lap one.
Arrietty hadn’t planned to spend her morning crying into her coffee. It was lukewarm now, in her travel mug decorated with stickers that said things like “Steinbeck was here,” “Carmel by the sea,” and “KDON.” But, there she was, wedged behind the counter of Cedar & Salt Books, blinking back tears between checkouts. The store’s bell chimed, salt air from Cannery Row drifting in on a breeze that smelled like kelp and oceanic rust. Monterey always smelled like longing to her.
“Hey, Arrietty,” came a familiar voice - Louisa, her manager, glancing at her over her tortoiseshell glasses. “You okay?” Louisa was older, mid 50s, with wavy salt and pepper hair that was stiff from salt and normally piled up into a bun. She was kind, a little leathery from her youth spent surfing down south, and she’d owned Cedar & Salt for as long as Arrietty had been alive. When Arrietty was a child, she’d come into the shop and asked for a job. Louisa, younger then, laughed and told her to come back when she was 15. She did, the day after her 15th birthday, and she’d been there since.
“Yeah,” Arrietty lied with a smile. She was good at smiling - one of her worst and most used habits.
Louisa raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, but choosing to let it go. “There’s a new shipment of ARCs in the back, if you want to get the first pick.”
That helped. A little. Arrietty slipped into the back room and let the door close behind her. Here, among the boxes and the dusty smell of paper, it was quiet enough to breathe.
It wasn’t that anything bad had happened. Nothing ever did, really. Her life was soft around the edges - like the old books on the clearance shelf - worn, familiar, easy to overlook. Her writing journal, tucked in her tote bag under a half-eaten banana, hadn’t been touched in a week. She’d told herself she was “thinking through plot points,” but she knew that was a lie. She’d started a short story about a girl who couldn’t speak except in dreams. It had stalled somewhere in the middle, like most of her work did, drowned in self-doubt and a sprinkle of loathing.
What made her think she could be a writer, anyway?
She’d grown up in the shadow of John Steinbeck. Cried when she read Aciman. Didn’t want to admit how much she loved Fitzgerald. Revered Toni Morrison. She could never be like them.
She pulled her hair into a loose bun, curls resisting in every direction. Her siblings always said she looked like their dad the most - same eyes, same crooked smile and big teeth - but Arrietty rarely saw anything she liked in the mirror. Just shadows of who she should be by now.
She opened the box of new books and found a galley that caught her breath. The cover was stormy blue, the title stamped in silver: The Saltwater Prophet. A fantasy novel, from a debut author. She flipped to the bio - 26 years old. Her stomach turned.
“I’m behind,” she muttered, like saying it out loud might absolve her.
Outside, the sea crashed softly in the distance, gulls calling overhead like ghosts in the fog.
The walk home from Cannery Row only took fifteen minutes if Arrietty cut through the back lot of the old aquarium and didn’t stop to stare at the sea. But she almost always did. She paused at her usual spot - just past a cypress grove where tidepools winked like secrets - watching the waves nibble at the shore. For a moment, it was just her and the hush of the world. No books to shelve, no story to finish, no baby crying through the walls.
But she couldn’t linger. If she was late, her mom would worry and send one of her sisters to look for her. Again.
Their house sat near the edge of New Monterey, one of those sun faded, two story stucco homes that had probably been meant for a family of four, not eight, and definitely not nine, now that Denny was back.
When Arrietty opened the front door, the smell of adobo hit her first, followed by the thump of a bouncing baby seat and the high-pitched squeal of her youngest niece, Lia. The living room was a patchwork of throw blankets, toys, shoes piled by the door, and unmatched and chipped coffee mugs. The TV was on but muted, playing some cartoon with dancing chickens.
“Ah, there she is!” Her mom called from the kitchen, wielding a wooden spoon like a wand. “Did you eat? There’s rice and chicken on the stove. Wash your hands and change and sit down. You look tired.”
Arrietty smiled tightly, she could have gone without the last comment. “I’m okay, mom,” she said, kissing her cheek before dodging a stroller to get to the sink and wash her hands before reaching into the fridge for a Pepsi. It was covered in alphabet and location magnets and hand written sticky notes with grocery lists that morphed hourly.
Her sister Rina was on the couch folding laundry with military precision. “Can you take Lia for like twenty minutes? I’ve gotta finish this load, I’ve been working on it for most of the day.”
