[Reader Discretion Advised]

Chapter Two (Sea Breezes)

Lena woke to the smell of something sweet and burning.

Sunlight crept sideways through the tall window, slicing the room into pale gold and shadow. For a moment, she forgot where she was. Then she heard it—voices from downstairs. Laughter. Metal clanging against metal. The scrape of chairs. A loud, deep voice—then another, lighter, amused.

She sat up slowly.

The dresser still sat half-turned from the wall. She avoided looking at it. Or the hole behind it.

The voices didn’t stop. They weren’t quiet or self-conscious. Whoever they were, they didn’t seem to care that she might hear them. She wasn’t even sure they knew she was here. Which meant they weren’t being polite. They were being real.

She dressed quickly—jeans, oversized hoodie, hair tied back—and stepped out into the hallway, her socks muffling her steps on the cold wood.

Downstairs, the kitchen was full of light.

A girl stood barefoot on the tile floor, one hand on the stove, the other holding a cigarette between two fingers. She wore an oversized black button-down shirt—clearly not hers—barely buttoned, the hem falling just below her hips. Pale thighs. Tattoos. No shame.

She turned before Lena spoke.

“Morning, stranger,” the girl said, and smiled.

Her voice was warm and rough around the edges, the kind that could sound like laughter or danger depending on the words. She blew smoke sideways, away from the stove, and flipped something in the pan—eggs, maybe. Or French toast.

“I’m Ari,” she added, casually. “You must be the new girl who doesn’t knock.”

Lena blinked. “What?”

Ari’s mouth curved. “Kidding.” Her eyes flicked down, up, scanning quickly but without hurry. “You look like someone who reads with a blanket on their lap. Am I wrong?”

Lena flushed slightly. “No.”

“That’s okay,” Ari said, turning back to the pan. “You’ll evolve.”

Two more figures sat at the kitchen island—one with a sketchbook, head down, long fingers stained faintly with charcoal. The other reclined backward in his chair, shirtless, eating toast like it was an afterthought.

The one drawing didn’t look up. “She’s cute.”

The shirtless one grinned. “Definitely Midwest.”

“Definitely flustered,” Ari said, flipping the burner off.

Lena took a breath. “I’m Lena.”

“Lena,” the shirtless one echoed, holding out a hand lazily. “Nico.”

The artist didn’t offer his name. Just nodded and scratched something into the sketchpad. Ari gave him a nudge with her bare foot as she passed. “That’s Cal. He talks when it matters.”

Cal looked up. His eyes were dark gray, heavy-lidded. He said nothing. Just stared at her for a beat too long, then returned to his drawing.

Ari placed a plate in front of her. Something golden and soft, covered in powdered sugar. “Eat. We made extra. Kind of. Nico steals bites when he thinks no one’s looking.”

“You always look,” Nico replied, grinning.

“That’s why I like you,” Ari said.

Lena sat.

The food was warm and good, but her stomach was tight. She couldn’t stop watching Ari—how she moved barefoot across the cold tile, unbothered by the world. Her hair was tangled like she hadn’t brushed it in days. Her nails were painted chipped black. There was a tiny scar above her left knee.

She didn’t say anything about last night. Or the peephole. Or the smile. But every time her gaze slid past Lena’s, Lena felt it.

That weight.

That same impossible knowing.

Ari poured herself coffee, sat on the counter instead of a chair, legs crossed at the ankles, and stared out the window like nothing mattered.

Lena tried to swallow her bite. It stuck in her throat.

Ari stirred honey into her coffee with a chopstick she pulled from somewhere behind the toaster. The motion was slow, absentminded. She didn’t look at Lena—until she did. A flick of the eyes, then a full turn of her head, chin tilted slightly like she was calibrating something.

Nico leaned across the island. “So. Lena from Nowhere. What are you studying?”

Lena hesitated. “Literature.”

“Ooh.” He clapped once. “So you’re one of Wren’s doomed girls.”

Ari smiled behind her cup.

Cal didn’t react, just kept drawing, the scratch of pencil the only counter-rhythm to Nico’s voice. His page was angled away, but Lena could see faint outlines—a neck, maybe. The curve of a shoulder.

She tried to steady herself. “Why doomed?”

Nico stretched, his back cracking. “Because Wren doesn’t teach. He seduces. And you look very… teachable.”

Ari choked softly on her coffee.

Lena turned to her. “And what does that mean?”

Ari didn’t answer right away. Instead, she reached across the counter and pulled a dark glass bowl toward her. It was filled with fruit—mostly bruised, overripe. She pulled out a cherry, still attached to its stem.

With theatrical laziness, she placed it between her lips. Didn’t bite. Just held it there. Her eyes never left Lena’s.

Then slowly, she pulled the stem through her teeth, stripped it clean, and spat the pit into her palm.

