Chapter 1: Neon and Insecurity
The boardwalk sizzled under the midday sun, its weathered wooden planks groaning under the weight of laughing tourists. Marisol Vega felt every groan in her own bones. The air was thick with the smell of salt, coconut oil, and fried dough, a humid blanket that made her oversized black cover-up stick to her skin. She trailed a few steps behind Emmy and Vanessa, their bright laughter a sharp counterpoint to the low, rhythmic crash of the waves.
“Come on, slowpoke!” Emmy called over her shoulder, her sleek black bob swinging. She adjusted the strap of her tiny cerulean bikini, a move so casual it felt like a performance. “The good spot by the pink cabana is still open.”
Vanessa, long platinum hair shining like a beacon, nodded. “I need to even out these tan lines. The wedding is in three weeks.” She shot a scrutinizing glance at Marisol, her green eyes missing nothing and yet everything all at once. “You’re not going to bake in that thing, are you?”
Marisol forced a smile, the one her friends expected. The ‘funny Marisol’ smile.“I’m cultivating a mystery. And a heatstroke. It’s a two-for-one.”
Emmy giggled, not unkindly, and slung an arm around her shoulders. The gesture was warm, familiar, and it made the constant critical monologue in Marisol’s head stutter for a second. They love you.They just don’t see you. The cover-up, a knee-length black rayon shirt, was her fortress.Inside it, she could be just a face, a personality. Outside of it, she was a body. A soft, round body in a world of taught strings and sharp angles.They claimed their patch of sand near a pastel pink cabana. Vanessa spread out a striped blanket with military precision while Emmy unveiled a tote bag overflowing with snacks, glossy magazines, and sunscreen.
“Okay, swimsuit time,” Vanessa announced, shimmying out of her sheer kaftan.Her neon green bikini was practically dental floss. She turned to Marisol, hands on her hips. “Don’t make me wrestle you.”
“I’d pay to see that,” Emmy said, stretching her already-toned limbs.
The panic was a cold spike, even in the heat.Marisol’s fingers fumbled with the single button of her cover-up. She’d bought the matching bikini to be part of the group, a neon orange set that had looked bold and fun on the hanger. In the dressing room, under fluorescent lights, it had looked like a warning sign. The fabric cut into the softness of her hips and belly, the triangles of the top straining in a way that promised escape.
“Here we go,” she muttered, slipping the cover-up from her shoulders. The ocean breeze hit her skin, feeling more like an interrogation light.For a second, there was silence.Then Vanessa clapped.“Yes! See?You look amazing! Doesn’t she look amazing, Em?”
“So good!” Emmy agreed, already rubbing sunscreen on her own shoulders. “That color is killer on you.”
They’re lying, the voice in her head whispered, smooth and sure as the tide. They have to say that.It’s the rule. Marisol crossed her arms over her stomach, her hands gripping her own sides. She could feel the tight elastic digging in, the flesh spilling over just enough to confirm every worst thought. She stood frozen, a statue of self-consciousness, while her friends settled onto the blanket, their easy, exposed bodies a foreign language.
“I’m just going to… sketch for a bit,” Marisol said, her voice tight. She grabbed her bag and pulled out her leather-bound sketchbook and a case of pencils.
“Of course you are,” Vanessa said, already tilting her face to the sun. “Get some inspiration from all this… inspiration.” She waved a hand vaguely at the ocean.
Marisol walked a dozen paces away, to where the sand rose into a gentle dune dotted with seagrass. She sat down, the hot sand shifting underneath her. She opened the sketchbook to a half-finished drawing of a whimsical, armored cat guarding a spiraling shell. Her pencil moved, focusing on the pattern of the armor, losing herself in the cross-hatching.This was her body.This line, this shape, this intent. It was quiet here.A distant thwack, followed by a cheer, made her look up. Emmy was waving her arms, running toward a group of men setting up a volleyball net. Vanessa was right behind her.“Mar, come play!” Emmy yelled.Marisol waved back, forcing another smile. “I’m good! Drawing!” She watched as her friends, glossy and laughing, integrated seamlessly into the game.They leaped for the ball, high-fiving, their movements effortless. She pulled her knees up to her chest, making herself smaller, her sketchbook a shield against the wide open space.
From his spot farther down the dune, Leo Carver watched the sea turtle tracks fade near the tide line. His own sketchbook was filled with field notes and rapid drawings of carapace scutes. The volleyball game was a noisy distraction, but it was the woman sitting alone who had pulled his focus.Not because of the neon suit, or the way she was curled in on herself. It was the intensity on her face when he’d glanced over earlier. It wasn’t the vacant stare of someone bored; it was the fierce concentration of someone creating something. He’d seen her hands moving, quick and sure, and then the sudden stillness when her friends called to her. The shift was like watching a light go out.
