TWELVE: 12 Signs. 12 Men. 12 Ways to Fall.

Jasper

The first thing Maeve Archer did was ruin my brother’s wedding photographs.

She insisted it was the other way around.

“Two steps to your left,” she said, looking through her camera. “And don’t move again.”

I glanced behind me. “You want me against the wall?”

“I want the sunlight against the wall. You’re standing in it.”

We were in the courtyard of a Barcelona hotel, where climbing jasmine softened the stone balconies and the flowers looked improbably effortless. I was holding Ben’s spare suit jacket and trying to keep a delivery trolley from cutting across the photographs. Apparently, I was obstructing the shot.

“The rooftop has a better view,” I said. “I told Ben that yesterday.”

“Then perhaps you should go up there and take pictures of it.”

“I’m Jasper. Ben’s brother.”

“I know who you are.” She lowered the camera, revealing dark eyes and a face that was considerably more interesting than the architecture. “Lucía said you’d try to rearrange everything.”

“Lucía adores me.”

“She used the words ’well-meaning hazard.’”

I laughed. It came easily around most women. This one looked back at me as though laughter had never once influenced her judgement.

“Maeve Archer,” she said when I offered a hand. “Architectural photographer. I’m doing the venue photographs as a favour to the bride, not auditioning for your creative department.”

“That’s a shame. I’m an excellent boss.”

“I’m certain you’ve been told.”

Her handshake was warm, brief and entirely unpersuaded. She turned back to her camera. I should have left. Instead I tried the move that worked in almost every room: a direct invitation delivered before anyone had time to invent a reason to refuse.

“Drink tonight? There’ll be a bar on the roof.”

“I know. I’ve photographed it.”

“With me, I mean.”

She finally smiled. It was a small, dangerous thing. “You always move this quickly?”

“Life’s short.”

“Or you don’t like waiting for an answer.”

I opened my mouth. She lifted the camera again.

“If I want a drink with you, Jasper, I’ll find you. Now please move. The light’s almost gone.”

I obeyed, which should have warned me how the weekend was going to go.

At eight, the rooftop welcome party glittered with glassware and people congratulating themselves for travelling internationally to drink champagne. Barcelona spread beyond the terrace in terraces of warm stone, with the distant outline of the Sagrada Família caught in the last gold of evening.

Ben found me by the railing and put an arm around my shoulder. At thirty-five, my older brother had somehow become the sort of man who enjoyed discussing table arrangements. Marriage had clearly damaged him.

“Lucía says you met Maeve.”

“She has a forceful approach to lighting.”

“She has a forceful approach to people who mistake enthusiasm for permission.”

“Did you recruit her to insult me?”

“Didn’t need to.” He looked at me more seriously. “She’s Lucía’s friend. Keep things straightforward, Jas.”

“I asked her for a drink. I didn’t propose.”

“That’s generally how you avoid proposing.”

Before I could respond, he was pulled away by our mother, who wanted to discuss the seating plan. I watched him go, annoyed that he could say so much with so little effort.

Maeve appeared twenty minutes later wearing a dark green dress and low sandals, a thin gold chain at her throat. Her camera was gone. She held out a glass of water.

“I saw you looking for me,” she said.

“I’ve been inspecting the exits.”

“Good. You’ll know where to go when I tell you the rules.”

I accepted the water. “There are rules?”

“For the next forty-eight hours, if we spend time together, I make the next move. Invitations, kisses, whether we leave somewhere together. You can say no to anything. I can change my mind. But you don’t get to turn every pause into a sales pitch.”

“Are you proposing a hostage situation?”

“I’m proposing that you find out whether you actually like me when you’re not busy trying to win me.”

I looked at her. She wasn’t pretending to be aloof. She was offering me a chance and naming the conditions under which she’d enjoy it. It should have been simple to accept without making a spectacle of myself.

“Forty-eight hours,” I said. “And no loopholes?”

“No trying to convince me to take my turn early.”

“That sounds targeted.”

“It is.” She set down her glass. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“Tapas. The welcome speeches will go on for another hour, and I know a place with better food.”

I followed her off the rooftop, fighting the impulse to take her hand and lead us down the stairs. She knew her way through El Born, past narrow façades and balconies crowded with plants. At a tiny bar tucked between two shuttered shops, she ordered grilled peppers and croquettes, then waited for me to choose the rest.

“So you do allow other people opinions,” I said.

“That’s the idea.”

