Londres Sem Adeus

The first time I saw Sadie, she was arguing with a pigeon.

Not the way people argue with pigeons, the exasperated shooing motion, the muttered curses. She was squatting on the pavement outside a bookshop in Bloomsbury, speaking to it in a low, serious voice, as if she expected answers. The pigeon, to its credit, appeared to be listening. It cocked its head, took one cautious step toward her foot, and waited.

I watched from across the street because that's what you do when you're alone in a foreign city and something strange and beautiful presents itself. You stop. You stare. You pretend you're looking at a building.

She wore an oversized denim jacket with a patch on the sleeve, something embroidered in gold thread I couldn't read from that distance. Her hair was pulled back in a messy knot, loose strands catching the weak afternoon light. She wasn't pretty in the obvious way, the way that makes you look twice and forget by the next block. She was pretty in the way that makes you want to sit down and figure out how the pieces fit together.

The pigeon lost interest and flew away. She stood up, dusted her hands on her jeans, and noticed me standing there like an idiot.

"You're the Brazilian," she said. Not a question.

I should explain. My cousin Rafael lived in London for two years before moving back to São Paulo. He'd sublet his room to me for the month, a cramped box in a shared flat in Clapham, and he'd told his flatmates about the cousin from Brazil who would be crashing in his old space. He'd also, apparently, told a girl named Sadie who studied theater and sometimes came over to watch movies with the flatmates. He'd shown her photos of our trip to the coast two years ago. He'd mentioned my name, my job, my approximate arrival date.

"She said she wanted to meet you," Rafael had told me over WhatsApp before I left. "I don't know. She's weird. You'll like her."

So there she was, on a Tuesday afternoon in October, having just finished a conversation with a pigeon, calling me out before I could come up with a lie about being a confused tourist.

"Guilherme," I said, crossing the street. I almost tripped on the curb. "Rafael's cousin."

"I know." She tilted her head, studying me the way I'd studied her. "I'm Sadie. The pigeon's name is Jeremy. He's an asshole but he means well."

"Jeremy."

"He's got a thing for breadcrumbs. Thinks he's entitled to them. I was explaining the concept of boundaries."

I laughed. It came out louder than I meant it to, a bark of surprise that made a woman with a stroller glance our way. Sadie didn't smile, but something shifted in her eyes, a flicker that said she'd filed the sound away for later.

"You want to get coffee?" she asked. "There's a place around the corner. They don't charge extra for oat milk, which is basically a political statement in this city."

That was three weeks ago. Three weeks of coffee shops and bookstores and one disastrous attempt to visit the Tate Modern on a Saturday. Three weeks of messages that started with "How's the jet lag treating you?" and ended with "Same time tomorrow?" Three weeks of watching someone become familiar, the slow geometry of learning how another person's mind works, the shape of their humor, the weight of their silences.

And now, three days left.

---

The restaurant was her choice. A small Italian place in a part of London I couldn't name, down a street that looked like every other street in London, narrow and wet and glowing with amber light from the windows. She'd been there once before, she said, with a girl from her program who'd since moved back to Ohio. The pasta was good. The wine was cheap. The owner had a habit of forgetting your order but bringing you free bread to apologize, which she considered a fair trade.

We got a table by the window. Outside, the Thames was a dark smear between buildings, barely visible through the rain that had started falling as we walked in. I watched the droplets race down the glass while Sadie scanned the menu she already knew by heart.

"I'm getting the carbonara," she said. "Don't tell me what you're getting. I want to be surprised."

"I was going to get the carbonara too."

"Then I'm getting something else. This is already boring."

She closed the menu and set it aside. The candle on the table threw shadows across her face, catching the curve of her jaw, the slight hollow under her cheekbone. She had a face that looked different in every light, and I'd spent more time than I cared to admit cataloging the variations.

"Tell me something I don't know about you," she said.

"That's a broad request."

"Start small. Favorite color. Worst injury. The first movie that made you cry."

"The first movie that made me cry was The Lion King. I was four. I sobbed for an hour and my mom had to call my dad at work to come home because she couldn't calm me down."

