WHEN IN ROME…
Find Yourself
Lena Mae Hill
Copyright © 2016 Lena Mae Hill
First Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except in cases of reviewer quoting brief passages in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, and events are entirely coincidental. Use of any copyrighted, trademarked, or brand names in this work of fiction does not imply endorsement of that brand.
Published in the United States by Lena Mae Hill and Speak Now.
www.lenamaehill.com
This edition ISBN-10: 1-945780-00-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-945780-00-4
DEDICATION
For my sisters in anxiety.
I hope you enjoy this work of fiction. To get insider info, early access to the next book in the series, and enter cool giveaways, please join for My VIP Readers Club.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to everyone who made this book possible. My parents, for their unwavering support. My husband and son, who give me time to write, motivation and encouragement. And all the amazing folks I’ve met in the online writing community who have cheered me along, including early readers, fellow writers, and friends. And last but not least, my sisters, especially Elana, who let me troll her study abroad experience when I needed help.
I couldn’t do it without any and all of you.
CHAPTER OnE
Rory Hartnett could not pry herself loose from her mother’s grip. She had first returned her mother’s embrace, then tried to pull away, then submitted and patted her mother’s sloping back while she watched some of her fellow study abroad group members ascend the escalator to her left. Her little sister, Quinn, rolled her eyes behind their mother’s back.
“Mom, seriously, I’m going to be fine,” Rory said. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“Now, hon, you know that just isn’t true.” She pulled back to fuss with Rory’s hair, but Rory ducked out of her reach. “Hon-ey,” her mother said, looking offended.
“You have your medications, don’t you, sweetheart?” her father asked, clearing his throat. If there was one thing Rod and Winnie Hartnett would never forget, it was to double check that their daughter had her prescriptions. You couldn’t trust those European countries, with their socialist medicine.
“Yes, Dad,” Rory said. “And I have my spare pair of glasses, and copies of my passport in a separate location from my real passport, and a second form of ID, and the number of the American Embassy in Rome.”
“Don’t be fresh,” Winnie said, blinking her watery eyes behind her glasses. She had given Rory her light red hair, her sensitive, nearsighted eyes, and her sensitive, freckle-prone skin that had a tendency to turn red at the slightest provocation.
Quinn, who had decided that looking up Pinterest recipes on her phone was more interesting than the farewell scene, had gotten lucky and taken after someone more attractive, though Rory couldn’t say who.
“It’s just that I’m twenty-one,” Rory said, feeling her neck and face prickle with heat as a couple from her class went up the escalator, the Mexican girl with pink ombre hair waving back to her mother and calling out goodbyes in several languages, the cute bespectacled guy looking on in amusement. Cynthia and Nick.
“I don’t need you to remind me to take my meds,” Rory said to her mother. “I’ll be okay. I really will.”
“Oh, I hope so,” her mother said, clasping Rory’s hands. “I wish I could go with you and make sure. Just until you got settled.”
Rory laughed and squeezed Winnie’s hands. “You can’t fly to Rome just to make sure I get settled in.”
“I know,” Winnie said. “But I still worry. You have your phone, right? And the phone card, in case for some reason your cell doesn’t work?”
“I have it,” Rory said. “I’m sure my phone will work.” They had switched her phone to make international calls for a couple months, while she was gone, but her mother didn’t trust that the phone companies in Europe would carry through any more than the pharmaceutical industry.
“It better,” Rod said. “It cost an arm and a leg.”
“I know,” Rory said. She didn’t want to worry them, but she was glad she had the international phone plan. Just in case. She’d never even been out of Arkansas without her parents. What did she know about international travel?
“You take care now,” her dad said, giving her a firm hug. “And don’t forget to call every night before bed at nine o’clock.”
“I won’t,” Rory said. “I better get going.”
“Can’t miss your flight,” Rod said, giving her one last squeeze. “That cost two arms and two legs.” He laughed, and Rory managed a smile as she met Quinn’s eyes.
Quinn stepped over and gave her a big hug. “Make sure you get out and have some fun this summer,” Rory told her little sister. Though they didn’t share a lot physically, they’d managed to score a similar abundance of “quirks,” as their mother would put it. This made it easy to join forces with her sister, especially when it came to their parents. She felt a little bad for leaving Quinn to deal with them on her own for the next six weeks. But they would be on vacation, so maybe they’d be distracted from worrying about her.
“I will,” Quinn said. “And remember to Skype, and text, and post pictures.”
“I will,” Rory said, patting her backpack, where her beloved camera rested. “And good luck in Cape Cod.” She squeezed Quinn’s hand. “You’ll do great.”
Unlike Rory, Quinn was going to a familiar place, one where she’d have to see her ex. Like Rory, she’d only been in love once, and that had been plenty. Their mother said Hartnetts were heart girls, and she had gotten that one right. Two years before, they had both fallen in love quickly and blindly, at the expense of everything else in their lives. As they comforted each other from the resulting heartbreak, they had made a pact not to date again until after college, when they wouldn’t have grades to suffer the ill effects.
