500 words or less
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My sister called me from a hotel room in Amsterdam. That was how she opened the conversation. ‘I’m in a hotel room in Amsterdam.’ No, ‘hello.’ No, ‘how are you?’ Just a slurred, lost-weekend whisper down the line, while I sat in a room an ocean away, and tried to think of something to say
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You will stare at one another through the darkness. Eye to eye, breath to breath, then you will watch as a lightning twitch of muscle propels it into the hawthorn, and away. And you will think, ‘how beautiful,’ then smile and shift into gear, gently squeezing the accelerator.
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Taormina, that’s where it was. They’d walked up the steep stone steps into town and at the top, when she looked up, she’d caught sight of the snowy peak of Etna in the distance. She had expected something violent, ugly even, so its beauty, the gentle incline of its slopes, had surprised her.
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‘Yeah, well… boys will be boys,’ he says. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Just that you shouldn’t read anything into it.’
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He could sit here forever and be happy. He’s said that too. More than once. ‘Do you know what? I’m happy, so I am. Really, I am.’
