Chapter 2: The Painter and the Street Artist
The espresso machine hissed like a living thing, steam curling toward the ceiling in lazy spirals. Jordan watched Matteo work—the precise angle of his wrist as he tamped the grounds, the way he wiped the portafilter with a cloth that had seen better days. Every movement was economical. Nothing wasted.
Sofia had already claimed the stool next to Jordan, her sketchbook open on the counter. She drew with a fury that made his own process look glacial. Her pencil scratched across the page in short, violent strokes, and when she paused, it was only to take a gulp of the coffee Matteo had set in front of her without being asked.
"This is good," she said, wiping foam from her upper lip with the back of her hand. "Like, really good. What do you put in it?"
"Nothing." Matteo didn't look up from the machine. "It's just coffee."
"No, there's something. Cardamom? No—" She took another sip, eyes narrowing. "Orange peel."
Matteo's hands stilled for half a second. Then he was moving again, pulling a shot for another customer, and Jordan caught the ghost of something on his face. Surprise, maybe. Or the satisfaction of being seen.
"Most people can't taste it," Matteo said.
"Most people don't pay attention." Sofia turned back to her sketchbook, and Jordan leaned over to look. The drawing was rough, unfinished—a figure hunched over a bar, shoulders curved like a question mark. It took him a moment to realize it was him.
"That's—" He stopped.
"Bad?" Sofia didn't sound offended. She sounded curious.
"Honest." Jordan traced the line of his own spine with his eyes. She'd drawn him smaller than he felt. More fragile. The version of himself he tried to hide behind bravado and half-finished paintings. "Is that really how I look?"
"That's how you look right now." She flipped the page before he could study it further and started something new. "You've got this thing you do with your shoulders. Like you're bracing for impact. I couldn't not draw it."
Jordan sat back. The stool creaked beneath him. Across the counter, Matteo was serving a pair of elderly women who argued over whether to split a pastry. His voice was low, patient, the kind of voice that made you want to tell him your secrets.
"So," Sofia said, not looking up from her work. "How long have you been here?"
"Florence? A week. Europe? Two months."
"And the café owner?" She tilted her head toward Matteo. "How long have you been his?"
Jordan's throat tightened. "I'm not his."
"Okay." She drew a long, sweeping line. "How long have you been his?"
"Ten days. Maybe eleven." He counted back, trying to remember the first time he'd walked through the café doors. He'd been running from a hostel that smelled like feet and regret, looking for somewhere to hide. Matteo had given him a table and a coffee and hadn't asked a single question. It had felt like a miracle. It still did.
Sofia hummed. "And nothing's happened?"
"What do you mean, happened?"
"I mean what I said." She finally looked at him, and her eyes were sharper than he'd expected—not cruel, but unflinching. "You've been circling each other like stray cats for ten days. I've known you for an hour and I can already see it."
"You don't know anything about me."
"I know you're scared." She said it without judgment, like she was commenting on the weather. "I know you came here to find something and you're terrified you won't. And I know that man—" she nodded toward Matteo, "—makes you feel like you might actually deserve to find it."
Jordan opened his mouth to argue. Nothing came out.
Sofia smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. It was the smile of someone who had spent her whole life watching people and had learned to see the things they tried to hide. "It's okay. I'm not judging. I'm just saying—you can't stay in the waiting room forever."
"Jesus." Jordan laughed, but it came out wrong. Too sharp. "You don't pull any punches, do you?"
"I don't have time for them." She turned to a fresh page and started drawing again. "Life's too short to pretend."
Matteo appeared at the end of the counter, wiping his hands on a towel. He looked at Sofia's sketchbook, then at Jordan, then back at Sofia. His expression was the same unreadable mask it always was, but something in his posture had shifted. His shoulders were tighter.
"You're staying for lunch?" he asked.
"Are we?" Sofia looked at Jordan.
Jordan hesitated. He thought about the painting waiting for him at the hostel—the one he still couldn't finish. He thought about the light on the river, the way it changed every hour, the way he kept chasing it and never quite catching it. He thought about Matteo's hands and Sofia's eyes and the way both of them seemed to see right through him.
