Her Billionaire Toy Boy

Chapter 12

Mira had watched what felt like an infinite number of episodes of Friends and awkwardly made her way across a distinctly disgruntled row of aisle-sitting octogenarians en route to the pocket-sized restroom at least five times when the pilot informed the plane that they were getting ready for a descent. Mira packed up everything except for her phone and her earbuds and watched excitedly as she saw Belgium for the first time in her life.

She was only in Belgium for a very short while. Soon after she landed and successfully went through customs and got her baggage, she stepped on a train to head across the continent to Italy, where she was planning on staying for the first week or so that she was around. Mira headed straight for the AirBnB she had booked shortly after she had found her plane ticket and decided to spend some time simply getting herself situated. She looked around at the bright, cheerful little place—it was a one-bedroom apartment, the second home of a lovely couple who had offered to show her around the next day—and sighed. Here was a place, she felt, where she could have a bit of a fresh start. It even felt and smelled fresh, looking and smelling rather like a citrus garden. The place was done up in fresh pinks and yellows and oranges. Mira’s spirits uplifted just because she was there.

After she had unpacked and showered, she sat down with a map of Italy as well as a handbook she had picked up in one of the airports. She wasn’t planning on rushing around to see the sights. She planned on seeing them, but only as the city unfolded for her: she did not want to be a tourist with a tightly-packed schedule. She was much more interested in letting her brain relax, in people-watching, and observing the differences between her fast-paced New York culture and the more laid back, exquisitely warm afternoons she was already seeing here.

But first, she would need to sleep. And eat. She had not slept in a very long time, as she hadn’t been able to unwind enough to do so on the plane; and, likewise, the plane food had not been incredibly satisfying, although she was grateful at least that her flight had included it. Mira hopped down her stairs to go look for a small market or something from which she could buy just enough food for her dinner.

She found a farmer’s market that had not yet closed for the day and which was, as it was nearing evening, actually selling the rest of its products at half cost so that they could leave for the day. From the few remaining stalls, she bought a crusty loaf of good Italian bread, a small vial of pesto sauce, two of the ugliest tomatoes she had ever seen, a small summer sausage, and asparagus. She took these up to her apartment and spent as much time as she possibly could thinly slicing the sausage and peeling and blanching the asparagus just so. She sliced everything up and took a knife and her spread out onto her tiny balcony and sat on the floor, toes dangling over the Italian streets, for at least an hour. She hadn’t brought any sort of stimulating activity with her. She had only her thoughts.

And now, with the gorgeous sunset happening before her and her hands happily engaged in pulling apart some of the most real, most delectable food she had ever encountered, she finally let her thoughts wind down and relax, and she thought about Sam and what he had done.

It was bad, there was no way around it. Here, on a different continent, her belly filled with good food and nothing but beauty before her—it still seemed bad.

But he had looked so hurt when he’d told her. The tortured look in his eye as he’d confessed—Mira wondered from whence that had come. For if he was truly some sort of a cad who had been playing her for the numbers—well—surely there would be pain and embarrassment from being caught, but he had seemed to really care for her.

Was there a chance, Mira wondered as she dragged her big toe through the dust on the wooden floor of her balcony, could there possibly be a chance that it had started off with poor intentions but grown into something more? That didn’t excuse much of Sam’s past actions, but it did inform the present and what she would do with the future.

As she slowly sipped the iced tea she had made to go along with her dinner, she realized that she held in her hands the cards which would determine her life. While Sam may have been toying with her in the beginning, which was bad, she now knew it; and she could decide for herself whether that was a bad enough offense to justify cutting him off for the rest of her life.

For she missed him, and she missed him terribly, and she was just hoping that she could be able to tell whether he was toying with her still or whether something had grown from what might have been a less than great beginning. She had lived long enough to know that people change; had Sam changed?

Had she?

She finished her baguette and rubbed her hands together, throwing the crumbs over the balcony where the pigeons would find them in the morning. Mira poured herself a glass of wine, lit a single tapered candle and sat in the flickering shadows, steeping herself in the welcomed silence and letting her thoughts swirl as the smoke did until the candle sputtered out. Her busy brain stilled. She had no alarm set for the next day, nor any plans which necessitated her to think further ahead than fifteen minutes.

*****

Sam was packing.

He didn’t want to disrespect Mira’s wishes. But he had to know, and he wanted to be there. So he had sort of sneakily, not entirely ethically, scheduled a business trip in Europe. Beginning immediately. Just enough of an excuse to have plausible deniability if asked. However, he was already playing the romantic tape in his head: he would call Mira, they’d have it out, she’d forgive him—and then he’d be able to be there in two hours instead of two days.

Plus, he sort of needed a break. The past couple of weeks had been wonderful and then awful. He’d been going through hell. He wanted to get away from the same four walls he usually stared at, the same pedestrian commute, the same faces. He didn’t think that he could do with the same level of sameness which usually pervaded his life. Usually, he found this comforting. He was a man of routine. However, this time, it was too much. Just too much. He needed to get out and see new things, even if he was just pursuing a distraction from his normal life. He felt like he was awaiting a sentence which would determine the rest of his existence; which, in a way, if he was serious about his feelings for Mira – which he was – he was indeed waiting.