“I think you’ll figure it out,” she said, voice low and even.

Cal glanced up at that, then back down.

Lena shifted in her seat. Her skin felt too tight. Like the air around her was warmer than the rest of the kitchen. Her fingers brushed her mug, but she didn’t drink.

“Want a tour?” Nico asked. “You should see the bookstore. The banned section’s bigger than the legal one.”

“No thanks,” Lena said quickly.

He arched a brow. “You scared I’ll flirt with you?”

“I’m not scared of flirting.”

Ari let out a quiet, knowing hum.

“Good,” Nico said, standing. “Then I’ll save you the effort.” He leaned over and kissed Ari on the cheek—she didn’t blink—and headed toward the stairs. “Don’t let her eat you, Lena. She pretends to nibble, but it’s always the throat.”

Cal stood too, pausing just long enough to slide the sketchpad across the counter, face-down. Then he followed Nico.

Ari stayed. She picked up the sketchpad, flipped it, and showed Lena the page.

It was her.

Rough lines, but unmistakable. Her posture. Her shape. The line of her neck bending forward like she was mid-confession.

“No one ever draws me that fast,” Lena said, voice small.

“Cal only draws people he wants to keep,” Ari said. Then added, “But he never actually keeps them.”

She slid off the counter and padded toward the sink, dropping the pit into the trash with a soft metallic plink.

Lena stood too. Her legs were shaking just enough to feel.

“Thanks,” she said, because it was the only safe word in her throat.

Ari didn’t respond.

Just smiled again—slower this time.

Then turned her back.

The stairs groaned under Lena’s steps as she climbed back toward the third floor, her hands tight around the railing, her breath tighter still. Her skin buzzed—not from caffeine, not quite from embarrassment. It was something else. Something lower, humming behind her ribs.

Back in the room, the light had shifted. Afternoon had sunk its claws into the sea-facing window, casting shadows across the bed like bars. She stood in the doorway a moment, unsure what to do with herself, unsure what to do to herself. She felt exposed, though she was alone.

She crossed to the window, tugged the curtain closed, then faced the mirror.

There it was again.

A reflection—hers, yes, but not only hers. A blur of motion just outside the edge of the frame.

She turned sharply toward the door.

Ari.

She stood in the hallway, not walking, not hiding. Just there, leaning against the opposite wall in that same black button-down shirt—still unbuttoned too far. Her hair was tied back now, messier somehow. Barefoot again.

Lena didn’t speak. Neither did Ari.

They stared at each other for three full seconds. That should have been awkward. It wasn’t. It was something else entirely.

Then Ari shifted her weight, pushed off the wall, and walked away without a word.

Lena stood there longer than she meant to. Her heart moved faster than her thoughts.

She finally turned back to the room, closed the door behind her gently, and sat down on the bed. The mattress held the shape of her body like it had been waiting for her to return.

Only then did she notice it.

On the pillow.

A folded scrap of paper, small and square.

Her name wasn’t on it. But the moment she opened it, she knew.

The handwriting was narrow, slanted, looping.

You looked hungry last night.

No signature.

Just the message.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she set it down. She didn’t know if she should feel threatened. Or flattered. Or something far worse.

She crossed the room, slid the dresser slowly back in place, covering the peephole like she was tucking something in for the night.

Then she sat on her bed and stared at the mirror again.

Her reflection didn’t move.

But her face was flushed.

And her mouth was dry.

The seminar room was too warm, the windows too narrow. It smelled like old paper and cedar polish. Twenty chairs formed an uneven circle, most occupied by students who looked far older than nineteen—fur coats, tattoos, tired eyes. Lena sat near the edge, backpack clutched like armor.

Professor Wren entered ten minutes late and made no apology. He carried only a slim black folder and a pen he never used. His presence rearranged the atmosphere—made it quieter, heavier, as if something sacred had begun without anyone announcing it.

He didn’t sit.

“Today,” he said, voice calm, deliberate, “we begin with eyes.”

He didn’t open a book.

“Tell me,” he continued, stepping into the circle, “why do we look at what we shouldn’t?”

No one answered.

Ari sat three seats away, legs crossed high, notebook closed. She didn’t write. She didn’t blink much either. Just watched.

Wren’s gaze drifted from student to student, never lingering.

Until Lena.

His eyes stopped on her, held, like he’d just found the answer to his own question.

Lena’s skin went hot. She looked down.

“Voyeurism,” Wren said, still looking at her, “isn’t about lust. It’s about control. Who has it. Who wants it. Who doesn’t know they’re giving it away.”

A few people chuckled lightly, unsure if they were supposed to.

He began walking the inside of the circle.

“In The Yellow Wallpaper, the room becomes a trap. But what traps her isn’t the bars—it’s the gaze of her husband. Of the doctor. Of us, the readers.”

He stopped near Ari.

