Love Far Away: 2 Page 8

  When I got back to the hotel room I shared with Megan, it was dark. “Hello?” I called, flicking the light on, but the other bed was empty. I knocked on the door that adjoined our room with Becca and Ashley’s room, but got no answer. I paced restlessly for a few minutes, looking around for a note or something like we had left for Ashley when she had stayed out all night with Farooq in Monte Carlo, but there was nothing. I tried to watch some TV, but when I flipped around the Italian channels I didn’t understand anything that was on, so around eleven-thirty I decided I might as well go to bed.

  I didn’t hear Megan stumble in, but when I awoke the next morning at seven-thirty she was sprawled in her bed, sleeping. I quickly showered and dressed and hung around the hotel room for as long as I could before I got bored. Sébastien was coming to meet me at ten, so eventually I went downstairs to eat breakfast alone.

  I couldn’t remember the last meal I had eaten alone. At home, I always had a child or two hanging out with me if Bradley wasn’t around, and on this trip I’d shared every meal with at least one of my friends, except the few dinners and lunches I’d shared with Sébastien. It felt very odd and a little lonely to be sitting there alone, eating my eggs and drinking coffee and looking around. I wondered if everyone was staring at me, wondering if I was alone, but convinced myself to not be so self-centered.

  I finished breakfast and still nobody had come to join me, so I headed back upstairs to brush my teeth and get a bottle of water to bring with me as I walked around the city. When I opened the door to my room, Megan’s bed was empty and I heard the shower running. It felt awkward to leave without saying hello to her, so I sat down on my bed to wait for her.

  A few minutes later Megan came out of the bathroom, dressed in one of the hotel robes and with a towel in her hair. She looked surprised to see me. “Oh,” she said. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I didn’t want to leave in the morning without seeing you guys,” I said. “I missed you last night. You’d all left by the time I came back to the hotel. Did you have fun?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Megan. She opened her suitcase and began rifling through it. “We had dinner and went to this super classy nightclub on the roof of this medieval building. It was really cool. We had a great time dancing.”

  “Oh,” I said. “It’s too bad I missed you.”

  Megan shrugged. “Yeah. Well, I’m sure you had fun with Sébastien.”

  I could feel an undercurrent of tension in the room. I cleared my throat. “Um, are you mad at me, Megs?”

  “Mad? No...”

  Just then the connecting door opened and Ashley pretty much fell in to the bedroom. “Ahhhh! I need your hairspray- oh.” Her demeanor changed the second she saw me. “Hi, Julia.”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you guys mad at me? Ashley, Becca?”

  I heard Becca call hello to me from the bathroom in the other room, but Ashley didn’t say anything for a minute. It was extremely unlike her to be quiet, so I prodded her a bit. “Ash?”

  “I just want to know exactly why you ended up taking this trip,” she burst out. “Was it to spend time with your friends? Or did you just want to find some guy?”

  My mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about? You’re the one who spent hours convincing me to come on this trip so that I could find someone new, have sex with them, and get over Bradley! Now that I did, you’re mad at me?”

  “I didn’t mean meet someone and spend every minute of the day with them, ditching your friends completely,” said Ashley. “You hooked up with that guy in Paris- okay, great! Get it out of your system and go have fun. But then you meet this Sébastien dude and all of a sudden you don’t want to spend time with us. You ditch us at parties. You ditch us during the day to go and hang out with him. You didn’t go to dinner with us the past two nights. During breakfast yesterday you spent the whole time on your phone, not messaging your kids, but making plans with him. You’ve been totally neglecting us ever since you met him.”

  “That’s not true!” I protested. “I’ve been spending lots of time with you. The only reason we’re even here in Rome is because of Sébastien, anyway! The only reason we’re on this whole trip is because of Bradley and his credit card, so you might as well act a little more grateful that I’m- well, Bradley- is footing the bill for all this! Instead all you do is drink, drink, drink from the minute you wake up. You know what? I’m worried about you, Ashley! You’re drinking way too much on this trip. It’s not healthy.”

