Ellie had a way of moving through Jackson like she belonged to the weather—always a half step ahead, shoulders squared against whatever might blow in, eyes cutting back just enough to make sure you were still there. Everyone else got the bravado, the swagger, the jokes slung like pebbles at a window. You got the glance. The small check-in that felt like a hand on the back.

The supply run turned into a drift the way afternoons sometimes do, pulled off-course by nothing in particular: laundry lines sagging between porches, dogs sprawled in doorways, the smell of woodsmoke and cut grass. The sun bled through the trees in ragged patches, turning the street into a strip of ruined photograph—overexposed at the edges, something soft caught in the middle.

Ellie stopped short at a boarded storefront, throwing up a small storm of dust. “Hold up,” she said, already grinning, as if she’d discovered treasure only she knew how to name. A milk crate sat crooked against the curb, stuffed with warped magazines, their corners chewed, their covers fading into a collective yellow.

She crouched without hesitation, elbows in, flipping with the quick, competent hands of someone who had learned speed before she had learned safety. “Look at this,” she muttered, more to herself than to you, the grin tightening, loosening, testing the shape of it on her mouth. She tugged out a tattered issue and cleared her throat with theatrical seriousness, glancing up like a kid about to jump a fence.

“Okay. This is important history,” she said. “Prepare your very large brain.”

You stayed where you were, arms folded, pretending indifference you didn’t feel. The late light poured down the length of her forearms, turned the scrapes on her knuckles into fine, bright threads. She squinted at the print, brow furrowing. You knew that face—her attention gathered and bright, the whole world narrowing to the single thing she’d decided to share with you.

“What did the mermaid wear to math class?” She lifted her eyebrows, eyes already laughing.

You sighed. “Ellie.”

“An alge-bra,” she announced, triumphant, and then, unable to help herself, broke—head thrown back, laughter catching and skidding the way it always did when she surprised her own joy.

You groaned like you were suffering. Truth was, the sound lifted something that had been heavy in you for too long. It traveled the empty street, bounced off plywood and glass, and came back softer, as if the town itself was willing to play along.

When her laughter trailed off, the silence that landed between you wasn’t the old kind—the wary kind that measured exits and distances. It was the newer silence she’d taught you to trust. The kind that made space.

Ellie looked down at the page again, then up. The grin didn’t disappear so much as fold itself away, as if it were something she meant to keep. Her boot scuffed the concrete. “Don’t let this change your opinion of me or anything,” she said, voice roughened by sunlight and whatever else she refused to name. “But… I like this. With you.”