Juno woke to the sound of Carmen singing Beyoncé in the shower and the smell of burnt coffee from the hostel kitchen downstairs. Sunlight slanted through their shared window, catching dust motes that danced like tiny celebrations.
"Rise and shine, beautiful disaster!" Carmen emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her hair a perfect crown of damp curls. "Today we're conquering the real Paris. None of that tourist bullshit."
Juno rolled over and checked her phone. Three missed calls from her mother and a text from her former assistant: Linda wants to know about the Morrison account handover.
She turned the phone face-down and reached for her journal instead.
Canal Saint-Martin stretched before them like a question mark, tree-lined and shimmering with morning light. Juno walked beside Carmen, who documented everything from iron bridges to flower boxes with the dedication of a war correspondent.
"Okay, but is Paris actually romantic or just pretentious?" Carmen asked, pausing to photograph laundry hanging from a third-story balcony. "Like, are we buying into capitalist marketing or genuinely experiencing beauty?"
"Can't it be both?" Juno stopped at the canal's edge, watching the water catch reflections of old buildings. She pulled out her journal and scribbled: Windows like secrets, laundry like flags of surrender. Some things survive translation.
"Deep thoughts this early?" Carmen peered over her shoulder. "Also, creepy sketching man at two o'clock."
Juno looked up to see Leo Moretti leaning against a bridge railing about fifty yards away, notebook open, pencil moving in quick strokes. He wore yesterday's rumpled linen shirt and looked like he'd been up all night.
"Think he's following us?"
"Think he's documenting the American invasion of authentic Paris." Carmen waved at him with theatrical enthusiasm. Leo's pencil paused, and he lifted one hand in reluctant acknowledgment.
"Come on," Carmen grabbed Juno's arm. "I smell real coffee."
The café sat tucked between a vintage shop and a pharmacy, so narrow it might have been someone's kitchen. Books climbed the walls to the ceiling, and mismatched chairs surrounded tables scarred with decades of conversation. Behind the counter, Étienne moved with the fluid precision of someone who'd found his calling in small rituals.
He looked up when they entered, amber eyes finding Juno immediately.
"Ah, the honest heart returns." Without asking, he began preparing two cups. "You need the bitter kind of coffee today, I think. For clarity."
Carmen stage-whispered, "God, even the way he says bitter sounds sexy."
Étienne placed a small white cup before Juno, the espresso so dark it looked like liquid night. "In Paris, we believe coffee should taste like decisions. Complicated, necessary, impossible to take back."
"Do you believe everything should be that complicated?" Juno asked, wrapping her fingers around the warm porcelain.
"Certainty is the enemy of discovery." He leaned against their table, close enough that she could smell cigarettes and something that might have been bergamot. "Rimbaud wrote that we must be absolutely modern—which means absolutely uncertain."
Carmen pulled out her phone. "This is going straight to my stories. Hashtag: Philosophy major fantasy."
Étienne's smile was slow and knowing. "Do you actually believe love is just a series of beautifully doomed moments?"
Before Juno could answer, the café door opened with a sharp chime. Leo entered, camera bag slung across his shoulder, and approached the counter like he was preparing for battle.
"Espresso. No milk," he said to Étienne, then caught sight of their table. His expression shifted from tired to mildly amused.
"The sketching stalker appears," Carmen announced loudly enough for half the café to hear.
Leo's order arrived, and he remained at the counter, close enough to overhear when Étienne continued his monologue about impermanence and beauty. When Étienne proclaimed that "even the moon has lovers who leave," Leo's response was audible to everyone:
"Oh, for god's sake."
Carmen's eyes lit up like Christmas morning. "Leo! Come join us. We need some balance to all this romantic philosophy."
Leo hesitated, espresso cup halfway to his lips. Juno found herself hoping he'd refuse and wishing he'd accept in equal measure.
"Why not," he said finally, sliding into the fourth chair. "Someone needs to provide reality checks."
What followed was the most caffeinated philosophical debate Juno had ever witnessed. Étienne waxed about the necessity of emotional risk, the beauty found in heartbreak's aftermath. Leo countered with surgical precision, dismantling romantic notions like a mechanic taking apart an engine.
"Love as beautiful suffering is just emotional masochism dressed up in verse," Leo said, sketching something in his notebook while he talked. "Some of us prefer functional relationships over poetic disasters."
"Some of us don't want to intellectualize everything to death," Juno shot back, surprising herself with her vehemence. "Not everything needs to be reduced to mechanics."
Leo's pencil paused. "And not everything needs to be inflated into mythology."
