Lamu was quiet.
The ocean stretched endlessly, the air thick with salt and possibility. Joey walked barefoot along the beach, the sand warm beneath her feet. The waves whispered secrets she couldn't yet understand.
She stayed in a small guesthouse run by an elderly woman named Asha, who wore bright scarves and spoke in riddles.
"You came to forget," Asha said. "But you'll remember instead."
Joey smiled. "I came to breathe."
"Then breathe deeply," Asha replied.
Days passed slowly. Joey swam under moonlight, wrote in her journal, photographed shadows and shells. She didn't think about Zed or Paul. Not directly. But they lingered—in metaphors, in dreams, in the spaces between sentences.
One evening, she sat with Asha on the veranda, sipping hibiscus tea.
"Love isn't a person," Asha said. "It's a place inside you."
Joey nodded. "I think I've been living outside of it."
Asha smiled. "Then move back in."
Joey laughed. "It's not that simple."
"It is," Asha said. "But simple isn't easy."
That night, Joey wrote:
> I am not a half. I am not a waiting room. I am not a mirror for someone else's reflection. I am a story. And I'm writing it now.
She slept soundly for the first time in weeks.