lycheepearlmilktea

They were best of friends once, years ago. Still are, perhaps. But it’s been a while.
Elise Ashton: stubborn yet determined, a brilliant aspiring astrophysicist with her head in the stars. Aiden Carter: caring and friendly, a talented musician who always has his friends and family at heart.
When a twist of fate brings these two longtime childhood friends to vacation destination Silverstone Beach as teenagers, cool-headed logic meets ardent emotions as they struggle to understand each other—and themselves. After all these years, what’s changed…and what’s stayed the same?

Constellations and Harmonies

After breakfast, Elise would've liked to stay holed up in her room, but unfortunately, life has other plans for her. Life, as in her sisters ("You already spent one afternoon reading about astrophysics, you've got to come to the beach today!"), who had dragged her out of her room to the beach where they're currently located, along with Melissa, one of the Carter cousins staying nearby, and Ethan. Oh, and Ethan's brother, not that Aiden is of any major concern to her at all.


She isn't in the mood to do much, so she refrains from swimming and keeps to herself under the sun umbrella, watching the others playing in the water and building sand castles, other than one certain brown-haired, green-eyed guy. 


The perfect escape comes when Ethan trips and scrapes his knee on a sharp rock buried in the sand, and Elise quickly volunteers to take him back to the house and help him clean up.


Luckily, he's decided at six years old that he finds crying distasteful, so he's not too upset, and his lone sniffle seems to be environmental rather than from crying. She hopes. She's never been great with kids, even with a sister almost a decade younger—actually, especially with Kathryn, who she was more distant with. Her mom often fretted over it, but attributed it to the large age gap between them and always said she'd grow out of it once they got older.


After the get to house, Elise fumbles around the medicine cabinet to look for the proper materials. "There you go," she says after she's applied antiseptic and a bandaid. "Feeling better?"


She ruffles his hair. "Of course. You're a brave boy now, aren't ya?"


She considers just staying at the house for the rest of the day, now that she's already here, but she realizes that wouldn't be fair to Ethan, who probably wants to go back to the beach. Even though it's a relatively short walk back, it would be irresponsible to let him go back alone. 


"Can you wait down here for a minute? I'm just going to go into my room to grab something."


Ethan is compliant, so she's able to run upstairs to get her astrophysics book, and spend the rest of her time at the beach reading, resolutely determined to not get distracted by anything or, perhaps, anyone.
