After smearing the coffee in the tissure on her chin and then cleaning it up for the umpteenth time, he finally got the composure to pull back.
As he did, Vittoria looked away toward the street, and whatever was happening on her face, she aimed at the passing traffic for a few seconds before she also found her composure and brought it back.
Her heart was doing something she was choosing not to examine too closely.
As they sat still, Leo looked down the street and spotted the artist a little way along, set up at the corner with a small crowd around him, doing fast portraits in charcoal for people who stopped and paid.
He looked at Vittoria, then pointed in that direction.
"Shall we?"
She looked at what he was pointing at and nodded, and stood, but as they did, neither of them noticed the two figures in a doorway across the street who had been there for the better part of forty minutes.
The first one scrolled back through the pictures on the camera with the focus of a man reviewing work he was proud of.
"Who’s she with?" the second one asked, leaning over.
The first one shrugged without looking up.
"Wasn’t really focusing on him."
"She hasn’t really been seen with anyone before. You know, aside from that rumour, but that wasn’t really confirmed, so this would be the first with hard evidence this time."
"That’s why this is good," the first one said.
He stopped on one of the frames and zoomed in on the moment at the table, the tissue, the proximity, the angle of both their faces.
Then he tilted the camera toward his partner.
The second one looked at it and then looked at where the couple had been sitting, now empty.
"Can’t really see his face properly," he said.
"But his profile looks good. Can he also be a model—"
"Doesn’t matter," the first one interrupted, already capping the lens.
"She’s the story. He’s the context. I mean, I haven’t heard of her having any campaign in England, so her being here means it’s personal"
He straightened up.
"Come on. We need to get back and get this sent before someone else beats us to it."
They moved off down the street in the other direction, and behind them, the cafe table sat empty in the afternoon sun, two paper cups still warm.
Evening eventually dawned upon the duo, bringing their time to an end.
Soon they found themselves getting closer and closer to Vittoria’s hotel, and as they did, Leo found himself staring at the canvas in his hand with the expression of someone trying to find something generous to say and coming up empty.
The artist they had seen had turned out to be one who dealt in goofy drawings, and the caricature of himself he had in hand was objectively terrible.
The artist had given him ears that belonged on a different species and eyebrows that took up roughly a third of his face, and whatever had been done to his nose was something he was choosing not to examine too closely.
Vittoria’s, by comparison, was lovely.
The lines were clean, with her features caught properly.
Basically, it was something one would want to keep.
"Why did he do you nicely?" Leo said.
Vittoria coughed lightly at that, bringing his attention to her as she pointed at her face.
"He couldn’t bear to," she said simply.
Leo looked at her.
Then at the portrait.
Then at her again.
"I’m going to stop feeding that ego of yours," he said, shaking his head, and she laughed, and they kept walking.
They ended up back at her hotel the way the previous evening had ended, but this time Leo didn’t stop at the entrance.
He followed her in, and they walked through the lobby still talking with their conversation picking up something new every few minutes and by the time they reached her floor, neither of them had noticed how far they’d come from the street.
Soon they began slowing as they got closer to her room, as if that could stop the time from moving.
The talking slowed with them, and then they finally stopped in the quiet corridor, which was beginning to feel like a different dimension.
Vittoria found her key and opened the door, holding it slightly with one hand before leaning against the frame with it half open behind her.
"Do you want to come in?" she said.
Leo opened his mouth, and she could see it in his face, the yes that was already there before his brain had weighed in on the matter.
But it never left his mouth.
"I’ve got something important tomorrow," he said. "I should get ready for it."
As he said that, Vittoria looked at him for a moment.
Something about the answer made her feel warm and fuzzy.
It was the fact that his answer wasn’t a no but a not yet, and that settled in her chest in a way that the straight yes would have done differently.
She smiled, feeling unable to contain herself at the moment.
"I had a really good time today," she said.
"Me too," Leo retorted.
She held his gaze for a second longer and then pushed off the doorframe and stepped forward.
Leo saw her coming, but all he could do was freeze, and as he did, she took his face lightly in one hand before he could think any useless thoughts; she took his lips in hers.
And in that moment, there wasn’t anything that Leo wouldn’t do to keep it that way forever.
The meeting went on for a few seconds before Vittoria finally pulled away, this time, not taking her eyes off of Leo’s.
"Take your time," she said softly before turning towards her door and then closing it.
And then it was Leo, standing in the corridor with the look of a man whose brain had briefly disconnected from the rest of himself.
He was alone in the quiet hallway with the carpet and the silence and the faint sound of his own thoughts trying to restart.
He stood there for another second before catching himself from falling any deeper into his reverie.
Then, with another glance at her door, he turned and left his body to carry him because, at the moment, his mind couldn’t really do it.