Chapter 38: Like the Light Between the Leaves
Summer arrived like a breath Anya hadn't realized she'd been holding.
The first morning of break was soft and slow—the kind of quiet only found in childhood summers, when the calendar stretched wide and lazy and unpromised. She woke to the sound of birdsong and the clink of her mother's tea cup downstairs. Sunlight poured through the window like syrup, golden and slow, spilling over her bed.
And she didn't need to rush.
For once, there was no bell waiting, no chalkboard, no forced routine. Just this morning. Just herself.
And just a message from Oriana.
"Pack a lunch. Wear something light. I'm stealing you today."
Anya's heart thudded as she read it. There was no location. No time. Just confidence. Just Oriana.
By ten, she stood outside her house with a small satchel, sketchbook tucked inside, two rice balls wrapped in wax paper, and her favorite hair clip holding her bangs away from her eyes. It was chipped. Oriana had once said it made her look like she stepped out of a Ghibli film. She wore it now like a secret charm.
When Oriana arrived, she was riding a battered green bicycle with a rusted bell and wildflowers woven through the handlebars. She wore denim shorts and a pale yellow shirt that looked like it had been kissed by the sun itself. Her hair was braided loosely, strands escaping to dance in the breeze.
"Get in," she said, grinning.
Anya blinked. "You want me to ride that with you?"
"There's a back seat," Oriana said, tapping the metal rack. "It's stronger than it looks. Like me."
Anya laughed, climbed on, and wrapped her arms gently around Oriana's waist.
They rode past rice fields and gravel roads, laughter trailing behind them like petals in the wind. The air was warm but kind, the scent of summer grass rising in waves. Occasionally Oriana would lean back and shout something absurd—"Hold on, we're racing the dragonflies!"—and Anya would bury her face against her shoulder, laughing too hard to speak.
After nearly forty minutes, they stopped at the edge of a quiet grove near the base of a hill. The trees arched high above, their leaves forming a mosaic of dancing light. A single winding path led through the shaded forest.
"This is the secret," Oriana said, dismounting and leading Anya by the hand. "No one really comes here anymore. Not since the walking trail closed."
"But how do you know it?"
"My dad used to bring me here when I couldn't sleep. He said the trees knew how to listen better than people did."
Anya glanced up. The canopy above glimmered with shifting green, as if sunlight had become a living thing. The air was cool and smelled of damp earth, moss, and a hint of something wild.
They walked in silence for a while, hands brushing, not always touching but never far. Oriana stopped suddenly by a small clearing.
"Here."
A fallen log made a perfect seat. Around them, ferns waved like they were whispering secrets to the soil.
Anya sat and pulled out the lunch she'd packed. Oriana unwrapped hers and blinked.
"You made these?"
"Sort of. My mom supervised. But I added the seaweed myself."
"You're domestic and dangerous," Oriana said, pretending to swoon. "I'm in trouble."
They ate quietly, the sounds of birds and wind wrapping around them. After a while, Anya pulled out her sketchbook and began to draw the way the light filtered through the trees, falling in dapples across Oriana's arms and legs.
Oriana didn't move, letting Anya study her. "What do I look like today?"
"Like the sun fell in love with you," Anya whispered.
Oriana blinked, lips parting. "Say that again."
Anya's cheeks flushed. "Nope."
"That's unfair," Oriana pouted. "You say something that beautiful and then retreat into silence like a forest spirit."
"I'm shy," Anya mumbled, smiling into her page.
"You're dangerous," Oriana said again, softer this time. "Because you make me feel like maybe the world isn't so sharp after all."
Anya set her pencil down and looked at her. "Do you ever get scared?"
Oriana tilted her head. "Of what?"
"This. Us. The fact that something this good might not last forever."
Oriana didn't answer right away. She stood, walked a few steps into the sunlight, then turned back.
"I used to," she admitted. "I used to think everything beautiful would vanish the moment I touched it. Like it would realize it didn't belong to me."
She walked back to Anya and sat beside her on the log.
"But not you," she said. "With you, I don't feel like I'm holding something I'll lose. I feel like I'm home."
Anya reached out, lacing their fingers together.
"Then I'll stay," she whispered. "Even when it's hard. Even when things change."
Oriana squeezed her hand. "Me too."
They spent the next hour lying side by side on a blanket Oriana had tucked into her bag. The forest buzzed softly around them—cicadas humming, the wind threading through branches like a lullaby.
"I read something once," Oriana said. "About how when you love someone, their name settles into your bones."
Anya turned to look at her.
"Like you can say it without speaking. Like it becomes part of how you breathe."
"Say my name, then," Anya whispered.
Oriana leaned in, nose brushing hers. "I don't need to. You're already inside everything I am."
They kissed. Not the first time. Not even the longest. But this one settled like sunlight across stone. Warm. Ancient. Unshakeable.
When they finally left the forest, the sun had begun to dip behind the trees. The sky blushed in hues of coral and lilac. Oriana rode slower this time, letting the breeze wash over them in long, quiet waves.
Anya rested her cheek against Oriana's back.
"I wish today could last forever."
"Then let's put it in the book," Oriana replied. "That way it does."
Back in Oriana's room, the scrapbook lay open on her bed. Anya glued in a dried leaf from the forest, still green with a tiny hole at the edge where a bug had nibbled it. Next to it, she drew the trees—the way they curved above them, cradling the sky.
Then she wrote:
"Some days are written in hours.
Others, like this one, are written in forever."
Oriana slipped a small Polaroid into the fold—one she'd snapped just before they left the grove. It was slightly overexposed, light bleeding across the image, but Anya's smile was caught perfectly, eyes glowing beneath the trees.
She captioned it simply:
"Her smile, and the forest learned to breathe again."
Later, as they curled beneath Oriana's blanket, listening to the summer rain against the roof, Oriana whispered, "When school starts again, we'll be different."
"Different how?"
"We'll have this. And people will know. Maybe not everyone will like it."
Anya thought of the whispers. Of Mina. Of the way some girls had looked at them when they held hands in the hallway.
"Let them look," she said quietly.
"You're sure?"
"I don't want to live like I'm half of something. I want all of it. I want you."
Oriana kissed her forehead. "Then we'll hold each other when it gets hard. Like now. Like this."
And they fell asleep that way—arms tucked close, dreams echoing with the forest, the bicycle, the light between the leaves.
The world would keep turning.
But for now, they had stopped time with love.