The Montmartre hostel's rooftop felt like stepping into someone else's postcard. Fairy lights drooped between mismatched furniture, and Paris sprawled below them in golden-hour splendor—all cathedral spires and chimney smoke against a sky the color of bruised peaches.
Étienne had appeared at dinner with a bottle of red wine and an invitation that sounded more like poetry than a proposition: "Come watch the sun die with me."
Now Juno sat beside him on a weathered chaise lounge, their knees almost touching, watching him smoke with the kind of reverence usually reserved for museum exhibits. The wine had made everything softer around the edges—the lights more luminous, his accent more hypnotic, her own inhibitions more negotiable.
"You hold that cigarette like it's going to tell you secrets," she said.
Étienne smiled, exhaling smoke that caught the evening light. "Everything tells secrets if you pay attention. The way you tuck your hair behind your left ear when you're thinking. How you hold your wine glass like you're afraid it will disappear."
"Maybe I am."
"Afraid of disappearing wine or disappearing moments?"
Juno considered this, swirling the wine in her glass. "Both. All of it. I spent three years afraid of my own shadow, and now I'm afraid of not being afraid enough."
"Rimbaud wrote, 'I is another,'" Étienne said, flicking ash over the balcony's edge. "Do you know what he meant?"
"That French poets speak in riddles?"
"That we're never just ourselves. Especially when kissing strangers on rooftops in Paris."
The line landed like a challenge disguised as philosophy. Juno felt her pulse quicken, but something else stirred too—a faint recognition that she was being performed for, that this moment had been choreographed by someone who'd done this dance before.
Still, when Étienne reached out to brush a curl from her cheek, she didn't pull away. His fingers lingered against her skin, amber eyes searching her face like he was memorizing something precious.
The kiss came slow and inevitable, tasting of red wine and cigarettes and possibilities she couldn't quite name. His lips moved against hers with practiced precision, each movement deliberate and poetic. She leaned in, letting herself fall into the romantic cliché of it all.
But her eyes remained half-open, watching the fairy lights blur above them.
When she pulled back, the words escaped before she could stop them: "It felt like kissing a line of verse."
Étienne's smile carried equal parts amusement and melancholy. "I'll choose to take that as a compliment."
They clinked glasses in a toast to nothing in particular, but the moment was already fading around the edges. Beautiful, but not burning. Perfect, but not permanent.
Later, Juno descended the hostel's narrow staircase alone, her boots echoing against worn wooden steps. She paused at the landing, drawn by lamplight spilling from the common room windows.
Leo sat at a corner table, completely absorbed in his sketchbook. His hair fell across his forehead as he worked, one hand moving in quick, confident strokes while the other anchored the page. There was something magnetic about his concentration—the way he'd disappeared entirely into whatever he was creating.
Curious, Juno circled around to the courtyard, approaching the window from a different angle. She pressed closer to the glass, trying to glimpse his work.
The sketch was unmistakably her.
Not a literal portrait, but something more essential—her profile caught in that moment from the café, head tilted, journal in her lap, hair escaping its silk scarf. He'd captured something she hadn't known she was revealing: a quiet intensity, a woman caught between thoughts.
Heat bloomed in her chest, part flattery and part violation. She tapped on the glass.
Leo looked up. His expression shifted from surprise to something unreadable as he closed the sketchbook with deliberate calm.
Juno entered the common room, her heart hammering against her ribs. "Is that me?"
"Depends." Leo leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "Are you going to get weird about it?"
The question caught her off guard. "Why are you drawing me?"
"Because you looked interesting when you thought no one was watching."
The observation hit like a physical thing. She felt exposed, seen in a way that made her want to flee and stay in equal measure. "You're kind of an ass, you know that?"
Leo's smile transformed his entire face, softening the sharp edges into something almost gentle. "So I've been told."
They stared at each other across the small table, the air thick with something neither could name. Above them, faint laughter drifted from the rooftop where other travelers were making their own romantic mistakes.
"Can I see it?" Juno asked.
