The moon looked like an ashen quarter-planet set in the west, the sky-blue colour of its horizon turning into pastel gold with a soft rose-pink hue.
 
    Leonora was constantly looking in the Maps app to see where they were and taking screenshots of the locations she thought she might need in the future, the station of the metro, which she and Blerimi travelled with, to arrive at the apartment where they would stay in New York, some key points of places, to know that she was on the right way, and the apartment itself.
 
    "We will settle down and rest a bit, and then we'll go out," he said as they entered the apartment building's elevator, and Leonora approved with a slight blink of her eyes shining with happiness. 
 
    America had given her positive energy the moment she put her foot on the paved ground, and she was thinking that maybe they could live there. New York was as beautiful as she had seen it in the pictures, and because she was with Blerimi, the places where they had been together had benefited and seemed more than beautiful to her. The adventure had just begun.
 
    She looked at herself in the elevator mirror, and her calm gaze reminded her of her father. The excitement on her face was replaced by a look of nostalgia. She had only told Denada that she was leaving Albania. She hadn't even spoken to Graniti, and she guessed that her father had no idea that Leonora was on the other side of the world. She strongly suspected that, even if he were aware, he wouldn't care less. 
 
    She looked a lot like Ardiani, while Graniti looked like Zana, an energetic and positive person who kept his true feelings inside and only got the colour of his eyes from Ardiani, while Leonora was the female version of their dad. They both gave the impression of being quiet people who only minded their own business, adapted to the circumstances, and went into survival mode without making a sound when they had to stay in silence, but they openly showed how they were affected by the surrounding environment or someone's actions against them, and, when they were sure that someone wanted to frightfully hurt them, they didn't consider at all the existence of a treaty of peace, to give the enemy an opportunity to earn their forgiveness.
 
    She had had such a similar fate to Ardiani's. But at least Leonora had won her freedom. She couldn't imagine how her father and Zana had lived for years and kept living in that unwanted version of their lives; how Graniti lived with the knowledge of the true reason why his parents were married; and if that false oath hadn't been discovered, perhaps he would never have existed.
 
    The four of them had shocking pasts connected to each other. She had done the right thing by leaving quietly. That way she wouldn't remind them all the time, with her depressed state, what a ruined life they had lived and were still living.
 
    They had always judged her for such an attitude, but they never admitted that they were the reason for the existence of that pragmatism. Now they were free. Surely Graniti, their father, and Zana had also experienced the feeling that suddenly things had started to go as they should, without knowing that because she had left, they had that kind of emotion. 
 
    "Leave some attention to New York too. Don't take it all by yourself." Blerimi suggested teasingly, and she shook her thoughts away from her hometown to look at him to her left.
 
    "You get to decide who will have your attention." Leonora continued flirting, and he separated his lips from each other in a smirk.
 
    "I'm sure you'll use it properly," he indicated his choice with that answer. 
 
    "Are you sure that I love you?" she tested him.
 
    "Yes," Blerimi didn't hesitate for a single moment. "My girlfriend loves me."
 
    That label sweetly reminded Leonora that she was living dreams that had already come true. The impossible was erased from the dictionary. She was travelling with her boyfriend, who also loved her, and she had everything on the line.
 
    They both turned their heads towards the elevator when they heard the signal of its doors opening and took their suitcases to get out of the cabin. 
 
    A woman in her forties was waiting with her daughter on the fifth floor, where they both stopped. Leonora looked only for a moment at the stranger's long black hair over her shoulders, her honey-coloured coat, white knee-length dress, and white high-heeled boots, overlooked the seemingly five-year-old girl with her short curly blonde hair, dressed in blue jeans and a white sweatshirt, and fixed her gaze on her small bicycle on her left side.
 
    She had asked her father to buy her a red bicycle when she was ten years old, just as Graniti had his blue one, but Ardiani objected with the argument that girls should not ride bicycles because she would risk not being 'okay' then. Leonora had understood right away that her father had meant the fact that she would risk losing her virginity if she rode a bicycle and couldn't persist any longer because of fear that Ardiani would suspect she wasn't a virgin, and that was the true reason why she didn't mind riding a bicycle. 
 
