soli

Before him, the Mediterranean crashed against the shore, inhaling matter in a whirl of iridescent reflections. Nothing remained of the familiar calm of Monaco’s harbour; here, on this island far removed from the rest of the world, the Earth was nothing against the Sea.

Sovereign and incontestable, her waters twirled in a fierce dance, wrenching shellfish and crustaceans from the rock. The foam left by the waves colonised the sand, staining it with white froth. Driven by the Mistral, it vanished at once into the eternal cycle of Renewal.

And amid this dance of turquoise and azure—standing alone on the beach’s sole jetty—Lando felt horribly alone.

Yet he had chosen this ‘spiritual retreat’.

The first time Max uttered those words, Lando had nearly choked with laughter. The mother of a mutual but remote friend had apparently praised the concept during a family meal.

It had taken three mimosas for the idea to take root in Max’s mind and three glasses of rum for Lando to be persuaded.

In a few minutes, he would vanish to a small French island between Nice and Corsica, far from Ibiza and its lascivious evenings, where he knew his friends and colleagues would spend their summers.

His bag weighed heavy on his sore shoulder. Lando regretted not wearing his cap; the sun was already burning his cheeks.

A crab scuttled across the sand and disappeared beneath a wave.

A chorus of splashing pulled him from his reverie. Lando turned. A few steps away, on the jetty, stood an old man. The curling smoke from his pipe vanished into the sun’s rays and nestled in the dozens of wrinkles crossing his face.

“T’es l’g’min que j’dois emm’ner su’l’île, c’ça?”

Lando coughed, the tobacco’s nebulous spirals coiling around his throat. He stammered a few words in French, but the man’s lip-smacking around his pipe quickly cut him off.

“Y’th’lad I’m t’take t’t’isle, yeah?” the old man grumbled, spitting more smoke.

Most of his vowels disappeared into his long beard, forming an unfamiliar accent. The smoker had to repeat himself thrice before Lando finally nodded in understanding.

“F’llow me.”

Lando fell into step behind him without question.

Hands in the pockets of his shorts, he struggled to keep pace with the old man. The sun dazzled him even through his sunglasses, and pearls of sea spray, lifted by the breeze, licked his cheeks with their salty tongues.

The old man soon halted before an ancient fishing boat, the only one moored among the jagged rocks and their razor-sharp blades.

“Brav’ beast, this’un,” he knocked on the hull.

Lando nodded, unsure what else to do. His gaze drifted to the ever-raging sea. It never seemed calm here, as if to scream its existence to all.

The old man climbed aboard with ease. Lando could not match his agility. The rickety vessel was a far cry from the opulent yachts he was used to. He handed his bag to the man and hauled himself onto the deck. His legs, shaky from leaving land, sought balance, only finding it when the stranger sat at the edge.

Lando cast one last glance at the coast and its Provençal villages, then looked out at the sea they were to cross.

How would their makeshift boat withstand this furious swell? The paint had peeled away with the salt, and deep scratches streaked the wood—no doubt marks from rocks the hull had scraped against.

Lando swallowed hard and hugged his bag close. The old sailor tapped his pipe thrice against the stern, brought it back to his lips, and untied the rope securing the boat to a thick rock.

“Won’ take long. Sea’s quiet t’day.”

Quiet was hardly the word Lando would have chosen, but he kept silent.

Beneath his feet, the engine roared. Before he could startle, the boat surged forward, leaving civilisation and the bottles he had no time to cast behind them.

The rickety craft rode the waves fearlessly. More than once, Lando felt as if he might fall into the void; his stomach churned; his jaw clenched. The old man’s face, however, remained serene, though his eyes were narrowed and fixed upon him.

Lando fidgeted, uneasy.

“Why’d y’come?”

“What?” he shouted over the noise of the waves and wind.

At least here, he could escape the merciless sun.

“Why’d y’come, eh? No one comes ‘ere,” the old man shook his head. “Last was a lass, two months back. Since, nothin’. Few even know th’isle’s there, y’see.”

It was Charles who had told him about it. Though the Monegasque had never berthed there himself, he had heard tales of its inn—a haven of peace at the crossroads of worlds and times where one forgot the passage of seasons and its woes.

“I needed a change of air.”

A wave splashed against his back. He closed his eyes and savoured the moment’s respite. When he opened them again, the old man’s gaze seemed gentler, and the silence between them, less oppressive.

Twenty minutes later, the sailor announced their arrival.

Lando raised his head. The island was larger than he had thought. The sole trace of human society, apart from the rudimentary harbour—a rotten wooden jetty and a mooring bollard—was the stone building that adorned the verdant landscape.

Lando disembarked, nearly tumbling into the water as a sudden gust rocked the hull. Once ashore, he rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a fifty-euro note, which he handed to the sailor. The man spat his pipe and, with blistered fingers, took the money.

The sailor nodded, crossed the jetty in five steps, and stopped at its end before a small tin box from which he withdrew three letters.

He returned to his boat; Lando set off for the inn.

As he pushed open the door, a wave of cool air embraced him and a bell tinkled.

“Mon dieu, sorry love! Didn’t hear ye! Come in, come in. Make y’self at home, will ye?”

A woman of about sixty hurried down the creaking steps, dusting her hands on her floral apron. She ushered him inside, closing the door behind them with a muffled thud.

Lando might have cried with joy hearing the lady’s perfectly comprehensible English. The southern accent lingered, but the vowels were mostly all there.

Without asking, she relieved him of his bag.

“Thought ye’d be arrivin’ tomorrow, I did. Then I remembered, no, s’today. Just finishin’ up cleanin’ yer room. But listen to me, goin’ on. Ye don’t care ‘bout my old stories,” she waved off his reaction before he could voice it, hauling a huge leather volume onto the dining table.

Everywhere, flowers sprinkled the living room. Dried sunflowers stood proud in frames, while bouquets of hydrangea and chamomile cluttered the sideboards. The mistress of the house, amidst this fragile vitality, seemed impervious to decay.

Her finger slid over the register, mumbling the names of previous guests until she found his.

“Lando Norris, there y’are now! Had yer name outta me head, excuse me. At my age, the mind’s slippin’” she winked. “Ye’re stayin’ two weeks, is it?”

He nodded.

“Well now! Look at tha’! I seem t’attract wanderers. Lucky me, eh?”

Lando didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

He watched her jot down a few words and tick some boxes before suddenly snapping the register shut. He jumped.

The woman rearranged her bun—held by a wooden pin—and turned to him, wiping her shiny brow. With a wave, she beckoned him to follow.

The steps creaked under her weight. He feared they might give way. Everywhere, gouges in the wood lightened the original colour of the staircase.

“Breakfast’s at seven, lunch at noon, dinner’s at eight in the dinin’ room, though I can bring it up to ye if ye’d rather. No internet here, nor signal. We’ve got electricity, and that’s enough.”

Lando already knew this; it was one of the reasons he’d chosen this inn over others.

They reached the upper floor.

“Y’look after yer own room.”

The old lady pulled a key from her apron.

“Ye’ve got the first room. Easy to remember, there’s only three,” she snorted.

“Is there a phone?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“For tha’, ye’ll have to go to the village. Only post we get is what Jacques brings, once a week.”

The sailor, Lando concluded. An odd fellow, that one.

“Hope he didn’t scare ye, with his big voice. He’s not used to speakin’ English, is all.”

Lando shrugged. He’d dealt with far worse than a grumpy old man with an unkempt beard; this one reminded him of elders from the Spanish and Greek islands where he usually spent his summer breaks.

“Jacques only comes on Wednesdays, ten sharp. Don’t miss him. Ye’ll pick up how things work round here soon enough. S’not too hard. Oh! I’m Solange, by the way.”

She opened the door to his room. Like the living room, few furnishings: a bed, a desk, a chest of drawers. Just enough.

Lando turned his head. At the corridor’s end, a closed door. He stood still a moment, then frowned at the woman.

“Am I the only guest?” he asked.

“There’s another girl about, but ye won’t see much of her. Always off wanderin’, that one.”

Lando thought of the girl the sailor had mentioned. Probably the same. Though the knowledge he wasn’t alone disappointed him, Solange’s words on her discretion reassured him. He nodded and set his bag on the bed.

No one would disturb him here. Silence, sun, sea, and nothing else. It was perfect.

“I’ll leave ye to settle in. Dinner’ll be served shortly.”

Solange closed the door behind her before he could utter a word. Silence enveloped him. Lando hurried to fling open the window—a blast of hot air invaded the room—and began unpacking.

He pulled his laptop from his bag and placed it on the desk, an immediate blot upon the rustic scene, right beside the oil lamp. A glance at his watch showed half past seven. From upstairs came the clatter of dishes and Solange’s grumbles.

His MacBook quickly plugged in, he switched it on, opened the programme Jon had sent before his departure, and hurried down the stairs.

The bowl of bouillabaisse—“a proper Provençal soup, dear! with scorpionfis, caught this mornin’” Solange had explained—turned his stomach.

As everything else here, the sea ruled above all.

Lando stared at the bits of fish swirling in the soup amongst fennel and garlic, wondering why he hadn’t chosen to do his spiritual retreat in Thailand like everyone else.

With a trembling hand, he forced down a spoonful and stifled a gag. Solange watched him pick at his meal, eyes sparkling, before taking pity and replacing his bowl with a plate of tomatoes and mozzarella.

“Ah, ye should’ve told me ye didn’t like scorpionfish, lad. I’d’ve spared ye that trouble.”

He smiled shyly and devoured the plate.

Between two slices of fresh tomato, his gaze drifted to the empty chair opposite, though a place setting had been laid.

His look must have been insistent, for the sixty-year-old explained that the other guest—the mysterious girl everyone spoke of—never came down to eat, but Solange nevertheless set a plate for her in the hope she might one day join them.

“Tha’ girl loses all track o’time out there,” she added with a tender smile.

He nodded, unsure what to say.

Once dinner was finished, he stood, handed his empty plate to Solange, and hurried upstairs.

Lando collapsed on his bed and closed his eyes. He would start Jon’s training tomorrow, he thought. After all, he was on holiday, and summer was in no rush; who was he to break its rule of idleness.

Suddenly, clicks and clacks echoed down the corridor into his room. Lando opened his eyes and tried to locate the source of the noise. Perhaps Solange was washing the dishes?

A door slammed, footsteps hurried down the stairs, and a feminine voice shouted: “I’m going out, Sol’! Don’t wait up for me!”

Exhausted from the day, he fell asleep without further thought, glad to have found a place on this earth where he could escape prying eyes and their ill-judged remarks.

Back on the shore, the rollers pounded against the coast.

It was the sound of the waves that woke Lando that morning.

Aside from the seagulls outside, the rest of the house still slumbered in a lethargy proper to summer mornings.

A quick glance at the clock told him it was a few minutes before seven. The sun already beat warmly on the stone walls; the wind, for now, resisted the invader, though Lando knew it would surrender within an hour or two.

Lando pressed down on his door handle; the rusty hinges screeched in protest despite his care. He grimaced. Solange was up—no doubt about that, he could hear her muttering in the kitchen—but what about the girl in room number three?

His gaze shifted to that very door. The end of the corridor was bathed in light, so much so that the colour of the floorboards, the walls, even the picture frames, seemed to all vanish under the golden veil of Summer.

The door stood ajar.

Lando stepped closer, cursed when the floorboard creaked under his weight, and peeked inside. Nothing much to see, just a messy desk cluttered with mismatched seashells.

“Bonjour, Lando!” was the first thing he heard as he made his way downstairs. His thoughts still preoccupied with what he’d glimpsed, the Englishman stumbled over his own greeting.

“Come on over, I squeezed ye some proper fresh juice. From the island’s own oranges, no less!”

Solange handed him a chilled glass and gestured toward the same chair he’d sat in the previous day.

The first sip—sweet and cold—swept away the remnants of sleep and his questions along with it. The old woman wiped a few drops of condensation from the table with her tea towel, slung it back over her shoulder, and turned to her flour-dusted work surface.

Lando tried to ignore the empty glass in front of him. He kept thinking of the seashells.

“Meant to ask ye yest’day, what with the trip an’ all, what brings ye ‘ere?”

He noticed immediately how the morning seemed to rob Solange of the vowels she’d enunciated so clearly the night before.

“I needed to disconnect for a while. My job is... intense, let’s just say.”

“What d’ye do?”

“I’m a Formula One driver.”

From her blank stare, Lando could already tell the words meant nothing to her. He smiled, pleased.

“I race cars.”

She gave an impressed little nod and began kneading dough.

“And d’ye win?”

“Sometimes. I’m often on the podium, though.”

“Tha’s good.”

The conversation fizzled out. The feeling of being just another normal person warmed Lando’s chest. He took another sip of juice to dampen it. It was already hot enough; it would be unwise to abandon himself to emotions.

The brioche further down the table was calling to him. He hesitated, then gave in. Jon wasn’t there to scold him, and no one here gave a toss about his weight—certainly not Solange, who was already talking about lunch: pistou soup and ‘few-gas’, whatever that was.

“Oh, before I forget–!”

Solange slid a sheet of paper toward him. She explained it was the shopping list they gave Jacques every Wednesday at ten so that it could be delivered the following week.

“If y’need anythin’, jot it down.”

The paper was already half-covered in messy handwriting, which he guessed was Solange’s—hurried, scratchy, listing everything from fruit to fish (he grimaced at that), to soap, even books.

At the very bottom, in blue ink (sea-blue, he couldn’t help but think), was a different, feminine handwriting—one of those elegant old-fashioned scripts where vowels and consonants intertwined in delicate loops.

1 pack of blank paper, 2 notebooks, 3 pens.

His eyes lingered on that blue line, confirmation that the girl from room three was, indeed, real.

He hadn’t imagined her the night before.

Lando considered adding anything, but didn’t want to be a bother. Solange had specified everything on the list was paid for by the inn, not the guests.

He reminded himself he had his laptop, that it was more than enough, and clicked the pen shut.

He drained his glass in one go, popped the last bite of brioche into his mouth, brushed the crumbs into a neat pile, and headed upstairs to change into his running gear.

Lando didn’t need to consult his laptop—Jon’s programme was branded into his memory. After bidding Solange goodbye, he began his run around the island.

I don’t expect performance, Jon had told him, just maintenance. Stay in shape. F1 drivers weren’t exempt from the sneaky dangers of summer holidays—those that tempted you with their sweet laziness and made you forget about discipline.

His pace wasn’t anywhere near Monaco speed. Here, he took the time to let the scenery unfold. He passed the orange groves Solange had mentioned, planted among fig trees and olive branches, climbed the little hills and jogged down to the shore.

And then he saw it. The sight stunned him into stopping.

There, in the middle of the horizon, between rocks and waves, stood a lighthouse—undeniably master of the tide.

A boat was moored beside it.

He frowned as he saw a figure vanish inside, then resumed running, still frowning.

“Is that lighthouse still running?” he asked Solange upon returning.

She handed him a tissue to wipe his brow.

“Not that I know of,” she shrugged. “State won’t put coin into fixin’ it. Says it’s no use now. Boats don’t pass ‘ere like they used to.”

A towel smacked him in the face, cutting the conversation short.

“Go shower. Ye reek. And if ye fancy helpin’ an old woman, start with the veg’, would ye?”

He squinted exaggeratedly.

“That’s emotional blackmail, Solange.”

“Maybe. But it’s workin’, innit?”