  “Oh, don’t turn this around on me,” snapped Ashley. “You met a new guy and you’re spending all your time with him instead of your friends. That happens all the time, but when you take your friends on a girls trip halfway across the world excuse me for thinking that you might spend some time with us!”

  “That’s rich coming from you, staying out all night partying with some fake Saudi Arabian sheikh!”

  “I’m done,” said Ashley. “DONE. You go have your little date with Sébastien, and by the way it’s incredibly pretentious that you keep saying his name with a French accent.”

  “It’s not pretentious when that’s his NAME!”

  “Guys, stop shouting,” said Megan, trying to stand between us. “Just calm down, we can all have dinner together tonight before we go back to Paris-“

  “Oh please, Julia is going to be dining at some overpriced pizza place with Say-bass-tee-ehn,” Ashley sneered, over-pronouncing every syllable of his name.

  “Yeah, well I’d have a better time than eating with you,” I snapped. I turned to Megan. “Sorry, Megs. I’ll meet you guys here at seven for dinner, but I’m not going to stand around and apologize for having fun with someone. See you later.”

  I was trying very hard not to cry as I sat in the lobby a few minutes later, staring at my phone and waiting for Sébastien. I had just logged in to the wifi and spotted a new email in my inbox from my mother when I heard him call my name. “Julia!”

  I looked up and smiled, as I opened my mother’s email. “Hi,” I said, kissing him on both cheeks and feeling very suave. “I just need to read this...”

  “What’s the matter?”

  My face betrayed the sinking feeling I had in my stomach as I read my mother’s message. “It’s my mom,” I said. “Well, my kids.”

  Sébastien’s handsome face looked concerned. “Are they all right?”

  “They’re okay,” I said. “They just miss me, a lot. She sent this message last night after they were in bed. They want to Skype with me before they go to day camp today.”

  “Will you call them now?”

  “It’s too early there now. I think...maybe just after lunch I’ll call them? If you don’t mind, of course?”

  “Of course,” he said, and we set out for our day. My mind kept drifting around, though, and I couldn’t focus on the beautiful works of art we saw at the Vatican. Were Henry and Olivia truly all right? As soon as I thought it was early enough that they would be up, yet not too late that they would have already left for day camp, I found a cafe with wifi and called them over Skype.

  My mother answered, and called them over. “It’s Mommy!” I heard her say, and the squeals and crashes of small children were like a forgotten song to my ears.

  The next thing I knew, my son and daughter’s small faces were filling up the tiny screen of my phone. I could only wave and say hello as they took turns talking over each other, filling me in on the minutiae of their lives in a way that only a seven-year-old and a four-year-old could. Olivia had stepped in a puddle the other day when it rained, but she hadn’t ruined her new sandals because Grandma had cleaned them. Henry had seen three spiders on the back porch yesterday and his best friend had scored a goal at soccer and they had eaten hamburgers for supper. Had I eaten any hamburgers lately?

  “No,” I managed to squeeze in, “but I’m in Italy right now and I have had pizza.”

  “PIZZA!” they both chorused. Olivia added, “Mama, when are you coming home?”
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  “Soon,” I promised. “In just a few days.”

  “When will Daddy come home?” asked Henry.

  I tried to think of something diplomatic to say. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “Have you been spending time with him?”

  “Kind of,” said Henry. “We went over to his friend’s house for dinner the other night.”

  I stiffened. Bradley was bringing the children around that slut while I was away? “What friend? What was her name?”

  “It wasn’t a lady, it was a man,” Henry corrected me. “It was Kevin’s house.”

  “Oh.” I breathed a sigh of relief. Kevin was one of Bradley’s best friends. It would make sense that he stayed at his place if he didn’t want to stay at ours.

