But Rae was sick of all the romance and decided to ruin the mood. She gave a mock gag, drawing a glare from Mikayla, but Rae didn’t care. She coughed and rubbed her neck and chest dramatically. 

“What the fuck,” she said, her voice strained theatrically. “Quit torturing us poor singles and take your sickening love elsewhere.” 

“Rae,” Parker said with a roll of her eyes. “I’m not single.” 

“I’m aware,” Rae said, rubbing her temples. “I meant me.” 

Both Parker and Mikayla rolled their eyes. 

“Let’s go,” Mikayla said, taking Beau’s hand again and pulling him away from her friends. 

Beau chuckled. “They seem nice,” he said brightly as they walked away. 

Mikayla smiled good-naturedly. “They’re a bit much, but… they are.” She brushed the topic away, intent on keeping the romantic, dating vibe from completely dying out. So she turned an excited smile to Beau and asked, “Hungry?” 

“I could eat,” Beau said with a shrug, willing to do anything to stay with Mikayla longer. 

“Come on, there’s this crazy good Italian place just down the street,” Mikayla said, leading the way. 

Behind them, Parker was watching them go, gnawing on her lip. 

“Relax, Parks,” Rae said, sauntering over with one hand in her pocket and draping her other arm over Parker. “He seems chill.” 

“Yeah,” Parker agreed after a moment. “Yeah, he seems alright.” 

“And besides,” Rae said, popping a sour lemon candy she had also taken from Mikayla’s candy bag a little while ago, “he makes her happy.” 

“I haven’t seen her smile like that in years,” Parker agreed. 

After a beat, the couple had walked around the corner and out of sight. Begrudgingly, Parker huffed a sigh that blew a stray brown strand of hair out of her face. 

Rae turned to give Parker a curious glance, watching with a ginger eyebrow raised as Parker pulled her phone out of her pocket. She opened her messages with Mikayla and, with a resigned furrow to her brow, sent a text. 

Down the street, Mikayla had just ushered Beau into the restaurant, holding the door open for him much to his displeasure (“I should be the one holding the door open for you,” he had complained, but she just brushed him inside with a laugh.) And as they were seated by the kind waitress, Beau still grumbling, Mikayla felt her phone vibrate. 

As she pulled out her phone, the waitress placed menus on the table in front of them and left. 

Mikayla saw that it was a text from Parker. 

‘He seems nice. I’m happy for you.’ 

Mikayla smiled, about to reply with a ‘Thanks’, when another text came from Parker. 

‘But if he hurts you, I’mma kill him.’ 

She rolled her eyes, not at all surprised. She amended her text to, ‘Noted, thanks.’ 

With an indulgent smile, Mikayla put her phone back into her back pocket and returned her attention to her grumpy boyfriend. He was pouting down, fiddling with a fraying end of a menu. Mikayla’s smile widened as she leaned her cheek into her palm. 

“How about you get the door for me on the way out?” she offered. 

Beau visibly perked up, a slight flush rising to his face as he brought his gaze up to meet Mikayla’s eyes. He nodded, a small smile lifting the corners of his lips. 

Mikayla let the hand propping up her face fall to the table beside the menus, palm up in the space between them. It only took a moment for Beau to pull his own hand from his pocket to entwine his fingers with Mikayla’s. 

They sat there silently, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes in a way Rae would have called sickening before yanking their hands apart and telling them to go find a room. And they remained that way, Beau rubbing Mikayla’s knuckles as she leaned her cheek into her other propped-up hand. 

But then the waitress returned, announcing her presence with a preppy, “Good evening! Ready to order?” 

Neither of them let go of their linked hands, and the waitress had to bite her lip from how adorable and in-love they were. But Mikayla did drop her other hand from her face to open the menu and glance over the familiar lists of entrees and appetizers. 

“Do you mind if I order for us?” Mikayla asked Beau. He just smiled and nodded, so Mikayla turned to the waitress. “For an appetizer, could we have one plate of garlic bread and a small margherita pizza?” As the waitress nodded, having finished writing their order down, Mikayla continued. “And then one classic meat-sauce and one creamy chicken Alfredo pasta, please?” 

The waitress took note of this with another series of nods, muttering under her breath as she wrote before lifting her head and flashing the couple a warm smile. 

“House garlic bread and a margherita pizza, and two plates of pasta, one meat-sauce and one Alfredo.” She tapped her pen onto her notebook before glancing back up at the pair. “Would you like any drinks with that? Today’s special is the second red wine on the list.” She pointed with the back of her pen at the wine she was referring to before bending over to whisper, “Personally, though, I think the coke is better.” 

