The rain in Seattle didn't fall; it hovered, a fine gray mist that turned the city into a watercolor painting. Julian sat in his usual corner of The Inkwell, a bookstore that smelled of vanilla-scented old paper and wet umbrellas. He was an architect who spent his days designing rigid, glass skyscrapers, but his nights were spent sketching the impossible: floating gardens and houses built into the sides of clouds.
He thought he was invisible until she sat across from him.
"You're drawing the wind," she said, not as a question, but as an observation.
Julian looked up. She was wearing a coat the color of a marigold and carried a violin case covered in stickers from cities he'd never visited. Her eyes were bright, curious, and entirely too close.
"I'm drawing a bridge," Julian corrected, though his hand had indeed wandered into abstract swirls.
"A bridge for what?" she asked, tilting her head. "It doesn't look like it's meant for cars. It looks like it's meant for secrets."