Chapter 7
1176 Words
The city looked softer than it really was. Winter had a way of lying like that.
Lia noticed it first.
She always noticed mornings, even when she wished she hadn’t woken up for them.
Julian noticed her noticing it.
He didn’t comment.
Some silences are more polite than words.
They stepped out of the narrow street almost at the same time, carried forward by nothing more than shared direction. No agreement had been made to keep walking together. No question asked.
Yet here they were.
Two strangers continuing a conversation neither had officially started.
A delivery truck rumbled past. Somewhere nearby, metal shutters rolled upward with a scraping groan. The smell reached them before the sound fully registered. Fresh bread, something buttery, something alive.
Lia’s stomach betrayed her with a small, humiliating sound.
She froze.
Julian heard it.
Of course he heard it.
He looked straight ahead, gracious enough not to smile.
“Don’t,” she warned.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were thinking it.”
Now he allowed the smallest exhale through his nose. Not a laugh, but dangerously close.
She squinted at him.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Moderately.”
“Wow. Emotional range.”
That almost got a real smile.
Almost.
They turned a corner and the market unfolded before them like it had been waiting for them. Strings of warm yellow bulbs zigzagging overhead, vendors already arguing about prices with the kind of passion usually reserved for politics and football.
A woman shoved a paper cup toward Lia.
“Hot chocolate, sweetheart. On the house. You look like you fought the night and barely won.”
Lia blinked. “Do I look that bad?”
“Child,” the woman said, already turning away, “you look nineteen.”
Julian hid it better this time, but she caught the flicker.
“Say it,” Lia muttered.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You keep saying things with your face.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
She took a cautious sip.
Her shoulders dropped almost immediately.
Heat does that. Lowering defenses faster than trust ever could.
Julian watched the moment without meaning to. The way her fingers loosened around the cup. The way her breath slowed.
Relief, on someone else, is strangely intimate to witness.
He looked away.
A brass bell clanged somewhere. Someone cursed cheerfully in a language Lia didn’t recognize. A child darted past them trailing laughter and a scarf twice his size.
Life was happening loudly here.
They drifted toward a bread stall.
Julian pointed. “You should eat something that isn’t just melted sugar.”
“Let me live.”
“You look like you might pass out.”
He ordered anyway.
Didn’t ask what she wanted. Just chose something simple, warm, impossible to dislike.
When he handed it to her, she hesitated.
People usually hesitate when kindness appears without paperwork.
“You don’t have to,” she said.
“I know.”
That answer lingered a second longer than it should have.
She accepted it.
“Thank you…” A pause. “Sir.”
He gave her a look.
“Oh relax,” she said. “You have very strong ‘sir’ energy.”
“I’m forty-two, not ancient.”
“Same thing to me.”
There it was again. The age. Dropped casually, but not carelessly.
Julian felt it land somewhere behind his ribs.
Not pain.
Just awareness.
Lia tore the bread open. Steam curled upward, ghostlike.
For a few seconds she forgot to be guarded.
Then she caught him looking and immediately put some distance back into her posture.
Masks returning to their rightful owners.
“Why are you still walking with me?” she asked suddenly.
Honest question. No playfulness cushioning it.
Julian considered lying.
Went with something adjacent instead.
“You seemed like you shouldn’t be alone this morning.”
Her eyes sharpened.
Alone. Something About that word made her alert.
So she laughed. Light, dismissive, practiced.
“I’m always alone.”
It was the kind of sentence that tries to sound like a preference.
It didn’t.
He didn’t challenge it.
Didn’t soothe it either.
Just nodded once, as if she’d commented on the weather.
Respecting a person’s defenses is sometimes the deepest form of gentleness.
They moved again, slower now, carried by the current of the market.
A violinist had stationed himself near the fountain. Bow gliding lazily, notes slipping into the cold air and staying there longer than expected.
Lia stopped without realizing.
Music does that. Reaches into you before permission is granted.
Julian stopped because she did.
She watched the musician, something unreadable crossing her face. Not sadness exactly. Not nostalgia.
Recognition, maybe.
He wondered who she used to be before whatever had carved that quiet into her.
She wondered why a man who looked like he belonged in boardrooms and quiet offices was standing in the snow listening to street music like he had nowhere else pressing to be.
Neither asked.
After a while she spoke, softer than before.
“Feels strange… doesn’t it?”
“What does?”
“This.” She gestured vaguely. The lights, the music, the ordinary magic of people buying oranges at nine in the morning. “The world celebrating like nothing hurts.”
Julian followed her gaze.
“The world has always been like that,” he said. “Joy doesn’t wait for permission from grief.”
She absorbed that.
Didn’t reply.
But she didn’t joke either.
Somewhere overhead, church bells began to ring.
The season moving forward whether they were ready or not.
Lia pulled her coat tighter.
“So,” she said, tone deliberately lighter now, “what tragic scheduling error brought you to a holiday market at this hour?”
He almost said: my mother loved mornings like this.
Almost.
“I couldn’t sleep.” he said instead.
“Ah,” she nodded. “One of us.”
A beat passed.
Then another.
People brushed around them, lives intersecting for half-seconds before separating again.
Temporary citizens of the same morning.
Julian glanced at her.
“You don’t have anywhere you need to be right now, do you?”
Suspicion flashed. Quick, instinctive.
“Why?”
“There’s a bookstore two streets over,” he said. “Old one. Opens early. Hardly anyone goes.”
She studied him like the suggestion might contain a hidden clause.
“Are you always this thrilling?”
“Painfully.”
She pretended to weigh it.
Truth was, she had nowhere urgent to run back to.
And for reasons she didn’t want to examine too closely…
walking away from him felt slightly more complicated than it should.
“Fine,” she said. “Lead the way, sir.”
He sighed.
They stepped out of the market together, bells still echoing faintly behind them.
Neither noticed how naturally their strides had begun to match.
And above them, unnoticed, patient as ever,
winter kept falling,
soft enough to feel like mercy.
- Writer
