The trio ventured down to the center of Positano later that evening.
Annie was right, Music on the Rocks was awesome, but Kim got the feeling that Annie’s desire to be there had less to do with showing them a good time, and more with her trying to find someone else, judging by the way she spent most of the night looking around.
Interesting...
Still, they had fun. Over dinner they’d exchanged further snippets of each other’s lives, delving deeper into the reasons they were all here in the first place. It was fascinating stuff, especially Annie’s upbringing—which was so utterly different from her own, yet they’d both been let down and rejected by their parents.
Kim was kind of embarrassed to admit that hers had basically wanted to marry her off to some guy in England; it seemed frivolous and stupid in comparison to the stuff they’d been dealing with, so instead she’d told them she just wanted to get out from beneath her folks’ thumbs for a while.
Later, Annie and Colette confessed to being wiped (particularly after that long trek up the hill) when they got back to the villa, but Kim was still a little wired.
She checked the time and calculated the equivalent East Coast time back in New York.
Realizing that it was the middle of the night there and Natasha would be fast asleep, she decided to upload a couple of photos to the new social media account she’d set up so she and her friend could keep in touch without Kim’s parents being privy to where she was.
Her chosen handle was “The Sweet Life,” the English translation of the villa’s name.
She picked a gorgeous sunset photo she’d taken from the pizzeria they’d eaten in earlier—a golden orb over the water, framed by vibrant bougainvillea trailing the ornate railing at their window table.
It was a pretty good shot if she did say so herself, she thought, as she tagged her friend’s account, though her iPhone was brand-new so the camera was top-of-the-range.
“Food with a View” was the rather uninspiring caption Kim chose, but that wasn’t the point. She just wanted to let Tash know that she was here, safe, and having a good time.
She still felt guilty about diverting the trip without her folks knowing, though she had sent a message to Spencer Andrews—enough to let him know that there was a slight change of plan and that she wouldn’t be coming over this week but his family shouldn’t worry.
No doubt Peter and Gloria were already aware she’d gone AWOL, and she’d have to confront them, too, at some point, but she’d wait till she was better settled here first.
She got a glass of water from the kitchen and ventured around the common areas of the house she hadn’t yet had a chance to explore properly.
According to Annie, there were four bedrooms in the villa, three of which were currently occupied by herself and Colette, with Annie in the single room and the older German couple they’d met briefly last night (though Kim couldn’t remember much of their conversation) in another.
That parlor-type room off the kitchen in the back which had been her haven that morning was so dark and dreary that it really should be knocked through so as to open out the tiny kitchen and let in some more natural light.
Though perhaps there was some advantage to that; the absence of direct sunlight and tiny windows would at least keep the place cooler in summer. With no air-conditioning in the place, that was definitely needed.
Feeling around for a light switch, Kim couldn’t find anything and proceeded further along the wall before stumbling into something. Her shin knocked hard against the side of a piece of clunky wooden furniture and she yelped as pain shot up to her knee.
She kicked at it. “Goddamn wreck,” she grumbled, before a thudding sound got her attention.
Creepy...
The hair on the back of her neck stood up and she was about to retreat from the room when she located a small lamp atop the dresser and switched it on.
Yup, this room was indeed long past its prime, with worn interiors and a shabby sofa that looked like it might convert to a foldout bed, which technically made it another bedroom, though she couldn’t imagine who would pay to actually sleep in it.
Ugh. Backpackers, probably, or travelers on a budget—like Kim was now. She gulped, reminding herself that she wasn’t in Kansas anymore. That would take some getting used to.
But she was pretty sure she could handle it; prove to her folks and herself that she didn’t need their money to get by in life.
The windows were open to let out some of the day’s heat, and tonight there was a welcome breeze. But other than that there was little else of interest in the room.
Kim reached to turn off the lamp and head upstairs to bed, when something sticking out beneath the dresser she’d knocked into caught her eye.
She kneeled down and fished it out. It was some kind of book. A journal, with some handwriting inside. Beautiful cursive script—a lot of it in Italian.
She flipped through a few more pages, recognizing some words also written in English. Looked like poetry... Actually, no—they were just stand-alone sentences.
La dolce vita: good food, good drinks, good people. Because life is meant to be lived, and lived well.
Nice. On a whim, Kim took out her phone and updated her social media caption from earlier.
Much better.