And it did, because fifteen minutes later, Lando was peeling potatoes with his hair still damp from his cold shower.

Solange made him laugh with tales of her youth, and the vegetables were soon done.

At noon, despite the pistou soup being delicious, the untouched plate beside him left a bitter taste in his mouth. Solange said nothing, but he caught the flicker of sadness on her face as she cleared the pristine bowl.

After that, Lando wandered aimlessly through the house. The morning run had drained him, and the suffocating afternoon heat finished him off. He ended up sprawled on the sofa, eyes drifting toward the half-open shutters. The distant sound of cicadas and seagulls lulled him toward an inevitable nap.

Solange, seated nearby with a crossword puzzle, peered at him over her glasses.

“Bored already, kid?”

Lando shrugged, not wanting to offend her.

“I’ll see if Jacques can’t take ye out to sea tomorrow. Might do ye good. Give ye somethin’ to do.”

“No need. I wouldn’t want to bother him,” Lando murmured, sinking deeper into the cushions.

The idea of spending hours stuck on a boat with Jacques gave him chills. Thankfully, Solange didn’t insist, and so Lando considered the matter closed; the worst, avoided.

But the next morning, the sound of a motor yanked Lando from sleep. When he drew back his curtain, a knot tightened in his stomach. The small blue-hulled boat—with its tangled ropes and rusted bucket—was tied to the old wooden dock.

Wednesday had come, and with it, Jacques and his ever-present pipe.

He watched Solange embrace the sailor and hand him their shopping list. Jacques stuffed the paper into the pocket of his sea-damp overalls and sank into conversation with her. From here, Lando could nearly hear his gruff voice and chewed-up vowels.

Eventually, Jacques disappeared into the inn, Solange close behind.

“Mornin’, lad,” he said as Lando descended. “Heard y’wanna sail?”

“Oh!” Lando glanced at Solange, whose radiant smile deepened every wrinkle on her face. “Er... yes?” he mumbled.

Jacques’s grey eye—clouded with age and cataracts—sparkled.

Being the people-pleaser he was, Lando felt compelled to keep the pleased look on his face. So, with a bit of hesitation, he followed Jacques outside.

On the way to the dock, the old man explained that the inn lent a little sailing boat to guests for short trips or excursions.

“But th’lass hog it.”

Lando barely registered the comment. His gaze stayed locked on the boat’s hull. He swallowed hard as he counted the cracks; a few more had appeared since the last time.

“Ain’t tricky. Got a m’tor an’ a tiller. Good bit o’machin’ this one,” he added, giving it an affectionate slap. “Y’wanna go right? Turn left. W’nna go left? Tu’n right.”

Lando blinked, then nodded weakly. He silently cursed himself for saying yes to this outing, maybe even to this whole spiritual retreat.

Jacques, lost in his explanation, did not notice his torment.

“Wave comes at ye, only two ways. Gun it or fac’ it head-‘n. Ye? Ain’t cut f’tha’ yet. Most ‘portant thing. N’ver let th’crest catch ye. Else yer done. Seen too many men lost tha’ way. Got it?”

“Not really?”

“S’fine. Ye’ll learn on th’boat.”

He motioned to the rickety craft, which swayed under their weight.

They set out. Soon, the rocks vanished from view. The tide had risen, and with it, his nausea. Lando bent his knees, struggling to find balance on the ever-moving sea. One must adapt to the wave, not the other way around.

He paled when Jacques handed him the tiller. Right is left. Left is right, he recited in his head. Before them, the sea stirred—eager to test the fledgling sailor. Fear clenched Lando’s gut and compressed his lungs. The ocean seemed to challenge him, conjuring deep-born waves to prove its dominance.

Lando looked back at the shore, his back soaked, already nostalgic for solid ground. When he turned his head, the lighthouse—the one from his morning run—towered above the rocks, far more imposing than he’d remembered.

Without thinking, he turned to Jacques.

“Can we go there?”

The sailor stared, puffed his pipe.

“Ye askin’ th’wrong sailor, lad.”

A wave splashed his face, the salt stinging his eyes, cutting the exchange short, but Lando did not look away from the lighthouse. Seawater dripped from his hair, clung to his lashes, slid down his neck. He didn’t care, mesmerised.

Something thudded against the boat. Jacques’s roar burst into Lando’s ears. Straighten th’rudder, god’s sake! He obeyed, barely. For a few seconds, he stood defiant against a raging Poseidon. Then the god grew bored and summoned a wave. Lando stared at it, so vast and immense. The Sublime washed over him, weakened his limbs. How small man was, before Mother Nature.

With a crash, the wave broke over them. He barely had time to shut his eyes. The deck flooded. So did his shoes. And finally, his stomach surrendered.

He leaned overboard just in time to vomit up his breakfast.

The two men returned to the inn in silence.

“What’d ye do to the poor lad, Jacquot? He’s lookin’ green as seaweed,” was Solange’s first remark as she handed Lando a towel.

Too busy lamenting his fate, he didn’t notice the fourth figure on the dock. It was only when a mischievous and feminine laugh rang out that he looked up and froze.

You reminded him of an endless summer. Sun-kissed skin dusted with freckles from hours outdoors. Salt-kissed hair lightened by the sea breeze.

Too beautiful to be real.

A faint memory from school—English class, perhaps—surged in his mind; a tale of sirens, and the men who fell for their charms.

Lando figured one must have swum up the Tyrrhenian and into the Mediterranean Sea.

Your shirt danced in the breeze, but he didn’t notice, captivated by the wide smile on your face. He scrubbed his hair with the towel, suddenly painfully aware of himself, of the sick still clinging to the corners of his mouth, and of you watching him.

“Hi,” you finally said. “I’m the other guest. You must be Lando. Sol’ told me about you.”

“That’s right,” he stammered, offering his hand.

You gave him your name. He tried not to dwell on the feel of your palm against his or the sound of his name on your tongue.

Two wrinkled hands seized his shoulders and yanked him away before he could humiliate himself further. Solange guided him back toward the inn, promising grilled sea bream with herbs.

“Nothin’ better t’set ye straight.”

Lando didn’t even think to grimace, too busy glancing over his shoulder, desperate for one more look at the siren—an anomaly surely sculpted by the gods.

A wave of disappointment struck as he realised you would not be following them. Instead, you were already deep in conversation with Jacques. The old sailor had transformed. He gestured broadly, enunciated his vowels, even stowed his pipe.

For a brief moment, your eyes met his. You winked.

Lando flushed.

Then you leapt into a small sailboat—one Lando swore hadn’t been there a minute ago—and loosened the ropes.

You waved and set sail.

When he awoke the next morning, the seagulls already shrieking at his window, Lando wondered if he had imagined last night’s outing and his encounter with the second host—a mirage, conjured by sea gods to punish his mediocre seafaring talents.

A knock at the door drew him from his lamentations. Three firm raps that startled him upright and tore him from his briny dreams.

Lando nearly choked when he opened the door—still in boxers—and found you standing in the doorway, barefoot, your skin salted by the morning wind.

“Solange’s been going on about bringing you at sea. She says you’re bored. So get ready. We leave in half an hour. Oh! And bring a swimsuit.”

Without waiting for an answer, you turned on your heel and vanished down the stairs, leaving behind a trail of salt and fig, the scented air threatening to drag him under a wave of dreamy sirens and lovesick drownings.

When Lando reached the jetty, the little sailboat from the day before was bobbing just above the water’s surface; you, one knee to the ground, were fastening a rope with a focused expression that he found utterly endearing.

You looked up at him suddenly, wind tangling your hair, and smiled.

“Right on time. You ready?”

Lando nodded and stepped over the hull. You followed with an ease he could not help but envy.

“The sea’s calmer than yesterday,” you reassured him quickly, catching his wary glance at the swell. “I don’t know what Jacques was thinking, taking you out in a weather like that.”

“Maybe he wanted to get rid of me,” Lando joked weakly, gripping the edge of the boat a little tighter.

“Maybe,” you shrugged. “No one really knows what’s going on in his head.”

You untied the lines and pushed against the dock with your foot. Softly, the boat began to drift away.

The two of you left the island in a trail of foam. The water—already glinting under the morning sun—barely rippled beneath the prow, but the gentle rocking was enough to rouse Lando’s stomach.

A hand began to stroke his back as he leaned over the edge, gasping.

“Breathe through your nose. Look at the horizon,” you advised, sitting down beside him.

The now-familiar perfume of fig and salt wrapped around him, drowning out the stench of algae and rotten fish. The nausea began to ease.

Lando straightened, cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“So, uh… have you been here long?”

If you caught on to his attempt at changing the subject, you gave no sign, simply returning to the helm. Lando stifled his disappointment as your hand left his back.

“Almost two months now.”

You ducked beneath the boom with the unconscious agility of someone who’d done it a thousand times (which, Lando figured, you probably had), and smiled as you adjusted your sunglasses.

“I was only meant to stay a week,” you went on. “But Solange can be pretty persuasive when she wants. I think she realised before I did. That I needed a bit more time away from all that.”

Lando understood, even without further explanation. ‘All that’ had a way of ruining people’s lives.

Silence settled between you again, broken only by the gentle slap of waves and the occasional cry of seagulls.

He watched you. The ease with which you steered the boat through the swells and rocks. That quiet confidence. An instinctive mastery that reminded him of his own connection to his car.

You tamed the Unpredictable with a calm that demanded admiration.

“Was it Jacques who taught you to sail like that?” he asked after a while.

A bright, unrestrained laugh burst from your throat. Your head tilted back, and Lando watched, entranced, as saltwater droplets glistened on your neck.

“Goodness, no! I don’t think anyone’s ever learned anything from that old sea-beard! You’d have to understand what he’s mumbling for that. No. I learned as a kid. I’m from Saint-Malo. In Brittany.”

Seeing Lando’s blank expression, you added: “It’s in France, on the Atlantic coast. Not far from Jersey, actually. My dad is a fisherman, so I grew up on boats.”

“Sounds cool.”

“It was.” Your smile softened, clearly sculpted by the memories of a joyful childhood. “But probably not as cool as driving cars.”

Lando tensed instantly.

Your eyes sparkled.

Smirking, you tilted your chin toward the west, where a jagged line broke the horizon.

“Marseille’s less than forty minutes from here. Go on another hour–” You pointed at a faint smear of land farther east. “–and you’ll reach Monaco. It’s hard to escape Formula One around these parts, even if you couldn’t care less.”

“So tell me,” you continued. “What’s Lando Norris doing in the middle of nowhere?”

You had said his name with a familiarity he only ever heard from those who knew who he was, and everything that came with it.

His shoulders stiffened.

“Relax,” she said, and somehow, he did. “Your secret’s safe with me. Hell, even if I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, I’d have to sail all the way to the village. And no offence, superstar, but the ten old southerners who live there couldn’t care less.”

He hesitated, then conceded you were right—the world was far away, and here, he was no one. For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he felt the urge to confide in you, this stranger who no longer felt like one—tossing a bottle into the sea, fully aware of the tide.

“I was tired of being watched. Judged for every little thing I do. I wanted to disappear for a few days. I knew I wouldn’t get any peace in Ibiza. Or Portugal. Or Greece. Anywhere with Internet, really.”

You slid back to sit beside him, your pinkie finger grazing his. Lando had to resist the sudden, foolish urge to intertwine them. There was something about you—something familiar, fig-scented, salt-kissed—that he did not understand but welcomed deep in his chest, and lower.

“My best mate helped me find the inn. I wanted him to come at first, but he said it’d do me good. To be alone.”

He glanced at you, searching for a reaction, but your smile did not waver. It even widened as you looked past him.

“We’re here.”

Lando turned, and promptly flinched at the sudden sight of the lighthouse, closer than ever. A tower of stone, so tall it pierced the sky open.

You moored the boat to a dock even older than the one back on the island and held out your hand to help him down. Lando’s heart skipped, but he masked it and clasped your hand.

You tugged him toward the lighthouse. He barely had time to take in the flaking paint, the worn stone; you threw open the door with a bang and led him up the stairs, higher and higher, your palm never leaving his.

Inside, the lighthouse was nothing like the cold, empty place he’d expected. Though the enormous lantern sat dormant at its centre, the room felt lived in.

Loose pages littered the floor and steps, some scribbled with a cursive handwriting, others with doodles or strange shapes with no obvious meaning. Mismatched cushions were heaped in a corner atop frayed blankets, surrounded by half-open books and board games missing pieces.

The scent of figs and salt hung in the air, and through the cracked glass panes, the Mediterranean sparkled.

“You did all this?”

You flopped onto the cushions.

“Yes. I got tired of picking figs and oranges back on the island. The rustic charm wears off pretty quick. I ended up here by accident, during a storm, and cleaned everything. Took me two weeks just to clear the spider nests.”

He lay down beside you. Your shoulders touched. Your pinkies searched for one another

Staring up at the dome, where a lopsided and seemingly recent mural of sea creatures stretched across the ceiling, Lando thought he could get used to this place.

“Earlier,” he began, tracing the misshapen tentacles of a purple octopus, “you said you needed to get away from things.”

Beside him, you shifted. On impulse, his hand found yours and gave it a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

“I was lost,” you said, voice almost a whisper. “I think I still am, in a way.”

Lando turned his head. He looked at you—this woman with sea-water hair and fig-scented skin—and thought you were like a shoreline: untameable, impossible to grasp, but utterly, achingly beautiful.

“It’s hard to know who you are when all your friends have their lives figured out,” you continued. “My best friend’s getting married in six months. Another already has three kids. All have big careers, big lives. And me? Well, I guess I felt like I was behind. Wandering without a purpose. Maybe to put off the inevitable. Responsibilities. Adulthood. All that.”

You turned to look at him. Your noses nearly touched. Neither of you pulled away from the newfound closeness.

“So I left,” you murmured, eyes flicking briefly to his lips. “Just like that. To try and find something. A purpose. Something to guide me.”

You pulled away and gestured around the room.

“There are loads of lighthouses in Brittany. I know them all by heart. My dad’s obsessed with them. He used to say they’d help me find my way if I were ever lost at sea.”

You cleared your throat and began to play with one of his curls, watching it spring back into place.

“I knew I had to find my lighthouse. One that was just mine. To guide me through storms.”

“And did you?” Lando asked, breathless, eyes locked on your mouth.

You gave him an incredulous look.

“Well, yeah? You’re in it.”

He spluttered. You burst out laughing.

“I’m messing with you.”

You paused, then added more quietly: “Fixing this ruin helped me figure things out. It was therapeutic, all those trips alone. Gave me a purpose and time to think.”

Suddenly, you clapped your thighs and stood. Lando jumped. The moment vanished.

“Right! Up you get! It’s far too hot not to enjoy the beach.”

You went back down.

In front of you, the Mediterranean shimmered, turquoise and undisturbed by the breeze.

“A proper millpond!” you said.

Without hesitation, you stripped off your shirt and shorts, wedging them beneath a stone—or maybe it was a shard of sea-glass, smoothed by the tide—then turned toward him.

Lando, behind his sunglasses, let his gaze drift down your body. He swallowed hard and adjusted his shorts.

“Last one in does the dishes for three days!”

You took off running before he could react.

“Come on! That’s not fair!” he shouted, laughing, before peeling off his shirt and dashing after you.

You plunged—Lando five seconds behind—into a chaotic splash that sent gulls scattering from the rocks.

