After they had finished their espressos and pastries—and Amelia had learned how Nutella was born from a cocoa shortage after World War II—everyone was eager to set off towards the city center despite how cozy and all-around wonderful the little cafe was.

The warm coffee in her stomach made the chill in the air a little less brutal when they stepped back outside. Amelia couldn't help but notice how utterly calm everything around them seemed to be. There were only a handful of other people crossing the bridge. Even the river beneath them was still, as if the whole city was holding its breath just for her, so that she could feel like she had all the time in the world to take it all in.

Across the bridge, they almost immediately arrived upon their first popular tourist spot of the day, the Piazza della Signoria. It was a large, open square in front of the town hall of Florence, which Amelia was told was a famous monument in and of itself. Its tower was the only piece of architecture in the city that came anywhere close to rivaling the height of the cathedral, but as her eyes floated around the square and all the beautiful statues that called it home and she listened to Robert point out what everything was, she realized that the adjacent courtyard she was staring at was actually something she was much more interested in: the center of one the most famous art galleries in the world. The Uffizi Gallery was one of those that she had heard about over and over and over again in her art history studies and she had a growing feeling that she was probably going to be inadvertently stumbling straight into important historical landmarks for this entire trip.

This was so different from home, from anything that she'd ever known. A city that had seen its artistic and economic peak just as the very first European colonizers were even making their way over to North America. She had only been here for a couple of hours and yet could already feel how the collective consciousness of the city—all of the people who had ever walked its streets, all of the trillions of little fragments of stories and memories and objects that when drawn together represented this place's legacy—felt like its own living, breathing thing that existed separate from any one person or location or idea, that continued to thrive even today.

Only once they had meandered around the perimeter of the square to look at all of the sculptures did they move on toward the cathedral. The streets of Florence were a curious amalgamation of old architecture and sleek luxury stores sprinkled in for the tastes of those who had come here from all over the world for a taste of Italian fashion.

Their pace slowed as they entered the piazza where the cathedral was. Amelia didn't think that her breath had ever been taken away by a building, but it was impressive in a way that contemporary architecture simply wasn't. This was tons upon tons of elaborately decorated marble and brick—hundreds of years' worth of labor and architectural innovation. As her gaze moved up to the dome, it surprised her to see that there were people on top of it.

"You can go up there?" she ogled, the question directed towards no one in particular since the answer was right there in front of her.

But the person who happened to be closest to her was, of course, Henry. He pointed towards a short line of people queued up near one of the side entrances to the cathedral.

"Have you ever done it?" she asked.

"Once, when I was a little kid." A nostalgic expression slipped onto his face as he glanced over toward Lily. "You were there, too, you just probably would have been too young to remember it."

"I'm vaguely remembering being terrified," she told him. "I'm sure you made fun of me for it."

"Of course I did."

Eagerly, Amelia questioned, "Can we go up there?"

Their entire group was listening in to the conversation at this point; Jen chimed in to say that she remembered seeing somewhere that the tickets could be bought online. One quick Google search later, they discovered that there were still some tickets available for half an hour from now—probably because it surely felt like Dante's Ninth Circle of Hell up there this morning.

But Amelia didn't care about the cold. She could only imagine what the view must be like and knew that she was going to feel immense regret if she didn't go see it for herself.

The eight tickets were sent to Jen's email, which only left the question of how they wanted to entertain themselves for the time being. There was no point in wandering off very far when they'd probably want to be in line fifteen minutes before their scheduled entry time.

"How early is too early for dessert?" Liam pondered.

"It's never too early when you're on vacation," Amelia said, and thus her attention was drawn to the little gelato shop across the piazza.

Some might say that they weren't doing themselves any favors by eating something cold right then, but she saw it more so as being economical with their time. There was so much to see in Florence but also so much to eat and so if the opportunity for a quick dessert run was presented to her, she certainly wasn't going to say no.

It was like the pastry case all over again—pure magic. Warm air and the mingling scents of sugar and espresso met them when they opened the door to the shop. There were at least a dozen flavors of beautiful gelato to choose from and most of them had English translations under the Italian names. Amelia was in the mood for a smidge of chocolate, so she picked Stracciatella. Liam and Henry both got tiramisu and Lily opted for strawberry.