He saw her now, arms wrapped around her legs, staring not at the game, but at the horizon line where the sea met the sky. Her expression was so profoundly lonely it felt like a physical object in the space between them.He hesitated. He was a scientist, not a socialite.But he also believed in paying attention when the universe pointed something out.
Marisol felt the shadow fall over her page before she saw him.She flinched, snapping the sketchbook shut.
“Sorry,” the man said, taking a step back. He had sun-streaked brown hair and kind hazel eyes. A faded tee-shirt covered a sturdy frame, and his arms were tanned and marked with a few old, silvery scars. He held up a hand, not in greeting, but in a gesture of peaceful surrender.“I didn’t mean to sneak up. I was just… I noticed you were drawing.I’m a bit of a doodler myself. For work.”
He gestured with his own sketchbook, its pages curled from humidity. It was filled not with cartoons, but with precise, beautiful drawings of marine life. A sea turtle, a skate egg case, a detailed clam shell.Marisol’s grip on her own book relaxed, just a fraction. “They’re beautiful,” she said, her voice quieter than she intended.“Thanks. Yours?” he asked, nodding to her closed book. His gaze was on her face, steady and open.There was no flicker down to her body, no assessing look. It was unnervingly novel.“Oh, it’s nothing.Just silly stuff. For kids.” She ran a thumb over the leather cover.“The best kind,” he said. He shifted his weight, glanced back at the ocean. “I’m Leo.”
“Marisol.”
“Mind if I…” He gestured to the sand a polite distance away.
She shrugged, a non-committal gesture, but he took it as assent and sat down, not too close. He didn’t try to fill the silence. He just looked out at the water, giving her space to exist next to him without the pressure of performance.After a moment, she spoke. “You’re not playing volleyball.”
He smiled, a gentle creasing of sun-weathered skin at the corners of his eyes. “Not really my scene. I’m better with things that have shells and don’t expect me to spike anything.” He tapped his sketchbook. “I’m hiding too, in my own way.”
The word ‘hiding’ echoed in her.She looked at him, really looked. He wasn’t just being polite.He meant it. A strange, fragile feeling of being seen—not examined, but recognized—began to unknot the tension in her shoulders.
Down by the net, Emmy squealed with victory. The sound was bright and sharp, a reminder of a world that felt a million miles away from this quiet dune. Marisol didn’t turn toward it. She kept her eyes on the horizon, aware of Leo’s calm, solid presence beside her, and for the first time all day, she took a full, deep breath of the salty air.
She kept her eyes on the horizon, aware of Leo’s calm, solid presence beside her, and for the first time all day, she took a full, deep breath of the salty air.
“So, kids’ stuff,” Leo said after a moment, his voice matching the easy rhythm of the waves. “What kind? Dragons? Wizards? School buses with personality disorders?”
A real laugh, small and surprised, escaped her. “An armored cat, actually. He guards things. Lost socks, summer vacations, that sort of thing.”
“A noble profession.”
“He thinks so.” She glanced at him, her defensive hunch softening. “And you? Shells and… what was the other thing?”
“Skate egg cases. Mermaid’s purses, some people call them. I’m a marine biologist. I’m here supposedly doing migration markers for the conservation group, but mostly I’m just avoiding my laptop.” He pulled a pencil from behind his ear, twirling it in his fingers. “The drawing helps me see details I miss with a camera. The way the light hits the ridges, the pattern of wear. It’s… slower.”
“I get that,” Marisol said, her fingers tracing the edge of her own book. “When I’m drawing, it’s the only time the world makes a predictable kind of sense. The line goes where I tell it to. The color does what I want. There’s no… surprises.”
He nodded, as if she’d said something profoundly true. “Versus the ocean, which is all surprise. I like the balance.” He tilted his head. “Is it your job? The drawing?”
“Yeah. Freelance. I illustrate children’s books.” She hesitated, then opened her sketchbook to the armored cat. “This is Herman. He’s for a series about mythological creatures doing very un-mythological jobs.”
Leo leaned over, careful to maintain his distance, and studied the page. His attention was focused, technical. “Your line work is incredible. So much character in his… eyebrows? Does he have eyebrows?”
“He does now. He’s judgmental.”
“I can see that. He looks like he’s about to tell me my life choices are poor.” Leo grinned, and the warmth of it felt genuine, directed at her work, not at her body in this awful suit. “It’s a great escape, isn’t it? Making little worlds that play by your rules.”
