Let all that you do be done in love.

1 Corinthians 16:14

THE ITALIAN SUNSHINE COULD do wonders for a man. But it couldn't erase the stain of guilt on my heart, or wash away the hurt I'd inflicted on my sister. No, greater miracles than that had been performed by far grander powers than the mere taste of amaretto and sight of the Mediterranean, as lovely as both were.

It was with these depressing thoughts in mind that I got out of bed that morning and hopped into the shower. As I towelled my hair dry with a brief but vicious rub—the salt air and breeze would dry it anyway—I caught sight of the dark circles under my eyes. The same eyes my sister had.

I'd left her. I shouldn't have, but I had. Her last words to me had been accompanied by the saddest smile, by the brightest tears falling. She'd never been a particularly emotional or expressive person, especially not after the death of our mother--but I had seen how my departure hurt her.

Wandering the globe for years had been thrilling at first, and it had been easy to put aside the thoughts of my demanding, stern, and micromanaging father, and even to cast away the sorrow of my sister, when I was telling myself that I was finally free. Free of demands, free of expectations to be someone I could never be, someone my mother had never wanted to be.

I had felt free at first. After a while, the globetrotting felt like nothing more than repetition. What had once been exciting--even making me feel like a swashbuckling pirate or a vagabond of old--was now nothing new. I'd seen all the tourist sites, heard every new sound of music, tasted each new flavour of culinary artwork at every new place. I'd sold some paintings, wandered through museums, and had begun to feel like I was living with a ghost--my father's--or maybe my own.

Until I'd met her yesterday.

Though, despite my last words to Georgia Philips, I doubted I'd see her again.

God certainly couldn't be that good. Not to me.

Shaving, I checked the battered appointment book I'd purchased at an airport eight months ago. Today, I had a job as a photographer for a prestigious magazine in Italy, since the magazine's editor had apparently liked my work enough (though I wasn't much of a photographer, preferring brushes and paint) to hire me. I only had the appointment book on my person, preferring to stay off the grid without any phones or computers. In reality, as much as I would have wanted to attribute the choice to a hipster lifestyle or some kind of radical digital minimalism, it was a coward's choice. The coward's decision to not have to face my father, or my sister.Until it was too late.

If it had been too late then, it was certainly too late now. Now that my father was ailing, now that he was dying, which was something I'd read in an interview he'd done in the business pages of the Montreal paper I'd picked up off the train in Toronto. I had been so close to home, yet so achingly far I could taste nothing but wind and exhaust.

Throwing on a flannel shirt, I dashed out the door to get a cup of espresso around the corner from my apartment. It wasn't much, but it didn't need to be when I wasn't staying for long. I never did.

My thoughts fell upon Georgia Philips once more as I sipped my bitter espresso, remembering how she'd never actually given me an answer before her friend, the redhead, had dragged her away. She'd looked at me like she wasn't sure how to respond, like the question I'd posed to her was in a foreign language she was learning and she was trying to puzzle out the words.

Or maybe that was the excuse I was giving myself for her rejection.

Finishing my coffee and pastry, I left a few euros on the table and jogged to catch a taxi toward the magazine's offices where the photoshoot would take place. My camera swung around my neck as I hopped onto the seat and gave the driver directions in rusty Italian. Fortunately, he spoke a smattering of English and the destination was fairly well-known in the city, so we didn't experience too many barriers.

As the tires screeched against the cobblestone and I got out of the cab and paid him, I spied a flash of blonde hair and a tall, lean frame. My heart thudded against my ribcage, and I wondered if one's ribs could break from the inside. It would make for a gruesome painting, surely, and my fingers itched for brushes, for a moody, Gothic painting that straddled the line between macabre and romantic...

"Are you stalking me?" Georgia Philips asked as she hiked a designer purse over one shoulder. Her redheaded friend was nowhere in sight. The smile that bloomed on her face shouldn't have been as lovely, alluring, or heart-stopping as it was.

"You? I think if I was stalking someone, I'd find a girl who had a shorter stride. She'd be easier to keep up with," I said as I fell into an easy pace beside her.

I held open the door of the building for her and her blue eyes narrowed at me as she walked through it. "That suggests you have considered stalking people before. Hasn't anyone ever told you not to say anything that doesn't sound creepy or serial killer-y before?"

"My sister tried, but she gave up after the fifteenth time I was rushed to the emergency room to remove my foot from my mouth."

Her laughter ended as quickly as it had begun as we stopped at the reception desk. "No, seriously, why are you here?"

The receptionist ID'd us both, asked a few questions, and waved us toward the sleek metallic elevators.

Georgia prodded me. "So?"

"I'm the photographer for La Mode today," I said, waving my camera with a flourish after pushing the elevator button.

Her jaw dropped. "Shut up!"

The hand that pushed my arm with a gentle shove was not delicately manicured as I might have expected from a girl who, well, looked the way she did. Instead, it was adorned with a clattering of bangles and half a dozen rings covering chipped green nail polish.

"Now I'm being subjected to physical violence for telling the truth?" I chuckled. For the first time in months, a weight seemed to lift from my shoulders. Just from being around her. "What are you doing here?"

"My agent booked me to do a magazine cover for La Mode." she grinned at me. "I guess we did end up seeing each other again, huh?"

"I guess so." A slender sliver of my soul prayed to a God whom I had not known in years, that this wouldn't end. That whatever this was–this friendship, perhaps–would last. That I wouldn't have to say goodbye, as I had to so many others in the past. "Even with the interference of your friend."

