Mara stayed.
She asked questions. Real ones. She admired Sana’s hand-painted lava lines. She offered an idea about reinforcing the base with a piece of scrap wood.
Arin found himself watching Mara more than he should, not because she was beautiful, though she was, but because she looked like someone who had been holding up a collapsing ceiling for a long time and didn’t know how to put her arms down.
When Mara stood again, she exhaled slowly. “I rented this place for two weeks,” she said, like she was confessing something. “I needed… quiet.”
Arin nodded. “You picked the right town for that. We’re basically allergic to excitement.”
Mara glanced at the scattered papers on Arin’s porch, the tools, the half-fixed volcano, the messy knot of Arin’s fatigue. Instead of the polite distance he expected, she offered a warm smile that felt like sunlight finding a crack.
“You look like you’ve had a week,” she said.
Arin snorted. “I’ve had a life.”
And just like that, the fence between them stopped being a border and started being a place to lean.
They talked while Sana taped and painted and occasionally demanded “jury approval.” Mara spoke in careful pieces at first: burnout, responsibility, the weird loneliness that creeps in even when you’re surrounded by people who need you.