  We talked for a few more minutes, but since I was in a public cafe and the children had day camp to get ready for it wasn’t as long as any of us wanted. I promised them I would see them soon, then signed off. I had to dab at my eyes with a paper napkin.

  “It must be hard for you to be away from them,” Sébastien said sympathetically. “Divorce is very hard on children. Two homes, two families, two of everything...it is not easy for anybody, but especially the children.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said quietly. “It isn’t.” I took a deep breath. “Sébastien, I have something to confess. When I met you I told you I was divorced. Well, the truth is...I’m not.” He raised his eyebrows at me, but let me continue. “I’m just separated from my husband right now. He had an emotional affair with a woman from work and I just needed to get away. We had plans to file for divorce, but I don’t know...I like you, I’ve had so much fun with you here in Rome. But I just don’t know if I can do this.”

  He looked at me solemnly. “Do you still love him, your husband? Are you staying for him? For you? Or for the children?”

  “For the children, of course. I’ve known my husband since we were teenagers- he was my first love. There will always be a place in my heart for him. After this trip...I don’t know, I may have almost outgrown him. I know I’m thinking in ways I never would have before. But I just don’t know if I can give up on him, on our children, on the whole life we built together like that. I’m so sorry, Sébastien. I’ve had a wonderful time with you and I’ll always hold it in my heart.”

  He looked at me quietly. “Julia, is this what you want to do? Not for your children. I know you have spent your life thinking of them first, but one day they will be grown and leave home. Is this man who you want to spend the rest of your days with?”

  I hesitated. I knew there was a nugget of truth in what he said, but I couldn’t stand the thought of my children spending one week with me, one with their father. “Yes,” I said. My voice quivered. “I’m so sorry, Sébastien.”

  ***

  So that was it, then. On the metro back to my hotel, I tried to tell myself that it had just been a vacation fling, that it didn’t mean anything. I had a family at home. I was going to call a marriage counselor the day I got back and schedule an appointment and drag Bradley there. I wasn’t going to give up on my family.

  The hotel room was, once again, empty when I got back. I didn’t know where my friends had gone and I didn’t even know if I’d be welcome if I found them. I stared out the window for a few minutes and started to pack half-heartedly before I gave up and laid down on the bed for a nap.

  I’m not sure how long I slept, but I woke up when Megan came home. “What’re you doing here?” she asked me.

  I looked down at the floor. “I Skyped with Henry and Olivia today. I realized...I can’t do this to them. I can’t break up their family. I’m going to go back home and do whatever it takes to get my family back. And my friends. I’m sorry if I neglected you all in favor of Sébastien. It was just...I don’t remember the last time someone showed that much interest in me. In what I like. Thoughtful. Bradley gets me the same bouquet of flowers for my birthday every year. I don’t think he even remembers to order them anymore, I think he just has a standing order to have them delivered every year. Obviously some things are going to have to change, but wouldn’t I hate myself forever if I didn’t even try?”

  Megan sat down on the bed next to me and gave me a hug. “You do whatever you have to do,” she said. “I’m here for you. Nobody is mad at you.”

  “But this morning,” I said. “Ashley was so upset!”

  “Who cares,” said Megan. “Come on, get dressed. We’re going to dinner.”

  Megan must have said something to Becca and Ashley, because when we all met up to leave for dinner Becca gave me a big hug and Ashley even gave my arm a little squeeze and told me everything would be okay.

  “We’re going back to Paris again tomorrow anyway,” Becca comforted me over dinner. “Then back home. You would have had to say goodbye anyway.”

  “I know,” I sighed. “It’s just been nice to spend a couple weeks not thinking about real life anymore.”

  I was worried that dinner would be a bit awkward, but it was nice. We compared notes over the past few days- the girls had climbed stairs I hadn’t known existed to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, which I was sorry I had missed, and I told them all about Ostia Antica and the Villa Borghese- and talked about some of the craziest moments from our trip.

