"Sometimes you don't fall in love with a person.
You fall in love with the way they sit inside silence."
—Ethan's notebook
⸻
Ethan
The heat of the day had broken, finally.
Out past the last rusted fence post behind June's house, the land dropped into a long stretch of wild field—knee-high grass, scattered crickets, and the occasional quiet flicker of a firefly.
June walked ahead of him with a flashlight in one hand and an old plaid blanket rolled under the other arm. She didn't say much—didn't have to. The stillness between them had begun to feel less like a wall and more like a narrow hallway. Walkable.
They stopped near a half-dry creek bed. A perfect view of nothing, and everything.
June spread the blanket, and for a while, they just lay there—not touching, not speaking—watching the dusk turn indigo, the stars teasing their way out one by one. Ethan had never seen stars like this before. In Manhattan, the sky was theory. Here, it was intimate.
He heard the soft click of a lighter. June lit a citronella candle in a chipped mason jar and set it between them. It smelled of lemon and smoke and childhood camping trips he never had.
"Fireflies'll start soon," she said, almost to herself.
He nodded. "You ever try photographing them?"
June gave a small shake of her head. "No point. They don't wait for you to be ready."
Ethan smiled. "Some things aren't meant to be caught, huh?"
"Most things," she said quietly.
⸻
They didn't talk about photography again.
Instead, June pulled something folded from her back pocket—a torn piece of notepaper, worn soft at the edges.
"You ever hear of Ada Limón?" she asked, not looking at him.
Ethan sat up a little. "Yeah. Poet. Why?"
June shrugged. "I found this in the library. The copy was so used someone had underlined half the page. I don't know why, but I liked it."
She read:
"The rain sounds like a mother's voice,
low and constant, even when it's nowhere near the house."
She didn't read the rest. Just that line. Let it hang.
The field was absolutely still.
Ethan swallowed. "That's beautiful."
"She reminds me of my mom. Or how I remember her—before everything got complicated."
He didn't ask what everything meant.
He just listened.
⸻
June
He didn't interrupt me.
That surprised me. Most people, when they hear I like poetry, either laugh or say something polite and condescending like "That's deep." But Ethan just looked at me like the words had opened a door he didn't know he'd been waiting to walk through.
I could see it on his face.
We didn't say it out loud, but I think both of us knew—we'd come out here to talk about something else. Something heavier than poems and bugs.
But neither of us had the right language yet. So we used fragments.
I told him about the storm that broke our porch when I was eleven.
How my dad spent the whole next day fixing the railing, even though he was hungover and bleeding from one hand.
"That's how I knew he loved us," I said. "Not the I-love-you kind of love. The kind that fixes things without saying why."
Ethan was quiet for a long time. Then he told me about the fire escape.
"I was twelve," he said. "My mom locked herself in her room for three days. I sat on the fire escape and counted how many windows I could see light in."
"How many?"
"Twenty-four. Only ours stayed dark."
That silence returned—but this time, it wasn't empty. It was full of small things: breath, candlelight, the soft rustle of grass.
⸻
A firefly blinked near June's shoulder. Then another, hovering above Ethan's shoe. Dozens began appearing—blinking, stuttering, like stars trying to remember their way home.
Ethan lifted his camera, but paused.
"You mind?" he asked.
June hesitated. Then nodded.
He didn't ask her to move. Didn't direct her. Just took one photo—her face lit by flashlight and fireflies, caught mid-thought. No pose. No pretense.
She looked at him after. Really looked.
And for the first time, Ethan felt seen. Not as a visitor. Not as a man with a camera. But as someone who might belong here—not to the town, maybe, but to her version of it.
⸻
When they walked back, the flashlight beam jittered between their feet. Once, their hands brushed.
Neither of them pulled away.