Julie

You find her again.

Paris is full of passing figures, blurred movements, strangers who exist for only a moment before disappearing forever—but Julie is never just a passing figure. Even when she tries to be.

She doesn’t see you yet.

She stands at the counter of a small café, stirring a sugar cube into her coffee. Her hands move mechanically, absentminded. Her mind is elsewhere. Maybe she thinks that if she keeps moving, keeps dissolving into the world, she can disappear completely.

But she doesn’t disappear. She never has.

You step forward. Her shoulders stiffen—not visibly, not obviously, but enough. She knows before she turns.

For a long moment, she just looks at you.

Blue light through the window. The sound of a spoon clinking against porcelain.

Then:

"Olivier."

Your name, nothing more. Not a question, not a welcome. A quiet acknowledgment of something she has tried to leave behind.

You sit down across from her.

The café hums around you—distant conversations, the hiss of milk frothing, footsteps passing outside—but between you and Julie, there is only silence.

She doesn’t ask why you’re here. You don’t ask why she’s alone.

You don’t need to.

She lifts the coffee to her lips, watching you over the rim of the cup. Her expression is unreadable, but not indifferent.

The last time you saw her, she was walking away.

Now, she’s here. For the moment.

The water is the only place where nothing can reach you.

You stand at the edge of the pool, the faint hum of underwater lights casting blue ripples against the tiled walls. Julie is already in the water, her body drifting, arms outstretched, eyes closed. The surface shimmers around her like glass, breaking only when she moves—a slow, absent gesture, like a thought half-formed and then abandoned.

She doesn’t acknowledge you, not at first. Maybe she doesn’t hear you. Maybe she doesn’t care.

A single movement—her head tilting slightly toward the echo of your footsteps—suggests otherwise.

"Are you getting in?"

The words are quiet, almost weightless, as if spoken more to the water than to you.

You hesitate. The water is deep, the air impossibly still. For a moment, you wonder if you’re intruding on something sacred, something fragile.

Julie opens her eyes. Blue. Endless. Empty.

"Or do you just like to watch?"

A ripple disturbs the surface. You’re not sure if she caused it.

You don’t expect her to come.

It has been weeks since she last answered a call, longer since she let you see her, and yet—Julie stands in the doorway, watching. Silent, unreadable.

The piano under your hands feels heavier now.

You keep playing.

It isn’t finished—not truly, not the way it should be. The melody lingers in half-formed phrases, searching for something that isn't there. The missing piece is standing across the room, arms crossed over her chest, waiting for you to stop.

But you don’t. Not yet.

Her voice breaks the silence between notes.

"You shouldn’t play that."

She doesn’t move forward, but she doesn’t leave either. The weight of her gaze presses against you, harder than any silence.

You lift your hands from the keys. The room feels colder without the music.

"You remember it," you say. It isn’t a question.

Julie exhales, barely audible. A breath filled with too much.

"It isn’t mine anymore."

And yet—she’s still standing there.

The café smells like burnt espresso and warm bread. A single sugar cube sinks into the black coffee across from you, dissolving slowly, quietly, as if this moment has happened before.

Julie watches it disappear. She doesn’t stir.

"You can tell a lot about a person by how they take their coffee," she says, her voice low, almost amused.

You glance at bowl of ice cream. The pause that follows is delicate, deliberate. If she wanted, she could let the silence stretch forever, like something unspoken between two strangers who will never meet again.

But she doesn’t.

"Are you just passing through?" she asks. Or is there something keeping you here?

The sugar is gone. The coffee is black again.

Julie lifts the cup to her lips but doesn’t drink. She’s waiting.

The apartment is almost empty.

Julie has just moved in, but there are no boxes, no furniture beyond the essentials. No past. No trace of who she was. The walls are blank, the rooms devoid of warmth.

She stands near the window, arms crossed, watching the street below. She doesn’t turn when you step inside.

"I threw everything away." Not a greeting. Not an explanation. Just a fact.

But then—a glance, fleeting but searching.

"Did you bring something?"

You hesitate. You weren’t sure if you should. But you did.

Something small. Something that belonged to her before.

Her breath catches, barely audible.

"Leave it on the table."

She won’t look at it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The silence stretches. Should you have brought it at all?

The apartment is dark, except for the light.

Julie stands, watching the chandelier sway. The blue glass catches the dim glow of the streetlights outside, scattering fractured shapes across the ceiling, the floor, her skin.

She doesn’t speak when you step inside. She doesn’t turn.

She only watches the light.

You’ve never seen her like this.

Julie is always controlled, always composed—but here, in the quiet, she seems weightless, untethered, lost in something too distant to reach.

Finally, she tilts her head toward you, her face half in shadow, half in the glow of blue reflections.

"I used to hate this light," she murmurs. A pause, then:

"Now I don’t feel anything."

She gestures vaguely toward the bottle beside her—wine, nearly untouched. An invitation? A test?

The blue flickers over her hands as she finally looks at you. Something about the moment feels fragile, suspended, as if speaking too loudly might break it.

What do you say?