“Looks like Solange found herself a new kitchen por—”

Lando didn’t let you finish. He raised an arm and sent a wave crashing over you. You yelped. He roared with laughter.

“Oh, you’re on!” you cried, sputtering seawater before lunging at him.

You chased and splashed each other, minutes dissolving into the rise and fall of the waves you stirred and your laughter.

When your legs finally began to tire, you made your way back to shore. Lando collapsed onto the sand, panting, while you climbed aboard the sailboat. You soon returned with a canvas bag full of boxes and fruit, which you set down on your shirt, by his side.

“Solange made the picnic,” you explained, handing him a slice of cold tomato quiche. “Lucky for you. Otherwise, I’d probably have poisoned you.”

They ate in silence, legs buried in the sand, skin still damp from the sea. When the sensation became too much, you pulled two towels from your bag and laid them side by side.

Time dissolved into a familiar post-lunch drowsiness and the lazy rhythm of the waves. You didn’t speak, basking in the presence of the other, content not just to be, but to be together.

You swam again, and again, drifting ever closer, nudged by the waves and something deeper, something that strangely looked like Fate.

Lando realised, watching you draw suns and shells in the sand only to let the ocean erase them and start again, that it had been a long time since he’d felt this at peace.

Max had been right. This spiritual retreat was a good idea.

“Do you think we could come back tomorrow?” he asked suddenly, almost shyly, eyes on the waves.

“Depends,” you replied at once. “You planning to puke on my boat again?”

“No promises. My stomach has a mind of its own. But I’ll do my best.”

“Hm. Then it’s a yes.”

Because a promise is a promise, you both went back the next day. And the day after that. Soon enough, the lighthouse became a landmark, a secret haven just for the two of you.

You climbed over rocks, swam for hours, savoured Solange’s picnics between bouts of laughter, collected seashells or simply sat in silence, gazing out at the horizon.

Days passed, each one perfumed with the same bouquet of salt, sun, and insouciance.

On the evening of the fourth day since that first expedition to the lighthouse, Solange—as she always did—set a plate for you at the table, before letting out a wistful sigh.

“I’m glad the girl’s op’ning to ye,” she said, staring at the empty chair with melancholy in her eyes. “She used to be an oyster, that one. If y’get a moment, tell her I’d love if she joined us for supper sometime.”

Lando opened his mouth to promise he would try his best, but a clamour of creaking steps cut him off before he could. Solange dropped her tea towel when you suddenly burst down the stairs and sat yourself at the table without a word.

“What? I mean. Are you–?” she stammered, mouth agape.

“I thought I might eat with you tonight. If that’s alright for you, Sol’?”

“Yes!” she blurted out immediately, trembling with delight. “Yes, of course, darlin’! No trouble at all. Wait till ye try my red mullet tart — ye’ll be beggin’ for the recipe, I swear!”

She gave your shoulders a quick squeeze before vanishing into the kitchen with a squeal of joy.

“I think you broke her,” Lando chuckled.

You rolled your eyes, smiling despite yourself, and Lando couldn’t help but do the same, charmed by the playful tilt of your expression.

When Solange returned, she carried in a steaming tart smelling of fish. Lando’s stomach churned at the scent. His grimace made you snort. As he accepted a slice with a tight-lipped smile—he never could say no to Solange—he kicked you under the table. You yelped.

“What’s wrong with you, girl?” Solange asked, frowning.

“Nothing.”

“If ye say so. Here, try this!” She sliced you a generous portion. “Patrick brought in the best red mullet o’the season! Oh– hold on, forgot the vinaigrette for the salad!”

Lando didn’t dwell on who Patrick was, or his mysterious status in the island’s tiny ecosystem. His eyes stayed glued to his plate; he swallowed with difficulty, his saliva thickening at once.

Even on land, he hadn’t quite shaken off his seasickness.

You kicked him again. Thinking it was retaliation, he returned the favour—ever the competitor—but you only rolled your eyes.

“No, idiot. Give me your tart,” you whispered, glancing over your shoulder to ensure Solange was still occupied in the kitchen.

In one deft motion, you stole his slice.

“I’ve got biscuits upstairs for this type of emergencies,” you added, sitting upright again as you devoured the tart in four greedy bites.

When Solange came back, vinaigrette in hand, her eyes drifted to Lando’s plate.

“Well, I’ll be damned! Looks like someone liked my tart. Want another slice?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

You shared a knowing smile as Solange launched into the latest village gossip, courtesy of Patrick, who, Lando soon learned, was a fisherman.

From that evening on, you joined them for dinner each night. This new routine became as familiar as your lighthouse visits. Soon, only the dark of night separated you from Lando.

Your days—governed by the philosophy of the farniente—drifted gently by, suspended between two islands: the inn’s and the lighthouse’s. Nothing existed outside the microcosm you’d built together, where trust flowed freely, and nothing needed to be hidden or explained.

Lando told you things even Max didn’t know, and never once considered regretting it. Summer had a way of making one careless; duties, obligations, and consequences melted away in the golden hours. Anyone who surrendered to Summer was trapped in a parallel pocket of time, shaped by cicada song and the crash of waves.

Lando was no exception—enchanted by you, the very embodiment of the season—and, without even noticing, he stopped counting the days left before returning to the mainland.

Until one morning, when Solange, after setting down a plate of fresh fruit, asked casually: “So– what time d’ye want Jacques to fetch ye on Monday?”

Lando frowned.

“Monday?”

“Ten? Or earlier?” she went on. “He’s off to the village after noon, so before then’s best. Someone waitin’ for ye on land, is there?

Lando froze. His eyes darted to the calendar on the wall, and he choked at the date. August 21. A piece of melon slid from his fork into the bowl with a dull thud.

Only four days left.

“Oh.”

Solange gave him a pitying smile, as if she knew what he was thinking of (she probably was). Lando had to look away, embarrassed by the lump forming in his throat.

That was when you came down the stairs, and, seeing both their faces, frowned.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothin’, love,” Solange said gently. “Nothin’, love. Just figurin’ when Landon’s headin’ off Monday.”

“Oh,” you echoed, your voice hollow.

You slumped into your chair, suddenly as heavy as the air between you all.

Your eyes met his. You tried to smile, but it faltered just as quickly. Lando looked down and poked at his melon. Neither of you had to speak to know what the other was thinking: the end was near, and with it came the terrifying thought that you might never see each other again.

“Tell ye what– how ‘bout ye skip the lighthouse fo’ today and go pick me some lemons instead. I’m makin’ a tart for tea. Might as well put ye young ones to use while I still can.”

Solange didn’t wait for a reply. Two wicker baskets were thrust into your arms with startling speed before she slammed the door in both of your faces.

You stared at it, stunned. Then marched off towards the garden, where citrus, figs, and olives weighed down the trees and filled the air with their ripe, sticky perfume.

“Hey! Wait up!”

“Don’t tell me I’m too fast for you, Norris? Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of elite athlete?” you shouted over your shoulder, before breaking into a sprint.

He caught up with you in no time and flung an arm around your shoulders to pull you into his side. You glanced up at him, one brow arched, before adjusting your grip on your basket so you could thread your fingers through his. He squeezed your hand three times and didn’t let go until you stood in the shade of the lemon trees.

“Looking forward to seeing your friends again?” you asked, picking your first lemon.

A twinge of guilt pricked his chest as Lando realised he hadn’t thought of them in days, too consumed by you.

“Of course,” he lied, only partially.

It was true, in a way. He did want to tell Max about the boat, the lighthouse, the fish he had eaten (even if it had been against his will). He missed their banter, their inside jokes, the easy bond between them. But he also knew that going back on land meant putting to an end the memories he’d been making with you.

And that, he wasn’t ready for.

“They’re going to freak when I tell them I sailed a boat and slept in a lighthouse.”

“You gonna tell them you threw up about ten times too?”

“I don’t need to share everything.”

You burst out laughing. Lando beamed with pride at the sound.

You kept working under the unforgiving sun. Bit by bit, the fruits piled up in your baskets. Lando wandered between the rows, lips dry, shirt damp under the arms. The air was thick, stifling; he kept wiping his nape with the back of his hand.

“This heat is insane,” you muttered.

From your back pocket, you pulled a small Opinel knife, flicked open the blade, and sliced into an orange. Juice streamed down your hand, dripping into the scorched grass.

You lifted the fruit to your mouth, eyes half-closed. The nectar slid down your chin, along your throat, and disappeared into your neckline.

Lando followed its trail, unable to look away.

Something cracked open inside him when, with a slow—and far too late—flick of your tongue, you caught a drop lingering on your lip.

“You’re killing me,” he groaned, pulling you toward him before kissing you. Right there. Beneath the orange trees.

The scent of figs surrounded him as you wound your arms around his neck and kissed him back, deeper and deeper. He drank you in—orange juice and soft moans—until your fingers crept beneath his shirt, grazing his stomach. He pressed you against the tree, his knee slipping between your thighs.

“Oi! How long’m I waitin’ on those lemons?” Solange’s voice rang out in the distance.

You both sprang apart, flushed and breathless, lips swollen but bearing the same dazed smile.

“I’ve wanted to do that for ages,” he murmured, before placing a quick peck on your mouth.

“Me too.”

You returned to the inn with your baskets and hearts full.

“I don’t want to leave,” he said the next day, three days before your departure. You were both lying atop the lighthouse, limbs entangled in an intimate embrace, listening to the waves break on the shore.

You gave him a playful punch on the shoulder, laughing, before softening the blow with a kiss a second later.

The citrus-sweet kiss you had shared the day before had opened Pandora’s box. An arm slipping around your waist to squeeze past you. A hand squeezing your thigh during a boat ride. A stolen hug in the kitchen in the morning. Like your trips to the lighthouse and your shared dinners, these tender gestures had become part of your shared routine.

Earlier, you had even kissed him in front of Solange, without thinking. The innkeeper had spilled her coffee in a burst of poorly contained joy before pulling you both into a flowery-aproned embrace.

“I knew it would happen!” She had screamed. “You’ve been dancing around each other for days. ‘Twas driving me mad!”

You had laughed. He had blushed.

Your voice pulled him back from his thoughts.

“Don’t be silly. You’ll get to drive again.”

“Yes, but you won’t be there.”

Your smile faltered.

He nestled his head into the curve of your neck and breathed in the scent of figs like a man famished.

“Is this just going to be a summer fling?” he murmured against your skin, barely audible, as if speaking it aloud might make it real.

“Would it be so bad if it were?” you whispered in reply.

He didn’t answer and just held you tighter.

“I think I love you,” he confessed. “Is that crazy?”

“Crazier than driving a car at 300km/h? I doubt it.”

He raised his head and gazed at you for a few seconds before kissing you softly. You returned the kiss, tracing the edge of his jaw with your fingertips. When you parted, and emboldened by your closeness, he summoned all his courage to ask the question that had been circling in his head for days: “Now that the lighthouse is fixed up… don’t you think you could make room for a second purpose?”

He finished his thought before you could interrupt.

“What if I asked you to come with me?” he added, his voice barely above a whisper, far meeker than he’d intended.

You didn't answer. Instead, you placed a long, lingering, kiss on his forehead.

The conversation ended there. You didn't speak about it again, and Lando was smart enough to understand the no hidden in this silence. Not wanting to spoil the little time you had left together, he swallowed his pain and pretended nothing had happened.

The final two days passed in a softness unmatched, though touched with the weight of the Inevitable. You went back to the lighthouse, ate the inn’s oranges, swam, and kissed each other breathless.

On the very last evening, Lando crossed the threshold of your room for the first and last time, breaking a rule he’d silently set for himself.

You kissed. Your hands joined in. At first hesitant, then more assured. Breaths quickened. Sheets tangled beneath your movements. You clung to his back, your back arched, soft moans escaping your throat like a secret offered to the night. Lando found you all the more beautiful, abandoned to your desire. When he felt you tremble against him, he closed his eyes and followed you into completion.

Then came the quiet. Your body softened against his. You fell asleep naked, your head resting on his chest. Lando tried to view this carnal embrace as something other than a goodbye, but he couldn't, and so, he held you tighter before closing his eyes too.

The irregular growl of an old engine pulled Lando from his pleasant dreams and tolled the bell. Dread washed over him. That mechanical crackling heralded his departure, the one he had tried to postpone. It was the end of summer, and of so much more.

He reached out to his right. His hand met only the sheet, cold, empty.

Maybe she’s just gone downstairs, he told himself, though even he didn’t believe the lie.

In the two weeks he had spent with you, Lando had come to learn you were a wave—unpredictable and untameable. No cotton-sheet bed could restrain you. You would never wait for anyone, not even him.

His chest tightened, and suddenly he felt exposed in his own skin, acutely aware of his nudity. He pulled the sheet up to cover his chest as his breath quickened. Did you regret it? Why hadn’t you waited for him?

Lando stared blankly at the window. Outside, the sea rolled in on itself, whispering its salt-tinged taunts to the shore. It felt, to him, like mockery.

That knot in his stomach followed him all the way to the kitchen, where Solange was waiting.

His eyes went straight to your chair at the table. The untouched plate. The cooling but full coffee cup. His face dropped. He shut his eyes, less for self-pity than to avoid Solange’s knowing gaze.

“Jacques is a bit early,” was all the innkeeper said her voice subdued, but breaking the heavy silence all the same. “If ye want, I’ll tell him ye’re ready.”

“Might as well,” he said, bitterness bubbling up like brackish water, translating as a hollow laugh that made her wince. “There’s nothing keeping me here now, is there?”

Solange gave him a sad smile.

He sat, turning his back to her, and forced down his breakfast, pretending not to feel the lump in his throat.

Once his bowl was empty, he went back upstairs wordlessly. He packed slowly, tucking away the laptop with the training programme he had abandoned after a day.

Before zipping up the bag, he looked around the room one last time. The salt-bleached walls, the half-open window, the bed unmade. In the hallway, his eyes drifted toward your door. He stood there for a moment, taking in the remains of yesterday, then descended the creaking steps of the inn for the last time.

Downstairs, Solange wasted no time to embrace him.

He closed his eyes and nestled into her flowered apron, which reeked of fish, citrus, and olives. He searched the hug for even a trace of fig but caught himself and clung harder. That was when he felt her body tremble against his.

“Sol’?”

“It’s that blasted sea air,” she sniffed into his shoulder. “Makes me sneezy.”

She wiped her nose and looked up at him, her chin trembling.

“Ye’ll come back, won’t ye? That room’s yers now.”

She stepped back just enough to meet his gaze, her eyes glistening.

He nodded and, at last, stepped out of the inn, his heart heavy.

Ahead of him, the waves, always the waves. They danced in that natural rhythm of theirs, lifting, falling, crashing against the coast—a heartbeat born out of salt and sea.

Lando matched his breath to the swell.

This, he knew, was what he’d miss most. In Monaco, the sea drowned beneath the engines of monstrous yachts and behind the towers of concrete.

He turned his head.

In a bittersweet echo of their first encounter, Jacques stood on the jetty, pipe in mouth, silent. Only his old boat remained moored. Your sailboat was missing, having left behind nothing but a pile of frayed ropes.

You were gone. Without a word. Without a glance.

A flush rose to his cheeks—wrath and heartbreak intertwined. You had chosen to slip away, to avoid goodbyes.

Coward, a voice shouted in his mind.