Sadie laughed, a short burst of air through her nose. "That's good. That's really good."

"Your turn."

She thought for a moment. "I used to steal my sister's clothes when I was twelve. Not to wear them. I just took them and hid them under my bed. I don't know why. I think I liked having something of hers that she couldn't find."

"Did she ever figure it out?"

"Eventually. She found a sweater she'd been looking for for six months. She was so mad she didn't talk to me for a week." Sadie shrugged. "Worth it."

The owner came by, a heavyset man with a mustache that seemed to have its own personality. He apologized for the wait before we'd even ordered. Sadie smiled at him like he was an old friend. She spoke to him in Italian, just a few phrases, and his face lit up. He brought us a plate of bruschetta before we could ask.

"You speak Italian?" I said after he left.

"A little. Enough to order food and apologize for my existence. The two most important skills in any language."

"You never mentioned that."

"You never asked." She reached for a piece of bruschetta. "There's a lot you haven't asked."

The words hung there, heavier than they should have been. I watched her bite into the bread, the crunch audible across the table. She didn't look at me.

"I'm asking now," I said.

She chewed slowly, swallowed, wiped a crumb from the corner of her mouth. "Okay. Ask me something real."

I thought about it. The easy questions crowded my throat, the ones about her family, her childhood, her dreams for after graduation. But those felt like interview questions, the kind you ask when you're trying to fill silence, not when you actually want to know.

"What are you afraid of?"

She looked up. The candlelight caught her eyes, green in this light, though I'd seen them look gray in the afternoon and brown in the morning. She held my gaze for a long moment.

"Being forgettable," she said. "Not in the big way. I don't need to be famous or leave a mark on history or whatever. I mean in the small way. The way that matters. I'm afraid of being someone that people remember wrong, or don't remember at all, because I never showed them who I actually was."

I didn't say anything. The words sat between us, honest in a way that felt almost too intimate for a Tuesday night in a restaurant with bad lighting and mediocre wine.

"That's real," I said.

"You asked."

"I know. Thank you."

She smiled, and it was different from the other smiles I'd seen from her. Softer. More careful. Like she was testing whether it was safe to let me see this version of her.

"Your turn," she said. "What are you afraid of?"

I didn't have to think. The answer had been sitting in my chest for three weeks, growing heavier with each passing day.

"Leaving," I said. "And finding out that this" I gestured between us, "was just a vacation thing. Something that mattered here but doesn't survive in the real world."

Sadie reached across the table and touched my wrist. Her fingers were cold from holding the wine glass.

"It's not," she said. "I don't know what it is yet. But it's not just a vacation thing."

The owner arrived with our pasta, and the moment broke. But the warmth of her hand stayed on my skin for the rest of the meal.

---

After dinner, we walked along the South Bank. The rain had stopped, leaving the streets slick and gleaming, reflecting the city lights like a second London underwater. The wind came off the river in gusts, sharp and cold, cutting through my jacket like it wasn't there.

Sadie walked close to me, her shoulder brushing mine with every step. Neither of us commented on it. Neither of us pulled away.

"I used to think London was a character in a movie," she said. "Before I moved here. I'd watch films set in this city and think, that's not a real place. That's a set. A backdrop for stories."

"And now?"

She looked around, at the lit windows of the National Theatre, the curve of the Millennium Bridge, the dark water moving beneath us.

"Now I think it's a place where stories happen to you whether you want them to or not. You can't just walk down the street here without something happening. A pigeon picks a fight with you. A stranger from Brazil watches you from across the street. You fall into something you didn't plan for."

"Falling," I repeated. "Is that what we're doing?"

She stopped walking. We were on the bridge now, halfway across, the wind whipping her hair across her face. She tucked it behind her ear and looked at me.

"I don't know what else to call it. Do you?"

I thought about the word. Falling. It implied something uncontrolled, a loss of footing, a descent into unknown territory. It felt accurate.

"No," I said. "I don't have a better word."

She reached for my hand. Her fingers found mine, cold and certain, and laced between them like they'd been doing it for years.

"Then let's not name it yet," she said. "Let's just walk."

