Act 3, Scene 5
Heather Returns

At the end of every journey everyone always asks “What was your favorite thing? What do you miss the most now that you’re home?”

"Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy."
Fanny Burney, from Celia

Well, that’s one thing for sure.
Amsterdam kicks ass in every way and is my favorite city I've ever seen. Capri ties it for natural beauty, however, and if they'd move Amsterdam to an island paradise like Capri I'd shovel shit just to live there.
I miss the people I got to know in Cortona. Umberto and his kids make me smile just to think of them. I even miss the grumpy pastry lady. Speaking of, the food just can't compare back here. The amazing view of the Tuscan valley from just about every turn around Cortona is tough to match too. The art. The wine. The coffee.
But the thing I miss most of all is the feeling that just around the corner is something else magical, wonderful, awesome, breathtaking.

"The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad."
Mark Twain, from Innocents Abroad

I got all my friends together for a welcome home party and telling of the tale so I’d only have to tell it once instead of answering the same damn questions every time I ran into people.

I read aloud the Reader’s Digested version of what you’ve read thus far. Most folks didn’t have the patience to sit through even the extremely abbreviated version so I ended up having to skip the very details that made it a story worth telling. Of course everyone still had to ask the same damn questions afterward. But I did get to polish off two bottles of Italian wine I’d brought back with me.

Heather was running around Greece, France and Switzerland for another week while I was home. I picked my life up again, trying to figure out what to do about the car I’d left in the shop and all the other unresolved issues I’d left behind.
I was hoping Heather would resolve all her unresolved issues she’d left behind when she got back too.
It was a long week waiting on her but I had a ton to do so it flew by. When she arrived I tried to be patient and realize that she needed time to settle back in too, but damn I wanted her.

A couple days went by and we finally got together. She told me her tales, fun stories that only made me moderately jealous of her time there without me. I had written down the portion of the Amsterdam trip and she read it wide-eyed. We both got a laugh out of it.
We had some amazing sex. Really lusty, wow-I-haven’t-seen-you-in-two-weeks kinda sex. I asked her how things were with all her outstanding issues. She’d put a few to rest over the course of the trip, the rest of the boys had apparently given up upon her return.
Things were great.

When school started back we took an art history class together. It was wonderful. We sat next to each other and snacked and passed notes and made fun of people just like in the art history class in Italia. A couple weeks went by and I was sure the art school in San Fran hadn’t accepted her for the winter semester since she hadn’t heard anything yet.
Oh, don’t you remember? We started this whole mess on a cliffhanger. Now we’re back to the edge.
I figured I could graduate by the end of the school year so I’d only have to stay a semester behind should she want me to join her in San Fran.
Time to push the issue again.

"But I had voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing instincts by which even the worst of us continues to walk with some degree of steadiness among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted, however slightly, was to fall."
Robert Louis Stevenson, from The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

I wrote her a letter. I wanted it to say just the right things in just the right way and I knew my mouth would fail me. I gave her the letter and watched impatiently while she read. It spoke of how interested I was in her and how I’d like to be there with her in San Francisco.
She was silent for a moment then looked me in the eye.
“No, the whole reason I’m going to San Fran is to get away from emotional attachments.”
Later she complimented me on how “cute” it was, me mentioning I could help support her financially when I got out there.
I tried to let it go and enjoy what time I’d have left with her, and try to get a little more under her skin and see if she would change her mind by the time the school accepted her application and she’d head west for spring semester.
But then she called the art school out in San Fran.
“Oh yeah, you’re accepted, you can come any time you’d like,” they told her.
“So when do you go?” I asked.
“January.”
Not what I wanted to hear in October, when I’d been thinking it'd be March at the earliest.