hey, so i kinda like you a little [liam]

Lately, life for Marisol had been going kinda of okay, which was a pretty big improvement from what had been going on previously. She was trying her best to patch things up with Skye and Carter, and while it was still hard sometimes, they understood she was trying and were grateful for the effort. She had also forced herself to start going to the school therapist, which was surprisingly helpful.

Today, she was meeting her new friend Liam for the second time. She sent him a letter, totally expecting to never get a response since he was, well, an overloridian, but to her pleasant surprise he actually really did want to see her again. She had only met him once, but she was excited to meet with him again. He had been so smart, and kind, and handsome...

You like him, Bar kept insisting, over Marisol's protests. That was silly, though, she barely knew him! How could she possibly like him like that? He was just cute, was all.

She was waiting for him at the edge of the island, which ended in a sheer cliff that dropped directly into the ocean. Her feet dangled over the side. She had promised him something exciting today.

Liam had been to Martha's Vineyard a few times, but only to stop in to Redfern on some of the Cuir classes at the request of the teachers. He had never been there as an actual student, so he didn't know his way around the island, and hadn't been many places except the campus of the school.

Today was different though. He was meeting Marisol, a new friend he had made at Tamar a week ago, and she had wanted to show him something exciting. The problem was, he wasn't quite sure where this exciting thing was supposed to take place. She had included vague instructions in her letter ("Meet me by the western edge of the island!") but that wasn't very helpful, considering he didn't know his way around.

Currently he was walking along the western edge of the island, calling for her. "Marisol? Oh, Marisollll." He thought he could finally see her up ahead.

Marisol smiled when she heard Liam's voice call for her. "Over here!" she called back, jumping to her feet and waving. She got impatient with him walking over, so she flew over and grabbed his hand, still smiling. "Come on, I want to show you something really cool."

She pulled him over to the edge of the cliff she had been sitting at and pointed downwards. "You can't see it from here, but it's down there," she told him. From the point they were at, all they could see were waves crashing against the edge of the island below.

"Oh...and, um, also: Hi, how are you?" she asked quickly when she realized she hadn't even really greeted him.

Liam was about to say hello when Marisol grabbed his arm and took him over to the side of the cliff. She excitedly pointed down the cliff and told him that was where they were going today.

Finally she stuttered out a greeting. "It's nice to see you too!" he teased with a laugh. "I'm doing good, excited to see what you have planned for us today! We're going into the water?" he asked her with a smile. She was cute when she was excited, and Liam thought he really liked her smile.

Ahem, Kyrie interjected.

I'm allowed to think she's cute, Liam protested. But he looked away from Marisol and back down the cliff, anyway.

"How are you?"

"I'm good. I'm happy you're here," she blurted out candidly.

"No, not the water," she replied, shaking her head. She looked down at the ocean below. "There's like...currents here, and it's, um, not really safe..." She trailed off, kind of zoning out as she looked down below. Even though they weren't even on the same side of the island, she got a kind of sickening realization that these were the same waters Jeanine had died in.

Mar, try not to think about that right now, Bar said gently. Part of the reason Marisol had had such a good time with Liam was because he didn't know about all the stuff that had happened, and she could push it out of her mind for a short time too.

You're right, she agreed, still a little shaken.

"A-anyways," she tried to recover. "There's a cave down there on the side of the cliff. I think I'm the only one who's ever seen it."

Liam watched Marisol go through a few moments of internal struggle, but didn't comment on it. Maybe she was afraid of the water. Hope had been afraid of the ocean, too. But for sillier reasons than Marisol's practical reason of currents.

There could be whales in there! Sharks! Hope would always say when Liam begged her to go to the beach with him. And there had been no convincing her, no matter how hard Liam had tried. Hmm.

Marisol wrote:"A-anyways, there's a cave down there on the side of the cliff. I think I'm the only one who's ever seen it."

As she continued, she pulled Liam out of his own thoughts.

"Really?" he asked, leaning over the cliff a little to try to get a better look. "What's down there?" He turned back up to look at Marisol.

Marisol managed to smile again. "You'll seeeeee," she said playfully. The secret cave was one of the few things she had never been able to convince her friends to check out with her, which was why she was pretty sure only she had been in it. She couldn't really blame them, though. The Falls were one thing, but jumping off a cliff at the edge of the ocean had to be terrifying if you weren't Cuir.

She jumped off the cliff and suspended herself in the air for a moment, motioning for Liam to follow her before flying down. Just as she had said, on the face of the cliff there was a small cave with an opening of about six square feet. "We're going exploring," she said. She already knew what was inside of course, but she wanted Liam to be surprised.

"Are you brave enough to go in first?" she asked with a grin.

Marisol was unlike anyone Liam had ever met.

She left him standing on the edge of the cliff as she dove headfirst through the air. With a laugh at how incredibly crazy this seemed (Cave exploring? Really? He would NEVER have done this before.) he jumped off the cliff, himself.

He followed her down, letting the salty air wash over him, until they were both staring into a cave that cut into the cliffside.

Marisol wrote:"We're going exploring, are you brave enough to go in first?"

"Brave enough?" Liam said with mock over self confidence, "I laugh in the face of danger!"

He floated in a little, watching as the light slowly faded, being overrun with shadows. "How can we explore if it's dark?" he asked Marisol,who was floating in behind him.

"Just keep going, you'll see," Marisol said from behind him. Several feet in, the tunnel suddenly expanded out into a large cavern. The cavern was illuminated by hundreds of shining glowworms on the top, and dozens of luminescent mushrooms along the bottom and lining the walls. It was a beautiful, amazing little world hidden inside boring old Martha's Vineyard.

