Maya looked at her own painting with fresh eyes. He was right. She'd painted the river as both constant and changing, and somehow that felt like hope.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "For this. For seeing what I needed before I knew I needed it."
"You would have done the same for me." Ethan sat beside her on the rock, close enough that their shoulders touched. "This is what you do for your clients, right? Create space for them to express what they can't say?"
"I guess."
"So let me do it for you. Just for today."
They sat in silence, watching the river move. Maya felt something settle in her chest not happiness exactly, but contentment. The quiet satisfaction of creating something, of being next to someone who understood the need for both connection and space.
"Can I tell you something?" Ethan said eventually.
"Always."
"I've been running for twelve years. Since I was eighteen and left home. I told myself it was about photography, about seeing the world, about freedom." He picked up a small stone, turned it over in his hands. "But really I was running from what I saw in my parents how love made my mother bitter and my father selfish. I thought if I never stayed, I'd never become them."
Maya waited, giving him space to continue.
"But being here, with you, I'm starting to think I've been running from the wrong thing. It's not love that destroyed them. It was how they loved selfishly, possessively, without trust." He looked at her. "You scare me, Maya. Because you make me want to stay. But you also make me think maybe staying doesn't have to mean what I thought it meant."
Maya's heart was pounding. "Ethan"
"I know. Three weeks. I'm not asking for promises." He set down the stone. "I'm just being honest. You asked me to be honest, so I am."
"I don't know if I can be what you need," Maya said carefully. "I'm still so broken. Still so scared."
"You're not broken. You're healing. There's a difference." Ethan took her paint-stained hand. "And I'm not asking you to be anything except yourself. Scared and brave and honest. That's enough. You're enough."
Maya felt something crack open in her chest not breaking, but expanding. Making room for possibility.
"I want to try," she whispered. "Really try. Not just three weeks. But I need you to be patient with me. I need you to understand that I'm going to panic sometimes, that I'm going to be difficult"
"I know."
"And you're still leaving. In three weeks, you're getting on a plane to Thailand, and I don't know how to" Her voice broke.
"We'll figure it out. Together." Ethan cupped her face gently. "Maybe I don't take the assignment. Maybe I do but we stay in touch. Maybe we try long-distance. Maybe we spectacularly fail and both get hurt. I don't know, Maya. But I know I want to try."
"That's terrifying."
"I know." He smiled. "Want to be terrified together?"
Maya laughed despite the tears on her cheeks. "That's the worst relationship pitch I've ever heard."
"It's honest though."
"It is." Maya looked at this man who'd brought her to a river to paint, who'd held her while she cried, who was offering her messy possibility instead of false promises. "Okay. Let's be terrified together."
Ethan kissed her then soft and deep and full of relief. Maya kissed him back, tasting promise and fear and hope all mixed together.
When they pulled apart, Ethan was grinning. "So we're doing this? Actually doing this?"
"I think so. Maybe. Yes." Maya laughed at her own uncertainty. "Yes."
"Can I take your picture? With your painting?"
Maya's instinct was to say no she hated photos of herself, hated the vulnerability of being captured. But this felt different. Important.
"Okay."
Ethan positioned her with her painting, the river behind her, morning light catching in her dark hair. He took several shots, his expression intent and focused.
"You're beautiful," he said, lowering the camera. "Do you know that? When you're creating, when you let yourself just be you're luminous."
Maya felt heat rise in her cheeks. "Stop."
"Never." He came back to her, kissed her again just because he could. "Can I show you something?"
He pulled up his camera and scrolled through images. They weren't just landscape shots they were photos of her. Painting, concentrating, biting her lip in focus. Laughing at something on the water. Looking peaceful in a way she never felt.
"This is how I see you," Ethan said quietly. "Present. Alive. Exactly where you're supposed to be."
Maya stared at the images, barely recognizing herself. She looked… happy. Or at least, on the verge of it.
"Can you send me these?"
"All of them. They're yours."
They spent another hour at the river painting, photographing, talking, kissing. Maya started a second painting, looser and more experimental. Ethan showed her his photos, explaining his composition choices, his use of light. They existed in that perfect bubble of new relationship energy, where everything felt significant and possible.
Finally, cold and hungry, they packed up and walked back to the car.
"Food?" Ethan asked.
"Definitely food."
