Chapter 3 The Ritual of Almost

Part 1: The Space Between Cups

Morning light spilled through the blinds of Emma's small apartment, tracing soft patterns across the wooden floor. The street outside murmured awake vendors calling out greetings, shutters clattering open, a delivery truck rattling over the cobblestones.

She sat by the window with her notebook and a mug of coffee she'd made herself, though it never tasted quite like the café's. It wasn't the beans, she knew; it was the missing piece of the ritual the quiet anticipation of seeing Liam, of hearing that low, amused voice ask how her morning had been.

For the first time in weeks, she'd woken before the alarm, restless. The memory of their walk through Trastevere lingered like a melody she couldn't get out of her head. His laugh. The way he looked at the fountain before sketching, as if he were listening to something only he could hear.

She flipped through her notebook, past pages of translations, and stopped at a blank one. For reasons she couldn't explain, she wrote:

"I think the city feels different when he's here."

The words startled her. She closed the notebook quickly, as though she'd caught herself confessing something. It was too soon for this whatever this was. He was just someone she met for coffee. Someone she didn't really know. Someone who, by all logic, could disappear as easily as he' d appeared.

And yet, when she finally left her apartment and crossed the piazza, her steps quickened at the thought of finding him there again.

At Caffè Rosati, the door chimed, and there he was already at the counter, sketchbook open, head bent.

He looked up when she entered, and that smile appeared, the one that seemed to make the morning itself brighter.

"Cappuccino, no sugar?" he said, as though confirming an inside joke.

She smiled back. "Still espresso?"

"Of course," he said. "Some things shouldn't change."

They stood side by side again, but today the air between them felt different thicker somehow.

When their drinks arrived, Liam lingered with his cup, tapping it lightly against the counter. "You ever think about how strange this is?" he asked.

"What's that?"

He shrugged. "How two people can cross paths every day and never say a word. And then one day they do, and suddenly... it's a thing."

She thought about that. "A thing," she repeated softly.

He smiled, faint but real. "Yeah. A thing. Whatever this is."

They sipped their coffee in silence for a while. Outside, the sunlight slid across the cobblestones, turning the fountain into a shimmer of gold.

Emma watched him sketch between sips his brow furrowed, his hand moving quickly, the faint smudge of graphite on his fingers. He caught her watching and grinned.

"You'll ruin my artistic mystery if you stare too long."

"I'm just making sure you're drawing the fountain this time, and not me," she said lightly.

He raised an eyebrow. "Would that be so terrible?"

Her heart skipped, but she managed a smile. "Depends on how flattering you'd be."

He chuckled, shaking his head. "You underestimate my talent."

The humor faded into a softer quiet.

He looked back down at his sketchbook, then said quietly, "You ever worry about getting too comfortable somewhere that isn' t home?"

The question caught her off guard. "All the time," she admitted.

"Yeah," he murmured. "Me too."

They didn't say anything else. But something in that shared confession the admission that both of them were half-rooted, half-floating wove an invisible thread between them, stronger than before.

Part 2 : Liam

By noon, the city had turned loud again sunlight bouncing off marble, the smell of exhaust mixing with basil from the trattorias. Liam sat on the stone steps that bordered the Tiber, his sketchbook open but untouched.

He'd told himself he came out here to draw. The truth: he needed air.

His morning with Emma kept replaying, every small detail sharper than the lines he could never quite get right on paper.

The sound of her laugh still clung to him, light but sure, the kind that settled somewhere behind the ribs and refused to leave. He liked that she didn't fill silence with nervous chatter. She noticed things the crooked edge of a tile, the rhythm of a phrase. The kind of attention he'd always believed belonged to artists.

He had lived in Rome for almost two years now, chasing commissions that never quite paid enough and designs that too often stayed sketches. It was supposed to be temporary, a few months of sunlight and history before returning home to London. But then the city held on to him. It had a way of doing that seducing you with light and chaos until you forgot what leaving felt like.

He glanced down at his drawing. Somewhere among the arches and fountain lines was the curve of her smile; his hand had traced it without meaning to.

It unsettled him.

He wasn't someone who got distracted easily. Architecture demanded discipline measure twice, decide once, know what stays and what falls away. But Emma made the world feel gloriously unmeasured. She carried the same kind of stillness that old buildings had; you didn't want to rush past her because you might miss something that had taken years to form.

A group of students walked past, their laughter scattering across the water. He closed the sketchbook and leaned back, eyes on the clouds drifting behind the Ponte Sisto.

He tried to tell himself it was nothing serious just conversation, coffee, routine.

Except it didn't feel routine anymore.

Every morning he found himself watching the door before she arrived, counting the seconds until that small bell chimed. The moment she smiled, the day rearranged itself around her.

He rubbed a hand across his face and let out a quiet laugh at his own foolishness. "Get a grip, Bennett," he muttered. "You've known her, what, a week?"

But time had its own logic here. Rome didn't measure life in hours; it measured in moments the way light shifted on water, or how one glance could stretch longer than an entire day.

He stood, tucking the sketchbook under his arm, and started back toward Trastevere. The streets shimmered in the heat; the bells from the basilica drifted over the rooftops. He passed Caffè Rosati and slowed, just for a heartbeat. Through the window he saw the barista wiping down the counter, the corner where Emma usually stood already clean and waiting.

He smiled faintly.

Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow he'd ask her if she wanted to sit instead of stand, maybe share a pastry instead of separate cups. Small things, maybe but sometimes the smallest changes rewrote everything.