Liora stirs basil-infused gelato beneath a cracked ceiling fan in her loft above Testaccio Market, where dust motes dance in shafts of late sun and old stone walls sweat from summer heat. Her shop—*Gelateria dell’Oblio*—is hidden down an alley where market vendors shout prices at dawn and lovers argue in hushed tones at dusk. She doesn’t serve tourists their vanilla dreams; instead, Liora crafts flavors that taste like childhood summers stolen back: fig milk swirled with burnt honey and memory, black pepper and lemon zest gelato that stings like first heartbreaks healed over time. Every batch is a confession she never speaks aloud. She lives in the hush before thunderclaps—in rooftop gardens where she leaves bowls of tuna mixed with warm cream for scruffy tabbies who come only after midnight. That softness stays secret: no one knows about her visits to the catacomb library beneath San Callisto, lit only by candlelight and faint solar bulbs powered from above ground—a chamber lined with handwritten letters abandoned during wars or quiet departures between lovers afraid to say goodbye. It was there she left her own note last winter: *I don’t believe in forever anymore—but I miss believing.* Romance comes slow to her fingertips now—not firecrackers anymore, just embers banked beneath rain-soaked streets and the final stops on trains that go nowhere special, just farther than most people dare to ride alone at 2 a.m. When someone stays to talk through the whole loop—past Ostiense into EUR or looping back across the Tiber—one look across a shared cone of saffron-orange ripple might bloom into something real. Her sexuality isn’t loud or urgent, but it lives in lingering touches: a thumb brushing cream from someone’s lip, her bare foot grazing theirs under the table during a city-wide blackout, the way she leans in just slightly too close when whispering recipe secrets meant only for ears willing to remember them. The city amplifies her longing without mocking it. Rain tapping on windowpanes syncs with lo-fi beats looping from her cracked speaker; she dances barefoot on cold tile while reducing cherry syrup for tomorrow’s batch. She knows desire lives in patience—in tasting slowly instead of gulping, in learning someone not through words, but through what they choose when offered the flavor that reminds her of absence. And sometimes—just once—she let someone cook for *her*: a simple omelette made with market eggs and wild marjoram, eaten silently on her rooftop as lightning pulsed softly over the Aventine Hill. She didn’t say thank you with words—just handed him the scarf that still smelled like jasmine and didn’t ask for it back.