Pier Pressure

When September came, Lottie stayed. The scooter still didn’t start, but Ben did every morning with coffee. There was still plenty they had not solved, but joy had a way of making brave people out of both of them. They did not need a perfect plan anymore. They needed the next laugh, the next honest sentence, the next excuse to stay beside each other a little longer. And when the morning finally arrived, it did not feel like the end of a wild night. It felt like the first page of something they were finally ready to read out loud.…