Yeup!

Later, a couple more girls had come to the beach. I was trying to sell them some of the stuff I had to offer, but the girl from earlier kept messing it up. "It's like it was made for you!" I said to one of them. "*Cough* Womanizer--*Cough* cheap--*cough* skate!" I turned to face her, and she turned her head away. I approached her. "Hey. Is this your idea of spending your time 'meaningfully'?"
"...Yes. Reading is meaningful."
I glared at her for a moment before sitting down next to her. "Oh, I know how I can spend my time now!" I smirked at her, and it was obvious she was a little annoyed. "I can just bug the crap out of you until you leave."
"...Are you always this charming?" She asked.
"Always."

Yep... she's a clone. xD

Practically, yes. xD

A perfect stranger. That's what she was. That's how it should've stayed. I sauntered up to the lady that kept ruining my business one day and said, "Good afternoon, ma'am. I don't believe we've ever met before." I offered another charming smile. "Do you come around here often?" I held up a bracelet. "I gotta say, seaweed is not a good look on you. Might I interest you in something more...shall I say, refined?"
"Yeah, nice try, but--" she threw the seaweed she had been holding onto me "--you wouldn't know 'refined' if it slapped you in the face 'sweetheart'." I smiled, wiping the water off my face, dropping the seaweed. She hadn't given me her name, nor I mine, but...I kind of preferred it that way. "Why do you mosey around here every day anyway?" I asked, resting my head against my case that was behind my head, and bit into an apple. "I mean...don't you have more 'meaningful things to do' or whatever you call it? Or am I just too irresistible to stay away from?"
She laughed at me. "You really haven't considered being a clown yet? I'm sure you'd make much more profit off of your humor than you do selling those gaudy knick-knacks of yours!"
Well, she had wiped the smile off my face. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. At least I'm doing something useful over here."
She picked up a pebble and tossed it into the ocean. "...Being by the ocean soothes me. I don't feel as closed in..." She stared off into the distance. "Free...almost."
I had finished my apple and tossed it away. "...Why? Do you feel trapped most of the time or something?"
She sat down a few feet away from me. "No, I wouldn't put it that way, I just...right now...my fiance wants to start a family." She examined a pebble before dropping it. "But I don't think I'm ready to take on that responsibility just yet."
"Does he know that?"
"Yes. I've told him multiple times, but he's...insistent. Not to mention half the time he listens, he's drunk."
I looked away from her, to the ocean. "Well, that's...suckish."
"Ughhh It really is suckish!!!" She began to throw a fit, on her back, flailing her arms and legs. "I feel like I could be doing so much more with my life before having a child, you know?! I'm still young! It's unfair! It's so unfair! ...I want to belong to myself for just a little while longer." She had stopped flailing, staring up at the sky now. "When I'm here, I can dream...I can still be my own person. Even if it's only for a moment. Perhaps I long to be...someone more like you."
I looked at her in shock, before looking back towards the ocean. The irony. For the first time, in a life of fraudulence, I was beginning to feel something real for a change. We were lying there on the beach, and I glanced at her. She was still staring at the sky. The day I offered her a fake pearl necklace, she finally asked for my name. Back then, it had been Kai. I held my hand out, and said, "It's Kai." She had smiled up at me and had shaken my hand. "I'm Emila."
Imitation pearls are usually coated glass or ceramic beads. So if you look close enough, they're too perfect...that's how you can tell them apart from the real ones. And for a moment, everything seemed like that fake string of pearls. Perfect.

But it wasn't too long after that when she came to me crying one day..."It was a mistake. I never should have met you. I'm so sorry." She was crying, but that wasn't the reason I was shocked. With no further explanation, she left. Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned to months...and I hadn't seen or heard from her since.
Until...her fiance brought a champagne bottle down on me. "Where is she?!" He had demanded. "Answer me!" The bottle had broken, and now my eyebrow was cut, almost down to my eye. "I don't know what you're talking about! I've never seen you before in my whole life!" He had grabbed me by the collar of my shirt. "My fiance, Emila! She's gone missing! You have something to do with this, don't you?!"
I stared at him. "What...?"

Oh... that's sad :(

Yup. Now you know why he has a broken eyebrow now.

"She's gone." Her fiance loosened his grip, and let go, falling to his knees, dropping the bottle. Emila...Once I heard she went missing, I sought out to look for her. A part of me hoped she had finally decided to run away, to live her life the way she had always wanted. I guess the only thing I found the hardest to accept was that it didn't include me.

Oh wow you should write a book. It gave me chills :0 I'm happy that Ian is still himself though instead of like bummed out or something like that.

