Chapter 8: Rome, Rewinds and Reruns
The train from Barcelona cut through Spanish countryside like a blade through gold silk, fields blurring past the window until they became more memory than landscape. Juno pressed her forehead against the glass, watching her reflection ghost over olive groves and distant mountains. Her journal lay open in her lap, a half-finished sentence trailing off mid-thought: What if this is who I really am—someone always leaving?
She slipped Carmen's photo between the pages and snapped the journal shut.
Rome announced itself with chaos—motorbikes threading between buses, church bells competing with car horns, the smell of espresso and exhaust creating its own particular perfume. Juno dragged her suitcase over cobblestones that had witnessed centuries of arrivals and departures, wondering which category she fell into.
The hostel sat tucked behind Campo de' Fiori like a secret, its entrance marked only by a brass plaque weathered green with age. The receptionist, a young man with kind eyes and paint-stained fingers, looked up from his sketchbook when she approached.
"Checking in?"
"Sinclair. I have a reservation."
He flipped through a ledger that belonged in another century. "Ah yes. American?"
"Is it that obvious?"
"The suitcase gives it away. Europeans travel lighter." He handed her a key attached to a wooden fob carved with Roman numerals. "Another American in Rome chasing some epiphany?"
Juno accepted the key without smiling. "Something like that."
Piazza Navona stretched before her like a stage set, all baroque fountains and golden stone catching afternoon light. Tourists moved in lazy circles, cameras raised, while street artists sketched quick portraits for euros. Juno found herself drawn to one artist in particular—an older woman with silver hair twisted into a messy bun, her hands moving with practiced efficiency across rough paper.
The woman glanced up, catching Juno watching. "You want portrait?"
"No, I—"
"You have interesting face. Sad but not tragic. Like someone who lost something small but important."
Juno felt exposed, like the woman had reached through her skin and touched something tender. "I'm fine, thanks."
But she stayed, mesmerized by the way the artist captured strangers in charcoal strokes—the tilt of a head, the curve of a mouth, the weight of untold stories written in the space between features.
A child broke free from his parents and ran shrieking through fountain spray, scattering pigeons like gray confetti. The chaos made Juno smile despite herself, a crack in the careful composure she'd been maintaining since Barcelona.
The rooftop café perched above the city like a crow's nest, offering views of terracotta tiles and church spires piercing sky the color of old parchment. Juno claimed a corner table and ordered espresso that arrived in a cup small enough to cradle in her palm.
She opened her journal and began sketching—not people, like Leo, but ruins. Broken columns reaching toward nothing, arches that framed emptiness, beauty found in things that had fallen apart.
On the facing page, she wrote a list:
Things I Always Mistake for Love
1. Attention
2. Chemistry
3. The feeling of being wanted
4. Someone seeing through my bullshit
5. Anyone who isn't afraid of me
Her phone buzzed against the table. One missed call—Leo Moretti. No voicemail.
She stared at his name on the screen, remembering the way he'd looked at her in the alley behind the Barcelona club, like she was something worth getting lost in. Then she remembered the careful distance in his voice the next morning, the way he'd talked around her instead of to her.
Juno flipped the phone face-down and returned to her list.
6. The idea that someone might stay
The Roman ruins at sunset looked like a postcard someone had left in the sun too long, all golden light and weathered stone. Juno found a quiet spot overlooking the Forum, where tourists had thinned to a few determined photographers chasing the last good light.
She pulled out her phone and opened the voice recorder, not entirely sure why.
"Day... I don't know. Lost count." Her voice sounded strange played back to her through the tiny speaker. "I'm in Rome, which feels like cheating somehow. Like I'm skipping ahead in the story before I've figured out what the previous chapter meant."
A breeze stirred her hair, carrying the scent of wild herbs growing between ancient stones.
"I keep thinking about what Leo said—about me collecting experiences like souvenirs. Maybe he's right. Maybe I am just... sampling life instead of living it. But what if the alternative is settling for something that feels like dying slowly?"
She paused, watching shadows lengthen across broken marble.
