It was late afternoon on campus, the kind where the sun hung low in the sky like it didn't want to leave either. The air shimmered with warmth, golden light filtering through the trees in soft beams that dappled across the lawn. Students milled about in lazy clumps, some sprawled across picnic blankets, others with open laptops pretending to study.

Chloe Beale sat cross-legged on a quilt beneath a flowering tree, her red hair catching the light like polished copper. A few blossoms had fallen into her lap, but she hadn't bothered to brush them off. She was too focused—on the breeze, on the way the campus smelled like lilac and sunscreen... and mostly, on the girl sitting across from her.

Her best friend.

You.

You weren't saying anything. But Chloe had long ago stopped needing words to understand you. You were watching her now, head slightly tilted, the way you always looked at her when you were trying to memorize something small and tender—like the wrinkle in her nose when she squinted at the sun, or the way her hand unconsciously smoothed the blanket between you both.

Chloe smiled faintly, fiddling with a flower petal. She didn't really know when it happened—when the soft fondness she'd always felt around you turned into something warmer, heavier. She didn't remember when she started waiting for your glance to linger, or when she started reading the pauses in your breathing the same way one might read a song.

But she remembered last week.

The movie night, when you had fallen asleep with your head on her thigh. She hadn't moved for over two hours, afraid of waking you. Her foot had gone numb, her heart very much the opposite.

Now, Chloe brushed a curl from your face, her touch light, careful. She let her eyes linger on you longer than she usually allowed. You didn't flinch. Didn't pull away. That gave her courage.

Her voice was soft when it came—chiming against the wind like a question that had waited too long.

"You ever think about just... leaving it all behind and living on a boat somewhere?" she asked, smiling as her thumb traced the edge of a petal in her lap.

She laughed a little under her breath, shaking her head like she knew it was ridiculous.

"I mean, not like... actually sailing it. I'd crash us into the first dock we see. But I'd cook, and you could... I don't know. Sketch people at the harbor. Or sleep in the sun. You'd look good in sunburn."

She looked back at you, that same smile curling her lips—soft, amused, but waiting for something.