“Every reader is a voyeur,” he said. “Every act of observation changes the thing being observed. That’s what literature is.”

Ari tilted her head. A slow, silent nod.

Then Wren turned.

“Lena,” he said, and her spine locked. “What do you think she saw in the wall?”

There was no hesitation in his voice. No smile. Just the soft precision of someone who already knows the answer and wants to hear how you’ll say it wrong.

Lena’s mouth opened. Closed. Then finally: “She saw herself.”

Wren didn’t nod. Didn’t praise.

Just moved on.

After class, the students filtered out slowly, voices low, bodies hunched against the strange intimacy of what had just passed. Lena gathered her things with careful speed.

She stepped into the hallway—

—and nearly walked into Ari.

She was leaning against the wall, one boot heel pressed flat, arms crossed.

“Wren doesn’t forget faces,” Ari said quietly. “Or eyes.”

Lena swallowed.

Ari pushed off the wall and leaned in, her mouth close enough to graze Lena’s ear. “He’s already seen you.”

Then she walked away, boots echoing down the long corridor like a metronome counting out something Lena couldn’t name.

The clock read 1:11 AM when the front door downstairs slammed open.

Lena blinked awake to laughter—drunken, throaty, trailing upward through the stairwell. Feet stomped, boots hit the floor, someone cursed loudly, someone else shushed them with theatrical uselessness.

Then footsteps overhead.

The trio had returned.

She sat up slowly. Her room was dark, save for the low lighthouse pulse through the curtain. Her throat was dry again. Not thirsty. Just… expectant.

Voices outside her door—Cal, Nico, Ari. She couldn’t make out words. Just tones. Nico laughing. Ari whispering. Cal saying something too low to register, which made her listen harder.

The door across the hall creaked open.

A beat of silence.

Then the unmistakable sound of skin.

Lena didn’t move.

A moan. Ari, low and controlled, like she had before.

Another. Shorter. Rougher.

Lena squeezed her eyes shut.

The bed beside hers hadn’t been used since she arrived. Her room was still foreign. Still wrong. The dresser stood still against the wall—but she didn’t need it now.

Because the door across the hall hadn’t shut.

It stayed open. Just a sliver. But a sliver was enough.

She rose. Moved slowly to her own door. Turned the handle without letting it click.

The hallway was dark, barely lit by a nightlight at the far end that cast everything in shades of blue and bone.

Across from her, the trio’s door hung ajar.

Just wide enough.

Her heart pounded in her neck.

She didn’t step forward.

She just looked.

Shadows on the bed. Bare skin. Movement. Bodies crossing each other like lines in an unfinished drawing. A hand—Nico’s, she thought—gripping the headboard. Ari’s mouth pressed against someone’s chest. The rhythm was slow but gaining speed, gaining weight.

Then Ari’s voice.

Not directed at anyone in the room.

But loud enough to carry.

“She’s listening,” Ari said.

Lena froze.

A pause in the motion, just for a second.

Then Ari added, lower: “Let her.”

And the rhythm resumed.

The hallway was colder than her room.

Lena’s feet barely made a sound as she stepped out, her hand grazing the frame behind her like she might need to retreat without warning. But she didn’t retreat. She moved forward, one step, then another, until she stood across from their door.

The gap between door and frame was only a few inches. But her eyes adjusted quickly.

Inside, the lamp on the floor cast a gold ring upward, catching on skin, catching on motion.

Nico was on his back, laughing into Ari’s mouth as she straddled him. Her fingers pressed to his chest. Her hips rolled with slow, deliberate weight.

Cal sat at the edge of the bed, shirtless, silent. Watching. Like he was outside the act but not outside the experience.

Ari’s back was to the door at first—but she moved, slowly twisting her body like a cat rearranging itself, until her face tilted sideways.

And her eyes met Lena’s.

Not by accident. Not surprise.

Intention.

Ari didn’t stop.

She didn’t look away.

She invited.

Her gaze held Lena still, not with aggression, but with something more dangerous—permission.

Then Nico looked up.

He followed Ari’s line of sight, saw Lena in the sliver of door, and smiled—not cruelly. Just knowingly.

Cal didn’t look.

But he shifted, subtly, to the side. Making room.

Ari leaned forward and whispered something to Nico. Lena couldn’t hear it. But Nico nodded. He pulled Ari down again and kissed her, open-mouthed, slow.

The air in the hallway felt like it had changed pressure—denser, tighter.

Lena’s pulse thrummed in her wrists.

She didn’t breathe.

Her body ached with the kind of stillness that threatened to explode into something else.

And then—from inside the room, soft and close and without any doubt—a whisper:

“Not yet.”

She couldn’t tell who said it.

Ari?

Nico?

Cal?

Or herself.

She turned and walked back to her room, her legs trembling.

She didn’t close the door behind her.