"Sure," he said. "Lunch."
Matteo nodded and disappeared into the back. The café had emptied out—the elderly women gone, the waiter on a break, the street outside quiet in the way Italian afternoons always were. It was too hot to move. Too hot to do anything but sit and wait for the sun to relent.
Sofia finished her drawing and tore the page from her sketchbook. She folded it in half and slid it across the counter toward Jordan.
"Keep it," she said. "Consider it a gift."
Jordan unfolded the paper. It was him again, but different this time—looser, freer. In this drawing, he was laughing. His shoulders were down. His face was open in a way he didn't recognize.
"I don't look like that," he said.
"You could." She stood and stretched, her spine cracking audibly. "So. I found this rooftop last night. It's above a plumbing supply store on Via dei Neri. The owner's an old guy who doesn't care who goes up there as long as you don't break anything."
"A rooftop."
"The best view in the city. Better than Piazzale Michelangelo. Better than anywhere the tourists know about." She leaned against the counter, close enough that Jordan could smell the paint on her clothes—turpentine and something floral underneath. "I'm going there tonight to paint. You should come."
Jordan looked toward the back of the café, where Matteo had disappeared. The kitchen door was closed, but he could hear the sound of a knife against a cutting board. Steady. Rhythmic. Patient.
"I don't know," he said.
"Don't know what?" Sofia's voice was light, but her eyes weren't. "It's a rooftop. Not a marriage proposal."
"I just—" He stopped. He didn't know how to explain it. The pull he felt toward Matteo wasn't simple. It wasn't just attraction or gratitude or the desperate need for someone to tell him he was good enough. It was something deeper. Something that scared him.
Sofia watched him struggle and didn't help. She just stood there with her arms crossed, waiting.
"You're allowed to want things," she said finally. "You're allowed to want two things at once. Even if they don't fit together."
"I don't want two things."
"Liar." She said it without malice. Just a statement of fact. "You want the stability he offers. The anchor. The person who tells you when your sky is wrong. But you also want—" she gestured at herself, at the sketchbook, at the world outside the café doors, "—this. The mess. The risk. The unknown."
Jordan didn't answer.
Sofia shrugged and picked up her backpack. "I'm leaving at eight. Go to the fountain in Piazza Santo Spirito. If you're there, you're there. If you're not—" She smiled, and this time it was almost soft. "No hard feelings."
She started toward the door, and Jordan felt something twist in his chest. The same thing he'd felt when Matteo had turned away from his painting, when he'd said the sky was wrong. The fear of being seen. The fear of being left.
"Sofia."
She paused at the door, hand on the frame.
"How do you know?" he asked. "How do you know you're not just running? That the next city, the next wall, the next person—how do you know it's not all just the same thing?"
She turned back. The light from outside caught her face, and for a moment she looked older than twenty-six. Tired. Real.
"I don't," she said. "That's the point. I don't know anything. I just keep moving and hope I figure it out before I run out of road."
She left.
The bell above the door jingled, and then it was just Jordan and the empty café and the sound of Matteo's knife in the back. He sat there for a long time, staring at the drawing Sofia had given him. The version of himself that laughed. The version that wasn't bracing for impact.
He folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.
Matteo emerged from the kitchen carrying two plates. He set one in front of Jordan—pasta with tomatoes and basil, simple and perfect—and took the seat Sofia had vacated. He didn't ask where she'd gone. He didn't ask if Jordan was going to follow.
"You should eat," he said.
Jordan picked up his fork. The pasta was good. It was always good. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten something that wasn't good in this café.
"She thinks I'm scared," Jordan said.
"She's right."
"You don't even know her."
"I don't need to." Matteo twirled pasta around his fork with the same precision he brought to everything. "I know you. You've been running since the moment you walked through my door. Finishing paintings, not finishing paintings—it doesn't matter. You're always looking for the exit."
Jordan set down his fork. The words stung more than he wanted to admit. "That's not fair."
"Fair doesn't enter into it." Matteo's voice was calm, but there was something underneath it—a current, dark and strong. "You think I don't see it? You think I don't notice the way you flinch every time someone tells you the truth?"