The word ‘escape’ hung between them. Down the beach, Vanessa spiked the ball with a triumphant shout. Marisol didn’t look. “Sometimes it’s the only escape,” she said quietly.
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was shared. He was hiding. She was hiding. They were just hiding in plain sight, together on a dune.
After a few minutes, Leo closed his book and brushed sand from his hands. “I’ve been staring at tide pools all morning and my brain is officially fried. I was going to grab a drink at the Tiki Tavern.” He gestured to a rustic structure farther down the boardwalk, its thatched roof overlooking the waves. “They have these awful, wonderful pineapple drinks with little umbrellas. The kind that makes you forget the names of fish entirely.” He stood up, easy and fluid. “You’re welcome to join me. No pressure. I just figure anyone who creates a judgmental, armor-clad feline probably has better stories than the guys trying to score volleyball points.”
Marisol’s instinct was to cross her arms, to decline, to say her friends were waiting. But when she looked toward the game, she saw Emmy laughing, draped on the arm of a guy with impressive shoulders. Vanessa was reapplying lip gloss, angled toward another. They were immersed. They wouldn’t notice if she was gone for an hour.
She looked up at Leo. His offer was simple. No subtext, no flirtatious edge—just company over a bad drink. An escape to a different, quieter corner of the same loud world.
She placed a hand over her sketchbook, over Herman’s protective scowl. “Okay,” she said. “Yeah. But only if the umbrella is tiny and completely inadequate.”
The walk to the Tiki Tavern was a short journey through a different layer of the beach’s ecosystem. They left the deep sand for the sun-bleached boardwalk, weaving through families with buckets and shovels, past groups of teenagers preening, past the rhythmic thump of a different speaker’s music. Marisol was acutely aware of her body with every step, the way the neon fabric felt against her skin, a constant, tight reminder. She kept her sketchbook clutched to her chest like a shield.
Leo matched her pace, his hands in the pockets of his shorts. “So, Herman,” he said, as if continuing a conversation they’d never paused. “Does he get a sidekick? A sloth accountant? A dragon who’s terrified of fire?”
“A goose who’s a licensed therapist,” Marisol offered, the corner of her mouth twitching. “It’s a whole messy ecosystem.”
“Naturally.”
The Tavern was a dark, thatched-roof cave smelling of rum, pineapple, and fried food. They found two stools at the rough-hewn bar that looked out over the water through a large, open window. The relative dimness was a relief. Marisol settled onto the stool, the wood still warm from the sun, and arranged her cover-up over her lap.
A bartender with a sun-creased face ambled over. “What’ll it be?”
“Two of the Painkillers,” Leo said. “Extra awful umbrellas, please.”
“You got it.”
The drinks arrived in comically large coconut shells, a riot of orange and nutmeg with not one, but two tiny paper umbrellas spearing a maraschino cherry. Leo handed one to her. “To inadequate shielding.”
She clinked her shell against his. “Amen.” The first sip was a sweet, spicy punch. It was deliciously terrible, in exactly the way he’d promised.
For a while, they just drank and watched the water. The alcohol was a warm, unspooling thread in her stomach. The tight coil of anxiety that had been her companion all day began, incrementally, to loosen.
“You’re not from here,” Leo said. It wasn’t a question.
“Is it that obvious? The lack of tan lines gave it away?”
He laughed. “The constant look of mild panic at the volume of the sun. I’ve been stationed here for six months and I still haven’t fully accepted it.” He traced a circle of condensation on the bar. “I’m usually up the coast, near the research center. More rocks, fewer people. This is… a lot.”
“Tell me about it.” The words slipped out, tinged with more weariness than she intended.
He glanced at her. “Not a beach person?”
“I’m a ‘sit-in-the-shade-with-a-book-and-linger-at-the-edge-of-the-party’ person. My friends are… not that.” She took another long drink. “They mean well. They just operate at a different frequency. All volume, all the time.”
“And you’re the observer,” he said, nodding slowly. “The one who draws the armor on the cat. It makes sense.”
“What about you?” she asked, turning the focus. “Marine biology. Was it Jacques Cousteau? Free Willy? A terrifying encounter with a minnow?”
“A stinging jellyfish, actually.” He smiled, a distant look in his eyes. “I was eight. Got wrapped around my leg. Hurt like hell. But I remember being in the urgent care, crying, and this nurse told me all about how it wasn’t really attacking me, it was just… being a jellyfish. Doing its jellyfish thing. My panic turned into fascination.” He shrugged. “I guess I just never stopped being fascinated by things that are just being what they are, even if it’s inconvenient or painful for the rest of us.”
His words settled in her, quiet and profound. Just being what they are.