As Amelia listened to Henry interacting with the cashier, she noticed that even though he'd told her that he didn't know all that many Italian phrases, the ones he did know seemed to roll off his tongue as easily as if he were totally fluent. The sounds of the language seemed to come naturally to him—as if he'd tapped into a muscle memory that was very much still ingrained in him no matter how much he seemed to think he wasn't any good at using it. It struck her that he didn't sound at all unlike his father had back in the cafe just an hour ago as he and Teresa had helped them order their breakfast so that they didn't sound like total buffoons.

They ate their gelato in the warmth of the indoors before returning to the square, where the others had already grabbed them a spot in line.

"I feel like you deserve to know that I found that very attractive," Amelia mumbled to Henry, keeping her voice quiet even though Lily and Liam had already gone a short way ahead of them.

A small laugh coursed through him, his cheeks going a soft shade of pink like he was pleased by what she'd said but also a little bit shy.

And when he looked over at her, his eyes drifted down to her lips, which felt very romantic for all of one second before he murmured, "You've got a little something right there."

She momentarily thought that he might have been messing with her, but before she could protest, he was swiping the bit of chocolate off the corner of her mouth with his jacket sleeve.

"There are these things called napkins," she muttered, slightly embarrassed.

"Which we didn't have the foresight to grab any of. It's alright, I don't mind being your human napkin."

"My human napkin," she repeated with raised eyebrows. "You're a real charmer, Henry."

In hindsight, she should have done some research into how much physical effort this was going to require before eagerly jumping to do it.

It turned out that there were a total of four hundred and sixty-three stairs that one must climb to get to the top of the cathedral.

Once they were let inside, they were directed to the stairwell that would take them all the way to the top, and Amelia suddenly felt like she was in some sort of cave tunnel. The narrow, steep, winding stairwell felt like something out of a medieval castle in a movie—which, of course, led her to remind herself that she actually was in a real medieval building right now. The only source of light was through tiny windows dispersed along the exterior wall at distant intervals. They weren't covered by any glass and thus let the cold air inside, but it felt very refreshing now that they were crammed in this humid tube of bodies. Though it was only a few feet wide, the corridor had to accommodate two-way traffic, which resulted in some interesting maneuvers of her pressing herself against the wall to let people pass by.

Even so, she found the whole thing to be very atmospheric and thus was still a fan. For the first several minutes, at least. Then, when her lungs and legs were already aching, she tapped Henry on the shoulder and asked him how far up he thought they were.

"Maybe a third of the way there?"

Oh. This was quite possibly going to be the end of her.

Eventually, they exited the stairwell and found themselves on a curved walkway that lined the interior base of the dome. It was equal parts gorgeous and horrifying—they had to already be a hundred feet or more in the air, looking down at the people that milled like ants below them on the cathedral floor, but this walkway also put them right under the frescoes that were painted inside of the dome, which were also beautifully terrifying. Depicted was an iteration of The Last Judgment, which always juxtaposed happy little cherubs with dudes getting their skin ripped off in Hell. Then, they ended up in another stairwell to continue the trek upwards, and Amelia only maintained her sanity by reminding herself that the view from the top would absolutely be worth it.

Finally, after what felt like eons but in reality was probably just a handful of minutes, she began to see a larger volume of natural light creeping in from ahead. There was a small set of steeper steps—more like a ladder, really—at the very end, but Henry clambered up ahead of her and then offered his hand to steady her as she pulled herself up.

She had to blink to adjust to the abrupt burst of light after being in the dim, cavelike stairwells, and was also relieved to notice that she wasn't the only one who needed to catch her breath. Her legs felt like they were made of gelatin now, but all thoughts of physical pain left her mind as she walked to the metal railing at the edge of the view platform, which ran a full three hundred and sixty degrees around the top of the dome.

To call the view incredible still would have been an understatement. All of Florence and beyond was sprawled out beneath her, a sea of red roofs as far as the eye could see. The people hundreds of feet below in the piazza were nothing more than tiny specks and in the distance, mountains reached up to meet the overcast sheet of puffy gray clouds in the sky.

It also did verifiably feel like the cold circle of Hell up there, so Amelia had no complaints whatsoever when Henry stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her body, shielding her against any gusts of wind that came from behind. She had no qualms about holding him there close to her, content to snuggle for a couple of minutes before she would proceed to be the annoying tourist who took dozens of photos of the same thing.

