Chapter 2 #4
It wasn’t just organization, it was curation— a gentle act of care.
She stood there for a while, hands braced on the counter, surrounded by vessels waiting to be filled.
And in the hush that followed, something surfaced. Not a plan, exactly. Not a certainty. But a pull.
She used to want this, fiercely. A little shop of her own with warm light spilling through the windows, the scent of butter and brown sugar in the air, and people starting their mornings with something she made.
It had once felt like the clearest expression of who she was.
A way to offer comfort, to create beauty, to be part of someone’s beginning.
To invite people in, to trust them to stay, even if just for a little while.
Somewhere along the way, that version of herself had gone quiet. Tucked down beneath deadlines and disappointments and the ache of trying to be enough in a world that didn’t seem to notice when she slipped away.
But she wanted to find her again, that girl who had dreamed of a bakery. Of a place people wanted to linger.
Maybe, if she built something here, with her own hands, people would see her differently.
Hazel didn’t let the thought settle fully— just let it brush the edge of her ribs, light and unsteady. But she didn’t turn from it, either.
She looked across the room at the shelves she’d filled, at the dust still lingering in corners, at the silence waiting to be broken. And then she drew a breath, slow and deep, and made herself a quiet promise:
She would try.
Not just because her grandmother had wanted it. But because some part of her still did, too.
By the time Hazel locked the door behind her, the street had gone still— the kind of stillness that felt earned, as if the world itself had wound down after a long day.
Her fingers lingered on the key, feeling its cool weight before she tucked it into the back pocket of her shorts.
She stepped off the bakery stoop and onto the sidewalk, her shoulders stiff.
She hadn’t meant to stay so late. But once she started making phone calls, placing orders, navigating the messy maze of applications and licenses, she couldn’t stop.
There was a strange kind of comfort in checking things off; it gave shape to her grief.
It let her make sense of it in a language she understood: lists, action, forward motion.
One more supplier account confirmed. One more step towards making Rise real.
The lamps on Main Street cast wide pools of golden light, their glow soft around the edges like halos dulled by fog.
A few window displays flickered in the distance, old fairy lights left up year-round and hand-lettered chalkboard signs promising deals on acrylic markers and second-hand books.
The shops were dark and the street was empty, but the hush wasn’t eerie, it was intimate.
Hazel tilted her head back on instinct and exhaled toward the sky.
There they were. The stars.
More than she remembered. More than she’d seen in a long time.
They were pinned like lanterns against a velvet black sky.
In Boston, light pollution had always blurred whatever loomed above.
Even on the clearest nights, she could only ever catch a few of the brightest ones, scattered like crumbs.
But here— here, the sky held things. The steady pulse of something older than her pain.
She slowed her pace, eyes still trained upward.
Her breath caught when she found Cassiopeia; those familiar five points tilted on their side, right where they used to be when she was a girl.
In the summer, she would climb out onto the flat patch of roof just beyond her bedroom window, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, shingles warm beneath her.
With her grandmother’s soft hums drifting through the open frame behind her, she’d trace constellations with the tip of a pencil, name her own stars, and believe in the kind of magic you could see but never hold.
If she stayed out too long, her grandmother would tap the wall just inside her room— tea in hand, voice amused but never scolding— and tell her to come inside before she floated away and turned into a constellation herself.
Hazel smiled at the reminder, small and crooked.
The ache in her chest had dulled, replaced by something quieter.
She reached into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out her grandmother’s rosary, one of the many physical reminders that tugged on the jagged edges of her heart.
Her fingers caressed over each of the worn beads with reverence, remembering late night prayers that had once been whispered to her before she fell asleep.
She was so caught up in the memory, she didn’t notice she was no longer alone on the street.
There, just up ahead, was a shadowed figure.
A man.
He came into view beneath the next streetlamp, emerging from the darkness like something sketched in charcoal.
He was broad-shouldered and tall, looming perhaps a foot higher than Hazel herself.
His frame was lean but grounded with an unspoken kind of strength.
He wore a faded flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, layered over a dark t-shirt.
His jeans were worn, the knees softened and frayed.
His gait, though sure, held a barely-there hitch— a rhythm shaped by compensation, almost invisible.
Her eyes caught on the limp before anything else. It wasn’t dramatic, but it was there, inescapable. Like something he had lived with for a long time.
He didn’t seem to notice her at first. Or maybe he did, and simply chose not to show it.
Hazel’s heart beat harder, instinct flaring. She was a woman alone, at night, on an empty street. For a breath, she remembered city shadows and the way fear could lace itself through the smallest moments.
But this wasn’t Boston.
This was home.
She didn’t stop, but she slowed. She tucked the rosary back into her pocket, cheeks flushing with a sort of embarrassment she wasn’t sure she could name.
They passed each other in the wide berth between pools of lamplight, their bodies sharing space for just a moment.
Her eyes flicked toward him, taking in the sharp line of his jaw, the tousled wave of dark hair, the way he carried himself like someone used to silence.
He moved with that particular kind of stillness that made you look twice— not because he demanded attention, but because he refused it.
She offered him a smile, though just the ghost of one. A quiet, reflexive kindness pulled from somewhere old inside her.
“Hello,” she whispered, more instinct than intent.
His eyes shifted just enough to register her.
He didn’t smile or offer anything back, but something in his expression changed.
The faint narrowing of his gaze, a subtle tightening of his jaw.
It wasn’t cold or disinterested, just aware.
Like a man who noticed everything and chose carefully what to show in return.
He offered her a nod and then he passed.
A gust of warm late summer air stirred in his wake, brushing her cheek with a touch that felt both fleeting and deliberate.
His scent lingered in the moment that followed, faint but unmistakable.
Pine and motor oil. Sea wind and something warmer she couldn’t quite name.
It reminded her of blankets pulled fresh from the dryer, of the softened echo of heat left behind in a room just after someone had stepped out.
Hazel kept walking.
But something in her chest shifted. Not just a loosening, but a tilt. Like a door she hadn’t realized was closed had just opened a crack.
And when she turned, drawn more by instinct than curiosity, she saw the shape of his back retreating down the street, shoulders set in a way that struck her, inexplicably, as familiar.
Not in recognition, but in the posture of someone who’d spent too long carrying weight no one else could see.
A kind of loneliness that lived in the bones, quiet and unyielding. The kind she understood too well.
He didn’t look back. But something in the line of him, held and restrained, made her wonder if he felt the flicker of something familiar between them, too. If he noticed how it had stretched, threadlike, from her to him in the span of those few brief seconds.
Hazel paused, the humidity sticking to her skin. Her fingers brushed the seam of her oversized T-shirt and tugged gently at the bottom hem. She didn’t know what she expected to feel, but whatever it was, it had settled into her, content to stay.
She exhaled and turned forward again, continuing on the path home.