Your Smile to My Polaroids - the Official Five-Chapter Trailer

Chapter 2

Three things I have learned from this sole situation already are:

1. Make sure your landlord is certainly someone with an organization fad, especially in the case of them being pregnant.
2. Make sure your landlord knows their due-date during pregnancy, if they are pregnant.
3. Definitely take more money in case you desperately need to book a hotel room all of a sudden, if your landlord is giving birth unexpectedly.

'Cause, here I am now, standing with all my luggage in the middle of the train station, desperately in need of a shower.

Her sister could've at least asked why I was calling! The only thing I need are the keys; I don't have to get a luxury tour of my apartment with a detailed description on how to use a coffee machine. I don't even think it's over thirty squared meters area wise, what's there to show?

I ponder my next few actions, anxiety welling up in my chest. I have money on my credit card that could stretch across two weeks with thoughtful spending, and around five hundred euros in cash in my wallet. I could temporarily get a hotel room for one night, but I haven't got the faintest idea on the length of the continuation of Francesca's offline status.

Then how long do I book a lodging for?

I let out a sigh as my mind rushes through all the possible outcomes of the situation, finger picking at a strip of dead skin on my lip.

Guess I'll get a room in a hotel for one night, and if Francesca doesn't get back to me tomorrow morning, I'll just book a new apartment. Thank God I grinded at that fast food job in Genoa.

I begin to saunter towards the exit, and then stop in my tracks.

But what if Francesca gets back to me tomorrow? And I have already cancelled the reservation? She's such a nice woman, I can't just put her off like that!

I plump down on the nearest bench and think this through all over again, for the next ten minutes. When I realize I have, yet again, wasted a relatively big fraction of my life on overthinking things, I get up, deciding that I'll go with the very first option. The irksome sensation of restlessness is still boiling up in my chest.

I head towards the exit, simultaneously scrolling through the numerous hotel choices in town. I pick the cheapest one and march on forward, preparing to enjoy the wonderful scenery Levanto is bound to grant me on my way there, forgetting that it's the middle of June.

***

As I reach the town centre, I can't help but gasp for air violently with every step I take towards the hotel. Summer in Italy is so unforgiving, it feels like the sun has decided to move a few light-years closer to Earth. I haven't even walked for longer than nine minutes.

Erica, didn't you work out at home for like a month?

I guess my more or less fit physique doesn't help here.

Even though I'm feeling like a thoroughly squashed lemon, I can't help but admire the scenery around me. At the town centre there is a building of almost every colour; red, orange, white, yellow, even light green (which gives me a fat heap of serotonin as I've loved this colour ever since I was three). Bushes of lush greenery sprouting up here and there, palm trees towering above me. Although I have gotten very well acquainted with this plant family throughout my life in Genoa, I don't know, the pineapple-like trees give off a completely disparate vibe in this town. A sense of something fresh, utopian and amorous in combination with all the emerald leafs creeping up the cobblestone walls of some houses. In accompaniment with all this, I can hear the blustering sea very warm to me as the never-ending waves crash on the pebbles of its coast. Strolling through the charming streets, looking up at the balconies full of blooming petunias and admiring the architecture, I don't notice how one of the wheels of my suitcase slips off the pavement and falls into a storm drain. As I feel like there is sudden resistance to my movements, I turn around, looking for the problem. My suitcase's wheel is, in fact, caught up in a rupture in the metal bars of the water drain.