Their group had dispersed in different directions once they climbed out from the stairwell, but as Amelia started to circle the perimeter of the platform, she spotted Lily and Liam first. They were in quiet conversation, then laughing about something, looking at each other more so than the view. As the breeze blew strands of her hair in her face, he kept patiently brushing them away until she reached up for his hand to take it in her own.

They were so earnestly adorable that Amelia could have cried. She might have teared up just a little bit (she blamed it on the wind) at how different Liam seemed now from when she'd talked to him in her kitchen the other week, and how even more vastly different this was from the Liam she'd known for nearly three months before that.

She wasn't naive. She knew that everything wasn't as simple or perfect as it looked and that they had already done some very serious work to get to this place. They had been living in two different realities. But watching them here, safely tucked away from all their hurts, all she could see was how much whatever they were doing was working. Finally, they were healing.

They hadn't noticed her and she wasn't going to interrupt them, but as she started to walk away, the sound of the wind died down enough for her to catch a glimpse of their conversation.

"He looks happy," Lily was musing.

"Yeah, he is. He's really happy."

"I can tell he really loves her."

"Oh, definitely."

Amelia's cheeks flamed as she realized that they were talking about her and Henry. Even though he had told her a million times by now that he loved her, hearing it come from someone else was validating in a different way. She tried to wipe the silly smile off her face as she went back to taking pictures, but she really wanted to be back with her Henry and it struck her abruptly that they hardly had any pictures together at all. She practically ran back to him.

"Ohmygodweneedapicturetogethercanweplease?" she asked in one breath.

Her enthusiasm made him light up too—albeit after the brief, confused moment during which his brain tried to process what in the world she'd said. "Of course."

She handed him her phone ("Take a couple" "Yes, ma'am") and scooted to his side to help him find just the right angle. They both smiled at the camera, but after clicking the button to take the first photo he sneakily curved in to kiss her on the cheek before he pressed it again. A laugh bubbled out of her, her heart skipping a beat in the most wonderful way.

"Sorry, couldn't resist," he grinned as he handed her phone back to her.

She opened her camera roll and was instantly happy with the first photo of them smiling, but she felt like she was falling in love all over again as she swiped to look through the rest of the photo burst. She hadn't thought it would actually turn out clear, but there it was, the exact moment he caught her by surprise. Henry's lips were pressed against her cheek and for the first time in her life, Amelia thought she looked genuinely radiant, wearing the biggest smile when he caught her off guard. She didn't know she could look like that.

Henry still had a bit of a smirk on his face, but it softened into a simpler smile when she passed him the phone to see the picture.

"You're beautiful," he said quietly, his gaze drifting back up to the real her, the face that existed outside of the screen.

"Oh, shut up."

If he kept being soppy, it was quite possible that she was going to shed actual tears, but she draped her arms around his neck so that he might hold her against him. Right where she wanted to be.

For a second, she closed her eyes and listened only to the steady beat of his heart.

For this sweet sliver of time, it felt like they were all going to be okay. More than okay.

It felt so, so good to be on top of the world for a day.

Amelia wouldn't have been very surprised if her legs gave out under her on the journey back to the bottom of the cathedral—who knew that walking down stairs could take so much effort?

She had no clue what they were going to do next, but she hoped it didn't involve more exercise. The others looked just as worn out as she felt, so at least she wasn't alone. They all had to catch their breath for a second, but Henry was the first to speak up.

"So...anyone up for an early lunch?"

Ah yes, her two favorite things: eating and not moving. Even though getting the gelato hadn't been very long ago, it felt like hours had already passed. Amelia was getting the impression that vacation in Italy basically just consisted of eating and then walking it off and then doing it all over again.

She was extremely full by the end of lunch, but her legs and feet were no longer killing her after having taken a break to rest. It also gave them time to figure out what they wanted to do all afternoon. They hadn't thought ahead that far, but as they were tossing around ideas, Lily's mom pointed out that there were a couple of leather markets they could check out if anyone was interested in buying souvenirs for themselves or anyone back home. Florence was known for its leather goods and the markets were apparently a good place to find all sorts of smaller items like clutches and journals that they'd actually be able to make room for in their suitcases when it was time to fly home. Naturally, it was also much easier to get scammed in an open-air market than it'd be in any of the boutiques, but the Caruso-Myers clan had visited enough times to know what to look for in authentic leather. Once the idea had been planted in her head, Amelia quite liked the idea of doing some shopping, and the trattoria they'd ended up at for lunch was a short walk from one of the markets.

