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Steph had forgotten how beautiful Haven Springs is from the pier, especially at golden hour. Sitting on one of the dock posts, she can see the whole Main Street strip, doused in the rays of setting sunlight. It makes the whole town glow.
If someone had told her two months ago that she’d be considering staying in this tiny town, so often draped in the shadows of gutted mountain peaks, she would’ve laughed at the absolute insanity of the thought. Or maybe she would’ve cried. Maybe a bit of both.
It’s funny, she thinks, the way a town seems to morph around you the longer you stay.
When she stepped off the bus that first day, Haven seemed like the kind of place she needed to explore for a while. It was a fresh start, a reset, a do over. No one knew her name or her past. She could be whoever she wanted to be and leave all the other shit behind her, spread out across the Pacific Northwest. Haven lived up to its name those first few months.
But as the seasons changed, so did her relationship with the space around her. The leaves fell first, then the snow, and the whole sleepy town transformed into something that made her feel like a character stuck inside a snow globe. Sure, she still woke up and pinched herself sometimes over being paid to play music on the radio. Gabe, Ryan, and Charlotte had become closer friends than she ever hoped to find here. Getting back into tabletop games and LARPs returned a joy to her life that she hadn’t realized she’d been missing. But she was a traveller; an adventurer. She needed space to roam and explore and grow . She couldn’t do that here, not inside the snow globe. The setting was beautiful but confined, and she’d seen it all. She needed to break free again. It was always what she thought she needed.
Then spring came. The snow melted, the flowers bloomed reds and purples and yellows, and with it all came Alex Chen. Suddenly, Haven Springs didn’t feel so confined. It didn’t feel so lonely.
Steph didn’t feel so lonely. Or so detached.
She found herself wanting to spend hours on the couch beside Alex, watching obscure sci-fi movies from the ’80s and stuffing popcorn into their faces, even if it was the third or fourth or fifth time that week they’d done it. She found herself smiling whenever Alex’s eyes landed on hers. She found herself trying at every opportunity to make Alex laugh because Alex’s laugh was a melody of its own: bright and soaring and strong. Her joy was infectious; her boldness was incredible; and her kindness chipped at Steph’s walls piece by piece, brick by brick.
In little more than a month, Alex Chen had managed to completely derail Steph’s boldly flirtatious but entirely noncommittal persona around pretty women. Steph had spent years crafting that version of herself, building up a layer of confidence to armor herself with, and Alex walked in and ripped the shield clean out of Steph’s hands.
And that scares Steph, if she’s being honest. It fucking terrifies her, if she’s being frank.
Because try as she might, she can’t hide her feelings for Alex. She can’t shove them away or diminish them. She can’t bring herself to leave Alex behind or to be the only thing pulling Alex away with her. She’s disarmed, nothing left but her flesh, and she knows that if Alex ever wanted to, she could slice her clean in half.
Steph reads Alex’s text again ( Meet me at the pier in fifteen? ) and checks the time on her phone. Alex should be here any minute, and Steph knows there’s nothing else for her to do now but to sit and to wait.
She swings her legs in and out against the post, trying to settle herself, trying to focus on the gentle lapping of the water against the pier. Frogs croak at each other along the bank; far up in the trees, birds sing to one another. She closes her eyes and breathes in as deeply as she can. She holds the spring air in her lungs for a moment, then exhales it through her mouth and opens her eyes.
And there, at the opposite, far end of the pier, is Alex.
Alex smiles when their eyes meet, raises her hand briefly in a wave that Steph returns, and makes her way over as Steph slides off the post.
“Pensive day, huh?” Alex asks, stopping a couple steps away.
The way the sunlight settles on Alex, warm and bright, does not help Steph maintain any sense of calm, cool, or collectedness. Alex is absolutely radiant. And no matter how many times Steph looks at her, she never finds it any easier to remember how to function.
“You know me,” Steph says, trying to shrug it off. “My brain’s always full of brilliant ideas.“
“I’ll never doubt that again,” Alex says. “I wonder if Diane will be at Denver Pride this year.”
Steph laughs, glad for the lifted mood. “God, I still can’t believe how red she got.”
“Oh, please,” Alex scoffs. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”
Steph shrugs, but she can’t deny her grin. “What can I say? That plan required an expertise that Ryan just… doesn’t have.”
“Yeah, he’s great and all, but…” Alex looks her over for a second and Steph can feel her own body heat radiating across her cheeks, up into her ears. “There was never any contest.”
Steph’s brain fizzles out, shuts itself down like an updating computer. Any inspired, scintillating response that may have once been logged in there gets drowned out by radio static.
Alex looks entirely too pleased with herself.
“Careful, Chen,” Steph says, her brain finally rebooting. “Keep sweet talking me like this and I just might fall for you.” She’s beginning to wonder if she already has.