We walked. The bridge led us to the north side of the river, then into a maze of streets I didn't recognize. Sadie led the way without hesitation, weaving through alleys and past closed shops, past a pub where someone was playing piano badly, past a woman walking a dog that looked like a small horse. The city was alive around us, indifferent and beautiful, and I was holding Sadie's hand in the middle of it.

"Estranho pensar que essa pode ser uma das últimas noites," she said.

I stopped. "You said that in Portuguese."

"I know. I've been practicing."

"You've been practicing Portuguese?"

She shrugged, but there was a smile tugging at her mouth. "I had time. You talk in your sleep sometimes, did you know that? The other night at the pub, you fell asleep on the couch for like twenty minutes and you kept saying things in Portuguese. I couldn't understand any of it, but I liked the sound."

I didn't remember falling asleep at the pub. I didn't remember saying anything in Portuguese. But the idea of her listening to me, trying to parse the sounds of a language she didn't know, did something to my chest that I couldn't name.

"What did I say?"

"I don't know. That's the problem." She squeezed my hand. "You'll have to teach me."

"Three days isn't enough time to learn Portuguese."

"Then I'll have to come to Brazil."

The words hung in the air, casual and enormous. She said them like she was talking about taking a bus across town, not crossing an ocean. I didn't know if she meant it. I didn't know if I wanted her to mean it.

"Come to Brazil," I said.

"Maybe I will."

"When?"

She turned to face me. The street was empty, a narrow lane between buildings that leaned toward each other like they were sharing secrets. The only light came from a single lamp above a door, casting a weak yellow circle around us.

"When you invite me," she said.

I looked at her. The shadows made her face unreadable, but her eyes were clear. She wasn't joking. She wasn't testing me.

"Come to Brazil," I said again, and this time it wasn't a hypothetical. "Come visit me. Stay with me. I'll show you Rio. I'll show you São Paulo. I'll take you to the coast where Rafael and I went, the place in the photos. I'll teach you Portuguese badly and you'll laugh at my accent in English and we'll figure out the rest as we go."

She was quiet for a long moment. The wind picked up, and she shivered, and I pulled her closer without thinking. She came willingly, her body fitting against mine like it belonged there.

"That's an invitation," she said.

"It is."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay, I'll come." She looked up at me, and there was something in her expression I couldn't read, something careful and hopeful at the same time. "But you have to promise me something."

"Anything."

"Don't let this become a thing we talked about doing and never did. I've had enough of those. I want this to be real."

I kissed her. Not because I'd planned it, not because the moment demanded it, but because there was nothing else I could do with the feeling building in my chest. Her lips were cold from the wind, soft, surprised for half a second before she kissed me back. Her hand came up to my jaw, her fingers cold against my skin, and she held me there like she was afraid I'd disappear if she let go.

We stayed like that until the cold became too much, until we were both shivering and laughing against each other's mouths.

"We should go back," she said.

"To your place?"

"To yours. My flatmates are probably still up. Yours are never home."

She was right. The flat in Clapham was essentially mine for the month, the other rooms occupied by people I saw maybe twice a week, passing in the hallway like ghosts. It wasn't much, a bedroom and a shared living space and a kitchen that smelled faintly of someone else's curry, but it was private.

We took the Tube. The train was nearly empty, just a man in a suit reading a newspaper and a teenager with headphones so loud I could hear the bass from three seats away. Sadie sat with her leg pressed against mine, her hand resting on my thigh, casual and proprietary. She looked out the window at the dark tunnels rushing past, and I watched her reflection in the glass.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked.

"Whether I should text my mom about you."

"Should you?"

"She's going to ask. She asks about everything. I told her about the Brazilian guy I met and she's been asking ever since. She wants to know if you're cute."

"What did you tell her?"

Sadie turned to look at me. The fluorescent lights of the train made her look pale, almost ethereal, like something from a black-and-white photograph.

"I told her you were the kind of cute that sneaks up on you. That you don't realize how much you're looking at someone until you can't stop."

I didn't know what to say to that. So I kissed her again, there on the nearly empty train, with the teenager's music bleeding through his headphones and the man in the suit pretending not to notice. She laughed against my mouth.