Lando reached Jacques, jaw clenched. Without a word, he climbed aboard while the sailor cast off the rope. The engine coughed under them, then settled into a steady purr. Lando kept his gaze fixed on the horizon, shoulders tight.

He did not look back once, not at the inn, already shrinking behind them, nor at the lighthouse island, for fear of seeing a familiar sailboat there.

As they neared the mainland, a strange nausea coiled in his belly. The port appeared, then the village. He saw coloured cars parked haphazardly up the slope, terracotta-and-concrete houses perched like watchful birds on the green mountains.

Lando heaved.

Great, he thought, bitter. Now I have landsickness.

When they reached the shore, Jacques cut the engine and leapt out to tie up the boat. Lando followed, bag slung over his shoulder, eyes hollow.

The old man laid a big and calloused hand on his shoulder, gave it a firm squeeze, before nodding once. Lando felt a sting behind his eyes, and returned the gesture, swallowing hard. He didn’t think the sailor would handle it well if he burst into tears, so he didn’t.

Jacques didn’t linger. Lando hadn’t expected him to. The old man climbed back onto his creaking boat and disappeared into the waves, leaving Lando alone with his bag and his pain.

He stood frozen on the deck for a minute, eyes lost in the horizon, before startling out of his reverie and checking his watch. 10:12.

Before leaving for the inn, two weeks ago, he’d arranged for Max to pick him up by car at noon.

Out of habit, he switched on his phone. Hundreds of notifications flooded the screen, overwhelming him. Lando swallowed.

He hadn’t missed any of this.

His eyes flicked through the chaos, trying to make sense of it, but a headache was already blooming behind his temples.

A message from Max, sent barely an hour ago, caught his eye.

[09:21] Max: Sorry, mate. Something came up. Can’t pick you up.

Lando sighed, pocketed the phone, and slumped onto a bench at the port, defeated.

This day can’t get any worse, he thought.

He cursed the sea gods and fate—maybe they were the same beings—for making him their scapegoat. What had he done to deserve it?

Suddenly, a car horn blared behind him, jolting him from his brooding.

Lando spun around, and nearly choked.

You.

You, with your salt-frizzed hair and sun-burnt skin.

If he closed his eyes, Lando could almost imagine your fig fragrance, but the mirage quickly disappeared in the hints of diesel emanating from the exhaust pipe of the convertible you were driving.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, breathless just from the sight of you, solid and earthly.

It seemed wrong, somehow, to see you away from the sea, the lighthouse, your sailboat.

You pushed your sunglasses to your forehead and winked.

“Heard someone needed a ride to Monaco.”

For a moment he stood dumbstruck, staring.

Then he sprang into motion, dashed to the passenger side when you opened the door for him, tossed his bag into the back seat before kissing you. Hard.

“I thought you’d left without saying goodbye,” he said when you finally broke apart.

“I wanted to surprise you. Sol’ helped.”

“Of course she did,” he laughed, breathless.

He kissed you again, then froze.

“But– the lighthouse?” he stammered.

You waved it off.

“Turns out a lighthouse doesn’t have to be an actual one,” you said at last. “That was just me being dramatic. Took me a while to realise it could also be someone. I think that’s what my dad meant all along.”

“And… have you found that someone?”

“Yes. Even if he’d be useless if I’m lost at sea. He tends to throw up as soon as he's on a boat.”

You both laughed, more from relief than humour. Then you looked at him, softly.

“The lighthouse, even the inn– It kept me busy just long enough,” you said. “But it’s time to go back to the real world.”

He took your hand and squeezed it three times.

“And did you know,” you continued, “there are eighteen lighthouses on the Côte d’Azur? One of them’s in Monaco. I think I’ll be just fine there.”

It was only then that he noticed the suitcase tucked behind the driver’s seat.

“Does this mean…?”

He left the sentence hanging.

“Yes. I mean– if that’s alright with you, of course,” you added shyly.

“Of course it is! Hell, you can even move in with me!”

His enthusiasm made you burst out laughing.

“Calm down, Romeo. I’ve got a flat in Nice. But I could be convinced to spend a few nights at yours.”

You winked, pecked his lips, and finally started the car.

You drove along the coast, never straying too far from the sea, as if She refused to let go of the story she had helped shape—love erosion.

The radio crackled and filled the air with old French songs, riding the salty wind. Lando closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he turned toward the horizon.

He squinted.

The water fight was a staple of camp. George and Lando always got dragged in, willingly or otherwise, but the real game? It was between you and Alex. The rules were simple: soak the enemy, protect your own, first one to dunk the cabin counselor wins. Officially, it was something about helping the new and younger kids find their footing through teamwork while still entertaining the more seasoned campers. But truth be told, it was also the one day the counselors got to pelt each other in the name of history. The funniest part of camp, in your humble opinion, along with the mischievous pattern of inducting the next generation to it.

So here you were. Your breath echoed in your ears. The ice-cold water balloon in your hand was sticky with condensation. Isabel, a girl of yours with brown braids, tugged at the hem of your shirt with laser focus.

Across from you, Alex’s casual smirk falters. You watch, almost in slow-motion, as the carefree light in his eyes gives way to shock. Then surprise. Only to give way to utter betrayal.

“STRIKE!” you shout.

As if possessed by a shared blood-thirsty instinct, your campers erupt. They leap from the bushes, howling like wolves, water balloons flying in all directions. Plastic buckets slosh. Towels fly. And you make a beeline for the tallest brown-haired man in the clearing as he stares at you in disbelief.

“GET THE WATER GUNS, NOW!” Alex yells to his side, breaking into a sprint. 

But it was too late, you were already airborne. 

Nothing was fair in love and war.

The sun poured like syrup across the sky and gleamed off the lake in sharp, glimmering shards. The air was thick with the saccharine perfume of overused citronella and the waxy, familiar scent of cheap sunscreen. All around you, summer reigned loud and chaotic. The grass beneath your feet was slick from balloon shrapnel and lakewater, patchy with mud and wild laughter. Campers screamed in ecstatic delight, darting across the field with war cries, their joy echoing off the pine trees.

It was a beautiful soundtrack for your relentless chase after Alex, unarmed and undefended, yet entirely too smug about his chances. It came as no surprise to the children that you zeroed in on him: they were the first seaters to your feud, which is one of the reasons you held the masquerade up. It came as no surprise to Alex either, because he knew exactly just how much fun you had with it.

You watched the way he darted ahead, making his way through the mass of his campers cheering him on and his giggle echoing through them, only to slow just slightly. He was letting you keep up enough to keep your silly little game going, and you followed like a moth in the center of a flame.

The bridge at the edge of the lake swayed underfoot as he bounded onto it, wood creaking in his wake. You followed, hot on his heels, heart pounding as an euphoric chuckle slipped from your lips.

“Getting tired of running, Albono?” you called after him. “Didn’t take you for a coward!”

A bunch of “ooooohs” could be heard from behind you.

Alex glanced back with that infuriatingly charming grin of his. “I’m just giving you a fair chance baby!”

Your breath hitched. At the familiar nickname, and the fact it was just loud enough for you to hear, but also at the devilish sparkle in his eyes you’d grown to love. At the fact that this is what summer with Alex had always felt like, ever since you kissed for the first time at this very same bridge: dizzy and golden.

By the time you reached the end of it, he was waiting. Hair messy from humidity, freckles saturated by the sun, crooked smile that you wished to kiss into oblivion, and to drown in cold water. He stood cornered, but not defeated.

You raised your water balloon, rubber icy against your palm, and stepped toward him. The tiniest movement, almost playful. “I should soak you right now and end your reign of terror, Albon.”

Alex tilted his head, his gaze dropping briefly to your lips before flicking back up. “Do it. I dare you.”

The bridge betrayed you before you could.

A slick patch of water on an unstable plank, and there you were: your foot slid out from beneath you, and before gravity could consider taking its prize—your dignity—, Alex’s hands were on you.

His hands, strong and rugged, wrapped in a firm grip around your waist, pulling you in out of the sheer force of habit. Your breath caught somewhere between your chest and your throat, and your free hand found the solid line of his shoulders to steady yourself.

His face was centimeters from yours, damp hair curling slightly at the edges, and you’d hate how maddingly handsome he was if you didn’t wake up to it every morning outside of camp.

“You’re alright?” he asked, all smiles and sharp intakes of air. “Didn’t expect you to fall for me so soon into the summer, my God. Here I was, thinking you were a fighter.”

You rolled your eyes at his theatrics. “I am a fighter, and I will be alright, Alex. Once I drop this over your head.”

As soon as you slowly, dangerously, approached your weapon to his face, the sound around you sharpened to an uncanny silence. 

You whipped your head back.

Every single one of the campers, yours and Alex’s, was staring. Their dozen faces, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, waiting to see what will happen next. Isabel and Michael, along with Camille, Wyatt, and Mateo, were whispering animatedly, eyes fixated on both of you.

You and Alex looked at each other. Back at the kids. Back to you.

“Don’t you blow our cover,” you whispered, stabbing a finger in his chest.

Alex grinned, and you saw the making of a plan you’d regret in all of two seconds in his irises. “Me? I would never.”

Without hesitation, he tightened his grip around your waist. It’s only when he took a step back that you understood what he was going to do.

“Oh my God,” you gasped. “Alex, no. Alex— Alex, no, no. No, ALEX—”

But by the time you were able to slither yourself out of his grasp, your beloved (note the irony) boyfriend threw himself backwards off the bridge, inevitably taking you with him.

The lake swallowed you whole. A flash of blue sky, a heavy splash of water, and your scream lost in a burst of clear, sunlit bubbles, into silence.

Water wrapped around you like silk, hair fanning in slow motion and fabric blooming around your limbs. For one suspended second beneath the surface, it was just the two of you in a shared, weightless hush. Alex caught your eye, bubbles escaping his lovesick smile and rays of sunlight catching the soft brown of his eyes, and you held up your middle finger in a gentle salute of betrayal.

He tried to blow you a kiss in response— only to choke on lake water.

You kicked upward, laughing even before you broke the surface, and exploded in the air with a gasp. Alex surfaced beside you, sputtering and coughing. He wiped water from his face, blinking through his soaked lashes the way a golden retriever would shake himself trying to get dry.

“You’re so stupid,” you wheezed, choking on your own laughter. “I swear—”

“I just wanted to show my love for you,” he said, gasping dramatically between coughs. “And this is how I’m treated? A middle finger? Long-term relationship, by the way.”

“Wanna talk about treatment?” You flicked water at him. “You just threw me into a lake.”

He floated closer, just enough for your feet to bump as you were keeping yourselves afloat. “Hey, I threw myself in it too. Don’t forget my self-sacrifice.”

You smiled at him, reaching to brush a damp strand of hair off his forehead. “Wow, you’re such a romantic.”

Before Alex could respond with something, whether it be a confession or a kiss, a head popped over the side of the bridge.

“SO…” Camille’s halo of blonde curls dripped water from above, followed by a majority of the other campers cramming beside her, peering over the railing like the world’s smallest search party. You and Alex swam away from each other as quickly as you could without it looking suspicious. “Who won?”

“You both got dunked,” Isabel added with a disappointed shrug. “Technically, that’s a draw.”

“A draw?!” you exclaim, faux-offended. “We can’t possibly let that be. Guess we’ll have to kick Albon’s cabin’s ass another way.”

The kids from your cabin erupted in cheers as the ones from Alex’s groaned. No matter what conclusion you came to, you’re sure it wouldn’t be the last you heard of this year’s water fight.

You could see it in the mischievous smile your boyfriend offered you.

After that, the afternoon unfolded the way it usually did, long and soaked by the sun. The war-wounds of the water fight dried slowly in sunlit splotches across your clothes, and the field shimmered with post-battle peace, laughter trailing from every corner like campfire smoke. After bigger activities like these, campers usually had the rest of the day to indulge in whatever their heart desired.

At a picnic table splattered in neon, Lando presided over the tie-dye station like a benevolent fairy, with glitter smudged across his cheek and at least three children tangled in rubber bands. You hadn’t planned on joining, but Mateo, with his impossibly wide eyes and pleading grin, had successfully dragged you down beside him.

And, what a coincidence, Alex was sitting directly across from you.

The sharp scent of dye hung in the air as you twisted your shirt into a spiral, fingers deft and practiced. “Okay,” you said after a few beats of silence, watching Alex fumble with a knot of rubber bands and blotch his entire palm blue, “have you ever made one of these before?”

He glanced up with a half-grin, sheepish. “Once,” he replied, nudging your knee under the table with his own. “And I got paint all over my shorts.”

You swallowed back a smile for the sake of the five campers surrounding you, who were trying not to be too obvious in their eavesdropping. Still, the memory snuck up on you and your poor, fluttering heart: last year’s camp, with everyone else asleep and the two of you laughing like children in the mess hall.

“Hmm… was that the same summer I put shaving cream on your pillow?” you asked, eyes wide with mock innocence. Mateo snorted. Glitter dust stuck to the tip of his nose.

“You mean every summer?” Alex retorted. “You’re becoming alarmingly predictable with your pranks.”

“Maybe you’re just alarmingly easy to prank.”

“Or maybe you’re due for new material,” Alex teased. You stuck your tongue out at him, and he mirrored the gesture with a childish grin until you both dissolved into laughter.

For some reason, Mateo high-fived Lando.

Small instances of the sorts became recurrent during the last part of the day. As the lake glittered in soft ripples, the paddle shed echoed with the scraping of oars and the squeak of life jackets. You had found yourself roped into supervising canoe pairings, and Wyatt insisted the numbers were “uneven” after looking at George’s carefully organized clipboard. He also maintained that “Alex should, like, just ride with you. I’ll sit out, it’s more efficient.” You found yourself floating together in knowing silence five minutes later.

By the time the sun had finished dragging its golden brush across the sky, the horizon glowed in streaks of tangerine and rose, and shadows stretched long across the messy grounds. The mess hall buzzed with voices and clattering silverware, chatter echoing beneath the wooden rafters, the smell of charcoal chicken lingering in the warm air.

Once again, you had been placed by total accident across from Alex. And while you were chatting with George, Lando chiming in now and then, no part of the conversation could distract you from the way Alex looked in the soft evening light. Skin golden and cheeks flushed from the day’s exertion, his lashes caught the last glimmer of luminescence as if the sunset had chosen to rest here for a moment.

If the others noticed you stealing greedy glances, they said nothing. But you could’ve spent the entire meal indulging in this type of sightseeing. Well, if it weren’t for Camille.

“Y/N,” she began sweetly. “I was talking with Isabel, and—”

Isabel, already halfway through a mouthful of potato salad, didn’t even wait. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

You choked. On what, you weren’t sure.

Across the table, Alex froze. His fork was suspended halfway between plate and mouth, head tilted just slightly in anticipation. You could feel George tense beside you, vibrating with the physical effort of holding in laughter.

“Uh…” Quick. Something, anything to cover you. “No?” you fumbled, and your voice cracked. “Not right now, no.” 

Your boyfriend-not-boyfriend’s eyebrows rose a dramatic ascent toward the heavens. He leaned back, gave the most exaggerated and theatrical nod known to mankind, and turned back to his chicken. George snorted into his glass. You wanted the earth to open beneath your seat and swallow you whole.

“That’s great!” Camille chirped. “I mean, it’s not great. I mean… good news, I guess?”

Isabel elbowed her in the ribs, hurriedly whispering something in her ear. While you would have loved to decipher what the two of them were scheming about, Alex decided to speak first.

