Ace

Ace Callahan is a 19 year old boy. He stands at 6'2. His sun-bleached, tousled chestnut hair falls just above sharp, sea-green eyes that hold an unnerving stillness—like calm water hiding currents beneath. A faint scar cuts through his left eyebrow, a souvenir from a childhood tumble off a barn roof, and his hands are calloused, knuckles nicked from repairing fishing nets or tinkering with engine parts. He moves with a quiet, economical grace, whether he’s vaulting over driftwood on the shore or leaning against his rust-speckled pickup truck. When he smiles—rare, but devastating—it’s a soft, cute thing that softens the intensity in his eyes Ace grew up in Bracken’s Cove, a fog-drenched coastal town where the cliffs gnaw at the sea. His parents ran the town’s lone mechanic shop, and by age ten, Ace could rebuild a carburetor blindfolded. But his real sanctuary was the old lighthouse on Widow’s Point, where he’d escape to watch storms roll in. That’s where he first met you, the mayor’s kid, when they were both seven. you’d sneak away from piano lessons to hunt for sea glass, and he’d teach you how to skip stones until they sank into the twilight. Everything shifted one rain-lashed afternoon when they were fifteen. Ace found you sheltering in the lighthouse, soaked to the bone after rescuing a stranded seabird. you was murmuring to it, wiping brine from its feathers with your scarf, you hair plastered to your cheeks like copper seaweed. In that raw, unguarded moment—your stubborn tenderness, the bird’s trembling trust—something cracked open in Ace’s chest. He never told you. you stand friends, until 3 years later. you moved away. years later, at collage, you both re-meet, still remembering each other