"We're going to be those people," she said.

"What people?"

"The ones making out on public transportation. I always judged those people."

"Guess we're those people now."

"Guess we are."

---

The flat was dark when we got there. The hallway light was on, the one that never turned off because the switch was behind a bookshelf and no one wanted to move it. I unlocked the door and let her in ahead of me.

She stood in the middle of the living room, looking around. I saw the space through her eyes: the mismatched furniture, the stack of books on the coffee table, the map of London I'd pinned to the wall with marks where I'd been. The postcards I'd bought but never sent, spread across the table like a collection of unfinished thoughts.

"You really keep everything," she said.

"I like to remember."

She picked up a postcard, one I'd bought at the British Museum. A detail from the Rosetta Stone, the text blurry and ancient. She turned it over, read the blank back, set it down again.

"What do you remember most?" she asked. "From this trip."

I thought about it. The tourist things, the landmarks, the moments I'd cataloged for Instagram posts I'd never write. But those weren't the real memories.

"The first time you laughed at something I said," I told her. "We were at that coffee shop, the one with the terrible music. I made a joke about the barista's mustache. You laughed so hard you snorted, and then you looked horrified, and then you laughed harder. I think that's when I knew."

"Knew what?"

"That I was going to have a problem. That I was going to want to stay."

She set the postcard down carefully. She crossed the room and stood in front of me, close enough that I could smell her perfume, something floral and faint, mixed with the rain and the city.

"You don't have to stay," she said. "You just have to come back."

"I will."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

She kissed me again, slower this time. Her hands found the hem of my shirt, her fingers cold against my skin. I pulled her closer, felt her heartbeat through her jacket, or maybe it was mine. I couldn't tell anymore.

The night stretched out ahead of us, full of possibility and the weight of the days we had left. Three days. Seventy-two hours. Enough time to fall deeper, not enough time to reach the bottom.

---

We ended up on the couch, wrapped in the blanket I'd bought from a street vendor on my second day in London. It was too thin and smelled vaguely of diesel, but it was all I had. Sadie didn't complain. She curled into my side, her head on my chest, her fingers tracing patterns on my arm.

"What would you do," she said, "if you had another month?"

"In London?"

"Anywhere. Here. Brazil. Somewhere in between. If time wasn't a factor."

I thought about it. "I'd take you to the places I haven't seen yet. The ones I was saving for later. The observatory in Greenwich. That garden in Kew. The market in Camden where I got lost for two hours."

"Those are all London things."

"Because I want to see them with you. I want to build a version of London that has you in it."

She was quiet for a moment. Her fingers stopped moving.

"That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me," she said. "And you said it completely by accident."

"I meant it."

"I know. That's what makes it romantic."

I laughed, and she laughed too, and then we were both laughing for no reason, the kind of laughter that comes from being too tired and too happy and too aware that it can't last.

"What about you?" I asked. "What would you do with another month?"

She tilted her head up to look at me. "I'd take you to my favorite spots. The ones I don't show tourists. The bench in Hampstead Heath where I go to think. The record shop in Soho where the owner knows my name. The bridge where I had my first kiss in London, because I want to overwrite that memory with something better."

"Something better?"

"You." She said it simply, like it was obvious. "I want to look at that bridge and think about the night I stood there with a Brazilian boy who watched me argue with a pigeon and didn't run away."

"Jeremy," I said.

"Jeremy. I want to think about Jeremy and you and the way you laughed when I told you his name. I want to remember that forever."

I pulled her closer. The blanket was too thin and the couch was lumpy and outside the window, London was cold and dark and indifferent. But inside, in this small space, with her in my arms, I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time.

I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

---

We fell asleep on the couch. I don't remember when. One moment we were talking, her voice getting softer, her responses getting slower. The next, she was breathing evenly against my chest, her hand curled loosely over my heart.

I didn't move. I didn't want to wake her. I lay there in the dark, listening to the sounds of the flat, the occasional car outside, the hum of the refrigerator. I thought about the days I had left. The flight I'd booked months ago, before I knew her name. The return to a life that didn't include her.

