The next morning, at exactly five minutes past eight, Vicente found Madeline at her usual spot by the bushes. She was fidgeting, running her fingers over a small length of ribbon and bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, but slowed down a little as he approached. "Good morning."

"Morning," he returned. The incident from the day before still nagged at the back of his mind. "I-I'm sorry, again, for what happened yesterday."

"You apologise a lot," Madeline observed. There was no malice in her tone; it was like she was just stating the truth. "You don't have to, you know, there isn't anything to be sorry for."

"I guess old habits die hard." If he had a dollar every time he'd apologised to his parents for something completely unnecessary, he'd have enough money to buy himself a house.

"Not everything is your fault," she continued matter-of-factly. "Don't take responsibility for things out of your control."

"But I did have control of what I was trying to say and I shouldn't have — "

"It's fine. It really is. Just don't dwell on it, all right?" Madeline put her ribbon into her pocket and began walking towards the school building. "Now come on, let's go."

They stepped inside the building, where a few other students were lounging around and drinking coffees. As they walked to the lecture hall, Vicente asked, "should we go to The Cove after classes today?"

"Mmhmm." Madeline pushed the door of the lecture hall open and stepped inside. "I only have to teach at the city hall every Monday and Thursday, so I can spend all the other afternoons with you."

They took their seats towards the back of the hall and pulled out their notebooks, the air silent save for the sound of flipping paper. The door creaked open not long after that, welcoming a few more students.

Vicente peeked next to him, where Madeline was flipping through her textbook. In the dim light of the lecture hall, her blue eyes looked even brighter, like tiny, shimmering sapphires. She pursed her lips as she highlighted a point in a paragraph, so tense with concentration that she resembled a hunter tracking down their prey. It had to be a special skill, how she managed to make something as boring as skimming through a textbook look so beautiful.

Loud, heavy footsteps sounded at the front of the hall, and their professor cleared her throat. Vicente jolted, realising he'd been staring at Madeline, and flushed. He busied himself with writing in his notebook and prayed that she hadn't noticed.

…

As per Leon's recommendation, Vicente ordered a mug of hot chocolate at The Cove. A toasted marshmallow bobbed up and down in the rich, sweet drink and was slowly melting. Across the table, Madeline was pouring herself a cup of red tea, the steam rising up from her cup fogging her glasses. The chef, who apparently knew her well, had left her a handmade doily on the saucer.

Madeline set down the porcelain teapot gently and picked up her saucer, looking right at Vicente. Her gaze seemed to pierce right through him. Those sky-blue eyes could change so quickly, from being bright with joy to stormy with rage, or, as they were now, sharp and cutting.

The words that left her mouth, though, were a far cry from her gaze. "Tell me more about you."

He nearly dropped his mug. "Huh?"

"I want to know you." Madeline lifted the teacup to her lips and drank from it, closing her eyes briefly. "We've been friends for a month now, and I still don't know much about you. I know that your brother owns a restaurant somewhere here, you're the middle child in your family and you're an amazing baker, but that's all."

Vicente took a sip of the hot chocolate before asking, "what do you want to know?"

"Anything." That look was back, brilliant and discerning. "Where are you from? What's your favourite colour? What languages do you know other than English?"

"Well…" he took another sip. "I'll start with the first question, since it's a long story. I was born in Macau, but my family moved to Hong Kong when I was two years old. My younger brother Leon was born there. A year after that, we moved again to Taipei, where Yuet Ling, my little sister, was born. Then, when I was nine years old, we left Taipei and arrived at Arlingdale."

Taking another drink from her teacup, Madeline said, "that's close by, right?"

"An hour or so away, I think." Vicente warmed his hands with the heated mug. "We lived there for nine more years until my oldest brother Yao graduated from university. He left home to start his restaurant here, and we all decided to follow him."

"I see."

"How about you?" He asked.

She fiddled with the doily on her saucer, running slender fingers over the crocheted flowers. "We were born in Nice, France," she said. "After my parents got a divorce, my mother moved to Quebec City in Canada. Francis got his cooking and pastry diplomas in Ottawa and decided to move away to Trofilos to start his own bakery. After Matthieu and I graduated high school, our parents encouraged us to follow him, work at the Boulangerie for a while before attending the local university." Madeline reached for the teapot again. "Last week, you told me you had a stepbrother. Were your parents divorced, too?"

Slightly taken aback, Vicente nodded. "Kiku and his mother moved in when I was twelve. He was all right, we still text every day. But his mother…" it all came flooding back — the insults, the shouting, the sound of a hand striking against a face. None of it had happened to him, but being spared while forced to watch his siblings suffer had been a million times worse. He struggled to keep the memories at bay. "Kiku's mother is the reason why we left."