They found a diner twenty minutes away, the kind of place that served all-day breakfast and had vinyl booths and smelled like coffee and bacon grease. They ordered too much food and ate slowly, stealing from each other's plates, talking about everything and nothing.
"What's Thailand like?" Maya asked, surprising herself. She'd been avoiding thinking about his departure, but maybe that was the wrong approach. Maybe she needed to engage with it instead of pretending it wasn't happening.
"Hot. Chaotic. Beautiful in a completely overwhelming way." Ethan sipped his coffee.
"I'm shooting a travel campaign for a hotel chain. Six weeks of beach resorts, street food, temples. It's good money, and I've been looking forward to it for months."
"But?"
"But now I'm thinking about what I'll be missing here."
Maya's chest tightened. "You should go. It's your job, your life. I can't I won't be the reason you give up opportunities."
"I know. And I'm not saying I won't go. I'm just saying it feels different now. Everything feels different." He reached across the table. "Talk to me about what you're thinking. Really thinking."
Maya took a breath. "I'm thinking that three weeks isn't enough. I'm thinking that six weeks feels impossible. I'm thinking that I want to ask you to stay but I know I can't. I'm thinking" She paused. "I'm thinking I've spent two years protecting myself from feeling anything, and now I'm feeling everything, and it's terrifying."
"Good terrifying or bad terrifying?"
"Both."
Ethan nodded slowly. "Can I propose something? No pressure, just an idea."
"Okay."
"Come with me. To Thailand." He held up a hand before she could protest. "Not the whole time. Just a week or two. You said you can do some remote sessions, right? Bring your paints. We'll work during the day and explore at night. You can come back whenever you need to. But at least we'd have that time together."
Maya's immediate reaction was no absolutely not, too risky, too much. But then she thought about what Dr. Chen had said about which risks she could live with. She thought about Sienna's comment about living at half volume. She thought about her mother's voice asking when she was going to take a risk.
"I maybe. I need to think about it."
"That's not a no," Ethan said, hopeful.
"It's not a no," Maya confirmed, surprising herself.
They lingered in the diner until the lunch rush started, then drove back to the city in comfortable silence, hands linked over the console. Maya watched the landscape pass and tried to imagine herself in Thailand sticky heat, unfamiliar language, herself in a foreign place with this man she was just beginning to know.
It terrified her.
It also thrilled her.
When Ethan pulled up in front of her building, neither of them moved to get out.
"Thank you for today," Maya said. "For the river, for the painting, for everything."
"Thank you for saying yes. For trying." Ethan turned to face her. "I know this is scary. But I think we could be good together. Really good. If we're brave enough to find out."
"I'm working on the brave part."
"You're already the bravest person I know." He kissed her softly. "Text me later?"
"I will."
Maya gathered her things her paintings, the watercolor set, her phone full of photos he'd sent. She paused at the car door.
"Ethan? I'm glad you sent those postcards."
His smile was sunrise-bright. "Me too."
That night, Maya spread her two new paintings on her kitchen table next to the sunrise she'd painted the day before. Three paintings in two days more than she'd created in two years.
She took a photo and sent it to Sienna: I'm painting again.
Sienna's response was immediate: And????
And I'm terrified and maybe possibly considering going to Thailand and I think I'm falling for him.
FINALLY. Details. Now.
Maya smiled and called her, settling in for a long conversation about fear and hope and the possibility of maybe, finally, taking a risk that mattered.
Outside her window, the city moved on indifferent and beautiful. But inside, in her small apartment surrounded by her mother's art and her own new paintings, Maya felt something shift.
Not happiness. Not yet.
But the beginning of it.
The courage to imagine it might be possible. Or maybe you needed these two years to learn what you're learning now. Grief doesn't have a timeline, Maya. And choosing to try again isn't betraying anything. It's honoring the fact that you survived and you're still here."
"What if I'm not ready?"
"What if you are and you just don't know it yet?" Dr. Chen leaned forward. "What's the worst thing that happens if you see him?"
"I fall for him and he leaves and I'm destroyed."
"And the worst thing that happens if you don't see him?"
Maya was quiet for a long moment. "I stay safe and alone and prove my mother right about living small."
"Both options carry risk. The question is which risk you can live with."
November 3rd arrived cold and bright. Maya changed her outfit four times, settled on jeans and a sweater that felt casual but intentional, then changed again because she didn't want to look like she was trying too hard.
