Chapter 2: Shoreline Ghosts
785 Words
Shadows clung to the corners of the living room as the last light of day melted into dusk. Sereia stood barefoot on the creaky floorboards, her fingers brushing against the spine of an old photo album she hadn’t seen since high school. The house had been still for so long, it felt like stepping into a memory left out in the sun too long—familiar, but warped around the edges.
She sank to the floor, cross-legged in the same spot she used to read as a kid. The album creaked open with the sound of brittle glue and time. Her breath caught.
There they were.
She and Kaelen on the boardwalk, faces flushed from a day in the sun, hands almost—but not quite—touching. Another one with Kaelen in her wetsuit, grinning while holding up a baby sea turtle. Her hair wild, cheeks pink, eyes bright. Sereia remembered taking that photo. She remembered watching Kaelen laugh, the way she’d looked through the lens and felt her heart trip over itself.
God, it hurt. Not in the sharp, clean way of a breakup. This pain was quieter. Slower. The ache of something that never had the chance to be broken because it never truly began.
Because she never said a word.
Sereia closed the album, pressing her palm to the cover as if she could will the images back into the past. Kaelen had never known—not really—how much Sereia had loved her. Not with just affection or nostalgia, but with a fierce, aching kind of devotion that terrified her even now. Back then, it had lived in glances, in small kindnesses, in the way her chest burned when Kaelen smiled at someone else.
She stood, needing air. Needing space between her and the things she couldn’t unfeel.
Outside, the night had begun to unfurl. A breeze carried the briny scent of low tide, and the hush of waves rolled in steady as breath. She walked the narrow path to the shore, sand soft beneath her feet. Driftwood Bay stretched out before her—moonlit, wild, and endless.
She paused where the dunes met the beach, eyes scanning the surf. Her camera hung heavy around her neck, and she lifted it without thinking. The shutter clicked once. Then again. The rhythm of it calmed her, the way it always did. Framing the world made it feel manageable, like she could draw borders around the chaos.
She knelt to photograph a half-buried shell, adjusting her lens until the curve caught the moonlight just right. Behind her, a faint voice called out.
“Virelle?”
Sereia froze.
That voice.
She turned slowly, heart already racing.
Kaelen stood a few feet away, holding a clipboard under one arm, flashlight in the other. She looked the same and completely different all at once. Her hair was longer now, pulled into a low braid. She wore boots caked in wet sand and a faded shirt with a marine research logo Sereia didn’t recognize.
“Didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” Kaelen said. “Didn’t know you were back.”
Sereia found her voice, though it came out quieter than intended. “Yeah. Just got in yesterday.”
Kaelen smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I heard about your grandmother. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
A pause settled between them, soft and awkward.
Kaelen nodded toward the dunes. “I’m doing a late survey. Nesting patterns. The tide’s been weird this season.”
Sereia glanced at her camera. “Still saving turtles?”
Kaelen shrugged. “Someone has to.”
Another pause. The silence felt charged, like standing too close to lightning.
“You staying long?” Kaelen asked.
“Just a couple weeks. Cleaning up the house.”
“Right.”
Sereia opened her mouth, then closed it again. There were a thousand things she could say. Should say. But none of them felt right. Not when her heart was doing somersaults just from hearing Kaelen say her name again.
“Well,” Kaelen said, shifting her weight, “it’s good to see you. Really.”
“You too.”
Kaelen lingered a moment, then offered a small wave. “Take care, Sereia.”
She turned and disappeared into the night, her flashlight flickering between shadows. Sereia stood still, watching until she was gone.
The waves rolled in and out like breath.
Sereia pressed a hand to her chest.
She hadn’t said it then, and she didn’t say it now. But even after all this time, it was still there.
She was still in love with Kaelen Ysoria.
And Kaelen still didn’t know.
And maybe she never would.
- Writer