They meandered through rows upon rows of stalls, all packed with more types of leather goods than she had even know existed. After just a couple of minutes, when Lily had stopped at a stall to look at some purses, Amelia spotted a journal that she thought Natasha might like. It was simple, but the brown cover was unbelievably smooth under her fingertips as she picked it up and carefully opened it. The paper inside was thick enough that she figured it would make for a pretty good sketchbook, which Nat was always in need of, and it was inexpensive. Once she'd dragged Jen over to double-check that the quality of the leather didn't seem questionable, Amelia decided to go ahead and buy it.

Henry sweetly offered to buy her something—anything she wanted—which did make her feel rather pampered, but she was horribly indecisive when it came to picking things out for herself. What did she actually need? She certainly didn't need a two-hundred euro bag and she didn't want him to blow a bunch of money on something that she wasn't going to get enough use out of. So while she could have jumped at the opportunity to get whatever she wanted right at that moment, she opted to look for something more sensible. He seemed mildly amused by her stubbornness.

"The keychains are cute," she finally said after lots of debating and several stalls.

And she'd meant it completely unironically, but Henry pressed his lips together like it was taking him a lot of effort to not poke fun at her.

"All the options in the world and you want a keychain?"

"Yeah, why not?"

The keychains were cute, each with a little iris flower, the giglio, stamped into the leather. It was simple and something she would see every day as a little reminder of their trip.

"You're ridiculous," he grinned, softly shaking his head, but he held out his hand for her to drop the keychain into it.

He handed the shopkeeper a whole five euros for it—they were being really big spenders today—and then passed Amelia's newly-acquired keychain to her. "What else do you want?"

She narrowed my eyes. "You're persistent, you know that? I don't need anything else."

"All this cash I withdrew isn't going to do me any good once we leave," he reminded her innocently.

"And this is literally our first day here," she countered, then mumbled, "...I'll maybe think about it."

It turned out that she received exactly what else she wanted shortly after they got the keychain. As they continued to meander around the market, Henry slowed to look at the leather jackets and Amelia's heart stumbled around drunkenly in her chest when he shrugged off his current jacket and held it out to her.

"Would it be too much trouble to hold this for a minute?"

It took some conscious effort on her end not to conspicuously stare at how nicely the thin tee shirt he had on underneath fit him. No, no it would not.

She swallowed. "Of course not."

And so Amelia stood to the side while he tried jackets on, giving her honest opinions and praying that her face didn't give away that she was thoroughly enjoying the views.

But he caught her eye—he knew exactly what he was doing to her, didn't he?—and grinned as he pulled one of the jackets on.

Pull yourself together, she thought. They were just jackets. She was acting like a middle school girl who was just noticing boys for the first time and she genuinely felt a little embarrassed about it, and yet it was a miracle that she was managing to give him any sort of coherent comments when he was out here looking like that.

She couldn't not pay attention to how the muscles in his arms and chest moved as he slipped the jackets on and off. How the breeze was making his hair messy and how his skin looked in the honey-hued light of the sun, which was just now starting to creep out from behind the clouds. How he had the slightest hint of stubble on his usually clean-shaven jaw. She definitely was not giving any thought to the way the tattoos snaked up his left arm and made her want to run her fingers along that spot on his shoulder where she knew the sleeve started.

Lily, who had drifted off a couple of stalls down with her mom, held back a snicker when she returned and saw how flustered Amelia was. Henry pulled on a brown jacket and turned to her, appearing satisfied with his appearance in the mirror.

"You like it?"

Like was an understatement. He had already been incredibly attractive in the black ones, but the brown really brought out the warmth in his hair and, by contrast, the vividness of his intensely blue eyes. Amelia was weak in the knees.

"Uh-"

Lily, a true hero, stepped in to save her.

"You look very handsome, Henry," she told him with feigned politeness, patting him on the shoulder. "You should get it."