I'd meant what I said about her coming to Brazil. But I also knew how these things went. How promises made in the heat of something new could cool into good intentions, then into forgotten plans, then into a memory you pulled out sometimes when you were drunk and feeling nostalgic.

I didn't want that. I wanted to be wrong about how the world worked. I wanted this to be the exception.

Sadie shifted in her sleep, murmuring something I couldn't catch. Her hand moved to my face, her fingers brushing my cheek, and she settled again.

I closed my eyes. I let myself pretend that this wasn't temporary. That I didn't have a ticket home. That the days weren't numbered.

I let myself pretend, just for a few hours, that I could stay.

---

I woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of someone moving in the kitchen.

For a moment, I forgot where I was. The light through the window was gray and unfamiliar, the ceiling was the wrong height, the blanket smelled wrong. Then I remembered. Sadie. The couch. The night before.

I sat up, stiff from sleeping in a bad position. The blanket fell to my waist. My shirt was wrinkled, my hair a disaster. I probably looked terrible.

Sadie stood in the kitchen doorway, holding two mugs. She was wearing my jacket, the one I'd left over the chair, and her hair was even messier than mine. She looked at me and smiled.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty."

"What time is it?"

"Almost ten. I found coffee. I hope you don't mind that I raided your kitchen."

"I don't mind. I didn't know I had coffee."

"You have instant coffee. It's terrible. I made it anyway." She crossed the room and handed me a mug. "Drink up. We have things to do."

"We do?"

She sat down on the edge of the couch, tucking her feet under her. "I've been thinking. Three days isn't enough time to be sad about leaving. It's enough time to make sure we don't waste a second. So I'm making a plan."

"A plan."

"Today: we go to the British Library and find the most boring book we can and take a picture with it. Then we go to that Korean place you mentioned, the one with the barbecue. Then we walk along the canal until we get tired. Tomorrow: I'm taking you to my favorite park, and then we're going to see a terrible movie at that cinema in Hackney, the one that only plays old films. And the day after" she paused, "the day after, we figure out how to say goodbye without actually saying goodbye."

I took a sip of the coffee. It was terrible, just like she said. But it was hot, and she'd made it, and that made it the best coffee I'd ever had.

"That's a good plan," I said.

"I know. I'm good at plans."

"You're good at a lot of things."

She raised an eyebrow. "Flattery will get you everywhere."

She leaned in and kissed me. Her lips tasted like coffee, bitter and warm. Her hand found mine, the one not holding the mug, and squeezed.

"Three days," she said against my mouth. "Let's make them count."

---

We didn't make it to the British Library.

We made it as far as the front door. She was putting on her shoes, talking about the most boring book she could think of, something about agricultural policy in the 18th century, and I was laughing at the way she said "agricultural" with an exaggerated British accent. She looked up at me, mid-sentence, and stopped.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing." She stood up, leaving one shoe on, one shoe off. "I just realized something."

"What?"

"I don't want to go to the British Library."

"Okay. We can do something else."

"No, I mean" she stepped closer, "I don't want to go anywhere. I want to stay here. With you. In this tiny flat with the bad coffee and the lumpy couch. I want to order food and watch something terrible on your laptop and not leave this apartment for the rest of the day."

"That's a very different plan than the one you proposed an hour ago."

"I know. I'm allowed to change my mind."

I looked at her. She stood there, one shoe on, one shoe off, wearing my jacket, her hair a mess, her eyes bright with something that looked like hope. She was ridiculous. She was wonderful. She was everything I didn't know I was looking for.

"Okay," I said. "We'll stay."

She grinned. She kicked off the other shoe and pulled me back toward the couch.

---

The day passed in a blur of small things. We ordered Thai food and ate it straight from the containers. We watched a documentary about deep-sea creatures and she fell asleep on my shoulder for twenty minutes. We played music from her phone, a playlist she'd made called "Songs That Sound Like Rain," and I told her about the music I grew up with, the Brazilian artists she'd never heard of, the songs that reminded me of home.

She asked me to teach her Portuguese. I started with the basics, hello and goodbye and thank you, and she repeated them back with an accent that made me laugh every time.