Leo hesitated, then opened the sketchbook to the drawing. Up close, it was even more unsettling—not because he'd captured her badly, but because he'd captured her too well. The woman in the sketch looked like someone worth knowing, worth following across continents.
"It's good," she said quietly.
"You sound surprised."
"I am. About a lot of things lately."
Leo closed the book again. "Such as?"
Juno thought about Étienne upstairs, probably still smoking and composing mental poetry about their kiss. About Carmen, already asleep and dreaming of tomorrow's flight home. About herself, standing in a Parisian hostel at midnight, feeling more awake than she had in years.
"Such as the fact that I've been confusing romance with connection. Poetry with passion. Pretty words with..." She gestured helplessly.
"With what?"
"With whatever this is."
Leo's eyes darkened. "And what do you think this is?"
Before she could answer, footsteps echoed in the stairwell. Étienne appeared, looking rumpled and romantic in his half-unbuttoned shirt.
"Ah, there you are," he said to Juno, then noticed Leo. "Drawing again, I see."
"Observing," Leo corrected. "There's a difference."
"Indeed." Étienne's smile was polite but cool. "Some of us prefer to participate rather than document."
The tension in the room thickened. Juno felt caught between them—between Étienne's warm invitation and Leo's sharp challenge, between safety and risk, between the story she'd thought she wanted and the one that might actually be true.
"I should go to bed," she said finally. "Early train tomorrow."
Both men nodded, but neither moved to follow her as she headed toward the stairs.
In the cramped dorm room, Carmen was meticulously folding clothes into her suitcase, each item placed with the precision of someone trying not to think about goodbyes.
"How was the rooftop romance?" Carmen asked without looking up.
Juno flopped onto her narrow bed. "I kissed Étienne."
"And?"
"It didn't spark. It just... sounded better in theory."
Carmen finally looked up, studying Juno's face with the expertise of a decade-long friendship. "Girl. That's what Paris is for. Mistakes that rhyme."
"What if I don't want my mistakes to rhyme anymore?"
Carmen sat on the edge of Juno's bed, her expression unusually serious. In a rare moment of gentleness, she pulled out a lipstick-stained piece of paper and tucked it into Juno's journal.
"What's that?"
"Insurance. Read it when you need reminding that you're braver than you think."
They hugged then, fierce and final. Carmen smelled like her signature perfume and airplane anxiety.
"I'll see you somewhere else," Carmen whispered. "Just don't be boring while I'm gone."
Hours later, Juno sat alone on the narrow balcony outside their room, legs dangling through the iron railings. Paris hummed below—late-night conversations in languages she couldn't identify, the distant wail of sirens, the eternal murmur of a city that never quite slept.
She opened her journal and wrote two lines, then scratched them out. Tried again. Crossed out those words too.
Finally, she pulled out Carmen's note. In her friend's bold handwriting: Don't chase the poem. Find the fire.
Juno stared at the words, then at the lights below. Somewhere in this city, Étienne was probably composing verses about their kiss. Somewhere else, Leo was sketching shadows and strangers. And here she sat, caught between the romance she'd imagined and the connection she hadn't expected.
Tomorrow would bring Barcelona—new cities, new possibilities, new chances to become whoever she was supposed to be. Tonight, she'd let herself exist in the space between certainty and discovery, between the safety of pretty words and the risk of honest complications.
She opened her journal one more time and wrote:
Day three. Turns out romance and connection are not the same thing. Maybe I've been aiming at the wrong stars.
E. kisses like he's writing poetry. Beautiful, perfect, forgettable. L. draws like he's solving puzzles. Uncomfortable, precise, impossible to ignore.
Question: What scares me more—being seen or being missed?
Answer: Yes.
She closed the journal and pulled out a postcard—Montmartre at night, all lights and shadows. On the back, she wrote: Some things survive translation. Others get lost on purpose.
She didn't address it to anyone. Some messages were meant for the universe to sort out.
Paris stretched endlessly below her, full of love songs in foreign languages and promises that tasted like wine. Tomorrow she'd take the train to Barcelona with Leo's sketch burning in her memory and Étienne's poetry fading like cigarette smoke.
Both felt like different kinds of falling. Only one felt like it might catch her.