Episode 1: The Perfect Lie

Jeaner never believed in fairytales, but if there was one person who made her consider the possibility, it was Kellan.

Their apartment sat on the tenth floor of an old brick building in the heart of Verona Hills. The space was modest but warm, full of mismatched pillows, fading polaroids, and little notes Kellan left her in the mornings—scribbled on napkins and stuck to coffee mugs: “Don’t forget your smile today.”

She hummed as she prepared his favorite dinner—lemon rosemary chicken and sweet potatoes—checking her phone now and then. Kellan was late, but he always was. A busy photographer with clients across the city, he lived in constant motion. Jeaner didn’t mind. She had long learned to celebrate the small pockets of time they shared, rather than complain about the spaces between them.

Tonight was special. She’d bought tickets to the jazz concert he once casually mentioned wanting to go to, and she had something even more important hidden in her sketchbook: a proposal.

Not a ring. Not a down-on-one-knee affair. Just words. A heartfelt letter asking if they were ready for forever—because she was. Kellan had seen her at her worst, and she’d loved him at his. They’d survived long-distance, job shifts, the loss of her father. If that wasn't love, what was?

At 9:30 p.m., the food sat cold on the table. Still no message.

She texted: Everything okay?

No reply.

She sighed and began tidying up. Reaching for his coat tossed carelessly over the armchair, she went to hang it up. Something clinked in the pocket. Curious, she reached inside and pulled out a small velvet box.

Her breath caught. A ring?

She opened it. It was delicate — rose gold with a sapphire at the center. Her heart fluttered. Maybe he’d had the same idea. Maybe tonight was fate folding in on itself, stitching two hearts into one promise.

Then her eyes caught the tag. A receipt.

Jeaner’s smile faltered as she unfolded the paper. The ring had been bought three days ago. The name on the gift note was not hers.

To Arielle. Forever, always, and more. -K.

She stood frozen, the air sucked out of her lungs. Arielle?

Her best friend. The one who had helped her plan Kellan’s surprise birthday just weeks ago. The same woman who cried with her when Jeaner’s dog died. The same woman who had always claimed she "wasn’t into Kellan like that."

Jeaner wanted to believe it was a mistake. A misunderstanding. But the evidence was undeniable. The trembling in her hands grew as she dug deeper into the pocket and found Kellan’s phone—unlocked.

There it was. Message after message. Photos. Voice notes. Kellan calling Arielle “his real muse.” Telling her things he hadn’t said to Jeaner in months.

Suddenly, the apartment felt foreign. Too many memories clung to the walls like smoke—ugly, choking. The dinner table she once called their ‘little haven’ now looked like a stage for her humiliation.

She put the phone down. Sat still for a long moment, hands in her lap, the ring box beside her.

No tears came. Only stillness. Deep, echoing stillness.

She looked around at everything they'd built — the bookshelves they painted together, the plant Kellan named Fernie, the couch with a tiny coffee stain from their first dinner party. All of it felt like a cruel joke now. A story written with invisible ink, where only one of them had believed in the plot.

She stood up and walked into the bedroom. Opened the closet. Pulled out a suitcase.

Inside, she packed only essentials — her sketchbook, a few clothes, her passport. She left the framed photo of them at the beach, her favorite mug, and the shoes Kellan had bought her for her birthday. Each item felt like a lie.

Before she left, she placed the ring box on the dining table — right beside the cold chicken. She scribbled a note:

“I found it. I found her. I found the truth. I hope she’s worth it.”

Then she walked out.

She didn’t go to her mother’s. Didn’t call her friends. She booked a late-night train out of the city with no real destination. When the conductor asked where she was heading, she blinked and chose the farthest name she recognized: Brightport.

A sleepy coastal town she once visited as a child. That was all she remembered — the sound of waves, a crooked lighthouse, and the taste of raspberry ice cream that dripped down her wrist faster than she could eat it.

It felt right. Distant. Safe.

