Letters of Love (Lessons in Love) (25 page)

“Done!” Ashley reached out and shook her friend’s hand firmly. “Now let’s go abuse my father’s credit card! As Chanel in Paris definitely sounds like an emergency to me!”

Within the designer store, Ashley was in her element. She tried on dresses and jackets, all of which fitted her like a glove. She had the figure of a model. The staff had initially been aloof towards the two American girls who came rushing into the store, but once Ashley mentioned her father’s credit card, they were much more attentive.

“You’re not really going to buy anything here, are you?” Alex asked with concern, noticing with a panic the price labels on the items. A Chanel
sweater alone could cost thousands of euros. She didn’t even want to try to figure out what that would be in dollars.

“I don’t know, maybe
.” Ashley shrugged casually. “I’m in dire need of some retail therapy.”

As Ashley tried on items, Alex carefully navigated her way around the shop. It was so much nicer inside than normal shops but with far less merchandise out. There
was only one of anything out on display. If Ashley wanted to try something on, she had to request it in her size.

Around the store, there were lavish chaise lo
ngues and chairs for patrons to sit in, and twice, the girls were offered champagne but declined, on Alex’s insistence, as the last thing Ashley needed to further fuel her splurge was alcohol.

Wandering around absently, Alex found that she was struck by the designer handbags, each neatly sat within a modern
-art-style bookcase, lit from above to reveal their full glory.

Tentatively, Alex lifted down a beige quilted handbag that had the Chanel logo stitched on the front in black. It was beautiful. Glancing around to ensure she wasn’t being watched, Alex even dared to place it on her shoulder, looking at her reflection to see how it looked. It made her appear so professional and grown up. It was the sort of extravagant gift her father would have bought her in a heartbeat.

Thinking of him made Alex suddenly unbearably emotional, and she put the handbag back and went to sit and wait for Ashley on a nearby chair. No matter how many years passed, there were still moments when her father’s loss could quite literally take her breath away. Feeling winded, Alex sat and waited for the sensation to pass.

She knew that he’d be so delighted to see her now, off travelling in Europe, becoming a young woman. Her father
had always spoken about wanting to travel and see the world. To Alex he’d always appeared so cultured and worldly, and she admired that immensely.

Lost
in her thoughts about her father, Alex didn’t see Ashley appear in front of her, proudly clutching a number of Chanel-branded shopping bags.

“Ready to go?” Ashley asked.

“Huh, yeah.” Alex got up and then surveyed the bags hanging off Ashley’s arms. “Dare I ask how much you spent?”

“Enough
.” Ashley shrugged.

“Won’t your
dad be mad?”

“No, he said he wanted me to go enjoy myself and get a few treats
,” Ashley explained, and Alex nodded with understanding. Had her father still been alive, she was certain that he’d have said the exact same thing to her.

****

“Oh my God, these macaroons are amazing!” Ashley declared as she finished off her second one.

“I know, right?” Alex agreed, taking a genteel sip from her cup of tea, resisting the urge to eat a third macaroon herself.

“Thanks for letting me go shopping,” Ashley said once her mouth was no longer full. “I know that sightseeing is important to you, so I promise, the shopping bug is out of my system, for now.”

“Don’t worry about it
.” Alex smiled. “Besides, look what we can see in the distance?” She looked out of the main window of the cake shop, and Ashley followed her gaze.

“Oh, no way,” Ashley breathed
. There in the distance was the Eiffel Tower gracefully hanging above the nearby buildings, looking down on them and the rest of the city.

“So we did get to see it
.” Alex smiled. Then she hailed a nearby waitress and asked her to take their picture, with the distant tower the backdrop.

Smiling
at the camera, both girls held up a brightly colored macaroon, looking the image of happiness.

“
Merci
,” Alex said sweetly to the waitress as she handed back her camera.

“Get you, starting to sound French,” Ashley noted, impressed.

“Well, when in Rome,” Alex joked.

“Speaking of Rome, I believe it is our third and final stop.”

“Indeed.” Alex felt happy and sad at the same time. She didn’t want their vacation to end, but she was excited to visit the historic Roman city.

“Oh, before I forget
.” Ashley rummaged amongst her Chanel bags and then passed one across to Alex.

“What’s this?” Alex asked, confused.

“It’s for you. Open it,” Ashley urged.

“Ash, I can’t
—”

“Don’t be silly
. Just open it,” Ashley pressed.

As instructed, Alex opened the bag and reached in beneath the Chanel logo tissue paper to find the beige quilted bag she’d previously slung over her shoulder. When she looked back at Ashley
, her eyes were bejewelled with teardrops.

“It’s for when you start your hotshot job in New York,” Ashley explained, becoming equally tearful.

“So when you go to work each day, you’ll wear it and think of me. That way, you’ll never forget about me,” Ashley said shyly.

“Ash, as if I could ever forget about you!” Alex cried, hugging her friend tightly. “You’re my best friend in the whole world!”

“You too,” Ashley confirmed. “Now you make sure you rock that bag! It certainly suited you when you gave it a try in the store.”

“You saw that?”

“I told you; I’m hardwired for designer shopping. I don’t miss a trick!”

****

Alex watched Paris become dwarfed beneath her as the plane ascended out of the airport, the Eiffel Tower now merely a tiny dot on the landscape.