"I don't flinch."
"You do." Matteo leaned back, studying him. "You've been flinching since the first day. When I told you your sky was wrong, you looked at me like I'd slapped you."
"Because you did."
"Good." Matteo picked up his fork again. "You needed it."
They ate in silence after that. The café was still empty, the afternoon light slanting through the windows at an angle that made everything look like it was glowing from within. Jordan watched Matteo eat and tried to memorize the lines of his face—the tiny scar above his left eyebrow, the way his jaw tightened when he chewed, the faint shadow of stubble that never quite disappeared.
He thought about Sofia's drawing. The version of himself that laughed.
He thought about the rooftop and the fountain in Piazza Santo Spirito and the whole wide world waiting just outside the door.
He thought about what it would mean to stay.
"I need to ask you something," Jordan said.
Matteo looked up.
"Why do you let me sit here? Every day, for hours. I never buy anything except coffee. I take up your best table. I—"
"Because you're an artist." Matteo said it like it was obvious. Like it explained everything. "And this café has always been a place for artists. It's why I bought it. It's why I keep it."
"You were an artist once."
Matteo's fork paused halfway to his mouth. The pause was brief—a fraction of a second—but Jordan caught it.
"Yes," Matteo said. "Once."
"What happened?"
Matteo set down his fork. For a long moment, he didn't speak. He looked at the fresco on the wall—the half-finished one that had been there since before he bought the place, the one nobody knew the original artist had abandoned. The colors had faded. The lines were blurred. But you could still see what it was meant to be: a hand reaching for something just out of frame.
"I stopped," Matteo said. "That's all. I woke up one morning and I couldn't do it anymore."
"But you still see it. The way you look at things—you still have the eye."
"The eye isn't enough." Matteo stood and picked up the empty plates. "You need the hunger. The obsession. The thing that makes you stay up all night chasing something you can't even name. I lost that a long time ago."
"Maybe you just haven't found it again."
Matteo paused at the kitchen door. He didn't turn around, but his shoulders lifted slightly—a breath, maybe. A laugh. Something.
"Finish your coffee," he said. "Then go find your friend. She's waiting for you."
"She's not my friend."
"She could be." He pushed through the door and disappeared into the back, and Jordan was alone again.
He finished his coffee. He gathered his sketchbook and his pencils and his half-finished painting that still wasn't right. He stood on the terrace for a moment, looking down at the river, at the light that was finally, finally the color he'd been trying to capture.
The sky wasn't wrong anymore.
He walked down the narrow stairs and through the crowded streets and didn't stop until he reached the fountain in Piazza Santo Spirito. Sofia was sitting on the edge, her bare feet in the water, her sketchbook balanced on her knees. She looked up when she saw him and smiled.
"You came," she said.
Jordan sat down beside her. The stone was warm from the sun. The water was cold on his ankles when he pulled off his shoes and dipped his feet in. Sofia bumped her shoulder against his, and he let himself bump her back.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he said.
"Neither do I." She turned to a fresh page and started drawing. "That's what makes it fun."
They sat there as the sun sank lower, two strangers with paint under their fingernails, and Jordan felt something loosen in his chest. Something that had been tight for so long he'd forgotten it was there.
He thought about Matteo. About the look on his face when he'd said go find your friend.
He thought about the fresco on the café wall. The hand reaching for something just out of frame.
He thought about the version of himself in Sofia's drawing, the one who laughed, the one who wasn't bracing for impact.
He thought: Maybe I could be him.
The light turned gold, then amber, then something deeper. The city hummed around them, alive and indifferent. Sofia finished her drawing and showed it to him—a rooftop, a figure on the edge, arms spread wide like she was flying or falling or both.
"Come on," she said, packing up her things. "Let's go paint the sky."
Jordan looked back the way he'd come. The café was somewhere behind him, hidden by the curve of the streets, Matteo inside doing whatever Matteo did when he was alone. He thought about going back. He thought about staying.
He thought about what it would mean to choose.
Then he stood up and followed Sofia into the night.
