The bookstore café smelled of coffee and old paper, that particular Prague scent that clung to everything like memory. Juno traced her fingers along the spine of a worn Rilke collection, German words she couldn't read promising truths she wasn't sure she wanted to understand.
At a corner table, Leo sketched in that loose, unconscious way she'd grown to love watching. His pencil moved across the page with confidence she wished she felt about anything in her own life.
"Guess who remembered your coffee order," she said, sliding two espressos across the scarred wooden table.
Leo looked up, that crooked smile appearing like sunrise. "You're dangerously close to knowing me."
They worked in the kind of silence that felt full rather than empty. Leo's pencil scratched against paper while Juno's pen moved across her journal in careful loops. Outside, Prague went about its evening business—tourists photographing Gothic spires, locals hurrying home with groceries, the eternal dance of a city that had outlived empires.
"What are you writing?" Leo asked without looking up from his sketch.
"A piece for the blog. About Prague and people who come back to cities hoping to outrun the versions of themselves that lived here."
Leo's pencil stilled. Something shifted in his expression—not quite a shadow, but a cooling. "That's oddly specific."
"All the best truths are."
The Vltava River reflected the last light of day as they walked along its banks. Their hands brushed once, twice, before Leo caught her fingers and held them. Such a small gesture, but it made Juno's chest flutter like a teenager's.
"I used to come here with Lucie," he said suddenly. "That café over there was her favorite."
Juno nodded, trying to keep her expression neutral. He never talked about Lucie. Not really. She was a name dropped in passing, a shadow that explained his caution but never took actual shape.
"You never talk about her," Juno said. "Not really."
"Because most of the time, I don't know how."
They paused at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Leo's thumb traced circles on her palm—absent, comforting. Then his hand went still.
"Shit."
Juno followed his gaze across the street. Outside the café he'd just mentioned, a woman sat at a small table, wine glass in hand, dark hair catching the golden hour light. Even from this distance, Juno could see she was beautiful in that effortless European way—all angles and confidence.
"Is that...?"
"Lucie."
The woman—Lucie—looked up as they approached, and her face transformed with recognition. Not surprise exactly, but something warmer. Complicated.
"I should wait here," Juno said.
"No, come meet her. It's fine."
But it wasn't fine. Juno could tell by the way Leo's shoulders tensed, the way his voice pitched slightly higher. Still, she followed him to the café table, her journalist's instincts cataloging every detail: Lucie's perfectly applied red lipstick, the way she rose to embrace Leo with practiced familiarity, the subtle once-over she gave Juno that managed to be both polite and assessing.
"This is unexpected," Lucie said in accented English, her voice honey-warm.
"Lucie, this is Juno. Juno, Lucie."
"The travel blogger," Lucie said, extending a manicured hand. "I follow your work."
Juno shook the offered hand, noting its softness, its lack of calluses. "And you're the ex-girlfriend who broke up with Leo on camera."
The words escaped before Juno could stop them. Leo's eyes widened. Lucie's smile didn't falter, but it sharpened.
"Guilty as charged," Lucie said lightly. "Though I prefer to think of it as performance art."
An hour later, Juno excused herself to the bathroom and didn't come back. She stood on the street corner, watching through the café window as Leo and Lucie leaned across their small table, deep in conversation. Lucie pulled a postcard from her purse—Prague Castle at sunset—and showed it to Leo. He laughed, that genuine laugh Juno had thought was hers.
The postcard looked familiar. Too familiar.
Juno turned and walked back toward the hostel, her boots echoing against cobblestones that suddenly felt less charming and more like a trap.
Her room at the hostel was small and spare—a single bed, a desk, a window that looked out onto a courtyard where other travelers smoked and shared stories in half a dozen languages. Juno sat on the bed and opened her journal, pen poised over blank paper.
Nothing came.
She closed the journal and lay back, staring at water stains on the ceiling that looked like continents she'd never visit.
A soft knock at her door made her sit up.
"Juno?" Leo's voice, muffled by wood and hesitation.
