ROBERT CONSIDERED HIMSELF to be well-versed in many subjects. He could speak three languages, tell you a great deal about United States, European, or world history, and even teach you a fair bit about art or cooking or how to change a tire on your bicycle. He loved many genres of literature, and if you asked him if he'd rather spend the weekend relaxing or learning something new, he'd probably pick the latter.

He was well-versed in many subjects, but romance was apparently not one of them.

Generally, he was good enough at shrugging off embarrassing moments and moving on, but he found himself unable to get past how horribly he messed up with Jen. They had been doing alright at peacefully coexisting – he definitely wasn't happy that way, but he was okay – until he went and crossed all the boundaries they'd finally been adjusting to. He supposed she technically broke the rules first by bringing him food outside of work, but in hindsight, her briefly visiting him while he was sick felt like a more forgivable offense than him trying to kiss her in the copier room.

He shouldn't have been despairing like this at this hour—he should have been in bed, asleep. It was barely even 6 a.m. and there was absolutely no reason for him to be at St. Catherine's this early. But when he was a teenager, back in Italy, he used to roam around the grounds of the old cathedral near his home when his mind was troubled. Now, years later, he often fell back into the same old way of coping. And in terms of churches, St. Catherine's was a nice one to explore. It stood out against the clusters of sleek, modern skyscrapers on the surrounding blocks. The fact that it looked much older than it truly was made it remind him of home more than most other things around here.

But such technicalities had extremely little effect on him when he was feeling broody—right now, he just needed somewhere to walk and think.

Each of his footsteps echoed loudly off the marble floors, resounding through the silence. No one else was around to disturb him. The hues of dawn, dusty pinks and violets, poured through the windows and mingled with the long shadows that were cast throughout the cathedral. The day was still so young and the ceiling so far above him that all he could see of it was darkness, but the effect carried a strange comfort to him. It was important, he thought, to remind oneself on occasion that you were not nearly as big and significant as you made yourself out to be.

And, therefore, that all of those mistakes which felt massive were hopefully rather small in actuality.

Praying that he could stop thinking about a girl was very high up the list of ridiculous things that he could possibly ever do, and yet he found his lips forming a string of quiet words, asking to forget. How could it be that when he tried to fall for someone he cared dearly for, he couldn't, and yet when this girl he should have stayed away from waltzed into his life, he spent his every hour failing to cast her out of his thoughts?

He tried time and time again to remind himself that he didn't truly know Jenny Adler as well as he thought he did, but that didn't stop him from thinking about her smile or her laugh, the light blue of her eyes or the sun caught in her dark hair. The sound of her lovely voice as they had a conversation over coffee. But the most difficult image of her to get out of his mind wasn't an image at all, but rather how she felt against him when he kissed her on her doorstep. She had a small, graceful frame, and he had expected that she might return his embrace gently or hesitantly, but no—she'd kissed him fiercely, almost as if she was trying to prove to him that she was a better kisser than he was (which was undoubtedly true).

He had thought about that moment entirely too much in the month that had passed since then, written entirely too many pointless Dear Jens that were now stuffed in the drawers of his desk. She would be too kind to make fun of him if she were ever to see them, but with how well things were currently going between them, he doubted that she would.

Perhaps the worst part of it all was that none of this would be happening if he hadn't been too scared to follow his heart in the first place. When she had come to meet him at the museum that next day, he'd seen hope in her eyes – hope for him and her, hope that he'd ask her to be by his side. Hope that he'd crushed.

He had thought that once the pain of that self-inflicted sting had a little bit of time to ebb away, he'd feel good about resisting temptation, but he didn't feel good at all.

He'd spent his whole life waiting for the right person, and the right person was right there in front of him. He didn't want to keep turning her away. Not anymore. So he'd written her a letter on Sunday night, a letter asking her to come meet him again, a letter that was tucked into his pocket on Monday morning.

And then he spilled his coffee on her before he got a chance to give it to her.

Then, when he tried to recover from his blunder and suggest (albeit very poorly) that they could be together, she panicked, and he realized that there was still so much to her that he didn't understand. He had thought she was someone who would go after anything they wanted, and he thought she wanted him. But that two-dimensional, rose-tinted image was as fragile as glass and had been easily shattered, and now that he was getting a glimpse through the shards, he saw that there was a deep-rooted fear that had taken a hold of her and overrode any amount of wanting.

Jen was scared of becoming someone's plaything.

He had always known that she kept her guard up—he'd even told her as much. But he did not know how to comfort her, how to convince her that a world full of evil was good, how to repair these faults that felt so irreparable, or how to earn her trust from an arm's length.

So here he was, pacing through the nave of the church and just praying that he hadn't accidentally hurt her even more than she was already hurting. 

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A/N:

okay so I know that this was extremely short and not much actually happened, but I hope you still enjoyed getting a little glance into Robert's mind!