Caught Between

Chapter 1

"He's 40 Isabella, I mean come on... What business does he have being with a... Wait, how old are you again?"

"22..."

"22 year old!? No business!! He has no business at all!"

Isabella's friend Amelia was giving her a lecture about her new boyfriend. To be fair, Isabella had been complaining about him for the last forty five minutes. Things hadn't been going that well between them over the last few weeks, and the relationship was only a few months old, so that wasn't a good sign at all.

Giovanni was 40 years old and he was the first and only person that Isabella had been with since leaving her ex boyfriend, Luca. He was a few inches taller than Isabella, who stood herself at 5'8"; he had green eyes and a shaved head, she knew he shaved it because he was prematurely balding a bit, and it had definitely bothered her when they first started dating. He was older than anyone that Isabella had ever been with.

"He just turned 40 last week..." Isabella muttered, trying pathetically to justify the age gap.

"Bella... You are way too beautiful and young and amazing to be with someone who doesn't appreciate you, especially if he's that much older then you and he still doesn't get what he has."

Amelia was going all older sister on her. She loved to do that, give Isabella advice on her dating life. But Isabella loved to share details of everything that happened in her relationships with her close friends, so she couldn't expect any less from Amelia.

Especially after everything that Bella had gone through leaving Luca... It had been like something out of a nightmare. Have you ever seen the movie "Enough"? Starring Jennifer Lopez? It was like that except without the beatings she got from her husband. That and of course Bella hadn't been married to Luca.

Their relationship had been getting bad for months before she finally gathered the courage to leave Luca. Her whole family had helped her pack up and move out of the apartment they had shared.

The day she left, she wasn't sad or scared or anything, because her family had been there to support her. But the second she was alone in the new apartment she had rented out for herself, she had sat down in the empty living room and cried. Hard.

Luca didn't give up easily either, he called her and harrassed her for weeks after she finally got away. It got so bad that Bella had to change her phone number finally.

He was leaving her several voicemails every day, each one in varying levels of emotional distress. One would be him crying, begging her to come back, to just answer the phone, to please, please talk to him. The very next message however, was him calling her horrible names, slut, bitch, whore, gypsy. Then he would circle back to crying again.

It was pure mental torment for Isabella. She saved most of his messages, at first so she could listen to them and remember why she left him; remember what an awful guy he was to her.

But after a few months, she saved them just so she could hear his voice; just so she could feel her heart strings being pulled from his desperate cries for her love.

Sometimes Bella thought she was some kind of masachist, that she like the abuse. But her friends kept reassuring her that she was going through withdrawal of some sort, like a solider in a war who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder.

Isabella had been strong, really strong in fact. It had been almost three entire months since she had spoken to Luca. There had been nothing but radio silence from him since she had changed her cell phone number. She was kind of surprised actually, that Luca had just given up on her like that.

She had thought that he would never let her go. That was until she signed into her old email address last week and saw several emails from Luca that had never made it to her.

It was the same as the voicemails she had been getting the first few weeks after she had left him. The emails were distressing, she could feel his pain in them. Some of them read like he was going through a horrible tragedy without her, and yet others told her to go fuck herself and called her names.

It was all very confusing for Bella, and when she found those messages it stirred up everything she had been trying to surpress while she was dating Giovanni.

Suddenly Isabella found herself lost again, upset, missing him, wanting desperately to call him, just to hear his voice or have him hold her close in his arms. She had made the mistake of telling Amelia that, and she got reprimanded hard for having those racing emotions.

Amelia had been there for Isabella during the dark times, the last two weeks before she had actually moved out. Bella had crashed on Ameila's floor at her apartment and had spent days and nights crying, full of anxiety and fear.

She seemed to have a fear of everything, fear of being alone, fear of Luca, fear of leaving him. She had been scares of everything. It was like a love addiction she couldn't quit.

But then once she finally got away, all she wanted was him back. At least until she met Giovanni.

Giovanni was the polar opposite of Luca; he was professional and business oriented. He owned a restaurant and had goals and dreams and ambitions. Giovanni was able to show Isabella a lifestyle that she hadn't had since dating Luca.

They had spent a wonderful three months together, yet now Giovanni seemed to be not everything that Isabella needed... She felt like she was missing something. Some kind of affection or love and Giovanni wasn't able to give it to her...