The train rolled through the night like a lullaby for the broken-hearted. Jeaner didn’t sleep. She stared out the window, her reflection barely visible against the glass. She didn’t recognize herself. Not yet. But she hoped she would.

The morning light broke softly over Brightport. The town was still, almost like it was holding its breath. She stepped off the train with no one waiting, no destination but forward.

She checked into a small inn by the harbor. The old woman who ran it didn’t ask questions — just handed her a key and said, “Ocean view. Good for thinking.”

Jeaner nodded silently and climbed the stairs.

Her room smelled of salt and wood and something vaguely nostalgic. She opened the window, and the sea greeted her like an old friend. Waves curled and uncurling endlessly, steady and indifferent.

She watched for a long time. Then, finally, she cried.

She cried for the girl who believed love was enough. For the friend she’d trusted. For the man she would’ve given everything to. For the version of herself that had been shattered in a single night.

But beneath the sorrow, there was a tiny ember of something else. Not hope, not yet. But possibility. The tiniest whisper that maybe — just maybe — this was not an ending.

Just a beginning

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...~Bye~...

Episode 2: Vanishing Point

The ocean had a rhythm Jeaner hadn’t known she needed. Each morning, she woke to the whisper of waves brushing the shoreline, like the world gently urging her to breathe again.

Three days had passed since she arrived in Brightport.

Three days of silence.

No calls. No messages. No Kellan. No Arielle.

She had turned her phone off the moment she boarded the train. Not out of fear, but because she didn’t want to hear apologies, explanations, or worse—excuses dressed as love.

This wasn’t running away. This was disappearing on purpose.

She spent most of her time walking along the coast, sketchbook in hand. Her drawings used to be delicate and romantic—now they were raw. Angry lines. Sharp silhouettes. A woman screaming into the wind. Another curled into herself like a dying flower.

Still, it was something. Pain, at least, meant she could still feel.

The innkeeper, Mrs. Tilly, had started leaving little extras on her breakfast tray—honeycomb, fresh bread, handpicked strawberries.

“Artists need strength,” she said one morning, without asking anything more.

Jeaner gave her a faint smile. Gratitude without words.

---

On the fourth day, the sea led her to the docks.

Brightport was a quiet fishing town, its heartbeat slow but steady. She watched boats come and go, the harbor filled with shouts and laughter from people who had nothing to prove to the world. They just existed—honest and weather-worn.

That’s when she saw him.

A man, probably in his early thirties, standing alone at the edge of the pier, checking the nets on a small boat. His dark hair was tousled by salt and sun, and he moved with the kind of quiet purpose that comes from solitude, not loneliness.

He didn’t glance her way.

Good.

Jeaner wasn’t looking for conversation. But fate had other plans.

As she turned to walk back, a sketch blew from her book, caught in the wind and fluttering down to the water’s edge. She chased it, but it was the stranger who caught it first—plucked from the air like a reflex.

He glanced at the drawing: a pair of hands gripping a broken heart like shattered glass.

He looked up, and for the first time, their eyes met.

“You dropped this,” he said, voice low but steady.

Jeaner reached out, avoiding eye contact. “Thanks.”

He paused, then handed it over without comment.

“I’m Rowan,” he added after a beat, not pressing for her name.

She hesitated, then quietly replied, “Jean.”

It wasn’t a lie. Just not the whole truth.

Rowan nodded once. “You draw pain well.”

She blinked. “That’s not exactly a compliment.”

“Wasn’t meant to be.” He motioned toward the sea. “Just an observation. Pain leaves deeper lines than joy.”

Jeaner wasn’t sure what to say to that. So she said nothing.

He didn’t seem to mind.

---

The next morning, she found herself near the docks again. She told herself it was the sea she wanted, not the company. But when she spotted Rowan fixing the same boat, a small flicker of familiarity lit in her chest.

They didn’t speak that day, only exchanged a nod. Still, it felt like something—something stable.

