly.
"You can't know that."
"I know us. That's enough."
The countdown reached zero. Fireworks went up somewhere down the coast. He kissed me while the bar cheered around us, and for once I didn't calculate who might see or what it meant or what it risked.
I just kissed him back.