We talked long enough for the waiter to bring another basket of bread. I learned that Maeve lived in London, had walked away from a secure architectural-firm job to work independently and was trying to secure funding for a photographic series about buildings people overlooked until someone proposed demolishing them. She loved the hotel’s courtyard precisely because renovation hadn’t polished away its age.

“What happens if the funding doesn’t come through?” I asked.

“I find another way. I want the work to exist more than I want anyone’s permission to make it.”

I understood the impulse. As creative director for a sports brand, I was used to making impossible pitches sound inevitable. I also respected how she didn’t invite me to solve anything.

At midnight she walked me back to the hotel entrance. I was almost certain she wanted me to kiss her. Her eyes lingered on my mouth; mine had barely left hers for the past hour.

“Goodnight, Jasper,” she said, pressing a brief kiss to my cheek.

“That’s it?”

“That’s a goodnight.”

I caught myself before asking for more. She saw it happen and smiled.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll decide what comes next.”

She disappeared inside, leaving me with an unreasonable amount of adrenaline and no useful place to put it. In the lift I opened our wedding-group chat, found her number and drafted a joke about the croquettes. I stared at it, then deleted it. My thumb went back to the blank message three times before I reached my room.

Apparently I could deliver an international advertising campaign in six weeks but couldn’t survive one evening without sending a follow-up.

Ben found me the next morning at breakfast with my phone faceup beside my coffee.

“Waiting for a call?”

“No.”

“You’re watching it like it owes you money.”

He sat down, already dressed for the day, and played an audio clip from his phone. A black screen, cream lettering and the title THE TWELFTH HOUSE: UNSENT appeared above a pulsing line.

A man’s disguised voice said, “I always make the first move so no one gets the chance to tell me no.”

“That’s embarrassingly dramatic,” I said.

“Lucía sent it to me. Said it reminded her of somebody.”

“Her imagination is wild.”

Ben reached to pocket the phone.

“Play it again.”

He raised his eyebrows but obliged. This time the sentence didn’t sound dramatic. It sounded economical: one clean admission beneath years of excuses.

“Is this about Hannah?” Ben asked.

I reached for my coffee. “Absolutely not.”

“Hannah asked for a few weeks to think. You cleared your things out in two days.”

“She wasn’t sure she wanted us.”

“And you made sure she never got the chance to decide.”

I stood. “I’m going for a run.”

“In linen trousers?”

“An aggressive walk, then.”

I left before he could say anything else. I knew how the story sounded from outside. I’d spent three years telling people Hannah didn’t know what she wanted. That story kept the focus on her indecision instead of my fear.

Maeve found me an hour later photographing the hotel courtyard on my own phone, badly.

“You’re holding it crooked,” she said.

“I’m developing an experimental style.”

“You’re obscuring the entire arch with your thumb.”

She stepped beside me, showing me how the lines of the courtyard met beyond the entrance. Her shoulder brushed mine. The urge to turn and kiss her rose so quickly it almost made me dizzy.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

“Anything except what my brother told you.”

“Why do you treat a pause as though something’s gone wrong?”

I considered giving her the answer I’d use at work: momentum, efficiency, no wasted time. She’d already heard that version.

“I hate feeling on hold,” I said. “At least when I’m doing something, I can’t be accused of giving up.”

“But people aren’t projects. Sometimes they need time to decide what they want.”

“I know.”

“You say that like somebody who doesn’t enjoy knowing it.”

We walked towards the old city while the wedding party prepared for the ceremony. Maeve stopped to photograph a cracked blue tile beside a doorway. She explained how repairs could become the most interesting part of an old building because they showed where somebody had chosen not to abandon it.

I found myself telling her about a campaign I’d nearly lost by insisting on my first idea instead of listening to the team. I admitted I hated being wrong. She listened without offering to improve me. At the end of the street, she took my hand.

“That’s my next move,” she said.

It was such a small thing. It made the whole morning feel different.

Ben cried at the wedding. I’ll deny doing the same. Lucía looked radiant, her vows made half the guests laugh, and my speech at the reception was exactly the right mixture of mockery and affection. For once I managed to sit down after speaking rather than chase the room’s reaction.

Maeve was at the back photographing light through the restored windows. She’d arranged with the official photographer to take architectural images rather than document every kiss. Twice I caught her watching me. Twice she returned to her camera before I could mistake it for an invitation.

Near midnight, she appeared beside my chair. I’d taken off my jacket and was listening to Ben tell a long story about a university trip neither of us remembered the same way.

“Walk?” she asked.

“Now?”

“If you want.”

I rose before she finished the sentence. Ben laughed into his glass.

