Take A Chance On Me ☆ [Mamma Mia - Bill Anderson X Reader]

☆22☆

Your POV

The two things you remember before passing out in the sand somewhere are rowing ashore after hours upon hours of sailing in the tiny boat without food and water, then crawling onto the empty stretch of sand and falling asleep in the night.

The first thing you sense when you wake up the next bright morning is an old woman standing over you, to which you start and scramble up the bed you find yourself on. Your eyes dart around the small room in panic, remembering all the examples of stranger danger you had always tried to yell after Donna. How did you get here?! Were you kidnapped?!

"Calm, calm, lady," the old woman says in a soothing tone, her language broken English but her accent something you've never heard before.
You gulp and ask delicately, "Where am I? Where is this? You don't sound Greek."

The woman, dressed in an abaya that complementes her darker skin tone but without the head covering some women of Muslim religion also wore, tilts her head questioningly.
"Greek? No, no, no Greek. Turkey."
She enunciates the name of the country loudly and slowly, like you're a baby that needs to be taught everything. You feel like one: she's telling you you're in... Turkey?! How in the Hell did you sail in a small rowing boat with no possessions other than a camera from an island in Greece to Turkey?!

The woman has a concerned expression on, and your mind scrambles to the little Turkish language you know from university. Slowly, so you say exactly what you know, you tell her, "Buraya nasıl geldiğimi bilmiyorum," which you think translates to, "I do not know how I got here."

Her face changes from slight confusion, probably because you don't really know Turkish, and she replies, "Burada kal," which you think means, "Stay here."

You don't remember to translate when you wonder aloud, "No, I can't, I can't stay somewhere. I need to get out there. What I saw when I was out there, in France, in Greece, in Kalokairi... it was all so wonderful, so eye-opening. I want to feel that way again, awestruck and free and adventurous. I wanna leave, I wanna go everywhere I can..."

Bill's POV

I'm in Rome.

And I still can't get over the fact that I'm a piece of shit who just lost possibly the first girl who as of yet has been able to break through to me. The first girl I let in.

And I was a stupid idiot. "γαμώτο!"

"What does that mean?" a barfly I've been talking to asks in Italian, and I answer back in the same language, "It means fuck."
"Oh. Why did you say fuck?" the olive-skinned woman asks, scratching lightly on the slice of my chest uncovered by my loose shirt in what I probably would think sexy on any other day. It doesn't help - just reminds me more of how Y/N used to lie on my chest and stroke my small trail of chest hair in my bed before we went to sleep holding each other.

Before I fucked her sister.

γαμώτο!

I haven't talked properly to the girl, who is my age and looking sleek in a short black cocktail dress, her bulky arms wrapped round my shoulders as we sit at the almost empty bar.
It's that odd part in the afternoon where it's not quite evening but not quite light, and makes you think about things. About her.

All right. I'm done with trying to chat up this stranger to help me feel better about Y/N. Time to selfishly indulge by going back to my boat and holding her leftover stuff in my arms. And possibly smelling them a little. Yeah, I'm gonna do that instead.

Wordlessly I unhook the barfly off of me and walk out of the bar, heading to the dock and ignoring the girl's shouts behind me slowly getting quieter.

I hold my emotions until I get into my living space, collect her adorable light blue cotton pyjamas and the flip flops of mine she borrowed for a few days in my arms - then I let tears seep out of my eyes as I screw them shut.