Leaning back in her seat
, she sighed contentedly. She felt relaxed and happy, and for the first time in what felt like forever, her mind felt fresh and revived, no longer haunted by thoughts of either Oscar or Mark. The vacation had done her good. She was finally breaking free from the men of her past, at least for the time being.

“As excited as I am to see Rome,” Ashley said, stretching in her aisle seat, “I am not enjoying all the travelling.”

Alex noticed that her friend seemed paler than usual.

“You okay, Ash?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” Ashley retrieved some travel sickness tablets from her satchel and eagerly swallowed them down.

“It’s just planes, trains and automobiles have left me travel fatigued
, and my travel sickness has really kicked in.” Ashley sighed wearily.

“Can I get you anything?”

Ashley shook her head and declined the offer of the snack served during the flight. Alex also declined, sensing that if she ate too close to her nauseous friend, she might prompt her to be sick.

After landing in Rome, as they hauled their luggage off the carousel, Ashley finally started to return to her normal tanned hue.

“Feeling better?” Alex asked as she lifted her duffel bag up onto her back.

“Yeah
.” Ashley nodded, taking tentative sips from her bottle of water.

“Well, this is our final stop, so no more travelling for you to suffer through.”

“It’s a good job we didn’t decide to do a world tour,” Ashley joked.

“I don’t know,” Alex said sadly, mulling the idea over. “In an ideal world, our vacation would never end.”

****

Rome was considerably hotter than both London and Paris had been. As they exited the airport and stepped out into the Italian sunshine
, Ashley eagerly put on her Ray-Ban Aviators, glad that she was finally able to wear them.

As a city, Rome seemed to throb with an ancient energy. The chaotic traffic was reminiscent of Paris
, with drivers taking crazy risks and people on mopeds constantly darting through the dense wall of traffic.

“I could never drive here,” Ashley said, bemused as their own taxi lurched out in front of another car.

“It’s like there are no rules,” Alex agreed.

They were staying at a small boutique hotel in the center of the city. There was a rooftop pool
, which would offer some pleasant respite from the heat.

Their hotel room was Mediterranean in style, with terracotta-tiled floors, beige walls and wooden shutters on the windows. The room had high ceilings,
with a ceiling fan in the center.

“This room is so hot,” Ashley declared as they began to unpack. “Can you turn the air
-conditioning on, please?”

Alex glanced around, looking for the central control for the cooling system. There was a light switch but nothing else apart from the fan on the ceiling
, which she could already see was too high to have any impact on the temperature of the room.

“I don’t think the room has air
-conditioning,” Alex said apologetically.

“What?” Ashley dropped the clothes she was unpacking and looked at her friend in amazement.

“There’s no air-conditioning,” Alex said again.

“That’s ridiculous!” Ashley declared desperately. “This room is boiling!”

“I know,” Alex agreed.

After ten minutes of a more thorough search proved fruitless, Ashley finally accepted that the room was indeed lacking any form of air
-conditioning, and they were resigned to opening the windows and hoping that some semblance of a breeze would float in and alleviate the heat.

Despite the warmth in the room, it was a welcome change to finally be able to wear summer clothes, instead of covering up against the rain.

Alex put on some denim hot pants and a baggy white T-shirt, and Ashley wore a bright yellow playsuit, which accentuated her olive skin.

“Where shall we go first?” Ashley pondered once they were ready.

“How about the Coliseum?” Alex suggested.

****

When Alex imagined the Coliseum in Rome, she pictured a grand, historic structure similar to the one on the film
Gladiator
. She anticipated that it would be so large in scale that she’d have to crane her neck to see the top of it. The reality was far removed from what she’d conjured up in her mind.

The Coliseum, or rather what remained of it, was within the city but surrounded by busy, frantic roads, offering a strange juxtaposition of the modern city against the historic remains.

“It doesn’t seem that impressive.” Ashley frowned as they exited the taxi.

“No, it doesn’t,” Alex agreed sadly.

The landmarks in Paris and London had been whole and intact, retaining their awe-inspiring grandeur. Seeing the remains of what had once been an architectural wonder made Alex feel strangely sad. What if all great things would one day be reduced to this? A glorified roundabout of ancient stones?

“I just thought it would be…
bigger,” Ashley said softly, trying not to rain on the parade of sightseeing.

“Me too,” Alex agreed.

They looked out at what remained of the Coliseum and tried to imagine how it had once been. How the circular seating would have reached up to the heavens and how the roar of the eager crowd would be carried on the soft wind for miles around.

“I bet it was great once,” Ashley said.

“Yeah.” Alex nodded and was suddenly blindsided by a thought of Oscar. Things with him had been great once. There was a time when their relationship was like the Coliseum in its heyday, huge and all encompassing. It was all she could think about, all she cared about. But now the relationship lay in ruins, no longer as impressive, losing its strength and allure. Thinking about it made her feel impossibly sad.

“Let’s go have dinner somewhere!” Ashley declared brightly, noticing how her friend’s face had suddenly dropped.

“And it must be Italian! After all, when in Rome,” she joked, and Alex managed to smile a little.

****

They settled upon a small bistro close to their hotel. Even though dusk was fast approaching, the city retained its heat, and most restaurants seated a majority of their patrons outside, creating a bustling atmosphere upon the streets of Rome.

The girls were shown to a small table for two that overlooked a busy street. Around them, couples and families were already dining, tucking in to great bowls of pasta. A handsome waiter with jet-black hair and deep brown eyes came to take their order.

He greeted them in Italian, and Ashley instantly waved her hand to stop him.