The Prague hostel lobby held the particular silence of early morning—coffee machines gurgling to life, sleepy backpackers shuffling toward showers, the whispered conversations of people trying not to wake their bunkmates. Juno's footsteps on the worn linoleum felt unnaturally loud as she wheeled her duffel toward the exit.
She hadn't left a note. What would she have said? Thanks for the layover? Good luck with your ex? Sorry I fell for someone who collects hearts like postcards?
The desk clerk barely looked up as she checked out, handing over her key with the mechanical politeness of someone who saw travelers disappear every day. Some stayed for weeks, some for hours. All of them eventually left.
Juno stepped into Prague's morning mist and didn't look back.
The train station smelled of diesel and possibility. Juno bought coffee that tasted like burnt ambition and studied the departure board until the letters blurred. Vienna. Budapest. Vienna would do. From Vienna, she could catch a flight south. Greece, maybe. Somewhere with sun that might burn away the chill Prague had settled into her bones.
She found a seat by the window on the 7:42 to Vienna and pressed her forehead against the cool glass. The train pulled away from Prague's Gothic spires with mechanical indifference, carrying her toward horizons that didn't include Leo Moretti.
Her phone buzzed once, then went quiet. She didn't check it.
The Austrian countryside rolled past in shades of green she didn't have names for. Other passengers dozed or read or shared snacks from crinkled paper bags. A young couple across the aisle played cards, their laughter soft and private. Juno watched them and felt like she was observing a species she'd never quite learned to be.
She opened her journal, pen hovering over blank paper.
Day 47: Running away from Prague. Or running toward something else. Hard to tell the difference when you're sitting on a train watching other people's lives blur by.
She closed the journal without writing more. Some thoughts were too raw to pin down with words.
The Vienna airport buzzed with the efficient chaos of people in transit. Juno stood in front of the departures board, backpack heavy on her shoulders, studying destinations like they were tarot cards promising different futures.
Athens. 2:15 PM.
Greece. Islands and ancient ruins and sun that might remind her skin what warmth felt like. She bought the ticket with her credit card and tried not to think about what Carmen would say about impulse purchases and emotional decisions.
In the departure lounge, she finally checked her phone. Three missed calls from Leo. No voicemails. No texts. Just the digital evidence of his attempts to reach her, hanging in the space between them like unfinished conversations.
She turned the phone off and slipped it into her backpack's front pocket.
The ferry to Santorini cut through Aegean water so blue it looked fake, like someone had oversaturated a photograph. Juno stood at the rail, salt spray misting her face, trying to remember the last time she'd felt genuinely surprised by beauty.
Other passengers clustered around her—couples taking selfies, families spreading picnic lunches, backpackers with sun-bleached hair trading stories about hidden beaches and cheap hostels. The easy intimacy of travelers bonded by temporary adventure.
Juno pulled out her journal and found a quiet corner in the ferry's lounge. The pages fell open to sketches she didn't remember making—street corners in Barcelona, the view from their Rome balcony, Leo's hands as he adjusted his camera settings.
Something fluttered from between the pages and landed at her feet.
A folded piece of paper. Not hers.
Juno picked it up with careful fingers, unfolding it slowly. A sketch in black ink—herself, laughing, hair caught mid-motion by some remembered wind. The lines were confident, intimate, like the artist had memorized every angle of her face.
On the back, in Leo's careful handwriting: I meant it. All of it. — L.
Her coffee cup slipped from her other hand, hitting the floor with a plastic thud that made nearby passengers look up. Juno barely noticed. She stared at the drawing, at Leo's words, at the evidence that maybe—maybe—she'd been wrong about everything.
The ferry's bathroom was cramped and smelled like industrial soap, but it offered privacy. Juno splashed cold water on her face and studied her reflection in the scratched mirror. Her eyes looked too big, too bright, like someone who'd been running on caffeine and panic for too long.
When had Leo slipped the drawing into her journal? Prague? Rome? Earlier?
She thought about the night in Barcelona when she'd fallen asleep reading on their hostel's rooftop terrace, waking to find her journal closed and a blanket draped over her shoulders. Or the morning in Rome when she'd left her journal on the café table while ordering pastries, returning to find it moved slightly, as if someone had been careful not to disturb her place.
How many small intimacies had she missed while watching for larger betrayals?
Santorini rose from the sea like something from a dream, all white-washed buildings and impossible blue domes perched on volcanic cliffs. The ferry docked with a gentle bump, and passengers flooded onto the pier with the eager energy of people arriving somewhere beautiful.
Juno's taxi wound up cliff roads so narrow she could have reached out and touched the bougainvillea spilling over garden walls. The driver—a weathered man with kind eyes—attempted conversation in broken English, but gave up when her responses came out as monosyllables.
The hostel perched on the caldera's edge, its terrace offering views that belonged on postcards. Juno checked in, dropped her bag in a room barely bigger than a closet, and immediately started digging through her belongings.
Postcards. She'd collected them in every city—Prague's Gothic bridges, Rome's ancient columns, Barcelona's modernist mosaics, Paris's tree-lined boulevards. Some had messages written on the back in her careful handwriting. Others remained blank, waiting for the right words.
She pulled out a watercolor of the Colosseum and uncapped her pen.
Leo—I ran. Not because of Lucie, but because I was scared you'd always have pieces of yourself I could never reach. I'm tired of being afraid of wanting too much. —J.
She addressed it to the Prague hostel, though she had no idea if he was still there. Maybe he'd already moved on to his next destination, his next story, his next girl who collected something different.
The sun hung low over the Aegean, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold that made the island look like it was glowing from within. Juno sat on the hostel's terrace, the postcard in one hand and Leo's sketch in the other.
Other guests chatted around small tables, their conversations a pleasant hum against the sound of waves far below. A couple at the next table shared a bottle of wine and spoke in rapid Italian, their hands moving as expressively as their voices. Juno watched them and felt the familiar ache of witnessing intimacy she wasn't part of.
Her phone, buried in her backpack, remained off. Whatever Leo had tried to say in those missed calls could wait. Tonight, she needed to sit with her own choices, her own fears, her own stubborn heart that had convinced her running was safer than staying.
The postcard felt substantial in her hands—real paper, real ink, a real message she might actually send. The sketch felt lighter, more fragile, like it might dissolve if she held it too tightly.
She thought about Carmen's text from Prague: Don't run away from complicated. Run toward it.
Maybe it was time to stop running altogether.
As darkness settled over Santorini, Juno opened her journal to a fresh page. She placed both the postcard and the sketch between the pages, then closed the book with careful hands.
Some stories hurt because they mattered. Some people were worth the risk of wanting them completely.
Tomorrow, she would decide whether to send the postcard or tear it up. Tonight, she would sit with the possibility that love might be less about finding someone who completed you and more about finding someone worth being brave for.
The Aegean whispered against the cliffs below, carrying secrets between islands, between continents, between hearts that had learned to speak the same language despite all the ways they'd tried to stay foreign to each other.
In the distance, a ferry's lights dotted the horizon—more travelers in transit, more stories beginning or ending or transforming into something new entirely.
Juno pulled her silk scarf tighter around her shoulders and watched the lights until they disappeared, carrying their cargo of hopes toward shores she couldn't see.