Arrietty didn’t even hesitate. She took the baby, who was warm and wiggling and smiling like she owned the place. Which, to be fair, she kinda did.
Upstairs, her old bedroom had become a hybrid writing space, nursery overflow zone, and laundry staging area. She’d carved out a desk in the corner, just under the window, where a stack of spiral bound notebooks sat unopened next to a laptop that was never charged.
She held Lia close and stared at that desk like it might bite.
She hadn’t written more than a paragraph in days. Every time she tried, it was like her brain filled with cotton. She could think of character and scenes, sure - but it all felt so distant. Like it belonged to someone else. Someone who didn’t change diapers between sentences or take three-hour shifts soothing a baby at 2AM. Someone who wasn’t the glue in a family that never asked her to be but needed her anyway.
Arrietty rocked Lia gently and sighed. Lia’s soft breathing slowed. Through the window, she could see the sky dimming to that velvety grey that meant fog was coming. The gulls were quiet now.
Maybe tonight, if the house settled early and the stars aligned, she could write.
Or maybe not.
Arrietty had just settled Lia into her bassinet - miracle of miracles, the baby asleep without a fight - when the front door banged open downstairs.
“I brought donuts!” came a voice like sunshine and reckless joy.
Arrietty didn’t even need to look. “Amilia’s here,” she whispered to herself, bracing for impact.
She heard her mom holler from the kitchen, “Take your shoes off!”
“I did!” came the answer, but it was followed by the sound of her boots being kicked off and thudding against the floor. Confirmed, she absolutely did not.
Seconds later, she burst into the room, arms full of a pink bakery box, keys dangling from her wrist, blonde hair windblown and eyes sparkling. Her floral sundress fluttered like she was just back from some Instagram picnic and it wasn’t 60 degrees.
“Smells like chicken and baby powder in here. Solid combo,” she said as she plopped down on the bed, already reaching for the sleeping baby. “Let me see my little bean!”
“You wake her, you put her back down,” Arrietty warned with narrow eyes. She smiled though, she couldn’t help it. Amilia did that.
“She likes my voice,” Amilia whispered, loud as ever, stroking the baby’s fuzzy head before shoving her donut box toward Arrietty. “You’re eating one. You look like a ghost.”
Arrietty took a maple bar without protest and bit into it. The sugar hit her bloodstream like a second wind. “I’m fine,” she said around the flaky pastry.
Amilia raised an eyebrow, “No you’re not. You’ve got classic Spiral Face.”
“I’m not spiraling,” Arrietty insisted, “I’m... spiraling adjacent.”
“Okay, well, adjacent is still within the blast zone, babe.”
She kicked her legs up and sprawled across the bed like she lived there. Which, in a way, she did - Amilia had her own drawer in the family bathroom and was in the group chat titled The Children + Amilia, much to the confusion of sporadically added distant cousins.
“You writing?” she asked casually.
Arrietty hesitated. Then, “Yes.”
Amilia knew it was a lie and nodded, “Too loud, huh?”
“Too everything,” Arrietty admitted, picking at the edge of her donut. “The crying, the chores, the presence of people constantly. I love them, but I feel like I can’t hear myself think. And when I do write something, I hate it.”
“You don’t hate it.”
“I hate me, writing it.”
Amilia sat up straight, “Hey. Don’t.” Her voice wasn’t soft now, it was steel wrapped in moss, the no-nonsense Amilia that didn’t let Arrietty swim too deep in her own thoughts. “You are so good,” she said, locking eyes with her. “And I know you’re tired and overwhelmed and full of self doubt. But that doesn’t mean you stop showing up to the page.”
Arrietty looked down, cheeks burning, “I don’t even know what I want to say anymore.”
“Then write until you do,” Amilia said, like it was the easiest thing in the world. Just do it.
“I don’t have time.”
“You don’t make time.” Amilia scooted closer and took her own donut out of the box. She bit and chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds before continuing, “You think the girls and your mom and Denny and baby bean over there don’t see you trying? You hold this whole house together, but you also deserve to make space for yourself. That story isn’t going to write itself, AirBear.”
The silence between them was thick, but not heavy. Arrietty looked out the window again. Fog curled along the horizon like a secret waiting to be spilled.
“Fine,” she whispered, mostly to herself. “I plan on trying tonight.”