Carmen filmed snippets with barely contained glee. "This is gold. Hashtag: Philosofight."
Étienne seemed delighted by the sparring, like he'd orchestrated a performance for his own entertainment. "You see? Passion reveals itself in opposition."
"That's not passion," Leo said, closing his notebook with a soft snap. "That's debate class."
The words stung more than they should have. Juno stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the floor. "I need air."
The vintage bookstore next door smelled like old paper and forgotten stories. Juno wandered between narrow aisles, running her fingers along spines in languages she couldn't read. She found herself in the poetry section, surrounded by names she recognized and dozens she didn't.
"Excusez-moi."
She turned to find Étienne holding a slim volume with a cover worn soft from handling. "Baudelaire. My personal copy—see the notes in the margins?"
He opened the book to reveal penciled commentary in French, English, and what might have been Italian. His handwriting was elegant, slanted, the letters connected like music.
"This poem," he said, pointing to a page marked with coffee stains, "speaks of spleen—a particular kind of melancholy that's also hope disguised. I think you understand this feeling."
Before she could respond, he began reciting in French, his voice low and musical. The words rolled over her like warm water, mysterious and oddly comforting.
"What does it mean?" she asked.
"That sometimes we must break ourselves open to discover what we actually contain."
He pressed the book into her hands. "A gift. From one honest heart to another."
Juno accepted it, touched despite herself. But something felt performance-like about the gesture, too rehearsed, like he'd done this before with other lost American women in Parisian bookstores.
Outside, Leo waited on the narrow sidewalk, sketching the bookstore's weathered facade. He looked up when she emerged, taking in the book in her hands with raised eyebrows.
"So. How's Baudelaire treating you?"
"He's less judgmental than you are."
Leo laughed, a sound that transformed his entire face. "Fair point. Though you looked like someone who doesn't actually buy the dream she's selling."
The observation landed with uncomfortable accuracy. Juno felt exposed, like he'd glimpsed something she hadn't meant to reveal.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing profound. Just that you seem too smart to fall for your own romantic fantasies."
She wanted to argue, to defend Étienne's poetry and her right to embrace whatever romantic fantasies she chose. Instead, she found herself walking beside Leo as they headed back toward the canal, their steps falling into an unconscious rhythm.
"Why do you care what I fall for?" she asked.
Leo was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn't answer. Finally: "Because you remind me of someone who's about to make a decision she'll regret. And I have a weakness for train wrecks in progress."
"Gee, thanks."
"You asked."
Evening found them back at the hostel courtyard, where fairy lights strung between plane trees created pockets of warm light. Carmen had somehow acquired a guitar and was leading an impromptu sing-along with backpackers from four different countries. Étienne sat in the corner reading by candlelight, cigarette burning forgotten between his fingers. Leo sketched in the shadows, occasionally glancing up to capture moments in pencil.
"Come on," Carmen called to Juno and Leo, "admit it—you're either soulmates or you're going to murder each other in a French alley."
Étienne looked up from his book and smiled. "Opposition creates the most interesting energy, non?"
Leo avoided eye contact, but Juno caught him watching her reflection in the window glass.
She raised her plastic cup of hostel wine. "To unpredictable strangers."
"To honest complications," Étienne added.
Leo said nothing, but he lifted his cup anyway.
As the group began to disperse, Juno found herself caught between gravitational pulls. Étienne's corner glowed with romantic possibility—poetry and wine and the kind of conversation that felt like truth told in a foreign language. Leo's shadowed table offered something sharper, more challenging, less safe.
She glanced at Leo's sketchbook and caught a glimpse of charcoal lines that looked suspiciously like her profile.
When their eyes met across the courtyard, neither looked away immediately.
Later, alone on the narrow balcony with her journal, Juno wrote:
Day two. What do you call the space between irony and sincerity? I think I just met it. Twice. One tastes like cigarettes and promises; the other tastes like coffee and doubt. Both feel dangerous in completely different ways.
E. sees me as a character in his personal romantic epic. L. sees me as a puzzle to solve or a mistake to prevent. Neither seems to see me as just Juno—whatever that means anymore.
Question: Is it possible to fall for two people's completely different versions of who you might be? And if so, which version do you choose to become?
She closed the journal and pulled out a postcard—the Seine at sunset, predictably beautiful. On the back, she wrote herself another note: Trust the complications.
Paris hummed below her, full of late-night conversations and possibilities she couldn't yet name. Tomorrow they'd take the train to Barcelona. Tonight, she'd let herself exist in the space between certainty and discovery, between Étienne's poetry and Leo's precision.
Both felt like different kinds of falling. Both felt like they might leave marks.