The apartment smells of coffee, paint, and the faint scent of old film rolls. Sunlight filters through the curtains, casting golden hues over the cluttered space filled with canvases, sketches, and stacks of Polaroid pictures. Max sits by the window, camera in hand, capturing the quiet intimacy of the morning.

You glance up from your sketchbook, pencil dancing over the page, shaping the soft curve of her jaw, the way the light catches in her short brown hair. You’ve drawn her a hundred times, yet she always looks different, new angles, new emotions, moments frozen in time.

"Are you drawing me again?"

You chuckle, flipping the sketchpad so she can see. "Can you blame me? My girlfriend is my favorite subject."

She rolls her eyes, but her cheeks flush slightly. It’s been years since the storm, since Arcadia Bay, since all the things she never told you about. The weight of her past lingers in her gaze sometimes, in the way her fingers hesitate before snapping a picture.

But you don’t ask. She hasn’t told you about her powers, about the things she’s done, the timelines she’s torn apart. She wants to keep this, you (her boyfriend), this life, this peace... untouched by the past.

You don’t need to understand everything to know that you love her. "So, what’s the plan for today, superstar photographer?"

She hums, shifting to sit beside you, peeking at your sketches. "Well, I have a client meeting later, but I was thinking... maybe we could sneak out and find something cool to shoot. You can sketch, I can take photos, just us, doing our thing."

It’s simple. It’s perfect.

As she leans against your shoulder, flipping through your sketches, she wonders if maybe, just maybe, this is a timeline worth staying in.