Broken Promises and Ripped Dresses

Heading Home

Chapter 20. Heading Home

I saw Andrew getting out of the elevator and turned my head before we could make eye contact. I heard the sound of footsteps and a suitcase rolling, but they weren't coming towards me, but instead towards the front desk.

I looked up now that the coast was clear.

After Andrew and I's fight up on the roof, I went to our room and quickly packed all my things so that I could get out of there before Andrew came in. I didn't think I could look at him without falling to pieces.

I would have preferred to have gone to the airport by myself, but he had the tickets and I didn't think I should just leave him there.

Maybe I was overreacting about the whole thing. I don't know. It's just that Andrew left me over such a stupid thing while in return I made myself go insane with ideas for why he'd left. How could he have left me with such a ridiculous motive?

I couldn't handle the sight of him at the moment.

Finally, after a couple more minutes, I heard Andrew's increasing footsteps as he walked over to me. He must have been checking out of the hotel.

When he finished and turned around from the desk, I quickly put my head back down, my wavy hair falling across my face. Instead of looking up at him, I just stared at his black converse as they appeared by the chair I was sitting in. I was wearing the exact same shoes, but they were more old and shabby than his.

"Are you ready?" he asked, strolling his suitcase next to mine.

"Yeah," I mumbled, not lifting my head.

"Angela, really-"

"I don't want to talk about it, Andrew," I snapped, finally raising my head to look at him. A slight pang of guilt shot through me when I saw his saddened face. "I don't want to talk to you."

He didn't protest. "Well then... let's get going. We need to get to our flight on time."

I nodded and stood up from the chair, grabbing my suitcase's handle. Before we started making our way to the door, I grabbed the two wedding dresses in their bags from a chair next to me.

Looks like I completed my mission: finding Mandy's dress. And I got it without charge, so that's a plus.

But something still felt left undone or unsaid as we left the hotel.

As we walked out the door, I took one last look at the beautiful hotel I would never have dreamed of staying at before this trip.

If you had asked me yesterday how I would be leaving this hotel, I would have told you that Andrew and I would be walking out hand in hand, laughing and waving goodbye to the lobby as if it were a real person.

That's not at all how it happened.

We walked at least five feet away from each other. One of my hands rolling the suitcase behind me, and the other with the dresses draped over it. I looked straight forward at the taxi pulling up for us.

No holding hands. No laughing. No waving. Just cold stone silence as we drifted out the doors like ghosts.

The taxi man helped us put our stuff in the trunk as I got into the back seat by the left window. When Andrew got in, I made sure to scrunch myself up against the far door as much as possible, far away from him.

Unlike the ride to the hotel where we'd been excitedly pointing at things outside the window, and having fun. This ride was quiet and disheartening.

The passing vineyards, cottages, and buildings didn't seem as charming as they had been before. Everything just seemed dull.

That's not how you're supposed to view Italy.