"Você é linda," I said.

"What does that mean?"

"You're beautiful."

She blushed. I'd never seen her blush before. It spread across her cheeks, pink and warm, and she looked away.

"Say it again," she said.

"Você é linda."

"Slower."

"Você" I touched her face, "é" I traced her jaw, "linda."

She kissed me. Slow and deep and full of everything we hadn't said out loud.

When we broke apart, she was smiling.

"I'm going to learn Portuguese," she said. "I'm going to learn it so I can understand what you say in your sleep."

"You might regret that. I probably say embarrassing things."

"I want to hear all of them."

We stayed on the couch as the light outside shifted from gray to orange to dark. The city hummed around us, indifferent to what was happening in this small flat. But inside, in the space between us, something was growing. Something that felt a lot like permanence.

---

That night, after we'd eaten the last of the Thai food and turned off the music, she lay with her head on my chest, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on my skin. The room was dark except for the light from the street, filtering through the curtains in pale stripes.

"Guilherme," she said.

"Mm?"

"I don't want you to go."

I felt the words like a physical weight. They settled in my chest, heavy and true.

"I don't want to go."

"Then don't."

"You know I have to."

"I know." She was quiet for a moment. "But I don't have to like it."

I ran my hand through her hair, soft and tangled. She closed her eyes.

"What if I came with you?" she said.

I stopped moving. "What?"

"To Brazil. What if I came with you? On your flight. In two days. I could pack tonight. I could call my professor and tell her I have an emergency. I could figure out the rest when I get there."

"Sadie."

"I'm serious. I've been thinking about it all day. I don't have anything keeping me here. My lease ends next month. My program is basically done. I could go."

I sat up. She sat up too, looking at me with an intensity that made my heart race.

"You can't just drop everything and move to another country for someone you've known for three weeks."

"Why not?"

"Because" I stopped. Because it's crazy. Because that's not how the world works. Because I'm terrified that if you come, you'll realize I'm not worth it, and I'll lose you anyway.

But I didn't say any of that.

"Because I don't want you to regret it," I said instead.

She reached for my hand. "The only thing I'd regret is not trying."

I looked at her. In the dim light, her eyes were dark, unreadable. But her hand was steady in mine.

"Come to Brazil," I said, for the third time.

"I will."

"When?"

She smiled. "When you invite me."

I laughed. "I just did."

"That wasn't an invitation. That was a wish. An invitation comes with a date."

I thought about it. The logistics. The money. The uncertainty of it all. But then I thought about her on the couch, in my jacket, talking to a pigeon. I thought about the way she said my name, the way she laughed, the way she fit against me like she'd been designed for it.

"January," I said. "Come in January. It's summer in Brazil. I'll take you to the beach. I'll show you what the sun looks like when it's actually warm."

She grinned. "January. I'll be there."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

She kissed me, and I believed her. I believed her completely, with the kind of faith that only makes sense when you're young and in love and stupid enough to think that wanting something badly enough can make it real.

Maybe it can. Maybe that's the only thing that ever makes anything real.

---

The next morning, we woke up tangled together on the couch. The blanket had fallen off sometime in the night, and the flat was cold. But I didn't care. I lay there, watching her sleep, memorizing the way her eyelashes rested against her cheeks, the way her lips parted slightly, the way her hand was curled against my chest like she was holding onto me even in her dreams.

I didn't want to move. I wanted to stay in this moment forever, suspended in the amber of a London morning, before the countdown resumed and the days became hours.

But the light was getting brighter, and somewhere in the city, a clock was ticking.

She stirred, her eyes fluttering open. She looked at me, confused for a second, then smiled.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey."

"What time is it?"

"Early. Go back to sleep."

"No." She stretched, her back arching, her arms reaching above her head. "We have two days. I'm not wasting them sleeping."

She sat up, her hair a wild mess, her eyes still heavy with sleep. She looked at me, and something in her expression shifted.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing. I'm just" she paused, "I'm trying to remember this. Every detail. So I can pull it out later when I need it."

"Pull it out?"