    She had also heard from a girl in her class, in Puka, when she was eighteen years old, telling her close friend that the first time she had slept with her boyfriend, she hadn't bled, and he had asked her if she had ever ridden a bike exactly for that reason.
    All those times, when she had had the opportunity to secretly ride Graniti's bike, she had given up because of the fear imposed by her father that her whole future would be destroyed if she went against his word to not ride a bike.
 
    "Are you okay?" Blerimi noticed the sad expression on her face.
 
    "I'm great," Leonora smiled happily. "Because you're with me."
 
    He pulled her closer to kiss her forehead and pulled the key from his pocket to open the pale, royal blue door to the apartment. He let his girlfriend enter first, and she quickly took in the entire environment as seen in the photos on the Internet: the light sand-coloured walls, the closed white curtains of the window doors in the front parlour that reflected a little of the early March sunlight, the light candy-coloured sofas, the white table in the centre, and the dining table with four chairs around her near the kitchen on the right.
 
    "These must be the bedrooms," Blerimi approached the two doors to their left and facing each other. "Which one do you want?"
 
    "I'll see if any of them have windows facing the east."
 
    Leonora opened the door to the right first, looked at the window to the south, glanced casually at the double bed with the pastel blue cover, the wardrobe of the same colour, the bedside tables, and the white walls, and turned to the next room, which had a window to the east.
 
    "I want this one," she happily entered and studied the surroundings, ran her hand over the powder pink cover of the double bed as she approached the window, passing by the closed yellow wardrobe.
 
    "Okay," agreed Blerimi. "There is also a gym with a swimming pool nearby if you would like to swim. We can go whenever you want."
 
    Leonora looked away too late, and he suspected from the frown on her face that perhaps she didn't know how to swim because no one had taught her, nor had she been given the opportunity, at least to learn it by herself, but she couldn't tell him.
 
    "Do you know how to swim, or should I teach you?" He stretched his hand along her waist and flirtatiously countered her.
 
    "I want to learn," she passed her hands over his shoulders, joined them behind his neck, and returned the same look, grateful that he had known how to ask her without embarrassing her. "But I can hire someone else. Why should I choose you, sir?"
 
    "I am very good at practicing."
 
    His implied argument, that he wasn't talking only about swimming, made her pout in excitement and kiss him back.
 
    "Why did you choose this room?" he asked, curious.
 
    "I want to see the sun when it rises." Leonora turned around towards the window and looked away.
 
    "After you see me, you mean?" He rested her back against his chest with his hands on her waist and kissed her neck, revealed by her red hair.
 
    Leonora dropped her head back on Blerimi's shoulder, closed her eyes, and grinned, drunk by the storming emotions from his touch. Her body seemed to know the palms lying on it very well as they crossed her chest. He pulled her closer to him in a hug and left another deep kiss on her neck.
 
    "I'll bring you the suitcase," Blerimi said in the form of a whisper in her left ear, and broke away from her. 
 
    Leonora took a deep breath, excited to be living that kind of reality.
 
    It was real, right?
 
    She had had many dreams where she had been in another place and had completely felt like she was really there, but this time it was all real.
 
    Blerimi's steps faded away at once, and Leonora heard no noise of any kind in the house.
 
    Was she in a dream?! Wasn't she in America at that time? She had never actually met Blerimi, nor had she met Albioni or Leonora Vitori? She had also often seen herself in dreams like she was blonde, another time brunette, and had a totally different life. 
 
    What if it was really just a dream? She was seeing herself as a redhead, but she actually had another look and another life? Graniti wasn't her brother, Albioni was married to a woman she didn't know, and Blerimi was dating someone else too, but Leonora had read a book, seen a movie, or heard stories about them, and her mind had created fictional scenarios in the form of a dream with them involved in it?
 
    Had everything up to those moments been just an illusion?