Outside, rain had cooled the pavement. We wandered through quiet streets where the day’s heat still clung to the walls, past a closed flower shop and a bar humming with voices. Maeve told me she’d spent years trying to please editors who wanted photographs that looked expensive rather than honest. She’d fought for independence. She wouldn’t surrender it for a relationship.

“That’s not a warning aimed specifically at me, is it?” I asked.

“Only if you make it one.”

“My ex, Hannah, used to say I took uncertainty personally.”

“Did you?”

“I thought she couldn’t make up her mind.” It was the version I’d been telling for years. Maeve waited a moment, but I didn’t offer anything else. She let me have the silence.

We stopped beneath an arch. She came close enough that I could smell her perfume, something bright and slightly woody.

“I’m going to kiss you,” she said.

“I’m extremely supportive of that decision.”

Her hand caught my collar, and then her mouth was on mine. I’d expected heat; I’d spent two days imagining it. What surprised me was the laughter when I accidentally bumped my shoulder against the wall, and the way she kissed me again after I stopped apologising to a building.

She stepped back, cheeks flushed. “I want to go upstairs with you.”

I could have rushed to the hotel in thirty seconds. Instead I asked, “Because you want me, or because the whole city is pretending tonight is a love story?”

She looked directly at me. “I know the difference. I want you. I might want something different tomorrow, and I’m not promising more than tonight.”

“Neither am I. And if you change your mind about anything, we stop.”

“Good.” She slipped her hand into mine. “Now you can walk a little faster.”

I almost ran.

My hotel room was a disaster of wedding clothes, chargers and abandoned cufflinks. Maeve stepped inside, took one look at the jacket hanging from the lamp and started laughing.

“Do you always live like somebody’s packing you up in a hurry?”

“Only when my brother gets married.”

She shut the door, set her bag down and crossed the room to me. For forty-eight hours I’d been practising not reaching first. Now she threaded her fingers through my hair and drew me down into a kiss that made patience feel considerably less virtuous.

I caught her waist and felt her smile against my mouth. She drew back just enough to look at me, her cheeks flushed, the gold chain at her throat moving with her breath.

“You’re thinking very loudly,” she said.

“I’m trying not to take over.”

“You can kiss me back, Jasper. I wanted the next move, not a statue.”

“That I can manage.”

I kissed her again, harder this time. She met me without retreating, and when I eased back to look at her, she pulled me close by my shirt. I’d flirted with women in crowded bars, taken chances and enjoyed every second of a chase. This was different. I knew precisely how much I wanted her, and I had no idea what she might choose next.

“Tell me what you want,” she whispered.

“To keep kissing you. To see what happens when you forget to look so composed.” I rested my forehead against hers. “And for you to know I won’t disappear if tomorrow is different.”

Her expression softened, but she didn’t let the moment become solemn. “Good. Because right now I want you to take that ridiculous watch off.”

It had caught on the delicate fastening of her dress. I wrestled it free, laughing, and dropped it onto the chair. She held up her hair and asked for help with the clasp of her necklace. My fingers weren’t as steady as I’d have liked. When the chain came loose, she folded it into her palm and reached for me again.

I kissed the side of her neck, and her breath caught. She tilted her face towards mine. The room seemed suddenly too warm, the balcony too far away, the whole city reduced to distant voices through an open door. Her hands found the buttons of my shirt; mine settled against her back as she moved closer.

“Still with me?” she asked.

“Painfully.”

She laughed. “You’re allowed to enjoy this.”

“I am. More than you know.”

Maeve guided me to sit on the edge of the bed, then stood between my knees. I looked up at her. She was usually so sure of the world around her, quick to choose a frame and defend what belonged inside it. For a moment she looked uncertain too, and I found it unexpectedly intimate that she let me see.

“I want to stay,” she said, clear and quiet. “I want tonight.”

“So do I.”

She leaned down to kiss me. I drew her nearer, and this time I didn’t count the seconds before her next decision. We found a rhythm that wasn’t smooth or rehearsed. She laughed when I caught a cufflink in the bedding; I laughed when she told me, with extraordinary seriousness, to stop apologising to the furniture. Between those interruptions were longer kisses, warm skin beneath my hands and the unfamiliar pleasure of letting desire lead without trying to dictate where it ended.

When we moved further onto the bed, she paused and told me what she wanted. I listened, answered honestly, and let the night become something neither of us needed to direct alone. She could change her mind; so could I. Nothing about that diminished the heat between us. It made it easier to give ourselves to the moment instead of performing it.