"When I'm missing you. When you're in Brazil and I'm here and I need to remember what it felt like to wake up next to you."

I reached for her hand. "You won't need to remember. You'll be there in January."

"I know. But I want to remember this version too. The beginning. Before everything got complicated."

I pulled her close. She rested her head on my shoulder, and we sat there, in the gray morning light, holding onto each other like the world outside didn't exist.

But it did. And it was waiting.

---

Two days.

Forty-eight hours.

We spent them like people who knew exactly what they were losing. We went to the British Library and took a picture with a book about 18th-century agricultural policy. We ate Korean barbecue and she burned her tongue on the rice and laughed about it. We walked along the canal, past houseboats and graffiti and a heron that stood perfectly still, watching us pass.

We went to her favorite park, a sprawling green space in the north of the city, and lay on the grass looking up at the sky. She pointed out clouds that looked like animals, and I told her about the constellations in the southern hemisphere, the ones she'd never seen.

"Show me when I'm there," she said.

"I will."

We saw a terrible movie at the cinema in Hackney, an old horror film from the 70s that was more funny than scary. She held my hand through the whole thing, her thumb tracing circles on my palm.

On the last night, we went back to the restaurant by the Thames. The owner remembered us. He brought us free tiramisu and told Sadie her Italian was improving. She smiled at him, but I could see the weight behind her eyes.

After dinner, we walked along the river. The wind was cold, but she didn't seem to notice. She held my hand, her fingers laced through mine, and we walked in silence.

"I don't know how to do this," she said finally.

"Do what?"

"Say goodbye. I've never been good at it. I always cry, and then I say something stupid, and then I spend the next week feeling like I forgot to say something important."

"Then don't say goodbye."

She looked at me.

"Say 'see you later' instead," I said. "Because that's what it is. You're seeing me later. In January. In Brazil."

She was quiet for a long moment. Then she nodded.

"See you later, Guilherme."

"See you later, Sadie."

She kissed me, there by the river, with the city lights glittering around us. It tasted like salt, but I couldn't tell if it was from her tears or mine.

---

The morning of my flight, she came with me to the airport.

We stood outside security, surrounded by the chaos of travelers, and we held onto each other like the world was ending. Maybe it was. Maybe a version of it was.

"Text me when you land," she said.

"I will."

"Call me when you get home."

"I will."

"Don't forget about me."

I pulled back and looked at her. "I couldn't forget you if I tried."

She smiled, but her eyes were wet. "That's a good line."

"It's not a line. It's the truth."

She kissed me one last time. Quick and fierce and full of everything we hadn't said.

Then she let me go.

I walked through security. I didn't look back. I knew that if I looked back, I wouldn't leave.

The plane took off at noon. I watched London shrink beneath me, the gray sprawl of it, the river curling through it like a silver thread. Somewhere down there, Sadie was watching the same sky.

I closed my eyes and thought about January. About the summer heat. About the beach. About her stepping off a plane into a world that was waiting for her.

I thought about the promise we'd made.

And I believed it.

---

Three months later, on a Tuesday afternoon in January, I stood at the arrivals gate at Galeão Airport in Rio de Janeiro, holding a sign that said "Bem-vinda, Sadie" in messy handwriting.

The doors opened. People streamed through, tired and rumpled from their flights. I scanned every face, my heart pounding.

And then I saw her.

She was wearing the same denim jacket, the one with the gold embroidery I'd never been able to read. Her hair was shorter, pulled back in a different way. She looked tired. She looked beautiful.

She saw me. She stopped.

For a second, neither of us moved. The crowd flowed around us, indifferent to the moment that was happening.

Then she smiled. That smile, the one I'd been carrying with me for three months.

I dropped the sign. I started walking.

She started running.

We met in the middle, and I caught her, and she laughed, and I kissed her, and the world fell away.

"See?" she said, her voice muffled against my shoulder. "I told you I'd come."

"You took your time."

"I had to pack."

I laughed. I held her tighter. The summer sun streamed through the airport windows, warm and golden, and for the first time in months, everything felt right.

"Welcome to Brazil," I said.

She looked up at me, her eyes bright.

"Show me everything."