“Well, here’s to hoping I keep up the good work then.” Alex’s gentle smile grows. Her eyes are deep and warm and they’re settled directly onto Steph’s.
Steph racks her brain, searching for something—anything—to respond with, but her mind is, once again, a dazed void. She’s putty in Alex’s hands and she knows it. The way Alex is looking at her always flusters her, even when she’s not already mentally combusting.
She can’t remember someone ever gazing at her with such a gentle focus, at least not in a way that didn’t also have her packing a bag before dawn the next morning. It feels like Alex sees her—really sees her—and that should be terrifying. It should send her running straight for the nearest emergency exit, adding another name to the stack of women she knows deserved better, but she couldn’t give it to them. This, though? This look Alex gives her more and more often these days? It feels comforting. It comes when Steph is being an absolute dork, rambling late into the evenings about gaming, movies, and music. It’s the look she sometimes gets from inside the KRCT booth, when she glances up and realizes Alex has been standing amongst the vinyl, watching her dance to the beat of her own indie drum. It’s a look that makes her feel absolutely and completely understood.
And then it hits her in a wave of self-conscious terror:
“Shit, have you been reading me?”
To Alex’s credit, she does at least have the decency to look genuinely apologetic about it. “Sorry,” she says sheepishly. “I haven’t been trying to, if it helps? Your feelings are just… pretty loud tonight.”
“There’s no being mysterious around you, is there?” Steph asks, trying to add a light, flirty tone to her voice to take the edge off it all. She’s not sure how well it works. She’d bet not very, based on the fact that her brain has apparently been yelling her every thought tonight, despite her best efforts to maintain some semblance of composure.
Alex steps forward and takes both of Steph’s hands in hers. Steph wonders if, even without the super power, Alex can sense the kaleidoscope of butterflies that simple touch releases inside of her.
“There’s no way the inimitable Steph Gingrich could ever be anything less than mysterious. It’s part of your charm,” Alex says.
Steph rolls her eyes, but she’s grateful to Alex for playing along.
“Think we could sit?” Alex asks after a moment, gesturing to the edge of the pier. “It still hurts to stand for too long.”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Steph says. She keeps a hold on one of Alex’s hands to be an extra brace as Alex lowers herself down onto the wooden planks, then Steph settles down beside her.
“Thank you,” Alex says after a moment, squeezing Steph’s hand. “For everything, especially these past few days.”
“You really don’t have to thank me for any of that. I wasn’t going to let you hobble around your apartment alone with three broken ribs.”
“Still,” Alex says, shrugging. “I’m not sure what I would’ve done without you this past month. I definitely couldn’t have solved Gabe’s murder, but just having you around was…”
“It feels safe,” Steph says softly.
Alex nods. “It feels safe.”
Alex looks away from Steph, out over the lake, and Steph follows her gaze. There’s a full on sunset now, the sky ablaze with colors. There are deep purples and bright pinks and fiery oranges. They reflect down onto the water and make the whole lake look enchanted, like it’s holding onto the kind of fantastic mysteries Steph writes campaigns about. It looks alive.
Alex reaches into her pocket with her free hand and fishes out an envelope with Steph scrawled across the front. She looks at it for a moment, then holds it out to Steph.
Steph takes it. “What’s this?”
“Open it,” Alex says softly.
Steph turns the envelope over and lets go of Alex’s hand to slide her finger underneath the seal.
Inside the envelope, she finds bus tickets. Two of them.
“Alex, I…” She sets the empty envelope on the pier and holds the tickets in her hands. She stares, just stares at them, registering that they’re for her and they’re for Alex and they’re real. This is real . She looks back at Alex, desperately wishing in this moment that she was the one who could read emotions. “Are you sure?”
“I want to see you stoked as hell to be playing music again,” Alex says, smiling. “I want to explore new cities with you and listen to you complain about how uninspired their radio stations are. I want to go on dinner dates with you. Real ones, with appetizers and desserts, and I want to disgust every single couple around us with how happy we are to be there together. I want to make a life that feels like mine . And I want you there with me.”
Steph beams, totally and completely enamored. It’s not an entirely new feeling; the core of it has been there for weeks now, coaxing her into being brave bit by bit until she finally told Alex how badly she wanted to be with her. But it’s different now, hearing Alex say that she wants the same thing. Their futures winding together is possible, as real as the bus tickets in her hands, confirming to Steph that she can have a life with both music and Alex in it. She can move on from Haven Springs and see anything, everything, whatever they want. And it feels good. It feels really fucking good.
And, for once, Steph lets it feel good.
“Can I kiss you?” she asks.
Alex grins and nods. “I was hoping you’d ask.”
Steph cups her hands around Alex’s face and guides their lips together, and it’s as tender and slow as their first kiss up on the rooftop. It’s sweet and grounding and safe. It’s joy and it’s hope. It’s home.