A Wink and a Smile & the Land is Ours

Chapter 1

Hey! this is my first story i've published on here so please let me know what you think of it <3 I included a picture of Eliza if you want to see what she looks like!

As much as I love Lucy, her endless jabber makes me want to makes me want to stab myself with a fork. My friend Lucy was explaining to me the calibrations of her trip to Paris. She was leaving in a week and despite having gone there three times before, she was ecstatic.

"And then I'm planning on walking around the Louvre for hours! It will be wonderful, Eliza." She exclaimed as she pushed a strand of her blond bob behind her ear. I must have given her a confused look because she explained, "not to look at the art, of course. To pick up foreign artsy boys". She smirked at me and I knew she was joking. Lucy had a boyfriend of two years, Gabriel, but not even he could stop her obsession of boys with accents.

I smirked slightly and readjusted my Cartier bracelet, "That makes more sense. I remember during spring break down in New York, you wouldn't set foot inside the MET. Gabriel had to physically carry you in!"

A few months ago, Lucy, Gabriel, My best friend Jay, and I went on a spur-of-the-moment outing to New York City. We spent majority of the time shopping to satisfy Lucy's addiction to clothes, but we managed to squeeze in a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Throughout the DaVinci section, Jay and Gabriel snickered at paintings of topless women; though outside of that section I'm sure I was the only one who enjoyed it. Not that I was some art nerd, I know nothing about the renaissance and modern art flies right over my head.

I mean, how on earth can a broken chair in the middle of a room symbolize the struggles and burdens of love?

I just love museums because of their concept. Museums are buildings dedicated to artists who devote their life to the pieces. People spend lifetimes studying art and come from all over the globe to catch a glimpse of it. Of course, I would never admit my museum obsession to anyone. I was able to justify going to the MET by saying that my mom wanted me to become a "cultured individual", therefore a visit to one of Americas largest museums would be a requirement. Of course, my mom never said this, but my friends understood my need to follow my parents' orders. I was far from being the rule-following type, but I always had an incessant need to try to impress my parents. I wanted them to notice me for once. There are many benefits to having two parents in corporate law, but family time is not one of them.

We stopped walking when we got to my locker. " I wish you were coming with me," Lucy pouted.

"Me too, Luc," I sighed. Lucy's family and my family got close when our dads started working at the same firm. For the last five years, we had traveled together over the summer. I had created so many memories with Lucy, skinny-dipping at a villa in Tuscany, surfing with cute locals in northern Australia, and sipping wine in Amsterdam. As stuck-up as it sounded, I almost felt as if it were the end of an era. I knew our families were not as close as they used to be so the chances of a conjoined family vacation were slim.

This year my parents had decided they were going to be working in United States for the summer. My mom had a client in Texas and my dad had decided to join her there for two months. He planned on picking up a few clients while he was away and being a reputable lawyer, it wasn't a difficult task. They dropped the bomb on me a month ago, we were having dinner together for the first time in weeks and I was listing possible locations for our summer trip. I was right in the middle of explaining how fun Prague would be when my mom interrupted me, bluntly stating that we wouldn't be traveling this summer. They gave me the option to go to Texas with them, but I decided to stay in Deep Cove. Sitting alone in a hotel while my parents worked for hours wasn't exactly my cup of tea. Not that staying in Deep Cove was, it was only a better option. More then half of the town during the summer months and their spots were filled with obnoxious tourists. Almost everyone in my school would be spending their summers in Jamaica and Greece while I was stranded in Deep Cove.