She found herself talking then, without planning to. About the freelance life, the feast-or-famine anxiety, the joy of seeing a kid in a bookstore point at a cover she’d drawn. She told him about her tiny apartment with the too-bright light, and how she sometimes bought the matching bikini just to feel included, even if it lived in the drawer.
He listened. Not the way people often listened—waiting for their turn to talk, or to offer a quick fix. He listened the way he observed tide pools: with a quiet, total focus.
He talked about the isolation of fieldwork, the months spent on boats or in remote stations where your only conversation was with the data. He mentioned a recent breakup, casual but with a weight behind it. “She wanted someone who’d be present. I’m better at being present for a spawning event than for a dinner party.”
“So we’re both hideously awkward, then,” Marisol said, and it didn’t feel like a confession. It felt like a discovery.
“Spectacularly,” he agreed, his eyes crinkling.
A comfortable silence fell, filled by the clatter of the kitchen and the roar of a wave. She felt, for the first time in years, unclenched. The second drink was halfway gone. The umbrellas sat discarded on the bar like fallen flags.
Leo swirled the ice in his shell. His gaze was on the ocean, but his words were for her. “You know, for what it’s worth… I think that color is really striking on you. The neon. It’s bold. It suits you.”
The compliment landed like a physical object in the space between them. Not a grazing, casual thing. A direct hit.
Marisol froze. All the softness she’d been feeling solidified into a cold, hard lump in her throat. The familiar script, worn smooth from repetition, activated in her mind. He’s being nice. He’s lying. He feels sorry for you. He wants something.
She looked down at the offensive, orange fabric cutting into her skin. She felt the roll of her stomach over the tie-side bottoms, the tight strain of the top. A hot flush of shame crawled up her neck.
“Yeah, right,” she said, the words coming out flat and defensive, coated in a bitterness she hadn’t meant to show him. “It’s a sausage casing with delusions of grandeur. But thanks.”
She braced for his backtracking, for the awkward laugh, for the clarification—oh, I meant your spirit!—that would somehow be worse.
Leo didn’t laugh. He didn’t look away. He turned fully on his stool to face her, his kind hazel eyes holding a sincerity that felt unnervingly like a spotlight.
“I’m not talking about the cut of it, or the fashion, or whatever,” he said, his voice steady and low. “I’m talking about the color. That electric, glowing orange against your skin. It’s… visually compelling. Like a sherbet sunset. It’s alive.” He paused, as if choosing his words with the same care he used for his specimens. “When I saw you on the dune, from a distance, that’s what I noticed. Not the… the shape of you. But this bright, fierce spot of color, absolutely still, in the middle of all that chaotic motion. It made me want to see what you were looking at.”
Marisol’s breath caught. Her internal monologue, that constant, critical drip, stuttered and went silent.
He hadn’t seen a body to be assessed. He’d seen a composition. A contrast. A point of interest.
She had no script for this.
She just stared at him, the cold lump in her throat melting into a confused, warm ache. Her fingers tightened around the rough shell of her drink. The noise of the bar, the ocean, her own pounding heart—it all funneled into a strange, quiet bubble surrounding just their two stools.
She didn’t know what to say.
She didn’t know what to say. The compliment hung in the air, disarmed, because it wasn’t the kind she knew how to deflect. It wasn’t about being “pretty for a big girl” or having a “such a pretty face.” It was an observation, detached and artistic, and it left her raw.
The warmth of the rum blended with a sharper, more vulnerable heat in her chest. She took a sip just to have something to do, the sweetness now cloying.
“Why are you being like this?” The question came out softer than she’d intended, almost lost in the clatter from the kitchen.
Leo’s brow furrowed slightly. “Like what?”
“Nice. Genuine. You don’t…” She trailed off, gesturing vaguely at herself with the hand holding the coconut shell. A drop of condensation landed on her thigh. “You don’t have to do this. I’m the sad, fat friend sitting alone on a dune. The charity case is usually a ten-minute conversation, max. You’ve bought me two terrible drinks.”
She tried to inject her usual humor into it, the self-deprecation that usually made people laugh and change the subject. It fell flat, the words landing with a hollow, ugly thud between them.
Leo didn’t smile. He put his drink down, the wood of the bar making a solid tap. He studied her face, and she forced herself not to look away from that steady, hazel gaze.
“Is that what you think?” he asked, his voice low.
“It’s what is.” She could hear the brittleness in her own voice. “Look, you seem like a genuinely good guy. Which is a rare and terrifying thing. But let’s not pretend. I’m not an idiot. I know what I look like in this.” She plucked at the neon fabric at her hip, a flicker of disgust crossing her face. “So why are you really here? Am I a project? A ‘be kind to the less fortunate’ checkmark for the day? Or is this just some… some weird niche fetish thing?”