“Y’know,” his words were muffled by his mouthful of food, “it doesn't surprise me that you don’t have a boyfriend. Must be that wonderful personality of yours.”

Your foot found his shin under the table with surgical precision. He let out an affronted yelp. George almost spat out his water with a wheeze. The girls had taken Michael onto their gossip. The last rays of sunlight spilled across the floorboards in a golden hush, the mess hall glowing amber with the softness of the ending day.

Your cabin door creaked open.

The moon now hung heavy and bright over the lake, casting silver ribbons over the sleeping camp. The air had gone still, only rhythmed by the quiet chirps of the crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl echoing through the trees.

“Alex,” you murmured in the dark of your room. 

It wasn’t a question. You turned your head just enough to see him slipping inside—ike he always did ever since he had blown his fifteenth candle—barefoot and freshly showered. His hair curled softly at his temples, and his hoodie clung to him slightly from the humid air outside. His cabin was at the complete opposite of yours, and yet he still insisted on being the one walking all the way to sleep by your side. Never once had he let you return the favor.

Alex looked devastatingly lovely in the unspeaking dark: sleepy and flushed, his half-lidded eyes seeking your figure in the shadows.

He didn’t say a word as he padded over, dropped onto your bed with a groan, and immediately buried his face in your side. A contented sigh slipped out of him, and his arms gently wrapped around your waist, his legs tangling with yours almost out of reflex.

“It really was a long day, huh?” you whispered, smiling as you carded your fingers through his wet hair.

“It really was. And then you told a table full of preteens you didn’t have a boyfriend,” he mumbled, voice muffled in your shirt. Well, technically, ‘his’ shirt that you ‘borrowed’ to sleep in. “I’ve known betrayal in this camp. But this…”

You laughed, the sound coming out hoarse. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Oh, yes, I’m very in love with the rival cabin’s counselor? Yes, the one we’re fighting with every week, that one!’”

“I would’ve accepted, ‘I’m very in love with my non-descript boyfriend who’s somewhere in the world. Very handsome fellow.” He looked up at you with a sleep-riddled gaze, hell bent on faking his offense.

You rolled your eyes with nothing but affection. “You’re so needy.” 

He grinned, mischievous, rising just enough to nuzzle against your chest. His hair was nowhere near dry, and the cold water soaked through your shirt in a matter of seconds.

“Alex!” you groaned between giggles, trying to shove him off. “You’re dripping—!”

He shook his head against you with stubborn purpose, sending droplets everywhere.

“Alex—!”

“No,” he said firmly. “This is your punishment. You didn’t claim me at the table, now you suffer.”

You burst into a laugh, dizzy with tiredness, arms instinctively wrapping around him. “I hate you.”

“Nah, you don’t,” Alex whispered. Slowly, he pressed a kiss right beneath your collarbone, and your breath caught in the sudden tightening of your throat. “You just like to pretend you do.”

His lips rose. One brush against the sensitive spot of your neck, one on the corner of your mouth, a small peck to your cheek, one to your forehead until, finally, he dropped a soft and careful kiss to your lips. One that you all too happily gave back.

A quiet fell between you as Alex settled back against your chest. The warm kind of silence, which could only be grasped at the end of a summer day, when your limbs felt like stone and cotton all at once, and that didn’t need words to be shared and understood.

“I love this place,” you muttered eventually, barely louder than the breeze coming out of the small gap of the window. “There’s a shitton of mosquitoes, true, and the mud around the lake gets kinda disgusting, but… It’s home. I love it.”

Alex nodded against your chest. “It’s where I found you, so I don’t think it can be anything less than home.”

You kissed his hair as agreement, fingers still lazily combing through the slowly drying strands. “Kids were acting weird all day, though.”

“Suspiciously weird,” he murmured. “Wyatt tried to sit me next to you, like, four times. Mateo even winked at me during the tie-dye thing. Or he tried, I don’t know.”

You snorted.

“D’you think our cover was blown?” Alex asks, words slurred. You weren’t quite sure if he was aware that you were having a conversation.

You shrugged, and the sudden movement got a whine out of him. “I don’t think so. We’re pretty discreet.” That made him chuckle. “Hey! We are! So if we end up, I don’t know, fake-married in the woods, it probably won’t be because we weren’t lowkey enough.”

Alex hummed a laugh, pressing a kiss to your chest this time. “I wouldn’t mind being real-married to you in the woods.”

You stared at your ring finger, nestled in the dark of his hair. Painfully bare. One summer, he’d twisted a small crown from the pink-tinged daisies you adored and slid it onto your finger. He told you he’d replace it for one of gold as soon as he could manage. You kept it until it wilted, long after the petals browned.

Now, lying beside him with no one but the moonlight for witness, you couldn’t help the impatient thrum in your chest.

“Hey,” Alex whispers, fingers squeezing your waist to get your attention. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

He raised his head to look at you, a thread of worry swirling in his irises as if your silence was the worst thing the night could bring. Your chest tightened in that aching, beautiful way love always brought. Your fingers found his face, thumbs tracing the curve of his cheeks as you pulled him closer until there was no space left between you. You kissed him then— slow and sleepy, smiling into it, and he answered in kind.

“Nothing,” you murmured against his mouth. Alex leaned into you, chasing even more as the kiss broke. “Just thinking how there’s no one else I’d rather come home to. Especially after a day like this.”

The smile he gave you was nothing short of euphoric, characterized by the drowsy vertigo only fatigue could bring to someone. Not something that had any place in the waking world.

“I love you,” he said. His voice cracked with how tired he was, or maybe it was just the reality of the confession getting to him. He buried his face back in your chest, curling further into you. “God, I love you so much.”

“You’ll never believe it, Alex, but me too.”

You fell asleep in that same position: limbs tangled together beneath worn cotton sheets, flickering string lights swaying gently overhead. His breath matched the rise and fall of your chest. His weight, his warmth… he was everywhere, and yet it didn’t feel like enough.

The world fell away. All that remained was the quiet rhythms of your hearts, beating in tandem.

Your cabin door creaked open once again, making you stir by force of habit. The world was still cloaked in the hush that came before dawn. The opening let in the cool air, laced with dew and the faint scent of pine. Maybe Alex had come to wake you, you thought, still deep in the haze of dreams. Maybe you’d missed the counselors’ breakfast, and he had come with the usual plastic-y pastry.

The weight above you shifted.

That’s when you realized that Alex was lying with you in bed. Whoever just entered your cabin was not your boyfriend.

“Y/N?”

The voice sliced clean through the heavy silence.

You jolted upright, a performance deserving of a horror movie protagonist. Your heart rose in your throat, and your lungs halfway through the scream of a lifetime.

“We need help. Michael threw up in the… boys’… room…”

Alex, startled by your sudden motion and still intertwined with every inch of you, groaned and rolled along with your body, blinking blearily into the semi-darkness. The hoodie he’d fallen asleep in was long abandoned somewhere on the floor due to overwhelming heat, his sleep-warm skin pressed against your side as he tried to make sense of the noise.

Your gaze whipped to the door. 

In the dim gray of the barely-there morning, backlit by the tiniest sliver of pinking sky, stood Camille. Wide-eyed and frozen. Door handle still in hand.

Alex’s arm was still slung possessively across your stomach. His hair was sleep-ruffled. Still shirtless and looking guilty of whatever crime he felt like he had committed. 

No one moved. Not you. Not Alex. Not Camille.

That is, until she took one giant breath, the one someone who had just witnessed a divine intervention would. And bolted.

“IT WORKED!” she screamed as she sprinted away from the cabin, her voice growing fainter and yet more dramatic by the meter. “OUR PLAN WORKED! THEY’RE DATING, OH MY GODDD!”

From a nearby cabin—yours, undoubtedly—more shrieks erupted at the local town crier’s announcement. Someone (Isabel?) wailed, “WE’RE GENIUSES!”, while you clearly heard Mateo holler, “I TOLD YOU THE TIE-DYE WOULD DO IT!”

You slowly turned to Alex. He pushed himself up on one of his elbows, brows furrowed in nothing but deep incomprehension.

“... Do… Do they think they matchmade us?” he asked, voice hoarse with sleep.

His eyes were still unfocused, his cheek marked faintly from where it had from where it had been pressed against your chest.

You let your face collapse into your pillow with a groan of despair.

“This is the least of my problems right now,” you mumbled into the cotton. “I have vomit to clean up. It’s like five in the morning.”

Alex let out a small, sympathetic wince. “Godspeed, baby.”

And after you peeled yourself from beneath him and gathered the necessary equipment from the disinfecting mission you were setting yourself on, you passed by an all too smug George Russell, coffee in hand, waiting next to your campers’ cabin— who seemed to be all chatting way too excitedly considering the time and situation.

“Don’t say a word,” you grumbled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he laughed, handing you the cup. “Though, congrats on the… soft launch? Is that what it is? Careful, there’s already marriage talk in there.”

You briefly considered throwing the hot liquid in his face.

Turns out, your campers and Alex’s did believe they were responsible for your grand romantic awakening. Their elaborate matchmaking maneuvering, which you had been blissfully unaware of, had, in their minds, orchestrated the very moment Alex wandered into your cabin the night Michael threw up and Camille caught you wrapped together. The idea that you’d been together beforehand was not even dignified by a thought.

That, at least, comforted you in the idea that you and Alex had been discreet enough. Maybe a little too good at hiding it because, according to wise, sunburnt Wyatt, who was clutching his granola bar as you were cleaning up the bunk beside his, “you guys were, like Romeo and Juliet. Without the dying and all that.”

Couldn’t argue with that.

You had never pictured a summer wedding. Spring had always felt more fitting. But then again, spring had never come with Isabel barging into your cabin, wielding your two damp tie-dye shirts and declaring that it was time to ‘reunite the rival cabins. ’ Which was also maybe a wedding. She asked you to please go with it. Somehow, you didn’t say no.

The ceremony, if it could be called one, was brief. Just long enough for a few jokes and a catastrophic speech from Lando, who had declared himself officiant and best man. The vow exchange had been deplorable, yet you still managed to shed a tear when Alex slipped a delicate daisy chain onto your finger. Another promise worth nursing, already wilting at the blush-colored edges. It was perfect.

By the time it ended, campers were already lining toward the lake by George’s vow of a paddle race. The great reunification had lasted for about ten minutes, as you could tell from the jabs your cabin and Alex’s were throwing at each other as they ran to the bridge.

“Well, can’t say our relationship ruined their camp experience. We did all that for nothing,” Alex commented, hand slipping around your waist. You unsuccessfully tried to swallow back your chuckle.

You looked down at the daisy ring, then at the man who made it. Sunlight in his hair, blue dye still staining the tip of his fingers, and laughter still carved in the curve of his mouth.

A summer wedding did feel right, after all.

Summer cradled your beginnings. It gave you stolen glances and cool water splashes drying into permanence. It was summer that let you fall in love in the first place.

And at least now, you didn’t have to pretend you weren’t hopelessly enamoured by Alex. That you didn’t wake up to find him twisted and tangled around you every morning. That you didn’t kiss him, still drowsy, right before the day fully began.

Now, you could fall asleep beside him every summer night after the long and tiring days, just like the one behind you. And the one ahead.

And the one after that.

Before him, the Mediterranean crashed against the shore, inhaling matter in a whirl of iridescent reflections. Nothing remained of the familiar calm of Monaco’s harbour; here, on this island far removed from the rest of the world, the Earth was nothing against the Sea.

Sovereign and incontestable, her waters twirled in a fierce dance, wrenching shellfish and crustaceans from the rock. The foam left by the waves colonised the sand, staining it with white froth. Driven by the Mistral, it vanished at once into the eternal cycle of Renewal.

And amid this dance of turquoise and azure—standing alone on the beach’s sole jetty—Lando felt horribly alone.

Yet he had chosen this ‘spiritual retreat’.

The first time Max uttered those words, Lando had nearly choked with laughter. The mother of a mutual but remote friend had apparently praised the concept during a family meal.

It had taken three mimosas for the idea to take root in Max’s mind and three glasses of rum for Lando to be persuaded.

In a few minutes, he would vanish to a small French island between Nice and Corsica, far from Ibiza and its lascivious evenings, where he knew his friends and colleagues would spend their summers.

His bag weighed heavy on his sore shoulder. Lando regretted not wearing his cap; the sun was already burning his cheeks.

A crab scuttled across the sand and disappeared beneath a wave.

A chorus of splashing pulled him from his reverie. Lando turned. A few steps away, on the jetty, stood an old man. The curling smoke from his pipe vanished into the sun’s rays and nestled in the dozens of wrinkles crossing his face.

“T’es l’g’min que j’dois emm’ner su’l’île, c’ça?”

Lando coughed, the tobacco’s nebulous spirals coiling around his throat. He stammered a few words in French, but the man’s lip-smacking around his pipe quickly cut him off.

“Y’th’lad I’m t’take t’t’isle, yeah?” the old man grumbled, spitting more smoke.

Most of his vowels disappeared into his long beard, forming an unfamiliar accent. The smoker had to repeat himself thrice before Lando finally nodded in understanding.

“F’llow me.”

Lando fell into step behind him without question.

Hands in the pockets of his shorts, he struggled to keep pace with the old man. The sun dazzled him even through his sunglasses, and pearls of sea spray, lifted by the breeze, licked his cheeks with their salty tongues.

The old man soon halted before an ancient fishing boat, the only one moored among the jagged rocks and their razor-sharp blades.

“Brav’ beast, this’un,” he knocked on the hull.

Lando nodded, unsure what else to do. His gaze drifted to the ever-raging sea. It never seemed calm here, as if to scream its existence to all.

The old man climbed aboard with ease. Lando could not match his agility. The rickety vessel was a far cry from the opulent yachts he was used to. He handed his bag to the man and hauled himself onto the deck. His legs, shaky from leaving land, sought balance, only finding it when the stranger sat at the edge.

Lando cast one last glance at the coast and its Provençal villages, then looked out at the sea they were to cross.

How would their makeshift boat withstand this furious swell? The paint had peeled away with the salt, and deep scratches streaked the wood—no doubt marks from rocks the hull had scraped against.

Lando swallowed hard and hugged his bag close. The old sailor tapped his pipe thrice against the stern, brought it back to his lips, and untied the rope securing the boat to a thick rock.

“Won’ take long. Sea’s quiet t’day.”

Calm was hardly the word Lando would have chosen, but he kept silent.

Beneath his feet, the engine roared. Before he could startle, the boat surged forward, leaving civilisation and the bottles he had no time to cast behind them.

The rickety craft rode the waves fearlessly. More than once, Lando felt as if he might fall into the void; his stomach churned; his jaw clenched. The old man’s face, however, remained serene, though his eyes were narrowed and fixed upon him.

Lando fidgeted, uneasy.

“Why’d y’come?”

“What?” he shouted over the noise of the waves and wind.

At least here, he could escape the merciless sun.

“Why’d y’come, eh? No one comes ‘ere,” the old man shook his head. “Last was a lass, two months back. Since, nothin’. Few even know th’isle’s there, y’see.”

It was Charles who had told him about it. Though the Monegasque had never berthed there himself, he had heard tales of its inn—a haven of peace at the crossroads of worlds and times where one forgot the passage of seasons and its woes.

“I needed a change of air.”

A wave splashed against his back. He closed his eyes and savoured the moment’s respite. When he opened them again, the old man’s gaze seemed gentler, and the silence between them, less oppressive.

