"You think you can just walk in and learn how to be human overnight," Maya says, leaning on the hostel rail like it was a spear, her camera heavy at her hip, the city below unclenching in slow breaths, and Jace, who has been practised at taking blows as if they were compliments, just watches her like a man cataloguing weather, "you look like you need instructions written in bold and underlined"
"I don't need lessons from someone who makes money off other people's smiles," he shoots back, voice low because crowds have ears and he is allergic to being heard when he is weak, "and I don't make money off smiles, I make products that make life easier, that's different"
"All the same lie," she says, and there is no malice, only a plainness that cuts, she knows how to strip rhetoric down to the bone and there is a way she looks at him now that makes him feel like the last man on a sinking ship who still insists the deck is dry
Leo is at the corner, mug in hand, wagging his eyebrows like a man who has nothing to lose by nudging with jokes, "Alright then, lovers' spat, front row seats for the soap, anyone else want popcorn," and Sienna's laugh drifts from a sofa as if she is counting bets, and the whole room smells of espresso and lemon soap and the sea that never quite leaves Lisbon even when you think you have outrun it
Maya drops the camera on the table face down and says, "You didn't tell me what you are running from, Jace, you told me a story about reinvention, it's cute, but stories need a villain to have teeth, who's the villain here for you"
He looks at the camera like a foreign object and he tells her a bit, not the whole ledger because confessions are expensive and he has learned to ration them, "I want to know if I am me without the extras, if people like the person not the package, that's not a villain, it's curiosity with teeth"
She snorts a laugh that turns gutteral, "Curiosity with teeth sounds like a serial dater, not a billionaire on a budget", then softer, "do you even know how to queue without being first"
They argue but it is a dance and Jace likes the steps because it keeps him from the other thing, the quiet that makes him count losses in the dark, and he watches the way she talks to the world, sharp and funny and full of small mercies, and he wonders how someone who looks so scrubbed by life can be so unbroken
That night they walk the Alfama lanes because the light there is always colluding with secrets, strings of bulbs like watching eyes, and a man two doors down hums a tune that sounds like his childhood and Jace thinks of his father counting coins, of lessons in keeping a poker face and not trusting the light, and Maya says, "You pick the escape that suits you, you know, adrenaline, spectacle, I pick the camera, I pick truth," and she teases him for being theatrical, but when a vendor sells them roasted chestnuts and the smoke curls between them she leans in and says, "If you're going to strip yourself of everything, start by telling me the truth about why," and there is a moment where the world shrinks to the single hum of a tram and his throat opens and he almost says the part about a father who swapped hugs for ledgers, but the city is never quiet for long so he swallows
They end up on a rooftop because Maya knows rooftops like sailors know the tides, she says, "Rooftops are for people who want to be seen and not seen at the same time," and Jace, who has built transparent platforms that hide scaffolding, finds the sentence curious and true, he watches her take photographs of a gutter, of a neon sign, of his reflection in a puddle and it strikes him that she sees him as a subject not a pawn, but the difference is razor thin
"Do you want something to be real," she asks without looking up, the camera clicking like a small heart, "or do you want people to believe it's real because you told them so"
He answers badly, "I want it to be real enough that I can sleep without checking the locks," which is an answer and not the one he meant but it lands like a stone, and she laughs then, a short sound, and says, "That's the most honest thing you've said since you arrived, it's either progress or I'm drunk"
They drink, they trade insults like currency and then their voices go soft because proximity always subtracts pretense and adds heat, and when hands meet it is not neat, it is fumbling, as if two people who have been taught to negotiate are trying, experimentally, to speak with their bodies, and the kiss is rough and quick and strange and it unbuttons something in him that doesn't remember being unbuttoned since adolescence, he surprises himself by not pulling away, he surprises himself by wanting to stay ridiculous and small under a stranger's touch
After, they lie on a blanket and the city smells of sea and lemon and the distant petrol of a taxi engine like a drum, and Maya's breath is a map, she says, "I don't do men who call me their experiment," and he answers, "I'm not experimenting on you, I don't know how to do that," and there is a pause where both think of the other things they will lose if this is a game and not a choice
She turns and studies him like a photograph and she says, "You could walk into my life and make it complicated for the sake of a dare and walk out, you have walked out before, some men are good at walking back to the yacht" and Jace has to bite down on a retort, because the truth is he has walked back to many things and left small deserts behind, he knows the shape of his own footprints and despises them sometimes
"Why do you care," he asks, slow, and she says, "Because people who think they're gods leave crooked paths on others, and I don't like stepping on cracks they make," and he says, "And what if I am tired of stepping around cracks," and she looks at him like a judge reading a plea and then she smiles, tired and small, and says, "Prove it"
The intimacy tightens the air between them and at the same time something else edges closer, the world outside this rooftop feels a fraction too loud, and Leo's voice over the phone cuts through like an alarm, "Mate, you better see this, Sienna's gone full circus, Ethan's live and he's got a thing, it's buzzing," and Jace fumbles for the phone and his thumb swipes and a feed opens and his stomach drops because the thumbnail shows the very rooftop they are on, a grainy night feed, a red dot like blood blinking in the corner of the screen
"What the hell," Maya breathes, fingers cold on his arm, and Jace says, "They can't, it's illegal and messy and stupid," and he is lying because he knows they can, and somewhere a laugh like a crow's caw splits the city air and his phone pings again with a line he does not want to read, "phase two initiated"
"Who would do that," Maya whispers, hand over her camera where it rests like an amulet, and there's the logic of it and the terror of it at once, because if someone had an angle on them now it meant exposure, it meant being manipulated in ways that made both of them not actors but puppets, and he thinks of the name that has been following him since the bet, the man who plays for blood, and the way the world narrows to a single thought, this was bigger than spectacle
They stand, quick, instincts sharp, and the rooftop door slams like an answer, a shout below, and someone calls Maya's name, "Maya, stop, we need you," and for a second Jace thinks it's Leo being dramatic, but the voice is new, ragged, and close, and the rooftop light flickers, a moth against glass, and the phone in his hand lights with a comment count climbing by the second, the live audience swelling like a sea
Maya grips the camera and says, "If this is a game I'm not in," but before they can move the rooftop speaker crackles and a voice he knows too well comes through, smooth as oil and smiling as a blade, "enjoying the show, people love a reveal," and the feed cuts to black and a text overlays on the screen, in clinical letters, "welcome to phase two, the selector watches too" and the red dot starts blinking faster, someone is watching them right now, the rooftop has become a stage they never auditioned for and the cliff edge they thought was private is suddenly very public.
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