I've tried writing a few books, but I get writer's block something terrible every time. And yeah. He's still him mostly because he believes that she's alive, but...yeah, she's not.

"Maybe you just aren't looking hard enough?"
I squinted, trying to see what on earth she was seeing. "Over there. Do you see it?"
"Hmm...oh, wait--!! Nope." She decided that flicking me on the forehead was a good idea. "Ow?! So...remind me again why you dragged me up here?" We were at the top of a lighthouse. She scoffed. "Me? Drag you? You're the one that followed me! And I just so happen to like it here."
"Orrr...this is where you push me off and send me plummeting to my inevitable death?"
She laughed, and it sounded like tinkling bells. "Ah, you got me~." We looked at each other. "Actually, this is the place where I..."
I tilted my head forward so I could see her better. "...?"
"This place...This is the place where I rediscover myself. Standing here, it brings back who I've always been: a dreamer. Even as a little girl, I was constantly scolded for having my head up in the clouds. But how could you blame me when the view is so beautiful up here?" She asked, staring up at the sky. She fell to her knees, holding the railing. "The problem is...I could never seem to bring myself back down. Forever looking through rose-tinted glasses...envisioning a make-believe world, better than it actually is. Like how I return to the same old places, expecting something spontaneous to happen...like how I expected my marriage to work out before realizing that I don't even know my fiance." She closed her eyes, and I stared at her.
"So here I am. Babbling on about my life to a stranger--though you're hardly a stranger at this point." She stood, fixing her dress. I was silent, and it must've unnerved her because she said, "Wh-why are you so quiet? You always have something crude, obnoxious, or snarky to say, s-so get on with it!"
I looked down at her, mostly in shock. "Well, dang, lady--okay, I guess!" She glared at me before looking away.
"You think I'm naive, don't you? A grown woman who still dreams like a child."
Well, I wasn't about to lie. "Yeah, kind of. But thanks to the naive people like you I can make a living."
"Excuse me, but if I remember correctly, I haven't fallen victim to your hustle."
I put on my award-winning smile. "Not yet you haven't."
"Oh that's cute. So is that what you daydream about? That one day, you'll finally swindle me? Is that why you insistently follow me around?"
Now it was my turn to scoff. "Right, you'd love that, wouldn't you?" We were both silent for a moment before she changed the subject. "...What does a rogue like you dream about, anyway?"
I took a second to think that one over before answering, "Oh, you know, world domination. The usual~. But...now that I think about it, I don't think I have any sort of 'dream'. Or at least I haven't had one in a long while. I just...accept my reality for what it is. Going from one day to the next, only doing what's enough to get me by. But I guess I never stopped to think about...who I really want to be...or could be." Welp, that had gotten too deep, so time to bring out the excuses. "Besides, I'm perfect anyway, so...What's the point in envisioning myself as someone I'm not?"
"Booo you're not fun," she pouted. "I mean...we're up here in the clouds already, aren't we? We can choose to be whoever we want. Someone new."

Oh... I get writer's block and drawing or artist block? Whatever's it called I get it too.... It sucks.
Btw I have realized Ian is kinda 'redoing' his love life with Hazel but since he has met someone before her, he doesn't want to jump into things, right?

Yeah. He doesn't really want history to repeat itself.

"What kind of airhead packs a picnic for herself when it's raining outside?" We were at the beach, huddling under the picnic blanket, but we were still soaked. "What about you?" She asked. "Did you really think you could hustle anyone out in this weather? No one is even here."
"You're here," I pointed out. For a moment, we looked at each other and then away from each other. Pretty awkward, if I do say so myself. "Well, I mean...you could have at least made yourself useful by bringing an umbrella," she said.
"...You didn't bring one, either."
She bit into a piece of bread with stuff on top. "So why'd you feel the need to escape?" I asked.
"Escape?"
"You're obviously trying to get away from something if you're eating cold toast under a soggy picnic blanket on a rainy day. You gotta admit that sounds a little pitiful."
"That...does sound pretty pitiful," she admitted.
"So what's bothering you?"
She was silent for a moment before answering. "We had another fight. He was lecturing me about how all women have maternal instincts and should naturally want children and that how I feel right now is simply a 'phase' I'll learn to grow out of. But that...just isn't who I am. And the more he reprimands me...the further I drift away into daydreaming...of touching the sands of every shoreline...watching the sunrise and sunset from different horizons...I would take a tiny shell from every beach I visit...and put them in a jar for a memento of all the places I would travel." She looked off into the distance, smiling. If only I had known what I wanted sooner. If only I had met her sooner. I couldn't even bring myself to hold her.

*Sigh* Welp now I kinda feel bad about the way Hazel was treating him...