  “No matter what happens,” I told them as our bill arrived for dinner and I handed the waiter Bradley’s credit card, “I’m glad I took this trip with you girls. I forgot how much fun I have with you. Once we get home I need to be better about getting out regularly. I’ve spent so much time putting the kids first and not enough putting the effort in to my other relationships. That includes Bradley,” I added sheepishly.

  “We miss you too,” said Megan.

  “If I had any wine left in my glass, I would toast to that,” said Ashley. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I just had the one tiny glass tonight. I figure if we’re going to be travelling tomorrow I don’t need a hangover.”

  I laughed, and was feeling like things were back to normal, when the waitress appeared back at our table. She looked concerned. “Signorina? There is a small problem.”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Your credit card. It’s been declined.”

  The blood drained from my face, and I looked at her numbly. Bradley’s credit card...declined? Bradley, the husband who I hoped to patch things up with and move on in our marriage? I had maxed out the emergency, high limit credit card on hotels and flights and meals and drinks and a very expensive purse. Bradley would hit the roof, I could already hear him.

  But right now, I was in this restaurant in the middle of Rome with no way to pay for my dinner. “I’m sorry,” I heard myself say, and I reached out to take the credit card back. I picked up my wallet and looked through it, hoping someone might have slipped hundreds of euros in there by happy accident. “Um...”

  “Here,” said Ashley, pulling a card out of her wallet. She handed it to the waitress. “Try this one.”

  The waitress nodded and went back to the cash register, and I looked at Ashley with gratitude. “Thank you,” I said.

  She shrugged. “It’s okay. Who knows how many drinks I have charged on that card by now? It’s the least I could do.”

  Ashley’s card was accepted, but I suddenly didn’t feel like going anywhere else for an after dinner drink. What had I done? I’d pushed Sébastien away. As soon as Bradley found out about the maxed out credit card, he might not want to even try counseling. I’d made a huge mess of things.

  Megan noticed I was quiet on the way back to our hotel. “What’s wrong?” she asked me. “Are you upset about the credit card thing?”

  I sighed. “Sort of. I want to try and fix things with Bradley for the sake of my family. But he’s going to flip when he finds out about the credit card. He’s never going to trust me again. I messed up, Megan. Big time.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said. “It’s going to be fine, because you’re smart and you’re resourceful and you’re cari
ng. You might have a cry about it tonight, and that’s okay. But tomorrow you’re going to wake up and you’re going to come up with a plan. By the time we get back home, you know what you’re going to have to do. I’m here for you, Jules. Ash and Becca too.”

  I looked at her with tears in my eyes. “Thanks,” I said. “I’m just feeling overwhelmed right now. I needed that.”

  Megan gave me a hug. “That’s what friends are for,” she said. “It’s going to be a fresh start tomorrow, I know it will.”

  To be continued…

  Thank you for reading!

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  (Excerpt) Love Far Away III

  by

  Leslie Cooper

  Chapter One

  There is nothing sadder than the last day of a life-changing vacation; it’s like the world’s most depressing hangover. The two blissful weeks were over, though, and it would be back to business as usual tomorrow. I packed my things wistfully, each item of clothing now attached to a memory. The dress I’d worn that day we had visited the ruins. The shoes I’d worn on the yacht the day I had met… him. I gave my head a little shake. It had been wonderful, but it was just a vacation fling. I was never going to see Sébastien again. It was time to go home and deal with the reality of my impending divorce.

  I was so used to handing over Bradley’s backup credit card that I almost handed it over to the ticket agent at the train station, before I remembered that it was maxed out. Megan bought my ticket back to Paris. The mood as we found our seats on the train and settled in for the ride was much more low key, almost downcast compared to the train trip we’d taken south from Paris to Monte Carlo or the yacht trip we’d taken from Monte Carlo to Rome.

  “Hey.” Megan patted me on the leg. “You doing okay? How do you feel about heading back home? Are you excited to see your kids again?”