Chapter 6

"Oh my God, these macaroons are amazing," Ashley declared as she finished off her second one.

"I know, right?" Dusty agreed, taking a genteel sip from her cup of tea, resisting the urge to eat a third macaroon herself.

"Thanks for letting me go shopping," Ashley said once her mouth was no longer full. "I know that sightseeing is important to you, so I promise, the shopping bug is out of my system, for now."

"Don't worry about it." Dusty smiled. "Besides, look what we can see in the distance?" She looked out of the main window of the cake shop, and Ashley followed her gaze.

"Oh, no way," Ashley breathed. There in the distance was the Eiffel Tower gracefully hanging above the nearby buildings, looking down on them and the rest of the city.

"So we did get to see it." Dusty smiled. Then she hailed a nearby waitress and asked her to take their picture, with the distant tower the backdrop. Smiling at the camera, both girls held up a brightly colored macaroon, looking the image of happiness. "Merci," Dusty said sweetly to the waitress as she handed back her camera.

"Get you, starting to sound French," Ashley noted, impressed.

"Well, when in Rome," Dusty joked.

"Speaking of Rome, I believe it is our third and final stop."

"Indeed." Dusty felt happy and sad at the same time. She didn't want their vacation to end, but she was excited to visit the historic Roman city.

"Oh, before I forget." Ashley rummaged amongst her Chanel bags and then passed one across to Dusty.

"What's this?" Dusty asked, confused.

"It's for you. Open it," Ashley urged.

"Ash, I can't—"

"Don't be silly. Just open it," Ashley pressed. As instructed, Dusty opened the bag and reached in beneath the Chanel logo tissue paper to find the beige quilted bag she'd previously slung over her shoulder. When she looked back at Ashley, her eyes were bejeweled with teardrops. "It's for when you start your hotshot job in New York," Ashley explained, becoming equally tearful.

"So when you go to work each day, you'll wear it and think of me. That way, you'll never forget about me," Ashley said.

"Ash, as if I could ever forget about you," Dusty cried, hugging her friend tightly. "You're my best friend in the whole world."

"You too," Ashley confirmed. "Now you make sure you rock that bag! It certainly suited you when you gave it a try in the store."

"You saw that?"

"I told you; I'm hardwired for designer shopping. I don't miss a trick."

****

Dusty watched Paris become dwarfed beneath her as the plane ascended out of the airport, the Eiffel Tower now merely a tiny dot on the landscape. Leaning back in her seat, she sighed contentedly. She felt relaxed and happy, and for the first time in what felt like forever, her mind felt fresh and revived, no longer haunted by thoughts of either Kyera or Valentine.

The vacation had done her good. She was finally breaking free from the love of her past, at least for the time being. "As excited as I am to see Rome," Ashley said, stretching in her aisle seat, "I am not enjoying all the travelling." Dusty noticed that her friend seemed paler than usual.

"You okay, Ash?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." Ashley retrieved some travel sickness tablets from her satchel and eagerly swallowed them down. "It's just planes, trains and automobiles have left me travel fatigued, and my travel sickness has really kicked in." Ashley sighed.

"Can I get you anything?"

Ashley shook her head and declined the offer of the snack served during the flight. Dusty also declined, sensing that if she ate too close to her nauseous friend, she might prompt her to be sick. After landing in Rome, as they hauled their luggage off the carousel, Ashley finally started to return to her normal tanned hue.

"Feeling better?" Dusty asked as she lifted her duffel bag up onto her back.

"Yeah." Ashley nodded, taking tentative sips from her bottle of water.

"Well, this is our final stop, so no more travelling for you to suffer through."

"It's a good job we didn't decide to do a world tour," Ashley joked.

"I don't know," Dusty said sadly, mulling the idea over. "In an ideal world, our vacation would never end."

****

Rome was considerably hotter than both London and Paris had been. As they exited the airport and stepped out into the Italian sunshine, Ashley eagerly put on her Ray-Ban Aviators, glad that she was finally able to wear them. As a city, Rome seemed to throb with an ancient energy.

The chaotic traffic was reminiscent of Paris, with drivers taking crazy risks and people on mopeds constantly darting through the dense wall of traffic. "I could never drive here," Ashley said, bemused as their own taxi lurched out in front of another car.

"It's like there are no rules," Dusty agreed.

They were staying at a small boutique hotel in the center of the city. There was a rooftop pool, which would offer some pleasant respite from the heat. Their hotel room was Mediterranean in style, with terracotta-tiled floors, beige walls and wooden shutters on the windows. The room had high ceilings, with a ceiling fan in the center.

"This room is so hot," Ashley declared as they began to unpack. "Can you turn the air-conditioning on, please?"

Dusty glanced around, looking for the central control for the cooling system. There was a light switch but nothing else apart from the fan on the ceiling, which she could already see was too high to have any impact on the temperature of the room.

"I don't think the room has air-conditioning," Dusty said.

"What?" Ashley dropped the clothes she was unpacking and looked at her friend in amazement.

"There's no air-conditioning," Dusty said again.

"That's ridiculous," Ashley declared. "This room is boiling!"

"I know," Dusty agreed. After ten minutes of a more thorough search proved fruitless, Ashley finally accepted that the room was indeed lack- ing any form of air-conditioning, and they opened the windows, hoping that some semblance of a breeze would float in and alleviate the heat. Despite the warmth in the room, it was a welcome change to finally be able to wear summer clothes, instead of covering up against the rain.

Dusty put on some denim hot pants and a baggy white T-shirt, and Ashley wore a bright yellow playsuit, which accen- tuated her olive skin. "Where shall we go first?" Ashley pondered once they were ready.

"How about the Coliseum?" Dusty suggested.