Amilia smirked. “Well, maybe not tonight.”
The baby was down. The dishes were done. Rina had folded the last load of towels, and Denny’s girlfriend Eva was passed out on the couch with a bottle clutched in one hand and a blanket half-tucked under her chin. The house had slipped into its rarest state - semi-silence.
“I’m stealing her,” Amilia announced as she dragged Arrietty out of the door by the wrist.
Their breath puffed in front of them as they walked down the hill, the sea air damp and tinged with eucalyptus and brine. Monterey at night was quiet but alive, the kind of place where fog slipped through alleyways like stray cats, and the stars hid behind the coastal haze.
Arrietty wore the crocheted beanie her sister Rina had made her, sage green with little toadstools stitched along the rim, a chunky cardigan, and skinny jeans tucked inside her yellow rain boots. Her shape was swallowed in the sweater, but she liked it that way. It was much easier to be the observer when you weren’t being observed. Amilia looked like she belonged in a Levi’s ad, ditching her sundress for high-waisted jeans, Vans, and a rust-colored crop sweater that showed just enough skin to keep attention without demanding it. People noticed her. They always did.
They ducked into a bar tucked between an old cannery building and a dive seafood spot that had somehow never updated its sign since ’82. The place had string lights over the bar, warped wood floors, and a jukebox in the corner playing Otis Redding. The bartender, Q, gave them a nod, knew them by name. “Bring your punch cards?” Q teased, sliding Arrietty a PBR before he started on Amilia’s gin and tonic.
Amilia slid into a barstool, “Don’t start with me, Q,” she said, not really annoyed.
“Whose tab?” he asked when he slid her drink to her.
“Someone’s,” Amilia said with a shrug, eyes already scanning the room.
And that’s when he walked in. Someone.
He obviously didn’t belong there, didn’t look like it. Not in this dim, humid bar where the floorboards creaked and the chairs didn’t match. Not unless he was here ironically. He was older, mid-forties, though his face didn’t wear it. Dark suit. No tie. Collar open just enough. His hair was salt and pepper in a way that looked intentional. Polished. His eyes, sharp and unreadable, flicked over the room like he was collecting inventory.
Arrietty felt it in her abdomen first, a weird little twist of intuition. Not fear, exactly. Not even discomfort. Just... an awareness. It felt like she’d forgotten something.
Amilia noticed him, too. Of course she did.
“Oh, hell yes,” she whispered to Arrietty, already sliding off her barstool. “He’s rich. No ring. I’m intrigued.”
“Amilia...”
“Come on! I just want to say hi. He looks lonely.”
Arrietty’s mouth was open to protest, but it was too late - Amilia was already at his side, all brightness and beauty, leaning just enough to seem curious but not desperate. Arrietty couldn’t hear what she said, but she saw the man smile, slow and deliberate, like someone indulging a sweet tooth they usually denied.
Q leaned forward, saying quietly for Arrietty only, “That guy gives me James Bond meets cult leader.”
“Right?” Arrietty whispered, turning in her stool to watch them.
Amilia laughed at something the man said and looked back at Arrietty with a grin, like Get over here, so she grabbed both of their drinks and told Q, “His tab, please.”
Q smiled, “Soon as he opens one, I got you.”
Arrietty beamed back and joined them reluctantly, Amilia draped over the man’s lap already. It wasn’t alarming, honestly. It was fairly typical behavior.
“AirBear! This is - sorry, what was your name?”
“Adrian,” the man said. His voice was warm, smooth, no regional accent. “Adrian Pearce.”
He turned to Arrietty. His gaze lingered for a beat longer than she liked. Not in a gross way - he didn’t look her over, per se. He looked at her, like she was someone he was trying to remember and couldn’t place.
“Arrietty,” she said cautiously.
“Beautiful name,” he said.
He didn’t ask anything else about her; he didn’t need to. There was something knowing in the way he smiled at her. It was unsettling to say the least.
She took a swig from her beer and tried not to shrink under his gaze.
Amilia leaned in closer to Adrian. “So, what brings someone like you to our humble little dive?”
“Passing through,” he said smoothly. A waitress, Hannah, brought him a Yuengling on tap. “I seem to always find the best things in unexpected places.”
There it was again, that little ping in Arrietty’s gut. Like an alarm with no reason to go off.
They should leave.
But she didn’t want to.