Once he had turned his back, Amelia mouthed a silent thank you to Lily, who held back a giggle.

She didn't want Henry to buy anything else for her—the jacket was quite possibly more of a present for her than it was for him—so they moved on after that, not wanting to stay tied down in one place for too long and also not needing to blow all of their money on day one. From where they were right now, it probably would have taken them a solid hour or so to walk all the way back across the river to their villa, so they agreed to start moving back in that general direction and stop at anything that caught their eyes along the way.

When they came across another old church, Amelia asked if they could go inside to look at the frescoes.

It wasn't lost on her that there was something kind of odd about walking into a random church just to look at the art—why would you ever do that in the States?—but it was commonplace here. She supposed it was the obvious result of almost all of the art from the medieval era being patronized by the Church. There was so much history to absorb around every corner and it was hard to pass up the chance to see art from seven hundred, eight hundred years ago for free. She didn't know how much everyone else in their group even cared about the art versus how much they were simply humoring her, but she found it all to be pretty fascinating.

God would have to forgive her for thinking very not-holy thoughts about Henry just a few minutes ago.

He pulled open the huge wooden door and led the way inside. The interior of the church was dim and quiet, with just a few other tourists milling around, but she thought it was beautiful. The frescoes that still lined the walls after hundreds of years were impressive, even in their cracked, decaying state.

Amelia wished she knew more about Catholicism; Henry probably knew more than he cared to. Her ambivalence towards Christianity mostly stemmed from being around too many judgmental and hypocritical people growing up, her parents included. Henry had told her one of the very first times they talked that although his parents were Catholic, he had given up on religion for the most part. At the time she had just assumed that their experiences growing up might have been similar—she clearly couldn't have been more wrong.

One of the first concepts she was ever taught in Sunday School was that God is good. It should have been straightforward enough, and it was to all of those five-year-olds who lived privileged lives in their two-story houses in the suburbs with big backyards and happily married parents. But Henry wasn't like all of those other kids, so there was something unexpectedly eerie about watching him slowly walk down the center aisle from behind, framed entirely by extravagant architecture meant to honor a God who had hurt him badly. It made Amelia's heart ache for that little boy who had been broken, that boy who had been told by everyone around him that God was real and God was good only for that God to take his everything away from him.

She hurried over to meet him, trying not to draw too much attention to herself as her footsteps echoed on the marble under her feet. Henry was thoughtfully looking at one of the frescoes, his gaze rather emotionless.

"They don't hold up very well, do they?" he remarked dryly.

"Nope."

Her heart tightened when she turned to look at which image they were in front of. Although pieces of it had cracked off over time and the colors were extremely faded, it was still obvious which scene was being depicted. It was the story of Jesus raising the little girl from the dead.

"It was one of the only verses I could ever remember," he explained to her under his breath, where no one else would hear. "'Stop weeping, for she is not dead but asleep.' I think it made my parents feel better, but me...I don't know, it just made me mad."

There was a sort of wistful longing in his expression. Not the kind of acute sorrow that makes you cry or the dull pain that aches like a rock in your stomach and never wants to go away. It was that inevitable curiosity that came with loss, that unabating desire to get a glimpse at what else might have been. That tantalizing what if? that had burrowed in his heart eighteen years ago and would stay there for the rest of his life.

Amelia placed her hand on the back of his shoulder, gently rubbing it with her thumb. "We can leave if you want to," she whispered.

Her voice slowly drew him out of whatever thoughts he had drowned in.

"No, it's okay," he promised. "I'm fine. Don't get me wrong—I still think it's really cool, even if just aesthetically."

"I kind of forgot that you and Jesus aren't besties," she mumbled, causing Henry to crack a grin.

"No, we're not," he agreed, trying not to laugh at her comment. "I mean, you know, I had that classic how can God let bad things happen? crisis. It made no sense when I was six and still doesn't make any sense now, really. But who knows..."

He glanced over his shoulder at something—no, someone—across the room, and his lips curved up into the smallest smile for just a second. He was looking at Lily. The miracle he actually had gotten.

"Perhaps I was wrong to assume it's all bad."

____________________

A/N:

I am genuinely sorry that this chapter was 5 billion words long but I was determined to not make this book more than 50 chapters.