Much later, with the city quiet beyond the curtains, Maeve lay beside me and traced the outline of an old scar on my shoulder. I told her it came from falling off a bicycle while trying to impress a girl at thirteen.

“Did it work?” she asked.

“She went home with the boy who had a functioning bicycle.”

Maeve laughed so hard she hid her face against my chest. I held her without searching for the next clever thing to say.

Morning was less straightforward. I woke before her with sunlight across the floor and a dozen possible plans already assembling themselves. We could have breakfast, visit a museum, take a later flight, find a restaurant in London on Thursday. I even knew which street near her studio would make a good first date.

When she opened her eyes, I asked about all of it in approximately one breath.

“Jasper.”

I stopped.

“You’re doing it.”

“Planning breakfast?”

“Planning what I feel before I’ve had a chance to feel it.”

I stared at the ceiling. “I had a good night. I’d like another one.”

“So would I. That doesn’t mean I want my entire next month laid out while I’m still in bed.”

I sat up, suddenly angry at myself for turning joy into a deadline. Maeve touched my arm.

“Tell me about Hannah,” she said. “You told me she couldn’t make up her mind. What happened?”

I looked at her. I’d given Maeve the same easy summary I’d been telling people for years. The rest was much less flattering.

“She asked for space,” I said. “Three weeks. We were talking about living together, and she wanted time to think. I moved out before the first weekend was over.”

“Why?”

“Because if I left first, she couldn’t choose to leave me. I told myself I was decisive. Really, I was frightened she’d take her time and decide I wasn’t worth it.”

Maeve was quiet. She didn’t offer immediate comfort, and I appreciated that more than I expected.

“Did you ever find out what she wanted?”

“No. I made sure I didn’t have to hear it.”

“Do you still think you were right?”

“No.” I rubbed my face. “I think I hurt somebody because I couldn’t bear being uncertain.”

She sat beside me. “I’m not Hannah, and I’m not going to promise a relationship because this weekend was wonderful. I like you. I want to see you again. But I have work I care about and plans that don’t revolve around a man I’ve known for two days.”

“That’s one of the things I like about you.”

“Then let it be true even when it inconveniences you.”

We were both quiet for a moment. I wanted to ask whether Thursday was still possible. I wanted proof the night hadn’t vanished with daylight. Asking for it wouldn’t make it true.

“Okay,” I said. “No campaign. No schedule unless we both choose it.”

Maeve smiled. “You can have breakfast with me. That’s one plan I am making.”

We ate downstairs in the courtyard. She showed me photographs she’d taken during the ceremony, then a series of old staircases from the project she hoped to exhibit. I asked questions and listened. Before our flights, she kissed me goodbye in the hotel lobby and said she’d be in touch when she’d caught up on work.

I let that be the answer.

Back in London, I worked. I ran, argued with a supplier, approved a campaign and resisted the urge to check whether Maeve had watched the photo story I’d posted from Barcelona. I reached for my phone, then remembered missing someone wasn’t an emergency.

On Wednesday she sent me a photograph of the courtyard arch at sunset.

YOU WERE STILL WRONG ABOUT THE ROOFTOP.

I replied: I ADMIRE YOUR COMMITMENT TO BEING INFURIATING.

She sent a laughing face, followed by: FRIDAY, SIX. THE CAFÉ ON LAMB’S CONDUIT STREET YOU MENTIONED?

I typed yes. Then deleted a paragraph offering to book somewhere better, pick her up or rearrange my evening to make things easier. What remained was enough.

I’D LIKE THAT.

On Friday I arrived five minutes early. The café smelled of coffee and warm pastry; rain gathered on the windows, turning the street into a blur of umbrellas. I chose a table near the door, ordered one coffee and let the second chair remain empty.

At six-oh-three I checked the street. At six-oh-five I put my phone facedown. I could text to ask if everything was all right, but she’d made a plan and I had agreed to it. I didn’t need to turn five minutes into an accusation.

At six-oh-seven Maeve appeared, damp-haired and smiling, the strap of her camera bag crossing her coat. She spotted me through the glass and lifted a hand.

When she came inside, I stood. She took off her coat and leaned forward to kiss me on the mouth before either of us said hello.

“Bus was late,” she said. “Did you survive?”

“Barely. I almost reorganised the entire transport network.”

She laughed and sat opposite me. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”

“Me too.”

I hadn’t convinced her to arrive. I’d wanted her here, and she’d come because she wanted to. The difference terrified and delighted me.

She reached across the table, palm up. I placed my hand in hers.

For once, I didn’t move first.