Twenty minutes later, the sailor announced their arrival.

Lando raised his head. The island was larger than he had thought. The sole trace of human society, apart from the rudimentary harbour—a rotten wooden jetty and a mooring bollard—was the stone building that adorned the verdant landscape.

Lando disembarked, nearly tumbling into the water as a sudden gust rocked the hull. Once ashore, he rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a fifty-euro note, which he handed to the sailor. The man spat his pipe and, with blistered fingers, took the money.

The sailor nodded, crossed the jetty in five steps, and stopped at its end before a small tin box from which he withdrew three letters.

He returned to his boat; Lando set off for the inn.

As he pushed open the door, a wave of cool air embraced him and a bell tinkled.

“Mon dieu, sorry love! Didn’t hear ye! Come in, come in. Make y’self at home, will ye?”

A woman of about sixty hurried down the creaking steps, dusting her hands on her floral apron. She ushered him inside, closing the door behind them with a muffled thud.

Lando might have cried with joy hearing the lady’s perfectly comprehensible English. The southern accent lingered, but the vowels were mostly all there.

Without asking, she relieved him of his bag.

“Thought ye’d be arrivin’ tomorrow, I did. Then I remembered, no, s’today. Just finishin’ up cleanin’ yer room. But listen to me, goin’ on. Ye don’t care ‘bout my old stories,” she waved off his reaction before he could voice it, hauling a huge leather volume onto the dining table.

Everywhere, flowers sprinkled the living room. Dried sunflowers stood proud in frames, while bouquets of hydrangea and chamomile cluttered the sideboards. The mistress of the house, amidst this fragile vitality, seemed impervious to decay.

Her finger slid over the register, mumbling the names of previous guests until she found his.

“Lando Norris, there y’are now! Had yer name outta me head, excuse me. At my age, the mind’s slippin’” she winked. “Ye’re stayin’ two weeks, is it?”

He nodded.

“Well now! Look at tha’! I seem t’attract wanderers. Lucky me, eh?”

Lando didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

He watched her jot down a few words and tick some boxes before suddenly snapping the register shut. He jumped.

The woman rearranged her bun—held by a wooden pin—and turned to him, wiping her shiny brow. With a wave, she beckoned him to follow.

The steps creaked under her weight. He feared they might give way. Everywhere, gouges in the wood lightened the original colour of the staircase.

“Breakfast’s at seven, lunch at noon, dinner’s at eight in the dinin’ room, though I can bring it up to ye if ye’d rather. No internet here, nor signal. We’ve got electricity, and that’s enough.”

Lando already knew this; it was one of the reasons he’d chosen this inn over others.

They reached the upper floor.

“Y’look after yer own room.”

The old lady pulled a key from her apron.

“Ye’ve got the first room. Easy to remember, there’s only three,” she snorted.

“Is there a phone?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“For tha’, ye’ll have to go to the village. Only post we get is what Jacques brings, once a week.”

The sailor, Lando concluded. An odd fellow, that one.

“Hope he didn’t scare ye, with his big voice. He’s not used to speakin’ English, is all.”

Lando shrugged. He’d dealt with far worse than a grumpy old man with an unkempt beard; this one reminded him of elders from the Spanish and Greek islands where he usually spent his summer breaks.

“Jacques only comes on Wednesdays, ten sharp. Don’t miss him. Ye’ll pick up how things work round here soon enough. S’not too hard. Oh! I’m Solange, by the way.”

She opened the door to his room. Like the living room, few furnishings: a bed, a desk, a chest of drawers. Just enough.

Lando turned his head. At the corridor’s end, a closed door. He stood still a moment, then frowned at the woman.

“Am I the only guest?” he asked.

“There’s another girl about, but ye won’t see much of her. Always off wanderin’, that one.”

Lando thought of the girl the sailor had mentioned. Probably the same. Though the knowledge he wasn’t alone disappointed him, Solange’s words on her discretion reassured him. He nodded and set his bag on the bed.

No one would disturb him here. Silence, sun, sea, and nothing else. It was perfect.

“I’ll leave ye to settle in. Dinner’ll be served shortly.”

Solange closed the door behind her before he could utter a word. Silence enveloped him. Lando hurried to fling open the window—a blast of hot air invaded the room—and began unpacking.

He pulled his laptop from his bag and placed it on the desk, an immediate blot upon the rustic scene, right beside the oil lamp. A glance at his watch showed half past seven. From upstairs came the clatter of dishes and Solange’s grumbles.

His MacBook quickly plugged in, he switched it on, opened the programme Jon had sent before his departure, and hurried down the stairs.

The bowl of bouillabaisse—“a proper Provençal soup, dear! with scorpionfis, caught this mornin’” Solange had explained—turned his stomach.

As everything else here, the sea ruled above all.

Lando stared at the bits of fish swirling in the soup amongst fennel and garlic, wondering why he hadn’t chosen to do his spiritual retreat in Thailand like everyone else.

With a trembling hand, he forced down a spoonful and stifled a gag. Solange watched him pick at his meal, eyes sparkling, before taking pity and replacing his bowl with a plate of tomatoes and mozzarella.

“Ah, ye should’ve told me ye didn’t like scorpionfish, lad. I’d’ve spared ye that trouble.”

He smiled shyly and devoured the plate.

Between two slices of fresh tomato, his gaze drifted to the empty chair opposite, though a place setting had been laid.

His look must have been insistent, for the sixty-year-old explained that the other guest—the mysterious girl everyone spoke of—never came down to eat, but Solange nevertheless set a plate for her in the hope she might one day join them.

“Tha’ girl loses all track o’time out there,” she added with a tender smile.

He nodded, unsure what to say.

Once dinner was finished, he stood, handed his empty plate to Solange, and hurried upstairs.

Lando collapsed on his bed and closed his eyes. He would start Jon’s training tomorrow, he thought. After all, he was on holiday, and summer was in no rush; who was he to break its rule of idleness.

Suddenly, clicks and clacks echoed down the corridor into his room. Lando opened his eyes and tried to locate the source of the noise. Perhaps Solange was washing the dishes?

A door slammed, footsteps hurried down the stairs, and a feminine voice shouted: “I’m going out, Sol’! Don’t wait up for me!”

Exhausted from the day, he fell asleep without further thought, glad to have found a place on this earth where he could escape prying eyes and their ill-judged remarks.

Back on the shore, the rollers pounded against the coast.

It was the sound of the waves that woke Lando that morning.

Aside from the seagulls outside, the rest of the house still slumbered in a lethargy proper to summer mornings.

A quick glance at the clock told him it was a few minutes before seven. The sun already beat warmly on the stone walls; the wind, for now, resisted the invader, though Lando knew it would surrender within an hour or two.

Lando pressed down on his door handle; the rusty hinges screeched in protest despite his care. He grimaced. Solange was up—no doubt about that, he could hear her muttering in the kitchen—but what about the girl in room number three?

His gaze shifted to that very door. The end of the corridor was bathed in light, so much so that the colour of the floorboards, the walls, even the picture frames, seemed to all vanish under the golden veil of Summer.

The door stood ajar.

Lando stepped closer, cursed when the floorboard creaked under his weight, and peeked inside. Nothing much to see, just a messy desk cluttered with mismatched seashells.

“Bonjour, Lando!” was the first thing he heard as he made his way downstairs. His thoughts still preoccupied with what he’d glimpsed, the Englishman stumbled over his own greeting.

“Come on over, I squeezed ye some proper fresh juice. From the island’s own oranges, no less!”

Solange handed him a chilled glass and gestured toward the same chair he’d sat in the previous day.

The first sip—sweet and cold—swept away the remnants of sleep and his questions along with it. The old woman wiped a few drops of condensation from the table with her tea towel, slung it back over her shoulder, and turned to her flour-dusted work surface.

Lando tried to ignore the empty glass in front of him. He kept thinking of the seashells.

“Meant to ask ye yest’day, what with the trip an’ all, what brings ye ‘ere?”

He noticed immediately how the morning seemed to rob Solange of the vowels she’d enunciated so clearly the night before.

“I needed to disconnect for a while. My job is... intense, let’s just say.”

“What d’ye do?”

“I’m a Formula One driver.”

From her blank stare, Lando could already tell the words meant nothing to her. He smiled, pleased.

“I race cars.”

She gave an impressed little nod and began kneading dough.

“And d’ye win?”

“Sometimes. I’m often on the podium, though.”

“Tha’s good.”

The conversation fizzled out. The feeling of being just another normal person warmed Lando’s chest. He took another sip of juice to dampen it. It was already hot enough; it would be unwise to abandon himself to emotions.

The brioche further down the table was calling to him. He hesitated, then gave in. Jon wasn’t there to scold him, and no one here gave a toss about his weight—certainly not Solange, who was already talking about lunch: pistou soup and ‘few-gas’, whatever that was.

“Oh, before I forget–!”

Solange slid a sheet of paper toward him. She explained it was the shopping list they gave Jacques every Wednesday at ten so that it could be delivered the following week.

“If y’need anythin’, jot it down.”

The paper was already half-covered in messy handwriting, which he guessed was Solange’s—hurried, scratchy, listing everything from fruit to fish (he grimaced at that), to soap, even books.

At the very bottom, in blue ink (sea-blue, he couldn’t help but think), was a different, feminine handwriting—one of those elegant old-fashioned scripts where vowels and consonants intertwined in delicate loops.

1 pack of blank paper, 2 notebooks, 3 pens.

His eyes lingered on that blue line, confirmation that the girl from room three was, indeed, real.

He hadn’t imagined her the night before.

Lando considered adding anything, but didn’t want to be a bother. Solange had specified everything on the list was paid for by the inn, not the guests.

He reminded himself he had his laptop, that it was more than enough, and clicked the pen shut.

He drained his glass in one go, popped the last bite of brioche into his mouth, brushed the crumbs into a neat pile, and headed upstairs to change into his running gear.

Lando didn’t need to consult his laptop—Jon’s programme was branded into his memory. After bidding Solange goodbye, he began his run around the island.

I don’t expect performance, Jon had told him, just maintenance. Stay in shape. F1 drivers weren’t exempt from the sneaky dangers of summer holidays—those that tempted you with their sweet laziness and made you forget about discipline.

His pace wasn’t anywhere near Monaco speed. Here, he took the time to let the scenery unfold. He passed the orange groves Solange had mentioned, planted among fig trees and olive branches, climbed the little hills and jogged down to the shore.

And then he saw it. The sight stunned him into stopping.

There, in the middle of the horizon, between rocks and waves, stood a lighthouse—undeniably master of the tide.

A boat was moored beside it.

He frowned as he saw a figure vanish inside, then resumed running, still frowning.

“Is that lighthouse still running?” he asked Solange upon returning.

She handed him a tissue to wipe his brow.

“Not that I know of,” she shrugged. “State won’t put coin into fixin’ it. Says it’s no use now. Boats don’t pass ‘ere like they used to.”

A towel smacked him in the face, cutting the conversation short.

“Go shower. Ye reek. And if ye fancy helpin’ an old woman, start with the veg’, would ye?”

He squinted exaggeratedly.

“That’s emotional blackmail, Solange.”

“Maybe. But it’s workin’, innit?”

And it did, because fifteen minutes later, Lando was peeling potatoes with his hair still damp from his cold shower.

Solange made him laugh with tales of her youth, and the vegetables were soon done.

At noon, despite the pistou soup being delicious, the untouched plate beside him left a bitter taste in his mouth. Solange said nothing, but he caught the flicker of sadness on her face as she cleared the pristine bowl.

After that, Lando wandered aimlessly through the house. The morning run had drained him, and the suffocating afternoon heat finished him off. He ended up sprawled on the sofa, eyes drifting toward the half-open shutters. The distant sound of cicadas and seagulls lulled him toward an inevitable nap.

Solange, seated nearby with a crossword puzzle, peered at him over her glasses.

“Bored already, kid?”

Lando shrugged, not wanting to offend her.

“I’ll see if Jacques can’t take ye out to sea tomorrow. Might do ye good. Give ye somethin’ to do.”

“No need. I wouldn’t want to bother him,” Lando murmured, sinking deeper into the cushions.

The idea of spending hours stuck on a boat with Jacques gave him chills. Thankfully, Solange didn’t insist, and so Lando considered the matter closed; the worst, avoided.

But the next morning, the sound of a motor yanked Lando from sleep. When he drew back his curtain, a knot tightened in his stomach. The small blue-hulled boat—with its tangled ropes and rusted bucket—was tied to the old wooden dock.

Wednesday had come, and with it, Jacques and his ever-present pipe.

He watched Solange embrace the sailor and hand him their shopping list. Jacques stuffed the paper into the pocket of his sea-damp overalls and sank into conversation with her. From here, Lando could nearly hear his gruff voice and chewed-up vowels.

Eventually, Jacques disappeared into the inn, Solange close behind.

“Mornin’, lad,” he said as Lando descended. “Heard y’wanna sail?”

“Oh!” Lando glanced at Solange, whose radiant smile deepened every wrinkle on her face. “Er... yes?” he mumbled.

Jacques’s grey eye—clouded with age and cataracts—sparkled.

Being the people-pleaser he was, Lando felt compelled to keep the pleased look on his face. So, with a bit of hesitation, he followed Jacques outside.

On the way to the dock, the old man explained that the inn lent a little sailing boat to guests for short trips or excursions.

“But th’lass hog it.”

Lando barely registered the comment. His gaze stayed locked on the boat’s hull. He swallowed hard as he counted the cracks; a few more had appeared since the last time.

“Ain’t tricky. Got a m’tor an’ a tiller. Good bit o’machin’ this one,” he added, giving it an affectionate slap. “Y’wanna go right? Turn left. W’nna go left? Tu’n right.”

Lando blinked, then nodded weakly. He silently cursed himself for saying yes to this outing, maybe even to this whole spiritual retreat.

Jacques, lost in his explanation, did not notice his torment.

“Wave comes at ye, only two ways. Gun it or fac’ it head-‘n. Ye? Ain’t cut f’tha’ yet. Most ‘portant thing. N’ver let th’crest catch ye. Else yer done. Seen too many men lost tha’ way. Got it?”

“Not really?”

“S’fine. Ye’ll learn on th’boat.”

He motioned to the rickety craft, which swayed under their weight.

They set out. Soon, the rocks vanished from view. The tide had risen, and with it, his nausea. Lando bent his knees, struggling to find balance on the ever-moving sea. One must adapt to the wave, not the other way around.

He paled when Jacques handed him the tiller. Right is left. Left is right, he recited in his head. Before them, the sea stirred—eager to test the fledgling sailor. Fear clenched Lando’s gut and compressed his lungs. The ocean seemed to challenge him, conjuring deep-born waves to prove its dominance.

Lando looked back at the shore, his back soaked, already nostalgic for solid ground. When he turned his head, the lighthouse—the one from his morning run—towered above the rocks, far more imposing than he’d remembered.

Without thinking, he turned to Jacques.

“Can we go there?”

The sailor stared, puffed his pipe.

“Ye askin’ th’wrong sailor, lad.”

A wave splashed his face, the salt stinging his eyes, cutting the exchange short, but Lando did not look away from the lighthouse. Seawater dripped from his hair, clung to his lashes, slid down his neck. He didn’t care, mesmerised.

