Amelia Allen feels stuck.
To an outsider, her life must look beautiful. She has a steady job, a relationship, and several years of her twenties left to figure out what more she wants out of life. But nothing is as shimmery as it appears from the su...
Once they were done checking out the frescoes in the church, they slowly wandered back to the villa, where the remainder of their first afternoon in Florence was spent hanging out in the garden and brainstorming what they might want to do the next day. Amelia and Liam's opinions were being weighed the most heavily since they were the ones visiting for the first time, so she chimed in that she really wanted to make it to the Uffizi sometime before they left town. Henry's dad suggested that if she was interested in seeing as much art as possible, it'd also be worth making a brief detour to the smaller but still significant Galleria dell'Accademia where Michelangelo's David was kept, so they decided to try to make it to both museums the next day.
After dinner, they'd decided to put on a movie in the living room and somehow stumbled across an obscure Italian rom-com, which was much too entertaining to look away from once they'd started it. Even more hilarious was the fact that the English subtitles kept cutting in and out for some unknown reason and so they made Robert and Teresa translate the pieces of dialogue that they were missing out on. Amelia was tuckered out enough from all the walking they did earlier in the day that she somehow managed to doze off on Henry's shoulder for a couple of minutes only to be awoken by the sound of Jen trying to stifle her giggles as her husband recited to her a particularly cringe-worthy line from the film. As Amelia rubbed her eyes and glanced around, she realized that everyone was trying not to laugh, including Robert.
By the time the movie ended (with the couple getting married, of course), they decided to call it a night since pretty much all of them were holding back yawns. Henry slipped into Amelia's room to kiss her goodnight once the villa was completely dark and she was already curled up under her covers.
"You don't have to sneak around just to kiss me, you know," she laughed softly.
"I know," he murmured, the edges of his lips curving upwards. "I just couldn't fall asleep without telling you goodnight. Come get me if you need anything, okay?"
She promised that she would. He kissed her forehead before tucking her back in, and it was like she could still see him there even once she closed her eyes. It took practically no time at all for her to drift off again.
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Amelia got caught daydreaming.
She was watching out the window of the restaurant they'd stopped at for lunch, her gaze captured by the pedestrians who passed in groups down the sidewalk. Bundled in their hats and scarves, they laughed with one another, not appearing to be in any particular rush to get wherever they were headed.
The pace of life felt much slower here than back home. Granted, she knew that most of the people she saw milling around the streets were tourists like herself who had the luxury of relaxing, but it was still nothing at all like being surrounded by other visitors in a frantic city like New York.
She hadn't realized how much she needed this time to recuperate from all things Colton without also having to worry about her job. Although being self-employed had its perks, the boundaries between her personal and professional life were very hazy and so she often got caught in the trap of working late into the night, hunched over her laptop in her bed. The only moments when it was truly easy to push her job completely out of mind were the ones she spent with Henry.