There. She’d said it. Laid the ugliness out on the sticky bar between the empty peanut bowls. She braced for the recoil, for the flashed anger or wounded pride that would send him storming out. It would be a relief, in a way. It would prove her right.
Leo didn’t recoil. He sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to carry the weight of a hundred similar, frustrating conversations. He ran a hand through his sun-streaked hair, leaving it tousled.
“Okay,” he said, nodding slowly as if accepting a challenge. “Let’s talk about it, then. Since you’ve brought it up.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the bar, closing some of the physical distance but in a way that felt focused, not invasive. “You keep saying ‘fat’ like it’s a secret we’re all keeping from you. Like it’s the only code anyone uses to read you. Marisol, I see you. I saw you from fifty yards away, completely still while everything moved around you. I saw you hunched over that sketchbook like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. I saw the way you flinched when your friend called you, like a light got switched off.”
He paused, his eyes holding hers. “Your size isn’t the problem. The opposite, in fact.”
She opened her mouth to interrupt, to deflect, but he held up a hand, gentle but firm.
“Hear me out. You asked why. So here’s why. You have a presence. A substance. In a world full of people trying to be wisps, to take up less space, to apologize for existing… you’re here. You’re substantial. Real. That’s compelling. That’s interesting. That neon color? It screams against your skin because your skin is this rich, warm canvas. It’s not being swallowed up. It’s having a conversation. A loud one.”
He shook his head, a faint, frustrated smile on his lips. “The idea that you should hide that? That you should be ashamed of the space you occupy? It’s like being angry at the ocean for being wet. It’s the whole point. You’re not a sketch, Marisol. You’re a full, complete painting. Every curve, every line. You should feel proud to flaunt every inch of skin, not because it meets some arbitrary standard, but because it’s yours. It’s the physical proof of a life being lived.”
He picked up his drink, took a long swallow, and set it back down. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was vibrating.
Marisol felt stripped bare. Not in the exposed way she had on the beach, but in a deeper, more fundamental way. Every defensive argument, every practiced self-insult, died in her throat. They were meaningless here, in the face of this… this bewildering sincerity.
He wasn’t telling her she was beautiful. He was telling her she was valid. He was describing her body not as an obstacle to be overcome, but as a fact of her existence, as inherent and natural as the tides he studied.
Tears pricked hotly at the corners of her eyes. She blinked rapidly, looking down at her hands clenched around her drink.
“I don’t… I don’t know how to be that,” she whispered, the admission terrifying.
“Maybe you start by just being,” he said, his voice softening. “And letting other people deal with their own reactions to it.”
A loud burst of laughter erupted from the entrance of the Tiki Tavern. Marisol’s head snapped up. Emmy and Vanessa stood silhouetted in the bright doorway, scanning the dim room. Emmy spotted her first.
“Mar! There you are!” she called, her voice cutting through the humid air. She weaved through the tables, Vanessa in tow, their bodies glistening with sweat and sunscreen. “We’ve been looking everywhere! We’re starving, we’re gonna get fish tacos at that place on the pier.” Her eyes flicked to Leo, registering his presence with open curiosity. “Oh, hi!”
The spell was broken. The intimate, charged bubble popped by the vibrant, oblivious force of her friends.
Leo leaned back on his stool, offering a polite, closed-lipped smile. “Hi.”
Marisol felt a desperate, irrational pull to tell them to go away, to rewind the last ten seconds. But the moment was gone. The world, with all its noise and expectations, came crashing back in.
Vanessa’s sharp eyes darted between Marisol’s face and Leo’s, a subtle, assessing look. “Making friends?” she asked, her tone light but layered.
“Something like that,” Marisol said, her voice surprisingly steady. She slid off the stool, her legs feeling unsteady. She glanced at Leo, a thousand unspoken words caught in her throat. “Thank you. For the drink. And the… the marine biology lesson.”
He gave a small, understanding nod. “Anytime. Good luck with Herman.”
Emmy linked her arm through Marisol’s, already pulling her toward the blinding sunlight of the doorway. “Come on, we’re fading away! You can tell us all about your mysterious marine biologist on the way.”
Marisol allowed herself to be led, casting one last look over her shoulder. Leo was still sitting at the bar, his profile to her, already looking back out at the ocean, a solitary figure once more. But the space he occupied in the world, in her world, now felt different. It felt permanent.
As she stepped back onto the sizzling boardwalk, the glare of the sun felt less like an interrogation and more like a spotlight.