AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Eden: Yeah. Calling you in 5.
*incoming call from Eden Elliot*
Amalfi
twenty-four
There are only five days left until the Athens concert. Officially time to freak out. My managers won’t leave me alone for five minutes, let alone an entire hour. Jude, Miki and I are dangerously close to being burnt out already, and I catch Skye sleeping standing up at least twice.
So, I make an executive decision.
“We’re out of here,” I tell Skye. “I’m going somewhere to rest for a day. Taking a plane, a ship, I don’t care what.”
“Where do you want to go?” he asks me immediately, without any objections.
“What’s close?” I ask him.
“Everything,” he says. “You have three private jets. One of them is here in Athens, in case you need it.”
I close my eyes. I have three planes and Eden needs to spend her summer interning for a jerk of a singer like me, just to have a shot at going to college. The self-loathing is overwhelming.
“Well, I need it,” I tell him. “Find me a good, relaxing place, and ask anyone who might want to come with.”
“Anyone?” he cocks an eyebrow.
I smile wryly. “Jude, Miki and Eden and Pooh,” I say. “Ren and one more guard, and that’s it. You’re not invited.”
He chuckles. He knows he’s invited, of course. It goes without saying. In two hours, we’re flying to the Amalfi coast.
…
Skye rents a luxury yacht for us and it’s gorgeous, but it’s nothing like Spencer’sL&H. It actually makes me nostalgic for that beast—and for Corfu as well. I barely had time to see it. And it’s the same here.
We sleep and eat, and that’s pretty much all we do. We plop ourselves on deck, sipping coffee or prosecco, and watch the gorgeous Amalfi postcard-like shoreline. I just sit there, gazing at miles and miles of aquamarine water. Winding cliff faces with steps stretching down to the water and colorful, cluttered little villages built vertically into the rock pass us by serenely.
My head is filled with cotton and it can’t hold a single thought—that’s how exhausted I am.
But the next day, we wake up early-ish and drag our tired bodies on deck for a swim. After my first two dives, I feel somewhat more awake and energized.
The water is so clear you can see the rocks and fish twenty feet below the surface, and even though it’s a little cold, it’s exactly what I needed. I dry off on deck and wait for the others to join me before I jump into the water for a third time and just float there, letting my body drift away from the boat, turning up my chin to the golden Italian sun.
There is something deeply moving for me here in Europe. This is where words started. The words that make up my entire universe were born here centuries, millennia ago. The sudden urge to be normal and go on long hikes and sightseeing hits me, even though I know how privileged I have been to be able to see the Parthenon all by myself. I never want to take that privilege for granted.
But yet… Oh, to be normal.
How underrated.
How sublime.
How nostalgic it feels right now. As if it belongs to another Isaiah, in the past.
Dizzy with sun, salt and my own thoughts, I look up at the boat, trying to judge how far away from it the current has carried me and if I should start heading back before I get too tired.
I see a lone figure watching us from the deck, and I swim quickly to the stairs that are dangling from the yacht’s hull in the water. It’s Eden. She came. After everything, she’s here. She came.
Saint Hope, I think.
Hope is the thing with feathers that nestles in the soul…
