Wish you were here (Five minutes freewrite)

marie-jay (61)in #freewrite • 6 years ago (edited)

The throngs of visitors rushed by ignoring her. Just another exhausted tourist resting on the steps of the marble stairs of the palazzo. If her face was ashen, they did not notice. Even if they had, there was nothing they could've done. The pain she felt in her chest was not physical, it was guilt she felt, although she couldn't say whether she was sorry for herself, for him or for what might have been.
The great hall with the grand piano was nothing like the dusty cramped room she so well remembered now, but for a second she thought she could see him playing, like he used to. And she could see herself, lying on the worn-out sofa, sipping on a glass of red wine, trying to look suitably impressed, yet dying for him to be done already. She had no clue what he was playing or if he was good at it, but she liked the idea of being there with her grown-up romantic lover, light years away from all her friends whose idea of a great date was making out in the backseat of the car and getting wasted on cheap beer.

There was no making out in the piano room, for Adrian's mother was in the habit of barging in on them without ever bothering to knock on the door. Amanda shuddered as she remembered the old woman with the long white hair, who looked half-mad and scared the shit out of her. And the way she looked at her with those piercing green eyes, head slightly tilted, lips pursed. She always seemed to find Amanda wanting. Even when she did something as innocuous as offering the girl a cup of tea for breakfast, she managed to turn it into an ordeal of scrutiny. It hardly mattered that Amanda was half-naked, standing there in one of Adrian's T-shirts, for the the woman could see more than her bare legs, she could see her for what she was. A silly infatuated young woman who had no idea what she was doing there. Other than banging her son, of course.
Amanda wondered if the old woman had known all along how it was going to play out. Probably she had. Probably that's why she had always seemed so judgmental, from the very beginning, when they were so crazy in love. Adrian was so happy, clearly she could see that. Yet she'd never made the slightest effort to befriend Amanda or make her welcome into their house. 'Why bother, you won't be here long, will you?'
Sitting there under the hot Tuscany sun, Amanda felt the tears clouding up her eyes, her self-defensive 'it was not my fault, I didn't know what else to do' rhetoric crumbling, the walls she had hidden that part of her life behind turning to dust. She'd pushed him into the gutter and walked away.

(to be continued)