Over the next week, they crossed paths more often. Sometimes he’d bring her fresh tangerines from the market. Other times, he simply sat on the edge of the pier while she sketched a rusted anchor or the old lighthouse beyond the cliffs.

No questions. No assumptions.

One day, she finally asked, “What do you do?”

He didn’t look up from the knot he was tying. “Fix things. Boats, mostly. Sometimes people.”

Jeaner smiled faintly. “Which one am I?”

He met her gaze evenly. “Still deciding.”

---

That night, Jeaner opened her sketchbook and drew something new: a man standing on the edge of the sea, back turned to the world, yet rooted like he belonged to the horizon.

She titled it “Anchor.”

She didn’t know what Rowan’s story was. But she didn’t need to.

Not yet.

All she knew was that for the first time since she left Verona Hills, she didn’t feel like she was drowning.

And maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t lost anymore.

Just... not found yet.

---

Episode 3: Salt and Silence

Brightport had a quietness that didn’t feel empty. It felt intentional—like the town knew how to hold space for people who didn’t want to be seen but needed to heal.

Jeaner was starting to blend in.

She developed a routine: sketch by the docks in the morning, walk the beach after lunch, return to the inn before sunset. It gave her enough solitude to think, but not enough to spiral.

And in the middle of that silence… there was Rowan.

He never intruded. But he always noticed. Like the time she shivered slightly on the pier, and he quietly handed her a thermos of hot coffee without a word. Or the day he left a folded paper crane on the bench where she always sat—no note, just the gesture.

There was comfort in the way he existed. Solid. Present. Uncomplicated.

That morning, Mrs. Tilly knocked on her door holding a flier.

“Rowan asked me to give you this,” she said with a knowing twinkle in her eye.

Jeaner unfolded the paper. It read:

“Help Wanted – Paint signs for the new docks. No sea experience needed. Just steady hands and better taste than mine.”

—R.

A smile tugged at her lips despite herself.

---

She showed up that afternoon.

Rowan glanced at her from behind a crate. “Didn’t think you’d come.”

“You bribed me with sarcasm. Worked.”

He chuckled softly and handed her a brush. “You good with blues? Or do you only paint heartbreak?”

“Depends on the shade.”

They started with the basics: repainting numbers on the boat slips, sketching names onto wooden signs. She worked quietly, focused, while Rowan sanded rough wood and repaired weathered beams. Occasionally, he’d hum—low, barely audible.

There was peace in that. Work that didn’t need performance. Connection that didn’t demand stories.

By day’s end, Jeaner’s arms were speckled with paint, and her heart felt unexpectedly lighter.

As she packed up, Rowan looked at her.

“You’re not running from something, are you?”

She paused. “Not anymore.”

He nodded, as if that was the answer he’d expected. “Good. Then maybe you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

Jeaner stared at him, surprised by how much that single sentence made her want to believe it.

---

Over the next few days, painting turned into something else — laughter, quiet conversation, and easy companionship. Rowan told her he grew up in Brightport, left for a while, then came back when his brother died. He didn’t talk about the grief directly, but it sat between his words like a soft ache.

Jeaner didn’t press. She recognized that ache.

“I used to think leaving fixed things,” she said one afternoon, painting the word “Marlowe” onto a boat sign. “But some pain clings to your bones, no matter where you go.”

Rowan didn’t reply immediately.

Then he said, “Pain like that doesn’t want to be fixed. Just witnessed.”

She looked up at him. “Is that what you’re doing?”

He met her gaze. “Only if you’ll do the same for me.”

Something in her cracked open—just a little.

---

That evening, Jeaner walked to the shore alone, sketchbook in hand. She sat by the rocks and drew her first peaceful image in weeks:

A boat sailing away—not fleeing, not lost—just... free.

She titled it “Letting Go.”

And as the tide pulled in around her ankles, she whispered a name she hadn’t said out loud in days.

Kellan.

Not with longing. Not with anger.

Just release.

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...bye 👋 ...