Florence glowed.
Not loud.
Not brilliant.
But soft—
like candlelight remembered from a dream,
or the faint warmth of a hand you once held too long ago.
The rooftops shimmered in the fading light, copper and gold melting into twilight.
And above it all, they stood together—
Elisa and Rafael—
on the edge of a forgotten rooftop garden, hidden like a secret between time and stone.
It wasn't on any map.
No tourists stumbled up here.
No tours pointed it out.
A place that belonged to the city, but not to the world.
---
Cracked terracotta tiles sloped dangerously underfoot.
A patchwork of ivy crawled up forgotten walls.
A rusted weather vane creaked gently with each breeze.
The garden had once been glorious—probably.
Now it was half-wild, half-dead.
But beautiful in the way abandoned things often are.
It wasn't public.
It wasn't safe.
But Rafael had the key.
A real one.
Rust-bitten, oddly shaped—
passed down from a friend of a friend who once restored old churches and hid keys in walls "just in case the city ever forgot how to feel."
He hadn't brought anyone here in years.
---
"I don't do heights," Elisa muttered, taking a step back from the ledge.
"You're standing on one," Rafael said, not looking up from his satchel.
"Doesn't mean I trust it."
"Fair."
He tossed his coat over a sun-dried bench, crouched beside a cracked planter, and began sharpening a pencil against the rim of a clay pot. The sound—grit against grit—was oddly grounding.
Elisa took in the view.
The Duomo rose in the distance.
Less imposing from here.
Less like something immortal.
More like something human.
The city spread beneath them like a painting half-finished.
Church bells rang in the distance.
Pigeons wheeled past, catching light.
Everything below looked smaller.
Manageable.
Even grief.
---
Rafael sat cross-legged on the bench and flipped open his sketchbook.
The pages fluttered in the breeze like they were breathing with him.
"You owe me," he said casually, pencil now perfectly honed.
She tilted her head. "Owe you?"
"For yesterday. The rescue mission."
"I said thank you."
"I said owe me."
She narrowed her eyes. "And the price?"
He looked up with a small, sly smile.
"Let me draw your hands."
She blinked.
"My hands?"
"After what happened… I want to remember how you held things together."
She hesitated.
Her instinct was to refuse.
To laugh it off.
But instead—
quietly—
wordlessly—
she held them out.
Palms up.
Scraped.
Trembling slightly.
Raw.
Real.
---
Rafael didn't touch her.
Didn't reposition them.
He simply studied them—
like they were sacred text.
Like they were telling him a story only he was meant to read.
His pencil began to move.
Soft strokes at first.
Then faster.
More certain.
She watched his eyes flicker back and forth—from her thumb to the curve of her wrist, from bruised knuckle to bitten nail.
He didn't pause.
Didn't second-guess.
It was the most focused she had ever seen him.
And something about it—
the total silence,
the reverence—
made her heart slow.
Made her lungs ease.
Like she could breathe again, after days of forgetting how.
---
When he finished, he didn't speak.
Just turned the sketchbook around.
Her breath caught.
Her hands—
drawn just as they were.
Not graceful.
Not delicate.
But strong.
Raw.
Wounded, yes.
But steady.
"I look…" she began.
"…tired."
"You are."
She glanced at him.
"You didn't make them softer."
"No."
"Why not?"
He met her gaze, steady.
"Because you didn't let them break."
---
She didn't reply.
Didn't need to.
Instead, she sat beside him.
Close this time.
No space between them.
The stone bench radiated the leftover warmth of the day.
Sunlight lingered just a little too long on the rooftop, like it didn't want to leave yet.
And Elisa—
for the first time—
reached out.
Not for the sketch.
Not to fix anything.
But for his hand.
---
She touched it gently—
testing.
Questioning.
Her fingers brushed his.
Hesitated.
Then curled around his palm.
He didn't pull away.
He didn't speak.
He just let her hold him.
Let the ink between his fingers smudge into hers.
Let the quiet do all the talking.
---
They didn't kiss.
They didn't move.
They didn't even smile.
But something shifted.
Not loudly.
Not all at once.
Like a page turning itself,
in a story both of them had been reading in silence.
---
The sky dimmed to violet.
The city sighed beneath them.
And for the first time in a long time,
Elisa wasn't thinking about the next step.
She was just there.
On the rooftop.
With ink-stained fingers.
And someone who didn't flinch when she reached for him.
---
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
She ignored it at first.
But curiosity eventually won.
She glanced at the screen.
____________•••____________
One Plus
You are one plus away from being seen for your strength—not your silence.
____________•••____________
---
She didn't say anything.
But she tightened her grip.
Just a little.
And Rafael— without a word squeezed back.