Something thudded against the boat. Jacques’s roar burst into Lando’s ears. Straighten th’rudder, god’s sake! He obeyed, barely. For a few seconds, he stood defiant against a raging Poseidon. Then the god grew bored and summoned a wave. Lando stared at it, so vast and immense. The Sublime washed over him, weakened his limbs. How small man was, before Mother Nature.

With a crash, the wave broke over them. He barely had time to shut his eyes. The deck flooded. So did his shoes. And finally, his stomach surrendered.

He leaned overboard just in time to vomit up his breakfast.

The two men returned to the inn in silence.

“What’d ye do to the poor lad, Jacquot? He’s lookin’ green as seaweed,” was Solange’s first remark as she handed Lando a towel.

Too busy lamenting his fate, he didn’t notice the fourth figure on the dock. It was only when a mischievous and feminine laugh rang out that he looked up and froze.

You reminded him of an endless summer. Sun-kissed skin dusted with freckles from hours outdoors. Salt-kissed hair lightened by the sea breeze.

Too beautiful to be real.

A faint memory from school—English class, perhaps—surged in his mind; a tale of sirens, and the men who fell for their charms.

Lando figured one must have swum up the Tyrrhenian and into the Mediterranean Sea.

Your shirt danced in the breeze, but he didn’t notice, captivated by the wide smile on your face. He scrubbed his hair with the towel, suddenly painfully aware of himself, of the sick still clinging to the corners of his mouth, and of you watching him.

“Hi,” you finally said. “I’m the other guest. You must be Lando. Sol’ told me about you.”

“That’s right,” he stammered, offering his hand.

You gave him your name. He tried not to dwell on the feel of your palm against his or the sound of his name on your tongue.

Two wrinkled hands seized his shoulders and yanked him away before he could humiliate himself further. Solange guided him back toward the inn, promising grilled sea bream with herbs.

“Nothin’ better t’set ye straight.”

Lando didn’t even think to grimace, too busy glancing over his shoulder, desperate for one more look at the siren—an anomaly surely sculpted by the gods.

A wave of disappointment struck as he realised you would not be following them. Instead, you were already deep in conversation with Jacques. The old sailor had transformed. He gestured broadly, enunciated his vowels, even stowed his pipe.

For a brief moment, your eyes met his. You winked.

Lando flushed.

Then you leapt into a small sailboat—one Lando swore hadn’t been there a minute ago—and loosened the ropes.

You waved and set sail.

When he awoke the next morning, the seagulls already shrieking at his window, Lando wondered if he had imagined last night’s outing and his encounter with the second host—a mirage, conjured by sea gods to punish his mediocre seafaring talents.

A knock at the door drew him from his lamentations. Three firm raps that startled him upright and tore him from his briny dreams.

Lando nearly choked when he opened the door—still in boxers—and found you standing in the doorway, barefoot, your skin salted by the morning wind.

“Solange’s been going on about bringing you at sea. She says you’re bored. So get ready. We leave in half an hour. Oh! And bring a swimsuit.”

Without waiting for an answer, you turned on your heel and vanished down the stairs, leaving behind a trail of salt and fig, the scented air threatening to drag him under a wave of dreamy sirens and lovesick drownings.

When Lando reached the jetty, the little sailboat from the day before was bobbing just above the water’s surface; you, one knee to the ground, were fastening a rope with a focused expression that he found utterly endearing.

You looked up at him suddenly, wind tangling your hair, and smiled.

“Right on time. You ready?”

Lando nodded and stepped over the hull. You followed with an ease he could not help but envy.

“The sea’s calmer than yesterday,” you reassured him quickly, catching his wary glance at the swell. “I don’t know what Jacques was thinking, taking you out in a weather like that.”

“Maybe he wanted to get rid of me,” Lando joked weakly, gripping the edge of the boat a little tighter.

“Maybe,” you shrugged. “No one really knows what’s going on in his head.”

You untied the lines and pushed against the dock with your foot. Softly, the boat began to drift away.

The two of you left the island in a trail of foam. The water—already glinting under the morning sun—barely rippled beneath the prow, but the gentle rocking was enough to rouse Lando’s stomach.

A hand began to stroke his back as he leaned over the edge, gasping.

“Breathe through your nose. Look at the horizon,” you advised, sitting down beside him.

The now-familiar perfume of fig and salt wrapped around him, drowning out the stench of algae and rotten fish. The nausea began to ease.

Lando straightened, cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“So, uh… have you been here long?”

If you caught on to his attempt at changing the subject, you gave no sign, simply returning to the helm. Lando stifled his disappointment as your hand left his back.

“Almost two months now.”

You ducked beneath the boom with the unconscious agility of someone who’d done it a thousand times (which, Lando figured, you probably had), and smiled as you adjusted your sunglasses.

“I was only meant to stay a week,” you went on. “But Solange can be pretty persuasive when she wants. I think she realised before I did. That I needed a bit more time away from all that.”

Lando understood, even without further explanation. ‘All that’ had a way of ruining people’s lives.

Silence settled between you again, broken only by the gentle slap of waves and the occasional cry of seagulls.

He watched you. The ease with which you steered the boat through the swells and rocks. That quiet confidence. An instinctive mastery that reminded him of his own connection to his car.

You tamed the Unpredictable with a calm that demanded admiration.

“Was it Jacques who taught you to sail like that?” he asked after a while.

A bright, unrestrained laugh burst from your throat. Your head tilted back, and Lando watched, entranced, as saltwater droplets glistened on your neck.

“Goodness, no! I don’t think anyone’s ever learned anything from that old sea-beard! You’d have to understand what he’s mumbling for that. No. I learned as a kid. I’m from Saint-Malo. In Brittany.”

Seeing Lando’s blank expression, you added: “It’s in France, on the Atlantic coast. Not far from Jersey, actually. My dad is a fisherman, so I grew up on boats.”

“Sounds cool.”

“It was.” Your smile softened, clearly sculpted by the memories of a joyful childhood. “But probably not as cool as driving cars.”

Lando tensed instantly.

Your eyes sparkled.

Smirking, you tilted your chin toward the west, where a jagged line broke the horizon.

“Marseille’s less than forty minutes from here. Go on another hour–” You pointed at a faint smear of land farther east. “–and you’ll reach Monaco. It’s hard to escape Formula One around these parts, even if you couldn’t care less.”

“So tell me,” you continued. “What’s Lando Norris doing in the middle of nowhere?”

You had said his name with a familiarity he only ever heard from those who knew who he was, and everything that came with it.

His shoulders stiffened.

“Relax,” she said, and somehow, he did. “Your secret’s safe with me. Hell, even if I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, I’d have to sail all the way to the village. And no offence, superstar, but the ten old southerners who live there couldn’t care less.”

He hesitated, then conceded you were right—the world was far away, and here, he was no one. For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he felt the urge to confide in you, this stranger who no longer felt like one—tossing a bottle into the sea, fully aware of the tide.

“I was tired of being watched. Judged for every little thing I do. I wanted to disappear for a few days. I knew I wouldn’t get any peace in Ibiza. Or Portugal. Or Greece. Anywhere with Internet, really.”

You slid back to sit beside him, your pinkie finger grazing his. Lando had to resist the sudden, foolish urge to intertwine them. There was something about you—something familiar, fig-scented, salt-kissed—that he did not understand but welcomed deep in his chest, and lower.

“My best mate helped me find the inn. I wanted him to come at first, but he said it’d do me good. To be alone.”

He glanced at you, searching for a reaction, but your smile did not waver. It even widened as you looked past him.

“We’re here.”

Lando turned, and promptly flinched at the sudden sight of the lighthouse, closer than ever. A tower of stone, so tall it pierced the sky open.

You moored the boat to a dock even older than the one back on the island and held out your hand to help him down. Lando’s heart skipped, but he masked it and clasped your hand.

You tugged him toward the lighthouse. He barely had time to take in the flaking paint, the worn stone; you threw open the door with a bang and led him up the stairs, higher and higher, your palm never leaving his.

Inside, the lighthouse was nothing like the cold, empty place he’d expected. Though the enormous lantern sat dormant at its centre, the room felt lived in.

Loose pages littered the floor and steps, some scribbled with a cursive handwriting, others with doodles or strange shapes with no obvious meaning. Mismatched cushions were heaped in a corner atop frayed blankets, surrounded by half-open books and board games missing pieces.

The scent of figs and salt hung in the air, and through the cracked glass panes, the Mediterranean sparkled.

“You did all this?”

You flopped onto the cushions.

“Yes. I got tired of picking figs and oranges back on the island. The rustic charm wears off pretty quick. I ended up here by accident, during a storm, and cleaned everything. Took me two weeks just to clear the spider nests.”

He lay down beside you. Your shoulders touched. Your pinkies searched for one another

Staring up at the dome, where a lopsided and seemingly recent mural of sea creatures stretched across the ceiling, Lando thought he could get used to this place.

“Earlier,” he began, tracing the misshapen tentacles of a purple octopus, “you said you needed to get away from things.”

Beside him, you shifted. On impulse, his hand found yours and gave it a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

“I was lost,” you said, voice almost a whisper. “I think I still am, in a way.”

Lando turned his head. He looked at you—this woman with sea-water hair and fig-scented skin—and thought you were like a shoreline: untameable, impossible to grasp, but utterly, achingly beautiful.

“It’s hard to know who you are when all your friends have their lives figured out,” you continued. “My best friend’s getting married in six months. Another already has three kids. All have big careers, big lives. And me? Well, I guess I felt like I was behind. Wandering without a purpose. Maybe to put off the inevitable. Responsibilities. Adulthood. All that.”

You turned to look at him. Your noses nearly touched. Neither of you pulled away from the newfound closeness.

“So I left,” you murmured, eyes flicking briefly to his lips. “Just like that. To try and find something. A purpose. Something to guide me.”

You pulled away and gestured around the room.

“There are loads of lighthouses in Brittany. I know them all by heart. My dad’s obsessed with them. He used to say they’d help me find my way if I were ever lost at sea.”

You cleared your throat and began to play with one of his curls, watching it spring back into place.

“I knew I had to find my lighthouse. One that was just mine. To guide me through storms.”

“And did you?” Lando asked, breathless, eyes locked on your mouth.

You gave him an incredulous look.

“Well, yeah? You’re in it.”

He spluttered. You burst out laughing.

“I’m messing with you.”

You paused, then added more quietly: “Fixing this ruin helped me figure things out. It was therapeutic, all those trips alone. Gave me a purpose and time to think.”

Suddenly, you clapped your thighs and stood. Lando jumped. The moment vanished.

“Right! Up you get! It’s far too hot not to enjoy the beach.”

You went back down.

In front of you, the Mediterranean shimmered, turquoise and undisturbed by the breeze.

“A proper millpond!” you said.

Without hesitation, you stripped off your shirt and shorts, wedging them beneath a stone—or maybe it was a shard of sea-glass, smoothed by the tide—then turned toward him.

Lando, behind his sunglasses, let his gaze drift down your body. He swallowed hard and adjusted his shorts.

“Last one in does the dishes for three days!”

You took off running before he could react.

“Come on! That’s not fair!” he shouted, laughing, before peeling off his shirt and dashing after you.

You plunged—Lando five seconds behind—into a chaotic splash that sent gulls scattering from the rocks.

“Looks like Solange found herself a new kitchen por—”

Lando didn’t let you finish. He raised an arm and sent a wave crashing over you. You yelped. He roared with laughter.

“Oh, you’re on!” you cried, sputtering seawater before lunging at him.

You chased and splashed each other, minutes dissolving into the rise and fall of the waves you stirred and your laughter.

When your legs finally began to tire, you made your way back to shore. Lando collapsed onto the sand, panting, while you climbed aboard the sailboat. You soon returned with a canvas bag full of boxes and fruit, which you set down on your shirt, by his side.

“Solange made the picnic,” you explained, handing him a slice of cold tomato quiche. “Lucky for you. Otherwise, I’d probably have poisoned you.”

They ate in silence, legs buried in the sand, skin still damp from the sea. When the sensation became too much, you pulled two towels from your bag and laid them side by side.

Time dissolved into a familiar post-lunch drowsiness and the lazy rhythm of the waves. You didn’t speak, basking in the presence of the other, content not just to be, but to be together.

You swam again, and again, drifting ever closer, nudged by the waves and something deeper, something that strangely looked like Fate.

Lando realised, watching you draw suns and shells in the sand only to let the ocean erase them and start again, that it had been a long time since he’d felt this at peace.

Max had been right. This spiritual retreat was a good idea.

“Do you think we could come back tomorrow?” he asked suddenly, almost shyly, eyes on the waves.

“Depends,” you replied at once. “You planning to puke on my boat again?”

“No promises. My stomach has a mind of its own. But I’ll do my best.”

“Hm. Then it’s a yes.”

Because a promise is a promise, you both went back the next day. And the day after that. Soon enough, the lighthouse became a landmark, a secret haven just for the two of you.

You climbed over rocks, swam for hours, savoured Solange’s picnics between bouts of laughter, collected seashells or simply sat in silence, gazing out at the horizon.

Days passed, each one perfumed with the same bouquet of salt, sun, and insouciance.

On the evening of the fourth day since that first expedition to the lighthouse, Solange—as she always did—set a plate for you at the table, before letting out a wistful sigh.

“I’m glad the girl’s op’ning to ye,” she said, staring at the empty chair with melancholy in her eyes. “She used to be an oyster, that one. If y’get a moment, tell her I’d love if she joined us for supper sometime.”

Lando opened his mouth to promise he would try his best, but a clamour of creaking steps cut him off before he could. Solange dropped her tea towel when you suddenly burst down the stairs and sat yourself at the table without a word.

“What? I mean. Are you–?” she stammered, mouth agape.

“I thought I might eat with you tonight. If that’s alright for you, Sol’?”

“Yes!” she blurted out immediately, trembling with delight. “Yes, of course, darlin’! No trouble at all. Wait till ye try my red mullet tart — ye’ll be beggin’ for the recipe, I swear!”

She gave your shoulders a quick squeeze before vanishing into the kitchen with a squeal of joy.

“I think you broke her,” Lando chuckled.

You rolled your eyes, smiling despite yourself, and Lando couldn’t help but do the same, charmed by the playful tilt of your expression.

When Solange returned, she carried in a steaming tart smelling of fish. Lando’s stomach churned at the scent. His grimace made you snort. As he accepted a slice with a tight-lipped smile—he never could say no to Solange—he kicked you under the table. You yelped.

“What’s wrong with you, girl?” Solange asked, frowning.

“Nothing.”

“If ye say so. Here, try this!” She sliced you a generous portion. “Patrick brought in the best red mullet o’the season! Oh– hold on, forgot the vinaigrette for the salad!”

Lando didn’t dwell on who Patrick was, or his mysterious status in the island’s tiny ecosystem. His eyes stayed glued to his plate; he swallowed with difficulty, his saliva thickening at once.

Even on land, he hadn’t quite shaken off his seasickness.

You kicked him again. Thinking it was retaliation, he returned the favour—ever the competitor—but you only rolled your eyes.

“No, idiot. Give me your tart,” you whispered, glancing over your shoulder to ensure Solange was still occupied in the kitchen.

In one deft motion, you stole his slice.

“I’ve got biscuits upstairs for this type of emergencies,” you added, sitting upright again as you devoured the tart in four greedy bites.

When Solange came back, vinaigrette in hand, her eyes drifted to Lando’s plate.