"What do you think?" she asked Liam. She couldn't see his face, only the silhouette of his back against the glowing cave.

Liam was speechless. Completely, one hundred percent speechless.

He stared around the cave, completely surrounded by bioluminescence. It was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen in his entire life.

"How--how did you find this place?" he finally asked her, turning around so he could look at her. The glowworms created dancing light patterns to trail along Marisol's face. "This is incredible!"

He had had no idea this was what Marisol had meant when she said she had an "amazing surprise." Holy cannoli.

He let himself float to the cavern floor and stood on a watery-sandy spot that had no mushrooms.

He likes it! Marisol thought excitedly. She floated down next to him. "I like exploring the island," she explained. "I was flying around and I saw the cave and decided to check it out."

She looked up at him. His awed face made her heart beat a little faster. She had always thought this could be a really romantic place...

Liam didn't notice Marisol staring at him because he was so busy looking around in amazement. "I have never seen anything like this," he said honestly, his voice drenched in awe.

He looked down at her. "This is... beautiful, Marisol," he said, slightly shaking his head in wonder.

Kyrie was too busy looking around in awe as well, or she would have warned Liam that his words could be taken completely wrong.

Marisol locked eyes with Liam and without even thinking about it first, leaned up on her toes and kissed him. She hadn't planned this out at all, it just seemed so right. It was the perfect moment, in the perfect place. And the way he was looking at her, she was pretty sure he wanted her to do it.

It happened so quickly, Liam wasn't even sure it had happened at all. One moment he and Marisol were standing in this beautiful cave, enjoying the incredible scenery together, when all of a sudden she had kissed him.

Kyrie froze behind him, feeling the kiss that was given to her clio. More than that, though, she felt the panic.

Liam swallowed, his eyes on Marisol's. She'd stepped back down, her feet flat on the damp stone floor. She gazed up at him, her eyes twinkling in the glowworm's luminescence.

What had just happened? How had this happened? Liam's heart started beating a painful, scattered rhythm and he looked around the cave quickly. How had he ended up in this beautiful cave with this beautiful girl? This seventeen year old girl who still went to school?

You need to leave, Kyrie told him slowly. Calm down. Tell her you've forgotten about something. Liam was freaking out because of Hope, but Kyrie's reasons were more practical. Marisol was still a child. She had settled, yes, but she was in school. Liam lived in Cuir. He was a man, and even if she wasn't worried about the age gap, he was an overloridian.

"Marisol," Liam said, taking a step away from her. God this was not going to be easy. "This--this isn't right." He ran a hand down his face, taking a moment to breathe and think. "I need to go, I shouldn't be here."

Kyrie had been right, as always. He'd been blindsided, and now he felt like he had taken advantage of a young girl. And Hope.

He felt like he needed to say more, but nothing else was coming. He took a few more steps backward, and then turned to leave.

Marisol's smile vanished the second she saw the look on Liam's face. He looked...he looked horrified, which was about how Marisol felt when she realized what she had done. Oh god, she thought, feeling her face grow hot with embarrassment. What had she been thinking? Why would he, an overloridian, want to do anything like that with a regular girl like her?

Relax, relax Mar, it was just a kiss, Bar said to her. Oh, the life of a daemon of a dramatic teenage girl. It's not a big deal.

That was true. It wasn't like Marisol had never been rejected before. It wasn't that big a deal at all. Liam seemed to think it was, though. And now he was leaving. Practically running away. Was he mad at her?

"Hey, wait!" she said, walking after him. "I'm sorry, okay? That was dumb. I just thought that maybe...you and me...okay, yeah, now I see that it was really stupid. I didn't make it weird, did I? Come on, let's just forget I did that and hang out!"

Liam would have liked to have stayed, but it was weird now. Kyrie was right. Marisol was seventeen.

Kyrie, though, was impressed with Marisol's response to the situation. She wasn't going to change Liam's mind and have him stay, but she did think about the fact that Liam had only been a year older than Marisol when he had first settled and become overloridian.

"It's not about that," Liam said to her, his voice tired. "I mean, it's not just about that," he amended.

He turned back to look at Marisol, whose face was still slightly red. "I just have a lot going on right now, I'm sorry."

He wanted to offer her an explanation, but "I am still hung up on my long-dead girlfriend" didn't seem like something he should speak out loud. He knew it was crazy, and that Hope would have wanted to see him happy, but he just couldn't even think about being with anyone else. And he had obviously gotten this girl's hopes up, even though he would never be able to offer anything in return.

It was wrong, and stupid of him. He should have realized what he was doing when Kyrie had warned him.

"Oh...of course, I understand," Marisol said, still incredibly embarrassed but trying to save face. She just wanted Liam to know that she wouldn't do anything like that again, that she was perfectly happy just being friends and she would get over what was obviously just a dumb little crush. But she wasn't sure how to say all that.

"So, um, maybe we can hang out some other time then?" she asked instead, hopefully. If Liam didn't like her romantically that was okay, but she felt like she needed this friendship. Liam was the first person she had hung out with in so long that didn't make her constantly think about Jeanine.

"I--of course," he told her, wondering if he meant it or not.

Kyrie resisted the odd urge to protest his leaving.

"I'll let you know when things calm down for me a little, okay?" he told her, rubbing his arm. He turned to leave but thought better of it. "I did have a good time, Marisol," he added.

"Oh yeah, and um, sorry again," Marisol stuttered out, with a sinking feeling that he was lying. Please don't be, she thought. She really, really hoped she hadn't screwed things up permanently over such a stupid thing. "And I'm glad you had a good time. I, I guess I'll see you around?"