"My friend?" Her blonde brows furrowed before smoothing out again. "Oh, you mean my cousin, Abigail. The redhead."

"You're on vacation with her?" I asked.

"Yes, though our vacation ended yesterday since she went back to New York. Leaving me to wander around Italy by myself."

"And somehow you wandered onto the set of a photoshoot?" I arched a brow at her.

"You know how it is." She gave a giggle that sounded forced. It felt wrong. I didn't want her to have to fake anything around me. Somehow, even though we'd only known each other for a handful of minutes, this girl felt real. Precious. A treasure that shouldn't be buried, an uncut gem that shouldn't be polished. "Happens all the time."

"Of course," I said. "That's how I ended up here. They just saw my camera and whisked me off the street."

"Right." We stepped onto an empty lift, both jabbing the button for the eleventh floor at the same time. Her finger brushed mine, and I felt a frisson of something that felt dangerously close to the time I'd stuck my finger into an electrical socket at age four.

"Right," I echoed.

We fell into a comfortable silence as the car filled with people, and I snuck a peek at Georgia in the mirrored wall. She was fixing her hair, tucking it into a sleek ponytail, and nearly elbowed me in the chin as she finished. Her laughter this time was real as she dropped her arm and turned toward me. "I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

Were it any other girl, I might have demanded recompense in the form of a date, a kiss, something that would be fun and fleeting and forgettable. Not with her, though. Georgia Philips was... she was different. I rubbed my jaw. "Your elbow should be labelled a deadly weapon."

"Just the left one," she agreed as the elevator doors parted to reveal a spacious loft, flooded with natural light and filled with assistants in black clothing, scurrying around with racks of clothing and fabric samples.

We stepped off the elevator into the offices of La Mode. It was a beautiful space, if slightly too modern for my tastes, and a stunning woman with a clipboard and an officious manner immediately marched toward us in Manolos. "Georgia Steele?"

Georgia cleared her throat. "Philips, actually."

Steele? That name sounded vaguely familiar since Steele Inc was one of the biggest corporations in America. Was Georgia related to those Steeles? Or was she just a pretty girl who'd made it big?

"Yes, yes. You are cinq minutes late. And you are the photographer for this shoot, yes? George Devereaux?" The French name rolled easily off her tongue.

"Oui," I said, though I hadn't spoken French in months, since leaving Paris. "Et comment t'appelles tu?"

"Rachelle," she said, giving a mononym as only fashion icons, former French supermodels, and style magazine editors could do. Well, and Rihanna. She didn't appear to be appeased by my French. Probably because it was Quebecois. "The two of you, over there. We are already running behind, and the wind machine is not working, so we have had to open a window, and then a bird flew in–"

She cut herself off, green eyes narrowing, mumbling something that sounded like alors zut under her breath.

Georgia and I shared an amused look as we walked toward the set.

+

After the shoot ended, in which I had snapped Georgia Philips in various poses and differing outfits from designer brands, I sent the photos to the magazine's still-imposing editor, Rachelle. What her last name was, it seemed Georgia and I would never know.

"Will I see you again?" Georgia asked with a smirk as we filed into the elevator. Her pink lips tilted upward at one side, slightly crooked. "Or will you be stalking me again?"

"I'm not stalking you." Though if I had been, I wasn't so sure that it wouldn't be an upgrade from my chosen profession.

"In that case, I'll feel safe giving you my number. She loked at me expectantly. I shook my head.

"I don't have a cell phone."

"You don't have a cell?" she said, raising an eyebrow. Her look wasn't quite shocked; rather, it appeared more impressed. "Someimes I wish I could do that. Then I remember that I'm way too social for it to ever work."

"It's... peaceful." I didn't add that the ghosts haunting me were still available in my mind twenty-four seven even without the reach of a mobile phone. "But, maybe for you, I'd pick up a burner phone."

"I'm honoured to make you break out of your self-imposed phone-less state." She laughed. It wasn't beautiful, but it was real, more real than any pristine painting or perfectly posed photograph could be.

"You should be. Not even my family has accomplished that feat." Even as the words slipped from my mouth, I regretted–no, that wasn't quite the right word. I didn't regret telling her about my family, even if only in veiled hints. It was more that I was terrified of the fear I didn't feel, the lack of trust I didn't have. I somehow felt a strange connection to this girl, a strange nudging that I could trust her. It was probably infatuation or insanity, but somehow it didn't seem like either.

"Family can be... difficult."

"Don't I know it." Her blue eyes held more pain than I would have thought possible. What did she know of family being difficult, I wondered?

Part of me wanted to pry every secret out of her like puzzle pieces from a box, to splice them together into a neat row of linear logic. Yet logic and reason didn't fit this girl. She wasn't logos; she was something else. Passion. Life, itself, in all its mysteries.

The elevator dinged and we stepped out. I walked her to her vehicle, not wanting whatever was between us to end. Not so soon. Not like this.

"So, you'll get a burner phone?" she prompted me when we reached her motorcycle.

"I will, if it gets me your number." The smile that spread across my face was involuntary. I tried to remember the last time something had led me to give such an easy, carefree expression that wasn't a grimace. The memory didn't come.

"Then, in that case..." She pulled out a metallic silver Sharpie and scrawled her number on the back of my hand. "Something to remember me by."

She got on her motorcycle, helmet sliding over her head, blonde hair peeking out beneath it as she sped off.

I didn't know if that was the last time I would ever see her, but when I got the news that my father had died, by seeing it splashed across a copy of the New York Times obituary section, I forgot all about calling that number.

All that could occupy my mind was my sins.