She was trying too hard.
They'd agreed to meet at a café near the art museum, neutral territory for both of them. Maya arrived fifteen minutes early and ordered a tea she didn't drink, watching the door with a mix of dread and anticipation that made her feel sixteen instead of twenty-eight.
Ethan walked in at exactly 2 p.m., and Maya's heart did that stupid complicated thing it had done at the wedding recognition and terror and want all tangled together.
He looked different. Thinner, maybe, or just tired from travel. His hair was longer, curling at his collar. He was wearing the canvas jacket she remembered and carrying a camera bag that looked like it had been through a war.
His eyes found hers across the café, and his entire face transformed into a smile so genuine it hurt to witness.
Maya stood on shaking legs as he approached.
"Hi," Ethan said, and his voice was exactly as she remembered warm and a little rough, like he'd been talking for hours or not at all.
"Hi," Maya managed.
They stood there for an awkward moment, neither sure of the protocol. Hug? Handshake? Nothing?
Ethan held out a small package. "I brought you something. From Iceland."
Maya took it with trembling fingers. Inside was a small watercolor set portable, expensive, professional-grade. The kind her mother would have loved.
"You said you didn't paint anymore," Ethan said quietly. "But I thought maybe you'd want to. Someday."
Maya's eyes burned with tears she refused to shed in a public café. "Thank you."
"Want to sit?"
They sat. They ordered more drinks neither of them wanted. And slowly, carefully, they started talking.
It felt like the wedding night and nothing like it. The ease was still there that strange comfort of being seen but now it was weighted with everything unsaid, with six weeks of postcards and silence and fear.
"How was Europe?" Maya asked.
"Cold. Beautiful. Lonely." Ethan wrapped his hands around his coffee cup. "I kept seeing things and wanting to show you. Which was new. Usually I'm pretty content alone."
"Usually I am too."
"But not lately?"
Maya shook her head. "Not lately."
They talked for two hours. About his travels and her work, about Sienna's marriage and Marcus's new baby, about nothing important and everything that mattered. The café filled and emptied around them, and neither of them moved to leave.
"I have three weeks," Ethan said finally, as the afternoon light began to fade. "Before Thailand. I thought I don't know what I thought. That maybe we could see each other. As friends, if that's all you want. Or as"
"I don't know what I want," Maya interrupted, honest and terrified. "I know I'm glad you sent the postcards. I know I'm glad I'm here. But I also know I'm scared, Ethan. Really scared."
"Of me?"
"Of this. Of wanting something that can't last. Of you leaving in three weeks and me being" Her voice broke. "Alone again."
Ethan reached across the table, slowly, giving her time to pull back. She didn't. His hand covered hers, warm and solid and real.
"I can't promise forever," he said. "I can't even promise I won't leave in three weeks, because I will. That's my job, my life. But I can promise that if you give me these three weeks, I'll be completely here. Present.
Honest. And we can figure out the rest as we go."
"That's not much of a promise."
"It's all I have."
Maya looked at their joined hands, at this man who'd traveled across the world and still thought about her, who sent postcards like breadcrumbs leading back to possibility.
She thought about her mother's voice: When are you going to take a risk?
She thought about Dr. Chen: Which risk can you live with?
She thought about herself, alone in her apartment, safe and stuck and slowly disappearing into her own fear.
"Okay," Maya whispered. "Three weeks."
Ethan's smile was sunrise-bright. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. But I need you to know I'm probably going to be difficult. I'm probably going to panic. I'm probably going to"
"I know," Ethan said gently. "I'm probably going to be all those things too. We can be a mess together."
Maya laughed, surprising herself. "We're definitely going to be a mess."
"The best kind."
They sat in the café until it closed, talking and not talking, holding hands across the table like teenagers, both terrified and both brave enough to try anyway.
When they finally left, stepping out into the November cold, Ethan turned to her. "Can I take you to dinner? Tomorrow?"
Maya's instinct was to say no, to keep this controlled and limited and safe. But she was tired of safe. Tired of small.
"Yes," she said. "Tomorrow."
Ethan kissed her cheek gentle, brief, a promise of more and walked away toward his car.
Maya stood on the sidewalk, watching him go, her heart pounding and her mind screaming warnings she was choosing to ignore.
Three weeks.
She could do three weeks.
Maybe.