The streets narrowed into alleys that smelled of basil and old stone. Sofia walked fast, her sandals slapping against cobblestones still warm from the day's heat. Jordan kept pace, his easel strapped to his back, the canvas bumping against his spine with every step.
"You're quiet," she said, turning down a street so narrow their shoulders almost brushed the walls.
"I'm thinking."
"About what?"
He didn't answer. The truth was tangled, knotted around the image of Matteo standing in the café doorway, watching him leave. The truth was that he'd wanted Matteo to call him back. He'd wanted Matteo to say stay, to give him a reason that wasn't just coffee and critique.
But Matteo hadn't said anything. He'd just stood there with his newspaper folded under his arm, his face a mask, and let Jordan walk out the door.
Sofia stopped in front of a building that looked abandoned. The ground floor was a plumbing supply shop, closed for the night, its windows dark. Beside it, a metal staircase zigzagged up the side of the building, rusted and precarious.
"Up there," she said, already climbing.
Jordan followed. The stairs groaned under his weight. The higher they climbed, the clearer the city became—a sprawling map of terracotta roofs and church domes, the Arno cutting through it all like a vein. By the time they reached the top, his hands were sweating and his heart was pounding.
The rooftop was flat and cluttered with forgotten things—broken chairs, a mattress stripped to its springs, pots filled with dead plants. Sofia had claimed a corner and made it hers. A tarp covered the ground, weighted down with bricks. Candles, half-melted, stood in old wine bottles. And there, propped against the low wall that bordered the roof, was her work.
Jordan stopped walking.
The mural was unfinished, but he could see where it was going. A woman with fire for hair, her body made of shredded paper and broken glass. She was climbing out of a cage, or maybe she was being pulled into one—the lines made it impossible to tell. The paint was violent. Reds that looked like blood. Blues that looked like bruises.
"Holy shit," Jordan said.
Sofia lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall, watching him. "You like it?"
"It's—" He couldn't find the word. He moved closer, studying the brushwork. It was chaotic, undisciplined, and absolutely alive. Nothing like the careful, precious things he painted. Nothing like the polite landscapes he'd been making for years.
"It's not finished," she said. "I don't know if it ever will be. I keep coming back, changing things, painting over what I did before. It's like the wall is having a conversation with me."
"A conversation."
"Yeah." She exhaled smoke, and it curled up into the dark. "You ever talk to your paintings?"
"No."
"Then what's the point?" She crushed the cigarette under her heel and walked over to stand beside him. "You're so careful. Every brushstroke, every decision—it's like you're afraid of making a mistake. But art isn't about getting it right. It's about getting it true."
Jordan turned to look at her. The candlelight caught the angles of her face, making her look older, harder. "What's the difference?"
"Being right is safe. Being true means you might be wrong. It means you might fail. It means you might find out something about yourself you didn't want to know." She shrugged. "Most people choose safe."
"I don't want to be safe."
"Then stop painting like you do."
The words hit him like a slap. He felt the sting, the heat spreading across his cheeks. He thought about the painting in his bag—the one with the sky he still couldn't get right. He thought about Matteo saying the sky was wrong, and how that had felt like a gift. He thought about how long it had been since anyone had told him the truth.
"Show me your work," Sofia said. "The real work. Not the tourist stuff."
Jordan hesitated. His sketchbook felt heavy in his bag, like it was filled with lead. But he pulled it out anyway and handed it to her. She flipped through the pages slowly, and he watched her face for any sign of judgment.
She didn't say anything for a long time. When she finally closed the book, she looked at him differently. Not softer, exactly. But less guarded.
"You're hiding," she said.
"I know."
"Good." She handed the book back. "Knowing is the first step."
She walked to the edge of the roof and sat down, her legs dangling over the side. Jordan joined her, his feet resting on the ledge below. The city stretched out in every direction, lit up and humming, alive in a way that felt almost aggressive.
"I started painting because I was angry," Sofia said. "My father left when I was twelve. My mother worked three jobs. I had nowhere to put it—the anger, the loneliness, all of it. So I put it on walls. Walls that didn't belong to me. Walls that people would see whether they wanted to or not."
