Kim and Annie paced the hallway at the clinic as they waited for news of their friend.
Colette had been struck by a Jet Skier on his way out to open water from the beach. This was according to Luca, who’d given them both a lift to the clinic.
“It is my fault,” he said, on the journey there. “I called out to her from the shore and she strayed into the wrong area on her way back into the beach.”
“But how do you know her?” Annie asked. “I mean, you said you recognized her—how?”
“She had lunch at my aunt’s restaurant a while ago—and she is difficult to forget,” he said, almost to himself, as Kim and Annie exchanged a glance.
As all three waited in the corridor for news of their friend’s prognosis, Kim couldn’t help but wonder how on earth she had ended up in a shabby Italian medical center with this motley crew of an Irish girl and strange Italian man, worried about an Englishwoman she’d only just met. It was a world apart from her shiny, soulless, former New York life.
And she decided that was no bad thing.
She was jolted out of her thoughts then by the appearance of a guy in a white coat they could only assume was a doctor, and a pale, limping, but smiling Colette by his side.
They all rushed to her at once. “Oh my God! Are you OK? Are you hurt?”
“Please, sit down,” Luca urged, taking her hand and leading her to a nearby seat, while Colette looked overcome and more than a little embarrassed by all the fuss.
Between them, she and the doctor explained that the Jet Ski had managed to swerve away from her just in time, which meant that thankfully her injuries hadn’t been terribly serious: just a slight concussion and a couple of stitches to the head.
“Are you sure there is no concussion now?” Luca demanded and Kim was impressed by his insistence that Colette was actually OK before she was signed out.
“No, she is fine,” the medic replied curtly, before turning back to Colette. “Please, just rest in your accommodation for a few days, and stay out of the hot sun,” he added, glancing at the English girl’s sunburned shoulders, which Kim knew Colette had picked up out of complacency about the Mediterranean’s UV rays during the early days.
“I will, thank you.” Again, she was mortified at being the center of attention, and gratefully accepted Luca’s offer of a lift for all three of them back to the villa.
Since her return, the Italian had been a regular visitor.
“How is he this hot?” Annie drooled now from a pair of rickety loungers on the pool terrace, as she and Kim watched Luca pass through the courtyard and inside the house, to where the other girl convalesced amid the cool of the rear living room.
“Dunno, but he sure is burning.”
“Burning for Colette, it seems,” she replied with some dismay.
Kim chuckled. “Clearly there’s a helluva lot more to our girl than meets the eye.”
“Lucky wagon,” Annie muttered darkly.
“But why should it bother you?” Kim asked, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t you have your very own Romeo in the wings?” She watched with satisfaction as Annie flushed a bit and a small smile tugged at her lips.
It was apparent that Colette wasn’t the only one being romanced at the moment.
“Mind your own business.”
“I am. Believe me,” Kim said, lifting up her book again.
Annie rolled her eyes. “You and that bloody book—you’re always stuck in it. Must be a good one, though in fairness you seem to have been reading it forever.”
“Maybe I just read slowly,” Kim countered.
“And maybe my name is Steve.” Her response dripped with sarcasm as she stood up and wrapped a sarong around her waist, her boobs bursting out of the skimpy bikini she wore. Kim knew they were completely natural, too, not bought and paid for like so many of her friends back home.
Annie really was the living, breathing definition of voluptuous, though Kim knew the Irish girl had major insecurities about her looks, always referring to herself as a “heifer” and “massive.”
Despite Kim and Colette’s protests, the other girl just couldn’t seem to admit that she had a body most girls would die for. But those assets and, no doubt, Annie’s sparkly wit, throaty laugh, and infectious sense of humor attracted plenty of male attention, especially here.
Whenever they went out, their Irish friend was the radiant flame who attracted all of the moths nearby, and since Colette was a little too shy to head off the obvious players—groups of locals or other holidaymakers out for a good time—Kim pretty much played bodyguard on their nights out. She wasn’t a complete bore and enjoyed the attention and odd flirtation, too, for sure, but she was determined not to fall back into her old party-girl ways.
“I’m going to head in for a while, before I start getting ready to go out later. Like you said, I have a hot date tonight and I want to straighten my hair and do a bit of a defuzz. See ya.”
“Have fun,” Kim called after her.
Annie winked mischievously. “Don’t worry. I will.”
She smiled and shook her head. Between Colette and Annie, she wasn’t sure who was the more smitten.
Annie definitely had some mystery man on the go downtown that she seemed especially keen on, given her insistence on taking so much time in getting ready for tonight’s outing when it was only early evening and still hours away till dinner.
Colette, on the other hand, seemed completely mortified by Luca’s visits.
Kim watched as the guy in question now emerged from the kitchen with a tray of freshly prepared treats. “I leave the food on the kitchen table. Help yourself,” he informed her.
She sighed inwardly. You could get lost in the guy’s accent, never mind his arms. It was like condensed milk—thick and sweet. Lucky old Colette.
“Thanks.”
She lingered for a few moments as she contemplated food or reading. It had been a long time since lunch, but she was so comfortable here. The intense heat of the afternoon sun was starting to dissipate now, enabling her to move out of the shade and bask in the late-evening glow. This was her favorite time of the day to sunbathe and the only time she exposed her skin to the sun’s direct rays. Not like Annie, who was only too happy to forgo the parasol and lay out cooking like a wiener on a barbecue all day long.
On the other hand, poor Colette could barely glance at the sun without reddening up like a tomato, and like the doctor had pointed out, it was probably no bad thing that she needed to rest up inside for a while.
Kim’s stomach finally won out, and she reluctantly pushed herself up from the comfortable sun lounger and walked back into the cool of the villa. She plated some chicken and pulled a slice of crusty garlic bread from the white paper it was wrapped in, then drifted back out and down to the terrace before curling back into her poolside sun lounger.
Opening the book, she began to once more skim through the words written on the page, as she nibbled on her bread.
Happiness is like the ocean. It comes and goes. You need to be able to ride the waves of the tide if you’re going to stay happy. It means you have to be light enough to float and strong enough to stand up to the breaking on the shore.
Was she light enough to the ride the waves? Kim knew she definitely wasn’t strong enough for the breaking on the shore. How often had she tried to stand up and found herself conforming to what her parents wanted?
Back home, she hadn’t been able to ride the waves. Instead she’d drowned in them, and every day sank lower as the waves got higher.
But since she’d come to Italy, the waves had subsided a little.
Maybe little by little she could start to overcome them and perhaps, given enough time here in Villa Dolce Vita, Kim might eventually be light enough to float.