“I’ll miss y’all,” Rory said, releasing her sister and turning to her parents. She really would. They were annoying as all get-out, but they were her parents.
“Let me get one more hug,” her mother said, snatching her into her arms the moment her father released her from the tenth hug of the day.
And then she was free, stepping onto the escalator before her parents could call her back one last time. She ignored her mother’s last query as to whether she’d remembered snacks for the plane. Her heart sped up as she reached the top of the escalator and turned for one last wave. Then she was in line to go through security. Her hands trembled as she unzipped her backpack and removed her camera and her quart-sized Ziploc bag of toiletries and makeup. What if they stopped her for her anxiety meds, or if she had more than three ounces of shampoo?
She knew she didn’t. But nonetheless, she was jittery going through security, almost dropped her boarding pass, and then grabbed her backpack off the conveyor so spastically that she forgot it was open. A book, a handful of pens, and a tube of lipstick cascaded across the floor. Oh, crap. They would see that she hadn’t put her tube of lipstick in with her toiletries. What if they pulled her aside, and she missed her plane, and she had to fly to Rome alone? She’d made sure to take a flight with some of the others
and with Professor McClain so she wouldn’t have to travel alone.
“You okay there, ma’am?” asked a black lady old enough to be her mother. She bent to help Rory pick up her things. Oh, God. She was one of the TSA agents. Rory just knew she was going to stop her and search her bags.
The lady handed her the handful of pens she’d collected. “Here you are.”
“Thank you,” Rory breathed. She shoved her feet into her flats, jammed all her items into her backpack without bothering to organize, and took off, calling out another thanks as she hurried away.
“Ma’am?” the woman called.
Oh, no. This was it. Should she keep going, pretend she hadn’t heard?
“Excuse me…Rory Hartnett?”
She turned back, pivoting in slow motion, her stomach sour with dread.
“You forgot your boarding pass,” the lady said, holding it out with one blue-gloved hand.
Rory’s legs threatened to buckle with each step. Each one seemed to take her further from the woman instead of closer, as if she were walking the wrong way on an escalator. At last, her cold fingers closed around the boarding pass. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said. “Thanks so much.”
“It’s that way,” the woman said, pointing her in the opposite direction from the one she’d gone before. “Enjoy your flight.”
She practically ran through the terminal, checking for gate numbers until she found her departure gate. She collapsed into a chair and took a deep breath. If she couldn’t get through the Northwest Arkansas airport, with all of two terminals, how was she going to survive Atlanta? Her nose was sweating so much she had to take off her glasses and dry the nosepieces so they wouldn’t slide right off her face.
Nick smiled at her. He was nice. She’d had classes with him, as well as everyone else in the anthropology study abroad group. She smiled back, her face warming under his gaze. It didn’t take much. Pretty much every time someone looked at her, she’d turn red. Jack, her ex, used to tease her about it all the time, which only made it worse. Cute boys also made it worse, and Nick was definitely cute. With his hipster glasses and dark hair and dimple, he reminded her of Clark Kent. But he already had a Lois, and she was nice, too.
At least, Rory imagined she was nice. She’d never talked to Cynthia, but she seemed like the kind of cool girl who would be nice instead of bitchy. She was always laughing and wiggling her eyebrows at people, swinging her pink hair around and smacking her gum. But she seemed utterly approachable and warm, so much so that it was too intimidating to actually approach her. She might be horrible in reality.
“Hey,” Nick said. “I’ve seen you around. Rory, right?”
“Like Rory Gilmore?” Cynthia asked.
“But without the cool mother or the Ivy League smarts,” Rory said for the millionth time. People always said that. Although it usually annoyed her, it was comforting now, to have to say her familiar lines in this foreign situation.
“You’re at all the Jack of Spades shows, right?” Nick asked.
“We’ve had a few classes together,” Rory mumbled, sweat breaking out all over her again. She really didn’t want to talk about her ex’s band, although Nick had definitely seen her there before.
Cynthia started talking to Maggie, and Nick turned his attention away from Rory. She relaxed and texted her mother to tell her she was waiting at the gate, and they could go. Winnie said they were waiting until the plane took off to make sure the flight didn’t get cancelled. Rory couldn’t help but wonder if they were really waiting to see if she’d chicken out. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d wanted to do something and then backed out at the last minute, too afraid to look stupid or leave the safety net of her family. Her friend Patty had almost convinced her at least five times to move in with her, but Rory always found some excuse not to take the plunge.