"And the police?"
"They don't care about art. They care about property." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I've been arrested four times. Spent a night in jail in Berlin. Another in Barcelona. Am I proud of it? No. But I'm not ashamed either. I needed to say something, and nobody was going to give me a stage."
Jordan was quiet. The night was warm, the air thick with the smell of jasmine and car exhaust. Somewhere below, a man was singing opera, his voice drifting up through the streets like a ghost.
"I came here to find my voice," Jordan said. "That's what I told everyone. That's what I told myself. But I think—" He stopped. The words were hard to say. They always were.
"Keep going," Sofia said.
"I think I came here because I didn't want to admit I'd already failed."
Sofia didn't tell him he was wrong. She didn't tell him he was being too hard on himself. She just sat there and let the truth hang between them, heavy and real.
"What does failure look like?" she asked.
"Finishing art school and realizing I had nothing to say. Realizing I'd spent four years learning technique and never learned how to feel anything." He picked at a loose thread on his jeans. "I can draw anything. Give me a reference photo and I'll copy it perfectly. But ask me to create something from nothing? I freeze."
"That's not a failure," Sofia said. "That's a starting point."
"It doesn't feel like one."
"It never does." She reached over and took his hand. Her palm was rough, calloused from years of holding brushes and spray cans. "But you're here. You're trying. That's more than most people ever do."
He looked at their hands, interlaced and resting on the warm stone. He thought about Matteo's hands, the way they moved over the espresso machine with such precision. He thought about the fresco on the café wall, the hand reaching for something just out of frame.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he said.
"You said that already."
"It's still true."
Sofia laughed. It was a real laugh this time, bright and sharp, cutting through the tension like a blade. She let go of his hand and stood, pulling him up with her.
"Then let's do something about it." She walked to her mural and picked up a brush. "Come here."
Jordan followed. She dipped the brush in paint—deep crimson, the color of a fresh wound—and handed it to him.
"Paint something," she said.
"What?"
"Anything. Just feel it. Don't think."
He stared at the wall. The woman with fire for hair stared back at him. He thought about being careful. He thought about getting it right. Then he thought about being true.
He dragged the brush across the wall in a single, violent stroke. The red split the image in half, cutting through the woman's body, separating her from herself. It was destructive. It was wrong. It was the most honest thing he'd done in months.
Sofia watched him. Her eyes were bright, burning with something that wasn't quite admiration and wasn't quite desire. It was recognition. She saw him. The real him. The version he'd been hiding even from himself.
"Do it again," she said.
He did. Another stroke. And another. He painted without thinking, without planning, without worrying about what it meant or whether it was good. He painted like the wall owed him something, like the whole city owed him something, like he'd been silent for so long and finally, finally, he was screaming.
When he stopped, his arm ached and his breath came in short, sharp gasps. The mural was changed. He'd covered half of it with raw, chaotic color. He'd ruined it. He'd made it something new.
Sofia was standing so close he could feel the heat coming off her skin. She was looking at him, not the wall, and her expression was different now. Hungrier.
"You feel that?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"That's what it's supposed to feel like."
She kissed him. There was no preamble, no hesitation. Her mouth was hard against his, her hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer. She tasted like cigarettes and cheap coffee, and he kissed her back like he was drowning and she was air.
They stumbled backward, tripping over the broken chairs, the mattress springs, the abandoned pots. He didn't know where they were going. He didn't care. Her hands were under his shirt, her nails dragging down his spine, and he was hard so fast it made his head spin.
"Wait," he said, pulling back. "Wait."
She stopped. Her chest was heaving, her lips swollen. "What?"
"I don't—" He didn't know how to finish the sentence. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know if this is what I want. I don't know if I'm using you or you're using me or if it even matters.
Sofia stepped back. She crossed her arms and waited. The candlelight flickered, casting shadows across her face.
"I'm not looking for a boyfriend," she said. "I'm not looking for anything. But if you want this—if you want me—then stop overthinking and take it."