"Carmen always said I was afraid of being ordinary. But what if I'm more afraid of being extraordinary? What if I'm scared that if I really try—at love, at staying, at anything—I'll discover I'm exactly as forgettable as I've always suspected?"
Her finger hovered over the stop button.
"God, this is pathetic. Talking to myself in the ruins of an empire. Even the Romans had their shit together better than I do."
She stopped recording and put the phone away, but the questions lingered in the gathering dusk.
Back at the hostel, guitar music and laughter drifted from the courtyard where travelers had gathered around mismatched tables, sharing wine and stories in a mixture of languages that somehow made perfect sense. Juno hovered in the doorway, watching strangers connect with an ease that felt foreign to her now.
A girl with purple hair was teaching a German boy to braid friendship bracelets. Two Australians debated football with passionate intensity. Everyone seemed to belong somewhere, even temporarily.
Juno retreated to her room and pulled out her journal. She started writing a letter she had no intention of sending.
Dear Leo,
I wanted to say I'm not sorry for what happened in Barcelona. Not the kissing part, anyway. I'm sorry for what came after—the way we turned something real into something complicated, the way we both got scared and started saying things designed to hurt.
You said I collect experiences like souvenirs, and maybe you're right. But if that's true, then what does that make you? Someone who gives tours of himself but never lets anyone actually visit?
She stopped writing, staring at the words. They felt too raw, too honest. She tore the page from her journal, lit it with a match, and watched it curl into ash in the ceramic ashtray by the window.
Some truths were too dangerous to send into the world.
Her phone rang again as she was brushing her teeth. Leo's name lit up the screen, and for a moment she considered answering. Instead, she let it go to voicemail, then checked immediately after.
"You have no new messages."
He'd called twice without leaving a word. She typed out a dozen different texts—angry ones, conciliatory ones, ones that pretended nothing had happened. Finally, she settled on: What are you actually looking for, Leo?
But she didn't send it. Some questions were better left unasked.
Rome at night was a different creature entirely—all shadows and golden streetlight, the ancient and modern blending until you couldn't tell what century you were living in. Juno walked without destination, past trattorias where couples leaned across candlelit tables, past gelato shops where families debated flavors with serious concentration.
She paused at a street cart selling vintage postcards, images of Rome from decades past when everything looked more romantic in sepia tones. The vendor, an elderly man with paint-stained hands, smiled at her with gold teeth.
"You buy postcard? Send love to someone back home?"
Juno selected one almost at random—the Pantheon at dusk, tourists tiny as ants before its massive columns. She paid without haggling and tucked it into her jacket pocket.
Later, sitting on a bench in an empty piazza, she wrote on the back: Still here. Still figuring it out.
She didn't address it to anyone.
The hostel's rooftop was accessed through a rusty door marked "Solo Personal," but no one had bothered to lock it. Juno climbed the narrow stairs and emerged onto a small terrace lined with dying plants and salvaged patio furniture.
Rome spread below her in all directions—a constellation of amber light punctuated by the dark bulk of monuments that had outlasted emperors and wars and countless travelers like herself, all searching for something they couldn't name.
She lay flat on the warm tiles, still holding the unsent postcard, and stared up at stars barely visible through the city's glow. Somewhere nearby, a cigarette burned in the darkness—another insomniac finding solace in the Roman night.
For the first time since Barcelona, Juno felt something close to peace. Not happiness, exactly, but a kind of acceptance. She was alone, yes, but alone with intention now rather than accident.
"Running felt like freedom," she whispered to the stars. "Until I ran into myself."
The postcard crinkled in her fingers as a breeze swept across the rooftop, carrying with it the scent of jasmine and diesel exhaust and something else—possibility, maybe, or just the promise of morning.
Tomorrow she would leave Rome behind, add it to her collection of beautiful places she'd touched but never quite inhabited. But tonight, surrounded by the remnants of an empire that had once believed itself eternal, Juno Sinclair was exactly where she belonged: caught between who she'd been and who she might become, with nothing but time and distance to show her the difference.