She didn't answer. After a moment, his footsteps retreated down the hallway.
The hostel lobby buzzed with the low energy of evening—backpackers planning tomorrow's adventures, couples sharing phones to video call home, the eternal ritual of travelers making themselves belong somewhere temporarily.
Juno bought a coffee from the vending machine and settled into a threadbare armchair in the corner. The coffee tasted like regret, but she drank it anyway.
"There you are."
Leo appeared beside her chair, hands shoved deep in his pockets. His hair was more disheveled than usual, as if he'd been running his fingers through it.
"Here I am," she said without looking up.
"You disappeared."
"So did you. Back there, with Lucie."
Leo sat in the adjacent chair, close enough that she could smell his cologne—something woody that she'd grown to associate with safety. Funny how quickly that could change.
"It wasn't what it looked like."
"It never is. Until it is."
"She showed up. I was surprised."
"You didn't look surprised." Juno finally met his eyes. "You looked like you were home."
Leo's jaw tightened. "That's not fair."
"Maybe not. But it's true."
They sat in silence, the distance between their chairs feeling like an ocean. Around them, other people's conversations continued—laughter and plans and the easy intimacy of travelers who'd found each other in strange places.
"The postcard she showed you," Juno said finally. "Prague Castle at sunset. You gave her one just like it, didn't you? Back when you were together."
Leo's silence was answer enough.
"I collect postcards," Juno continued, her voice steady despite the tightness in her chest. "From every city I visit. I write myself messages about what I learned, what I felt, who I was in that place. It's my thing. My weird little ritual."
"Juno—"
"But you already knew that, didn't you? Because I told you. In Barcelona, when we walked through the Gothic Quarter and I bought that stack of vintage postcards from the street vendor. I told you exactly why I collect them."
Leo's face had gone very still.
"So when Lucie mentioned she'd kept that postcard you gave her—the one from Prague Castle—and how she'd been carrying it with her ever since, and how maybe it was a sign that you'd both ended up back here..." Juno stood up, leaving her half-empty coffee cup on the small table between them. "Well. Maybe I was always just the layover."
She walked toward the stairs, each step deliberate and final.
"Juno, wait."
She paused, hand on the railing, without turning around.
"You could have asked," Leo said. "About what we talked about. About why she was here."
"And you could have warned me that postcards were your thing with her first."
"They weren't. That's just—"
"Your pattern?" Juno turned back to face him. "Charming girls with meaningful gestures that feel unique until you realize you're just the latest version of the same story?"
Leo's expression crumpled. "That's not what this is."
"Isn't it?" Juno's voice was quiet now, tired. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks exactly like what this is."
She climbed the stairs without looking back, leaving Leo alone in the lobby with the ghosts of conversations that couldn't be taken back.
In her room, Juno packed mechanically—rolling clothes, securing toiletries, checking for forgotten items in corners and drawers. The Rilke book sat on her nightstand, and after a moment's hesitation, she left it there. Some things were meant to stay behind.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Carmen: How's Prague? Still pretending you're not in love?
Juno typed and deleted half a dozen responses before settling on: Prague is complicated.
Three dots appeared immediately, then Carmen's reply: The best places always are. Don't run away from complicated, babe. Run toward it.
Juno stared at the message until the screen went dark, then tucked the phone into her backpack's front pocket. Tomorrow there would be trains to catch, new cities to explore, stories to tell that didn't involve Leo Moretti and his beautiful, complicated history.
But tonight, in a Prague hostel room that smelled like other people's dreams, she let herself feel the weight of what she was leaving behind—not just Leo, but the version of herself that had believed, for a few precious weeks, that she might be someone's destination instead of their detour.
Outside her window, Prague settled into darkness, its bridges and spires and ancient stones holding their secrets close. In the morning, she would join the river of travelers flowing toward new adventures, carrying nothing but a backpack and the hard-won knowledge that some stories end before they're finished.
That was the thing about postcards, after all. They captured a single moment, a single feeling, frozen in time. They were never meant to tell the whole story.