“Well, I’ll be damned! Looks like someone liked my tart. Want another slice?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

You shared a knowing smile as Solange launched into the latest village gossip, courtesy of Patrick, who, Lando soon learned, was a fisherman.

From that evening on, you joined them for dinner each night. This new routine became as familiar as your lighthouse visits. Soon, only the dark of night separated you from Lando.

Your days—governed by the philosophy of the farniente—drifted gently by, suspended between two islands: the inn’s and the lighthouse’s. Nothing existed outside the microcosm you’d built together, where trust flowed freely, and nothing needed to be hidden or explained.

Lando told you things even Max didn’t know, and never once considered regretting it. Summer had a way of making one careless; duties, obligations, and consequences melted away in the golden hours. Anyone who surrendered to Summer was trapped in a parallel pocket of time, shaped by cicada song and the crash of waves.

Lando was no exception—enchanted by you, the very embodiment of the season—and, without even noticing, he stopped counting the days left before returning to the mainland.

Until one morning, when Solange, after setting down a plate of fresh fruit, asked casually: “So– what time d’ye want Jacques to fetch ye on Monday?”

Lando frowned.

“Monday?”

“Ten? Or earlier?” she went on. “He’s off to the village after noon, so before then’s best. Someone waitin’ for ye on land, is there?

Lando froze. His eyes darted to the calendar on the wall, and he choked at the date. August 21. A piece of melon slid from his fork into the bowl with a dull thud.

Only four days left.

“Oh.”

Solange gave him a pitying smile, as if she knew what he was thinking of (she probably was). Lando had to look away, embarrassed by the lump forming in his throat.

That was when you came down the stairs, and, seeing both their faces, frowned.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothin’, love,” Solange said gently. “Nothin’, love. Just figurin’ when Landon’s headin’ off Monday.”

“Oh,” you echoed, your voice hollow.

You slumped into your chair, suddenly as heavy as the air between you all.

Your eyes met his. You tried to smile, but it faltered just as quickly. Lando looked down and poked at his melon. Neither of you had to speak to know what the other was thinking: the end was near, and with it came the terrifying thought that you might never see each other again.

“Tell ye what– how ‘bout ye skip the lighthouse fo’ today and go pick me some lemons instead. I’m makin’ a tart for tea. Might as well put ye young ones to use while I still can.”

Solange didn’t wait for a reply. Two wicker baskets were thrust into your arms with startling speed before she slammed the door in both of your faces.

You stared at it, stunned. Then marched off towards the garden, where citrus, figs, and olives weighed down the trees and filled the air with their ripe, sticky perfume.

“Hey! Wait up!”

“Don’t tell me I’m too fast for you, Norris? Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of elite athlete?” you shouted over your shoulder, before breaking into a sprint.

He caught up with you in no time and flung an arm around your shoulders to pull you into his side. You glanced up at him, one brow arched, before adjusting your grip on your basket so you could thread your fingers through his. He squeezed your hand three times and didn’t let go until you stood in the shade of the lemon trees.

“Looking forward to seeing your friends again?” you asked, picking your first lemon.

A twinge of guilt pricked his chest as Lando realised he hadn’t thought of them in days, too consumed by you.

“Of course,” he lied, only partially.

It was true, in a way. He did want to tell Max about the boat, the lighthouse, the fish he had eaten (even if it had been against his will). He missed their banter, their inside jokes, the easy bond between them. But he also knew that going back on land meant putting to an end the memories he’d been making with you.

And that, he wasn’t ready for.

“They’re going to freak when I tell them I sailed a boat and slept in a lighthouse.”

“You gonna tell them you threw up about ten times too?”

“I don’t need to share everything.”

You burst out laughing. Lando beamed with pride at the sound.

You kept working under the unforgiving sun. Bit by bit, the fruits piled up in your baskets. Lando wandered between the rows, lips dry, shirt damp under the arms. The air was thick, stifling; he kept wiping his nape with the back of his hand.

“This heat is insane,” you muttered.

From your back pocket, you pulled a small Opinel knife, flicked open the blade, and sliced into an orange. Juice streamed down your hand, dripping into the scorched grass.

You lifted the fruit to your mouth, eyes half-closed. The nectar slid down your chin, along your throat, and disappeared into your neckline.

Lando followed its trail, unable to look away.

Something cracked open inside him when, with a slow—and far too late—flick of your tongue, you caught a drop lingering on your lip.

“You’re killing me,” he groaned, pulling you toward him before kissing you. Right there. Beneath the orange trees.

The scent of figs surrounded him as you wound your arms around his neck and kissed him back, deeper and deeper. He drank you in—orange juice and soft moans—until your fingers crept beneath his shirt, grazing his stomach. He pressed you against the tree, his knee slipping between your thighs.

“Oi! How long’m I waitin’ on those lemons?” Solange’s voice rang out in the distance.

You both sprang apart, flushed and breathless, lips swollen but bearing the same dazed smile.

“I’ve wanted to do that for ages,” he murmured, before placing a quick peck on your mouth.

“Me too.”

You returned to the inn with your baskets and hearts full.

“I don’t want to leave,” he said the next day, three days before your departure. You were both lying atop the lighthouse, limbs entangled in an intimate embrace, listening to the waves break on the shore.

You gave him a playful punch on the shoulder, laughing, before softening the blow with a kiss a second later.

The citrus-sweet kiss you had shared the day before had opened Pandora’s box. An arm slipping around your waist to squeeze past you. A hand squeezing your thigh during a boat ride. A stolen hug in the kitchen in the morning. Like your trips to the lighthouse and your shared dinners, these tender gestures had become part of your shared routine.

Earlier, you had even kissed him in front of Solange, without thinking. The innkeeper had spilled her coffee in a burst of poorly contained joy before pulling you both into a flowery-aproned embrace.

“I knew it would happen!” She had screamed. “You’ve been dancing around each other for days. ‘Twas driving me mad!”

You had laughed. He had blushed.

Your voice pulled him back from his thoughts.

“Don’t be silly. You’ll get to drive again.”

“Yes, but you won’t be there.”

Your smile faltered.

He nestled his head into the curve of your neck and breathed in the scent of figs like a man famished.

“Is this just going to be a summer fling?” he murmured against your skin, barely audible, as if speaking it aloud might make it real.

“Would it be so bad if it were?” you whispered in reply.

He didn’t answer and just held you tighter.

“I think I love you,” he confessed. “Is that crazy?”

“Crazier than driving a car at 300km/h? I doubt it.”

He raised his head and gazed at you for a few seconds before kissing you softly. You returned the kiss, tracing the edge of his jaw with your fingertips. When you parted, and emboldened by your closeness, he summoned all his courage to ask the question that had been circling in his head for days: “Now that the lighthouse is fixed up… don’t you think you could make room for a second purpose?”

He finished his thought before you could interrupt.

“What if I asked you to come with me?” he added, his voice barely above a whisper, far meeker than he’d intended.

You didn't answer. Instead, you placed a long, lingering, kiss on his forehead.

The conversation ended there. You didn't speak about it again, and Lando was smart enough to understand the no hidden in this silence. Not wanting to spoil the little time you had left together, he swallowed his pain and pretended nothing had happened.

The final two days passed in a softness unmatched, though touched with the weight of the Inevitable. You went back to the lighthouse, ate the inn’s oranges, swam, and kissed each other breathless.

On the very last evening, Lando crossed the threshold of your room for the first and last time, breaking a rule he’d silently set for himself.

You kissed. Your hands joined in. At first hesitant, then more assured. Breaths quickened. Sheets tangled beneath your movements. You clung to his back, your back arched, soft moans escaping your throat like a secret offered to the night. Lando found you all the more beautiful, abandoned to your desire. When he felt you tremble against him, he closed his eyes and followed you into completion.

Then came the quiet. Your body softened against his. You fell asleep naked, your head resting on his chest. Lando tried to view this carnal embrace as something other than a goodbye, but he couldn't, and so, he held you tighter before closing his eyes too.

The irregular growl of an old engine pulled Lando from his pleasant dreams and tolled the bell. Dread washed over him. That mechanical crackling heralded his departure, the one he had tried to postpone. It was the end of summer, and of so much more.

He reached out to his right. His hand met only the sheet, cold, empty.

Maybe she’s just gone downstairs, he told himself, though even he didn’t believe the lie.

In the two weeks he had spent with you, Lando had come to learn you were a wave—unpredictable and untameable. No cotton-sheet bed could restrain you. You would never wait for anyone, not even him.

His chest tightened, and suddenly he felt exposed in his own skin, acutely aware of his nudity. He pulled the sheet up to cover his chest as his breath quickened. Did you regret it? Why hadn’t you waited for him?

Lando stared blankly at the window. Outside, the sea rolled in on itself, whispering its salt-tinged taunts to the shore. It felt, to him, like mockery.

That knot in his stomach followed him all the way to the kitchen, where Solange was waiting.

His eyes went straight to your chair at the table. The untouched plate. The cooling but full coffee cup. His face dropped. He shut his eyes, less for self-pity than to avoid Solange’s knowing gaze.

“Jacques is a bit early,” was all the innkeeper said her voice subdued, but breaking the heavy silence all the same. “If ye want, I’ll tell him ye’re ready.”

“Might as well,” he said, bitterness bubbling up like brackish water, translating as a hollow laugh that made her wince. “There’s nothing keeping me here now, is there?”

Solange gave him a sad smile.

He sat, turning his back to her, and forced down his breakfast, pretending not to feel the lump in his throat.

Once his bowl was empty, he went back upstairs wordlessly. He packed slowly, tucking away the laptop with the training programme he had abandoned after a day.

Before zipping up the bag, he looked around the room one last time. The salt-bleached walls, the half-open window, the bed unmade. In the hallway, his eyes drifted toward your door. He stood there for a moment, taking in the remains of yesterday, then descended the creaking steps of the inn for the last time.

Downstairs, Solange wasted no time to embrace him.

He closed his eyes and nestled into her flowered apron, which reeked of fish, citrus, and olives. He searched the hug for even a trace of fig but caught himself and clung harder. That was when he felt her body tremble against his.

“Sol’?”

“It’s that blasted sea air,” she sniffed into his shoulder. “Makes me sneezy.”

She wiped her nose and looked up at him, her chin trembling.

“Ye’ll come back, won’t ye? That room’s yers now.”

She stepped back just enough to meet his gaze, her eyes glistening.

He nodded and, at last, stepped out of the inn, his heart heavy.

Ahead of him, the waves, always the waves. They danced in that natural rhythm of theirs, lifting, falling, crashing against the coast—a heartbeat born out of salt and sea.

Lando matched his breath to the swell.

This, he knew, was what he’d miss most. In Monaco, the sea drowned beneath the engines of monstrous yachts and behind the towers of concrete.

He turned his head.

In a bittersweet echo of their first encounter, Jacques stood on the jetty, pipe in mouth, silent. Only his old boat remained moored. Your sailboat was missing, having left behind nothing but a pile of frayed ropes.

You were gone. Without a word. Without a glance.

A flush rose to his cheeks—wrath and heartbreak intertwined. You had chosen to slip away, to avoid goodbyes.

Coward, a voice shouted in his mind.

Lando reached Jacques, jaw clenched. Without a word, he climbed aboard while the sailor cast off the rope. The engine coughed under them, then settled into a steady purr. Lando kept his gaze fixed on the horizon, shoulders tight.

He did not look back once, not at the inn, already shrinking behind them, nor at the lighthouse island, for fear of seeing a familiar sailboat there.

As they neared the mainland, a strange nausea coiled in his belly. The port appeared, then the village. He saw coloured cars parked haphazardly up the slope, terracotta-and-concrete houses perched like watchful birds on the green mountains.

Lando heaved.

Great, he thought, bitter. Now I have landsickness.

When they reached the shore, Jacques cut the engine and leapt out to tie up the boat. Lando followed, bag slung over his shoulder, eyes hollow.

The old man laid a big and calloused hand on his shoulder, gave it a firm squeeze, before nodding once. Lando felt a sting behind his eyes, and returned the gesture, swallowing hard. He didn’t think the sailor would handle it well if he burst into tears, so he didn’t.

Jacques didn’t linger. Lando hadn’t expected him to. The old man climbed back onto his creaking boat and disappeared into the waves, leaving Lando alone with his bag and his pain.

He stood frozen on the deck for a minute, eyes lost in the horizon, before startling out of his reverie and checking his watch. 10:12.

Before leaving for the inn, two weeks ago, he’d arranged for Max to pick him up by car at noon.

Out of habit, he switched on his phone. Hundreds of notifications flooded the screen, overwhelming him. Lando swallowed.

He hadn’t missed any of this.

His eyes flicked through the chaos, trying to make sense of it, but a headache was already blooming behind his temples.

A message from Max, sent barely an hour ago, caught his eye.

[09:21] Max: Sorry, mate. Something came up. Can’t pick you up.

Lando sighed, pocketed the phone, and slumped onto a bench at the port, defeated.

This day can’t get any worse, he thought.

He cursed the sea gods and fate—maybe they were the same beings—for making him their scapegoat. What had he done to deserve it?

Suddenly, a car horn blared behind him, jolting him from his brooding.

Lando spun around, and nearly choked.

You.

You, with your salt-frizzed hair and sun-burnt skin.

If he closed his eyes, Lando could almost imagine your fig fragrance, but the mirage quickly disappeared in the hints of diesel emanating from the exhaust pipe of the convertible you were driving.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, breathless just from the sight of you, solid and earthly.

It seemed wrong, somehow, to see you away from the sea, the lighthouse, your sailboat.

You pushed your sunglasses to your forehead and winked.

“Heard someone needed a ride to Monaco.”

For a moment he stood dumbstruck, staring.

Then he sprang into motion, dashed to the passenger side when you opened the door for him, tossed his bag into the back seat before kissing you. Hard.

“I thought you’d left without saying goodbye,” he said when you finally broke apart.

“I wanted to surprise you. Sol’ helped.”

“Of course she did,” he laughed, breathless.

He kissed you again, then froze.

“But– the lighthouse?” he stammered.

You waved it off.

“Turns out a lighthouse doesn’t have to be an actual one,” you said at last. “That was just me being dramatic. Took me a while to realise it could also be someone. I think that’s what my dad meant all along.”

“And… have you found that someone?”

“Yes. Even if he’d be useless if I’m lost at sea. He tends to throw up as soon as he's on a boat.”

You both laughed, more from relief than humour. Then you looked at him, softly.

“The lighthouse, even the inn– It kept me busy just long enough,” you said. “But it’s time to go back to the real world.”

He took your hand and squeezed it three times.

“And did you know,” you continued, “there are eighteen lighthouses on the Côte d’Azur? One of them’s in Monaco. I think I’ll be just fine there.”

It was only then that he noticed the suitcase tucked behind the driver’s seat.

“Does this mean…?”

He left the sentence hanging.

“Yes. I mean– if that’s alright with you, of course,” you added shyly.

“Of course it is! Hell, you can even move in with me!”

His enthusiasm made you burst out laughing.

“Calm down, Romeo. I’ve got a flat in Nice. But I could be convinced to spend a few nights at yours.”

You winked, pecked his lips, and finally started the car.

You drove along the coast, never straying too far from the sea, as if She refused to let go of the story she had helped shape—love erosion.

The radio crackled and filled the air with old French songs, riding the salty wind. Lando closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he turned toward the horizon.

He squinted.