Salt and Sea Glass

No Rules

They didn't talk about what they were, exactly, for the next few days, some unspoken agreement to let the thing between them exist without a label.

It was Dahlia, inevitably, who forced it.

"So are you two official, or are you just going to keep doing this weird thing where you look at each other affectionately and pretend it's platonic?" She said it refilling Jessica's coffee, entirely unbothered by her own bluntness.

"We haven't really talked about labels."

"Mm." Dahlia gave her a long look. "Can I say something as your new best friend s***h unofficial town oracle?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No. Part of the job." She leaned in, voice gentler than usual. "That man hasn't looked at anybody the way he looks at you since he showed up here three summers running, brooding by himself with that camera like the ocean owed him money. Whatever you two are doing, don't overthink it into something smaller than it already is just because it's got an expiration date attached."

The observation stayed with her the whole walk home, where she found Finn on her porch steps, two coffees from a different café balanced in his hands like a peace offering for a fight they hadn't actually had.

"I come bearing inferior coffee," he said, holding one out. "Dahlia's better, but figured you'd had enough of her opinions this morning."

"How did you know I'd had opinions delivered?"

"Small town. She probably texted three people before you finished your first sip." He settled beside her, shoulder pressed warm against hers. "For what it's worth — she's not wrong. About any of it, probably."

"You talked to her too?"

"Didn't have to. I already think it myself." He looked at her, steadier than the careful uncertainty she'd grown used to. "I don't want to pretend this is casual, Jessica. It's not casual for me. I know we've got a clock running less that four weeks left on my end, whatever's left on yours but I don't want to spend that time acting like it doesn't mean anything just because it's not going to last forever."

"What if that makes it harder? When it ends."

"Probably will." No illusions in it. "But I've spent five years photographing things because I was scared to actually live inside them. Don't want to do that here. Not with you."

The honesty disarmed her completely. She'd made rules once, in the dark of her bedroom the first week

don't let anyone get close enough to matter that much

qrand here she was, mattering to a man who mattered right back, with no interest in pretending otherwise.

"Okay," she said. "No rules, then. No pretending it's less than it is."

"No rules." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Just this. However long we get."

"However long we get," she agreed, and let him kiss her on the porch in full daylight, no distance left, no performance for anyone watching.

It should have felt reckless. It didn't. It felt like the first entirely honest decision she'd made in longer than she could remember.

"So," Finn said, pulling back with a crooked smile. "Girlfriend. Too much, too soon?"

"Try it and find out."

"Girlfriend," he said, testing it. "Yeah. Fits."

"It does," she agreed, and kissed him again before either of them could second-guess it.

They spent the rest of the afternoon doing nothing in particular, which felt, after six weeks of careful vigilance, like its own small luxury. Finn brought his camera down to the point out of habit more than plan, and Jessica sat on the same flat boulder she'd claimed as hers weeks ago now, sketchbook open, filling pages with rough studies of the tide pools while he worked a few feet away, both of them quiet in the companionable way that no longer needed narrating.

"Girlfriend," he said again at one point, apropos of nothing, like he was still testing the word for durability.

"You're going to wear that word out before the week's over."

"Good. Want it thoroughly broken in." He glanced over, camera lowered. "Feels different, saying it. Having something to actually call this instead of just —whatever careful non-label we'd been using."

"What were we using?"

"Honestly? I don't think we had one. Just avoided the question entirely and hoped nobody asked directly." He laughed at himself, a little sheepish. "Dahlia asked directly. Repeatedly, and with increasing volume, until we finally caved."

"She would love being right."

"Yes she would, this just gives her a fresh angle." He set the camera down and crossed to sit beside her instead, close enough that their shoulders touched. "For what it's worth, I don't mind her being smug about it. She was right. I just needed a shove to admit it out loud."

"Me too," Jessica admitted, leaning into him, the tide pulling in slow below them, indifferent and constant and, for the first time in longer than she could remember, entirely unthreatening.

They stayed out until the light started to change, packing up only when Finn's stomach growled loud enough that they both laughed, and walked back into town for dinner at the café, where Dahlia served them with an exaggerated flourish and refused to let either of them pay, muttering something about "commemorating the historic occasion" that made Jessica roll her eyes and Finn laugh so hard he nearly choked on his water.

"She's never going to let this go, is she," Jessica said once Dahlia had swept off toward another table.

"Not a chance. You've given her a story to tell for the rest of the summer, minimum." Finn reached across the table for her hand. "Small price to pay, honestly."

"I don't mind," Jessica admitted, and found, turning the sentence over, that she genuinely didn't mind being talked about by people who actually cared about her felt entirely different from being talked about by strangers who didn't, a distinction she was only now starting to fully understand.