Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

Daily Dose of Romance – Short Stories for FREE

She was swimming at dawn when he first saw her, which meant she saw him watching from the dock, which meant they started with honesty.

“Rude,” she called, still treading water.

“Impressive,” he called back. “There are jellyfish.”

“I know. They’ve been polite.”

She came out of the water with the absolute lack of self-consciousness of someone who’d grown up by the sea. He handed her the towel he’d brought for himself, because it was right there.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’m staying in the blue house,” he said.

“I know. I’m in the white one. Next door.”

“How long?”

“Two weeks,” she said. “You?”

“Two weeks.”

They stood on the dock in the early light, the sea still moving behind them.

“Rules,” she said.

“Sorry?”

“Summer things need rules. So no one gets surprised.”

He looked at her — calm and wet and direct. “What are your rules?”

“No history. No future. Just here.”

“And if it gets complicated?”

“Then we say so.”

“Agreed,” he said.

Her name was Persephone — Seph — and she was a marine biologist and she read in hammocks and cooked fish on an open grill and had strong opinions about tide charts. He was an ER doctor taking the first real leave he’d had in three years. They were nothing alike.

They spent the first week following the rules.

She taught him about the jellyfish — not their Latin names but their behaviour, their particular grace, the fact that they had no brain and no heart and were still perfectly calibrated to their world. He found this unbearably poignant. She found his finding it poignant unbearably interesting.

He cooked her breakfast on the eighth day. She didn’t have rules about breakfast.

“Rafe,” she said, on the tenth night.

“Seph.”

“I think I’m getting complicated.”

He was quiet. Outside, the sea.

“I’ve been complicated since day three,” he said.

“Why didn’t you say?”

“Because you made the rules.”

“I made the rules so I wouldn’t get hurt,” she said. “Which is a very different thing from actually not wanting this.”

He turned to look at her fully. She was sitting cross-legged on his bed, sand still in her hair from the afternoon, and she looked at him with those clear eyes that had been looking at the sea for years.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I want to know what happens after two weeks,” she said.

“Nothing stops after two weeks. Nothing has to.”

“You live in Edinburgh.”

“You live in Plymouth.”

“That’s six hours.”

“It’s also trains,” he said. “And weekends. And I have leave I haven’t taken.”

She looked at him for a long time.

“The jellyfish have no heart,” she said quietly. “And they’re still perfectly calibrated.”

“You don’t have to be a jellyfish, Seph.”

She unfolded herself from the bed and walked toward him.

“No new rules,” she said. “Let it be what it is.”

“Let it be what it is,” he agreed, and pulled her close.

Outside, the sea moved steadily in the dark, following rules only it knew, perfectly at home.

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So you made it to the end… which probably means you’re the kind of person who enjoys a little romance with their coffee ☕. If you’re in the mood for more stories about messy feelings, stubborn attraction, and women who absolutely refuse to settle for boring love, you can find all my books here.

Fair warning though. One story tends to lead to another. I’ve seen it happen. Repeatedly.