summer love / lewis redman

day 12

"What is this?" Luciana asked the hostess, who leaned against the front window and handed over a long white envelope.

She shrugged a bare shoulder, giving her friend a knowing look as Lucy slid a fingernail under the lip of the envelope and split the paper, ripping it carefully until she could slide out the folded paper inside. She pulled the two folded sides of the page apart and swatted her hand through the air, trying to catch the piece of thin paper fluttering towards the ground, but missing.

When she'd flipped the smaller sheet, she found that her legs couldn't make her stand back up. It was a one-way flight voucher to London.

"Holy shit," Lucy breathed out, holding the voucher in one shaking hand as she held the paper open, reading the words scribbled almost illegibly. We don't ever have to buy the return flight if you don't want to.

This was like those fairy tales, the ones where a handsome man was too sweet for words, generous, kind and caring beyond measure. He showed up, swept her away with his charm and his fortune. Her life was better, her potential not lost by lack of opportunity, and the best hiding inside of her came out to play. 

This was a rom-com with a man who came and brought the foreign woman, struggling, living with her parents, to live in a flourishing country where she could make her name, escape the life she'd always dreamt of leaving behind. He would marry her, give her a home and a job and visits back home as a guest where she'd once struggled to make ends meet.

But this... wasn't either of those things. This was the place where Luciana worked her ass off day in and day out, earning the life she had. She learned and read and studied not because she had to do such a thing to get out of her parents' house, out of this country, into a world like his, but because she wanted to learn and escape whatever universe she was in in favor of the ones on the pages.

This was Lewis thinking that by handing over a flashy plane ticket with an invitation to leave what she'd founded for herself to be with him. It was him asking her to give up everything she knew and loved, all she'd earned and created for herself, simply because of a boy she'd barely known two weeks. It was him giving up nothing, expecting her to throw all she had away as if it meant nothing because he thought he deserved that. 

Instead of being swept off her feet, Lucy felt a kick in her stomach.

She marched from the restaurant, along the walkway around to the front doors of the hotel where she knew the boys were still getting ready for their second to last day in Ibiza. She breezed past the other guests leaving the lift and stepped in, hitting the door close button and holding the envelope in her trembling hand as she was flown away to the boys' front door.

Her hand banged the door sharply, and before Simon fully had the door open behind him, Lucy was brushing past him and storming towards the room that Ethan and Lewis shared.

"Hey, Lucy!" Ethan chirped, rubbing his damp head with his towel and giving her a rosy-cheeked smile.

"I need to speak to Lewis, please." Lucy replied in greeting, avoiding Ethan's gaze as she met a pair of eyes that had made her stomach melt just hours ago, but now made her feel like she was rising to a boil.

Ethan read her tone appropriately and quickly left the room, closing the door gently.

"Did you get the letter I left you?" Lewis asked, looking a bit wary. Lucy held it up, crossing her free arm over her chest.

"This?" She quizzed, tilting her head to the side. "This isn't a letter, this is a plane ticket and a single sentence that you're expecting to convince me to leave my entire life behind."

"I don't understand - " Lewis began, confusion covering his face as he stepped towards Luciana. She stepped back, letting the envelope drop to her side.

"Clearly you do not understand," She responded, trying not to let her voice raise, "Because you don't seem to realize that you are telling me to leave behind my entire world here, my family and my job and my roots, so that I can move to London to be with a boy that I hardly know."

Lewis held out a hand, but Lucy held up her own, signalling for him to stop. "I want you to come with me, I didn't think about anything else except for you and me and how much I want to stay with you."

"But you didn't think of me at all, amigo." Lucy frowned, her eyebrows drawing together. "This is what I have, what I've always had, and maybe it isn't what I've always wanted - not for every moment, but if I had to choose a boy I met twelve days ago or this?"

There was silence that settled between them. "I get it."

"No, you do not." Lucy continued, crossing her arms so the envelope crunched between her arm and her chest. "You think that this means nothing to me, that I need saving. How... what is the word? Intitulado."

"Entitled." Lewis corrected. "I think you meant entitled."

Lucy's lips pulled up into a sad smile. "You came to my home as a luxurious vacation, but you pity me for living here. You think everything you have is better, that you can bring me to London and take away my problems."

"I never thought -" Lewis began, but Lucy held up her hand to silence him again.

"No, you never thought it." She corrected, shaking her head. "You never thought it because you never even realized you thought that way. That is entitled."

"I'm sorry." Lewis breathed, reaching out both hands and sliding them up her arms, his heart lifting slightly as she finally let him touch her.

Lucy looked down at his hands, and then up at his eyes. "I am sorry too."

And then she left, closing the door behind her quietly. She brushed by the boys standing silently and confused in the living room, and let the door drop closed behind her. Lucy didn't want to wait for the elevator, so instead she sprinted down the stairs until she felt the sun and the warm air on her skin.

She picked up her phone, seeing that now she'd missed the start of her shift. She dialed, pressing her phone to her ear, and began to walk out into the sand as it rang. 

"Hola, Marianne. I'm not coming back in today." Lucy announced into the phone, her eyes squinting against the light as she stared out at the ocean. "In fact, Mary... I quit."