“What face?”

Caleb blinked water from his lashes. “You already told me that. Six weeks ago. You said, ‘I like your backpack.’ And I said, ‘Thanks, it has a lot of pockets.’”

Lena laughed, pulling her hood up. “Your fault for drawing me instead of watching the sky.”

Lena and Caleb had been dating for exactly six weeks—long enough to know each other’s coffee orders, not long enough to have said the big thing. They were sitting on the cracked bench outside the old bookstore, sharing earbuds and a sleeve of Oreos, when the first fat drop hit Caleb’s notebook.

“I like you,” she said. Not whispered. Just said, like a fact. Like the rain.

“No,” Lena said. She turned to face him fully. “I like you. The kind that makes my stomach hurt when you don’t text back. The kind where I remember the exact shade of your shirt on the first day. The kind that’s—” She stopped. Her sneakers were soaked. Her hair was a disaster.

“And?”

Here’s a short piece about a teen couple and a quiet, romantic storyline. The rain was a surprise. Not the kind forecasted, but the kind that rolls in off the river without warning, turning sidewalks into mirrors and hair into wet strings.

The rain picked up. People started running. But Lena didn’t move. She pulled the earbud out and let the music disappear into the static of water on asphalt.

He leaned in, close enough that his nose bumped hers. “It’s not the way you look. It’s the way I feel when I’m looking.”

When they kissed, it tasted like Oreo dust and rain and that particular bravery that only comes at seventeen—when everything is temporary, which makes everything feel like forever.

He grinned, that crooked thing he did where one dimple showed and the other hid. “You were making a face.”

Caleb closed his sketchbook carefully, set it in his backpack, and then pulled the backpack under the bench to keep it dry. Then he took Lena’s cold hands in his.