"That's not—"
"That's exactly what it is." She tilted her head. "You're scared. You've been scared since the moment you got here. But you came up to this rooftop anyway. You painted on my wall. You kissed me back. So either you want this or you don't. There's no in-between."
Jordan looked at her. The city hummed below. The candles flickered. Somewhere in the distance, the opera singer hit a high note and held it, his voice rising above the rooftops like a prayer.
He stepped forward and kissed her again.
This time, there was nothing tentative about it. He pulled her against him, his hands on her hips, her ass, dragging her close until there was no space left between them. She moaned into his mouth, a low, filthy sound that went straight to his cock.
"Good," she breathed. "Good."
They fell onto the mattress. The springs groaned under their weight, rusty and unforgiving. Sofia straddled him, her knees on either side of his hips, and pulled her shirt over her head. She wasn't wearing a bra. Her breasts were small, her nipples dark and hard, and Jordan reached up and cupped them in his hands like they were something sacred.
She laughed. "You don't have to be gentle."
"Who said anything about gentle?"
He pinched her nipples, hard, and she gasped. Her hips ground down against him, and he could feel how wet she was through her jeans, the heat of her soaking through the denim. He wanted to flip her over, to tear her clothes off, to bury his face between her legs and make her come until she couldn't remember her own name.
But she was already moving, sliding down his body, her hands working at his belt. She had his jeans open in seconds, her fingers wrapping around his cock through his boxers, and he groaned so loud he was sure the whole city heard.
"Fuck," he said.
She pulled his boxers down. His cock sprang free, hard and thick and aching. She looked at it, then at him, and smiled.
"Nice," she said.
"You sound surprised."
"Not surprised. Just—pleased." She stroked him slowly, base to tip, and he shuddered. "You're bigger than I expected."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"You should."
She lowered her head. Her tongue flicked across the head of his cock, and he almost came right there. He grabbed the mattress with both hands, trying to hold on, trying to last.
She took him in her mouth. Slowly. Deliberately. Her lips stretched around him, her tongue working the underside, and he watched her dark head bob between his thighs with something between awe and desperation. She sucked him like she did everything else—without hesitation, without apology, like she had something to prove.
"Stop," he said. "I'm gonna—"
She pulled off with a wet pop. "Already?"
"It's been a while."
"How long?"
"Too long."
She laughed. "Then I guess I'd better make this count."
She stood up and peeled off her jeans. Her panties were black, simple, soaked through. She left them on and climbed on top of him, her thighs framing his hips.
"Condom?" she asked.
"Back pocket."
She found it, tore the wrapper open with her teeth, and rolled it on him with a practiced efficiency that made him jealous. Then she positioned herself above him, her hand guiding his cock to her entrance, and sank down.
"Oh fuck," Jordan said.
She was tight. Wet. Hot. She took him all the way, her ass settling against his hips, and for a moment they both stayed still, breathing hard, letting the feeling settle.
Then she started to move.
She rode him like she painted—with abandon, with fury, with no thought for what she looked like or what he thought. Her hips rolled, her tits bounced, and she fucked him like she was trying to break him open. Jordan grabbed her hips and pulled her down harder, deeper, and she moaned his name like it was a curse.
"Is this what you wanted?" she said. "Is this what you were afraid of?"
"Yeah," he admitted. "Yeah."
"Good."
She fucked him faster. The mattress springs screamed. Sweat dripped from her forehead onto his chest. He could feel himself getting close, the pressure building at the base of his spine, and he wanted to come, wanted to let go, but he didn't want it to end. Not yet.
"Don't stop," he said.
"I'm not planning to."
He pushed her off. Not hard, just enough to flip her onto her back. She landed on the mattress with a grunt, and he climbed on top of her, pressing her into the springs.
"My turn," he said.
He shoved her legs apart and buried himself inside her. She was even wetter now, her cunt gripping him like a fist. He fucked her hard, fast, the way he'd wanted to since the moment he saw her smudge of blue paint and her reckless smile.
She reached up and grabbed his hair, pulling hard enough to hurt. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her heels digging into his ass. She bit his shoulder, hard enough to leave marks, and he groaned.