"Oh," she said, somewhat flatly. "My parents' divorce didn't affect us that much, so I'm lucky. My father visited us every two weeks, and I get along with my stepfather. In fact, I'm probably closer to him than I am to Francis."

He recalled the few spats he head Madeline and Francis have in the Boulangerie's kitchen, where Francis claimed his sister was incompetent or worse than Matthieu, or kicked her out of the kitchen altogether. "I'm sorry. It must be terrible to have siblings who aren't nice to you, especially since you work with him."

"He isn't unkind." Madeline twisted the doily. "No, Francis has always been overprotective of me. Even when I was young, he'd follow me around as I played because he was worried I'd get hurt." She twisted the doily harder, tugging at one of the stitches. "That's exactly the problem. He was protective to the point of being controlling; he stopped me from doing lots of things because he thought I'd get hurt. Not even my parents were so watchful of me. But it never really got to me until several years ago, when Francis… well, he…"

"You don't have to tell me," Vicente said quickly.

She sighed. "I'd rather not keep it bottled up inside me." Madeline stared into her tea, as though it could provide her with some consolation. "And I trust that you won't tell anyone, will you?"

"I won't tell a soul."

"All right, then. You remember yesterday, when I told you I could be dancing professionally?" She clenched her fists, glowering at her teacup. "It's Francis' fault I'm not." Another sigh. "Ever since I was seven, I'd trained at the top schools in the countries. I was good at it, I loved it. I started dancing in France, and I continued doing so in Canada; it was one of the only things that stayed the same after moving.

"But for some reason, Francis got the idea that dancing wasn't good for me. I guess he thought all the things I'd have to focus on, turnout and extensions and all that, would be too much for me to handle, or being on stage with music constantly playing would make me shut down." Madeline's voice wavered slightly. "He was wrong — being in the studio was one of the only times I wasn't overwhelmed. But he didn't listen when I told him that. He never listened.

"When I was sixteen, Francis went to my coaches himself. I don't know what he told them, but it was enough to convince them that I wasn't to train again. No matter what I said, I couldn't talk my way back into training again." Her voice grew quiet; her eyes darkened. "My coaches believed him over me, their own student. After I left that dance school, Francis stopped me from dancing."

Vicente reached hesitantly across the table, his hand stopping a few centimeters away from her clenched fist. "T-That's awful," he said softly. "Francis had no right to keep you from dancing."

Madeline's knuckles were white as she squeezed tighter, continuing, "I tried teaching myself how to dance after that, and I've managed for two years. Of course, I jumped at the chance to hold lessons at the city hall if it meant I could dance at an actual studio again. I'll never be on stage as a principal dancer like I dreamed, but I guess this is close enough." A tear slipped down her cheek.

He couldn't help closing the distance between them, covering her hand with his own and keeping it there until she relaxed, reaching her other hand up to wipe her eyes. "Thank you for listening," she whispered. "I've never told anyone about what happened between Francis and I."

They stayed like that for a peaceful, comforting moment, hands overlapping in the middle of the table while their drinks cooled beside them. Then Madeline spoke up. "I suppose that's the problem with Francis. He's like a helicopter, always hovering around me and trying to keep me out of harm, but he just causes more problems. I don't know why, but I thought you'd understand the feeling."

"My parents, especially my stepmother, never gave me the light of day." Vicente surprised himself by speaking. "Maybe they thought that because my grades weren't as high as Yao's or as low as Leon's, there wasn't any need to help me. Or maybe they just forgot about me." He tapped a finger absently against Madeline's wrist. "We barely talked. They were barely home, and for a long time Yao and I had to cook dinner for the family. They gave me a lot of freedom, sure, but it was more because they didn't want to bother with me."

"But you're away from them now, right? You've found people who care."

"Of course. There are my siblings, my stepbrother." He smiled slightly. "There's you."

She smiled, too, sweet and genuine. It wasn't the smile he saw on her when she was talking to customers at the Boulangerie, the strained one that didn't quite reach her eyes. It was real, one that seemed to stop time itself with its joy and relief. If only he could draw — then he'd be able to document that smile for eternity.

The loud buzzing of his phone snapped him out of his daydream. Vicente pulled his phone out of his bag and turned it on. The screen displayed the words 82 MISSED CALLS. Half of them were from Yao and the other half from Leon and Ling.

Oh, no.

"Your siblings?" Madeline asked.

He turned his phone off again. "Who else? I think they'll show up here any minute to tear me apart or something."

"We should get going," she agreed. "I want to get some stretching done before going back to the Boulangerie." Madeline finished off her tea and stood up, fixing the ribbon in her hair. "You can go catch the bus. I'll pay this time."

Reluctantly standing up, Vicente placed his purse back in his pocket and pushed his chair in. "See you tomorrow."

"See you." Madeline went to the cashier, counting coins in her wallet. "And thank you again, for listening."

"Any time." He pushed the door open and stepped out into the cool evening.