Excited to go home.

Lucien arrived at his hotel room after another day of battle. Things in Italy were worse than he feared. He didn’t intend to stay as long as he had. The memory Audrey, and how she had been that night stayed with him. He couldn’t wait to get back and have an encore performance.

​ Any other business trip would have found him with a different girl in his hotel room each night. There was only one girl in his mind, and it was strange to him. Their “relationship” had taken twists and turns he hadn’t anticipated. Not once did he imagine things would happen the way they did. How interesting.

​ He looked at the clock and saw it was time to call Audrey. As he waited for her to answer, a small smile crept over his face without his permission.

“Hey,” she answered. He could hear that she was messing with something. She sounded distracted.

​ “How did it go?”

​ “It was amazing. The judges really liked me.” He had expected a rapid fire, mile long babble, complete with minute details. She seemed muted