[locked from Rory]

I know I'm being childish here but I can't help it.

I've been wandering around Alessandro's empty house all morning. He wanted me to go with him to Mass but I just can't do that. It makes me feel even smaller than I already do to sit in an nearly ancient Cathedral and listen to some wizened old relic carry on in a language I barely speak (Latin) about damnation and guilt, knowing I have more than my fair share of what the Catholic Church would consider sin on my soul.

That's not really what I am being childish about though, cowardly maybe but not childish.

No, it's Ro.

He didn't ask me to stay. Didn't ask me not to go. He didn't come after me to ask me to come back to New York either.

It's not that I left just so he would chase me. It's not that at all. I don't know what I would have done had he asked me to stay or had he shown up here asking me to return.

I'm not making much sense.

I do keep wondering if part of him is glad that I'm gone. I'm so scared that he is.

[RP for Rory] There's Static On the Line...

takes place well into the second week of January

She needed a break from the oppressive heat in Alessandro's glassworks studio, needed a drink of water and to wipe the sweat from her brow. She also wiped at the back of her neck and the small of her back. Moisture gathered everywhere it could pool as she worked and it didn't bother her until she stopped long enough to break her concentration. Now it positively itched.

Carrying her towel and a bottle of water outside with her, Pippa sat on a low stone bench and leaned against the building's exterior. Several days ago she'd had a conversation with one of her friends over the internet and since then she'd been having an internal debate over one sticking point: should she call Rory?

Today it seemed as if Pippa had had enough of her internal debate. She was going to call Rory. Just once. And if she got his voicemail, she'd leave him a message.

Her new phone, already filled with numbers and contact information, was missing an entry for the Irishman--not that it mattered. Pippa knew his numbers, his address, his email by heart. Without much thought, her fingers danced over the keypad, entering the digits for his cell phone.

As it rang in her ear, Pippa nodded at a passerby and offered a soft greeting in Italian. Hello, good afternoon.