“Two cokes, then,” Mikayla said with a smile. 

“Good choice,” the waitress agreed as she stood and wrote it down, sharing a small smile with Mikayla, a bright twinkle in her eyes. “I’ll be right back with your drinks.” 

She gathered the menus and swept off with that same warm smile, returning, just like she had said, moments later with two tall glasses slick with condensation. But she didn’t say anything, leaving the two to stare lovingly into each others’ eyes as they waited for their food to arrive. 

Eventually, she returned with a small pizza in one hand and a plate of fluffy garlic bread in the other. She set them in the center of the table the couple was settled at, leaving with a parting smile. 

When she returned for the second time, this time with two bowls of pasta, the two were talking in low voices about the significance of pearls. The waitress didn’t know what it meant, but she assumed it had to do with the fact that both of them had pearls woven into their hair. 

The girl thanked her graciously, and the waitress turned away with a smile. 

“What?” she heard the girl ask from behind her. 

The waitress lingered, wanting to see what she could overhear. 

“Are you always nice to everyone?” the girl’s boyfriend asked. 

“Uhm… yes?” the girl replied, sounding confused. Turning to refill another table’s empty glasses, the waitress got a glimpse of the couple. The boyfriend was red with embarrassment and the girl was leaning forward, her chin resting in her palm. “Would you rather I was only kind to you?” 

The waitress had to cough to hide her laughter as the girl’s boyfriend nodded sheepishly. 

“Amber!” a voice suddenly called from the kitchens. “I need you!” 

“Coming!” the waitress called, scampering away from the adorable couple at table twelve. 

Mikayla frowned over her shoulder at the retreating waitress with the curly blonde hair who seemed to be named Amber. She wasn’t listening to us, was she? Mikayla wondered with a raised eyebrow. But then she shrugged to herself because what did it matter? 

So Mikayla turned back around to face Beau, who was happily nibbling on the edge of a piece of garlic bread that he had dipped into the spaghetti sauce, just like Mikayla had done. 

“Do you like it?” she asked him, twirling her own forkful. 

He nodded vigorously, raising the back of his hand to cover his mouth as he chewed. 

“It’s really good,” he agreed. “We don’t have food like this at the Margmaris.” 

“Marg-mary?” Mikayla asked. 

“Oh, that’s just what we call the palace,” Beau explained. “It’s an abbreviated term for the nickname we use to describe our palace.” He wasn’t sure if Mikayla would be interested, but seeing her sparkling eyes, he decided to continue. “Well, the official term for our palace roughly translates to ‘Palace of Pearls’, mostly because of the design and the fact that pearls are our first choice of decor. And because of that, the people began to refer to the palace as ‘the Pearl of the Sea’. But of course, saying that over and over again can get a little old, so we shortened it to Margmaris.” 

Mikayla stared wonderingly at Beau. She hadn’t ever really displayed an interest in other cultures, but she couldn’t help but become amazed as she learned of the culture of a whole fucking other species. Especially the culture of her boyfriend. 

They spent the rest of the night eating and talking and laughing together until the sun was on the verge of sinking below the horizon line. And so, after ordering and finishing a lovely tiramisu cake for dessert, Mikayla called Amber over for the check. 

With a bright smile, Amber whisked away and returned with their receipt, and then the couple were on their way out. 

It was an easy matter to track down Mikayla’s motorbike near the Mocha Bean Meadow, which was closed with a sign that read Sold Out! in bright red letters on the door, and then they were speeding back towards the ocean. 

Beau was just as in awe behind Mikayla as when he had been on the ride into town. He gazed up, where the clouds floated by like puffs of orange and pink, looking like they had been painted onto the gradually darkening purple canvas that was the sky. Some seagulls flew by, returning to their nests for the night as stars were beginning to poke through the darkness. 

It came as a shock when they suddenly bounced off of the asphalt and onto a dirt road, thick forage covering the view above them, with how absorbed Beau had been with the sky above. 

And then, all too soon, Mikayla’s bike came to a halt by the edge of the forest where the dirt met white sand. 

The two were silent, both of them filled to the brim with joy over the long day that they had just spent entirely with each other, but also filled with sorrow at having to part again. Because even after all this time, they both lived different lives. 

Mikayla was the first to interrupt the silence lingering between them like their linked hands swaying with their steps. 

“Would you… like to meet my parents?” she offered.