"You like that?" she said.
"Yeah."
"You want more?"
"Give me everything."
She moved her hips to meet his thrusts, her body arching off the mattress like a bow. He could feel her getting close, the way her muscles tensed, the way her breath came in short, sharp bursts.
"Come for me," he said. "Come on my cock."
She did. Her eyes rolled back, her mouth opened in a silent scream, and her whole body shuddered underneath him. The sight of it—the feel of it—sent him over the edge. He came harder than he had in years, his whole body shaking, his mind blank, nothing but white heat and the smell of her skin and the sound of his own voice breaking.
After, they lay tangled together on the broken mattress. The candles had burned low. The city was quiet now, the opera singer gone, the streets emptied of tourists and locals alike.
Jordan stared up at the sky. The stars were faint, drowned out by the city lights, but they were there. He could see them if he looked hard enough.
"What are you thinking?" Sofia asked.
"I'm thinking about Matteo."
She didn't react the way he expected. She didn't pull away. She didn't get angry. She just turned her head to look at him.
"Tell me about him."
"He's—" Jordan searched for the words. "He sees me. The way you see me. But different."
"Different how?"
"With you, it's like—you look at me and see what I could be. What I might become if I stop being afraid." He paused. "With him, it's like he sees what I already am. And he's not disappointed."
Sofia was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "You should go back."
"What?"
"Not tonight. Tonight, you stay here. But tomorrow, you go back to that café. You talk to him. You figure out whatever it is you're too scared to figure out." She sat up, the sheet falling away from her breasts. "I'm not going to be your anchor, Jordan. I told you that. I belong to the road."
"I know."
"But that doesn't mean I don't want to see you again." She smiled, and it was almost soft. "I just don't want to be the thing you run to instead of the thing you choose. That's not fair to either of us."
Jordan sat up too. He looked at her—the paint-stained hands, the wild hair, the eyes that saw too much.
"I don't know how to choose," he said.
"Yes, you do." She leaned over and kissed him, gentle this time. "You've been choosing your whole life. You just haven't been paying attention."
They stayed on the rooftop until dawn. They talked about nothing and everything—the cities they'd loved, the cities they'd hated, the paintings they'd made and the paintings they'd destroyed. Sofia told him about the first mural she'd ever painted, a portrait of her mother on a wall in Naples that the city council had painted over within a week. Jordan told her about the first painting he'd ever sold, a landscape he'd hated, a landscape he still hated, a landscape he wished he could take back.
By the time the sun rose, painting the rooftops in shades of gold and rose, Jordan had made a decision.
He walked Sofia to the train station. She was heading to Rome, she said. Then maybe Sicily. Then maybe somewhere else. She didn't know, and that was the point.
"I'll see you again," she said, hugging him hard.
"You don't know that."
"No." She pulled back and looked at him. "But I hope it."
She kissed him one last time and disappeared into the station. Jordan stood there for a long time after, watching the trains come and go, watching the people rush past with their suitcases and their coffee cups and their tired, hopeful faces.
Then he turned and walked back to the café.
Matteo was on the terrace, arranging chairs. He looked up when Jordan appeared, and his expression didn't change. He didn't smile. He didn't frown. He just watched.
"You're back," he said.
"I'm back."
There was a pause. The river churned below. The light was different now—harsher, more honest. The kind of light that showed you exactly what was there and nothing more.
"Sofia left," Jordan said. "She's going to Rome."
Matteo nodded. He didn't ask where that left them. He didn't ask what had happened on the rooftop. He just picked up another chair and set it in its place.
"Espresso?" he asked.
"Yeah." Jordan sat down at his usual table. "Espresso."
Matteo went inside. Jordan looked at the fresco on the wall, the hand reaching for something just out of frame. He thought about Sofia's mural, the woman with fire for hair. He thought about the red stroke he'd painted across her face.
He pulled out his sketchbook and opened it to a blank page.
He didn't know what he was going to draw. But for the first time in a long time, he wasn't afraid to find out.
Matteo returned with two cups and sat down across from him. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
Jordan picked up his pencil and started to draw.