Fighting to Be Free (Fighting to Be Free 1)

My family had been less than supportive when I’d called them. As soon as they found out I was in a foreign country, alone, my dad was ranting that I was to get on the first flight back. He’d threatened to fly out and get me if necessary but thankfully I’d avoided that so far, but we weren’t exactly on good terms at the moment. Every time I spoke to them they argued that I should come home, that it wasn’t safe for an eighteen year old girl to travel alone, that they’d only agreed to it because of Jamie coming with me.

In every call my mom would bitch about Jamie leaving me, that she knew she had his character right the first time she met him, and that I should have listened to her. Time and time again I found myself defending him down the phone, arguing with them, even though she was right and I really should have listened. I hadn’t told them the full extent of what happened, I’d just said that we’d broken up and that I’d decided to still go. The plan was just to go for two weeks, because that’s how long Jamie and I had booked the hotel in Rome for, but after I made a friend, they’d convinced me that I needed to see Florence before I went home. So we’d been here a week and then I’d somehow been convinced that we needed to go to Venice, which is where we were heading tomorrow. At this rate I couldn’t see myself going home anytime soon. I was actually having a nice time; though I was pretty sure that everything would have been ten times better had I been with Jamie.

I sighed and stirred my coffee absentmindedly, letting my thoughts wander to dangerous places where I really shouldn’t let them go. I thought about his kisses, his smile, the warmth of his hand as he caressed my cheek, how his hard body would wrap itself around me while I slept. I could almost still taste him on my tongue if I thought about it hard enough, I could still smell him and picture how his brown eyes would kind of twinkle when he laughed. I missed him like crazy. I didn’t hate him, it would have been so much easier if I could, but I loved him too much to think badly of him at all.

Over the last three weeks I’d allowed myself to call him only once, hoping that he was regretting his decision and that he missed me too - but that call was pretty pointless anyway because his cellphone number was no longer in use. No one had heard from him at all. Stacey told me that my dad had gone around to his place wanting to ‘speak’ to him about me, but that apparently he’d moved out and that his apartment was already rented to another tenant. I had no way of contacting him at all, and that was probably the most painful thought of all.

I thought about what he was doing today, if he would wake up and go to work like normal, not even thinking of me. I silently wondered if he was dating someone else already, maybe the blonde he’d cheated with…. I envied her I really did. He was the perfect boyfriend and if she managed to hold on to him then she was a lucky girl. I just prayed that she made him happy. After everything that he’d been through in his life, he deserved to be happy even if he didn’t think he did. Even though he’d ripped my heart out and left a ragged hole in my chest, I wished him well and hoped that he found that one special person that would be enough for him.

A chair scraping on concrete snapped me out of my reverie and I looked up into the grinning face of Natasha, my new little travelling buddy. I smiled back as she nodded down at my coffee. “You order me one of those?” she asked, her voice a little husky, probably from all the drunken singing we did in the bar last night to the karaoke.

“Nope. Didn’t know how long you’d be in the shower for, you know you spend hours in there,” I joked.

She grinned and waved for the waitress, putting in her order too. She sat back in her chair and blew out a big breath as she adjusted her huge black fashion shades and smoothed back her still damp brown hair. “You suffering this morning after drinking so much?” she asked, laughing.

I shrugged. “Not too bad actually. You?”

She nodded, lifting her shades and latching her bloodshot eyes on me. “Not taking these off today that’s for sure,” she replied sheepishly. I laughed and took a bite of my cake, both of us ignoring the lady at the table who was now engrossed in her book anyway. I’d been with Tasha for just over two weeks now, and in that time we’d become great friends. She was a little older than me at twenty-two but we had a lot in common. She was American too and had just finished college and wanted to travel before she got a job. She was on her own as well, so when we hit it off in Rome we decided to stick together and see the sights. She had no distinct plans for travelling; she just wanted to see as much as possible in the next three months, so it worked out perfectly - and it was cheaper to just get one double room and split the price, so my grandpa’s inheritance money would go further too. I actually still had Jamie’s envelope in my luggage where I hadn’t taken it out, but I didn’t plan on spending it though. I’d have to find some way of giving it back to him, but for now I just buried it in the bottom of my case and like I did with my memories of him, I tried to forget all about it.

“You were talking in your sleep so much last night,” Tasha grumbled, shaking her head. “At one point I actually considered smothering you with a pillow, but then I realised that spending time in an Italian jail probably wouldn’t look good on my résumé.”

I laughed and smiled apologetically. I’d always thought Jamie was kidding around when he told me I talked in my sleep, but Natasha had said the exact same thing, so maybe I really did. “Sorry. What was it about this time? Alien abduction?” I joked; apparently I could be pretty random at times.