When they finally got on the plane, Rory thought her seatmate wasn’t going to show up, but then she burst onto the plane. With her lanky, loose limbs that were almost painfully thin, her tan skin and blonde hair and the black knee brace she wore openly, with skirts or shorts, as if she’d never thought to be self-conscious about it, Kristina was the least approachable person in the group. She had an air of confidence that was almost forceful, but upon closer inspection, she wasn’t actually pretty. Rory had a feeling that most people missed that. They didn’t study other people as closely as she did.
Kristina crumpled into the seat and immediately announced that she’d been dumped. Rory leaned against the armrest and looked out the window as Kristina talked to her friends in the seat behind them. But once the plane started moving, Kristina turned around and, to Rory’s surprise, started talking to her. She probably didn’t even know Rory’s name, but by the time they reached Atlanta, Rory knew the entire history of Kristina’s relationship with the guy who had just dumped her.
And strangely enough, it had kept her from getting nervous. Kristina’s drama seemed so real, so overwhelming and unfair. How could a guy have the nerve to dump her, and at the door of the airport of all places? How dare he?
Because Rory had listened so intently, Kristina didn’t seem to mind that Rory tagged along with her, Maggie, Cynthia, and Nick, through the Atlanta airport. Rory even stopped at the same greasy Chinese place for dinner, because she was afraid if she lost sight of them, she might never find the right gate. Maggie gestured for her to join them, so she ate quietly at the end of their table.
Of all the people in the program, Maggie was the only one who seemed to remember having classes with her. She’d seen Maggie around campus for years, the petite, short-haired brunette walking with her blonde boyfriend to classes, eating with him in the dining hall, studying with him in the library. Rory couldn’t imagine someone ever being that devoted to her.
After they went through customs, she followed them at an unobtrusive distance to their departure gate. This time, she didn’t sit with Kristina on the plane, and she took an extra Xanax to keep calm during takeoff. It was kind of exhilarating, now that she’d found her way and hadn’t gotten lost in either airport. She was leaving not just Arkansas, not just her parents, but the United States. She, Rory Hartnett, was a world traveler. She was flying over the Atlantic Ocean.
Oh, crap. She shouldn’t have thought about that. Now all she could think of was the plane crashing. An engine malfunction. What if they’d forgotten to fill all the fuel tanks? What if there was a terrorist onboard? Oh, no. What if her mother was right, and she never should have signed up to travel abroad? What if she died, leaving her poor mother and father with only one child? And poor Quinn with both of them.
They hadn’t always been so overprotective. At least, she didn’t think they had. She remembered camping in her backyard, in a tent by herself, when she was little. More likely, her older brother was supposed to be watching her, but he’d snuck out with his friends instead. He’d been an unruly teenager. That’s how her mother always put it, with fond sadness in her eyes. Rory didn’t remember that part. She’d been only seven when he died. To her, he was always the roughhousing big brother who made her smell his stinky armpits but let her stay up as late as she wanted when her parents were dealing with the colicky baby and left him in charge of Rory.
Now, her parents poured all their love and attention, their worry and expectation, into her and Quinn. She didn’t usually mind. She loved them, too, and she understood why they guarded her so closely. They’d already lost one child, the strong, resilient one. How could they help but worry about her, the anxiety-ridden one who had migraines, poor vision and a weak immune system? Even Quinn, who was the baby, didn’t get fussed over quite as much.
And now, they couldn’t even help her if she needed them. To be fair, she’d given them plenty of opportunity for concern. Plenty of opportunities to rescue her. But this time, she’d be across the ocean. They couldn’t drive a few hours to pick her up. This both terrified and excited her. For the first time, she’d be really, really on her own, with no one to fall back on.
She flipped to the next page, where the glossy, gorgeous face of her sister’s favorite popstar stared back at her. “Where in the World is Brody Villines?” the headline read. Brody Villines had mysteriously disappeared six months before, and no one in the media had seen or heard from him since. The article theorized that he was hiding at his family’s Kentucky mansion, but they were staying mum to protect him, as old Southern money was apt to do. The writer suspected drugs.
Rory carefully pulled the pages out and folded them, so she could later send them to Quinn, who was constantly glued to her phone for the latest news from the blogosphere, and had listened to his solo EP, Does Me Plus You? at least a thousand times, searching for clues as to why and to where he might have vanished. After a second, she pulled out the page before the article, too. While she was tearing up the magazine, she might as well.
Not that she’d ever do something as crazy as applying for a travel internship. She’d barely left America. Still, she could use it for her vision board. She folded the page and slipped it into her backpack before returning the magazine to the seatback pocket in front of her.
CHAPTER TWo
They arrived in Rome the following afternoon. It was seven hours earlier in Arkansas, so Rory knew her parents would be getting to work right about then, her father at an insurance company and her mother at the daycare center in their church. She’d already texted from the Atlanta airport as well as London’s Heathrow. Now she texted her dad before calling her mom.
When In Rome...Find Yourself: A Sweet New Adult Romance Page 1