Love is Just a Moment by Taylor Hill Page A

suitcase, while with the other he fished in his pocket for change to pay the driver, before turning into the aisle and looking right at her. Her, not anybody else!
    Rebecca’s heart immediately jumped into her throat. He smiled, with lips smooth and soft and almost pink in comparison to the darker tone of the rest of his face. His beautiful face, which was rich and smooth and handsome, big brown eyes that were open and honest, slightly inquisitive as they peered right into her own. Rebecca immediately dropped her gaze as she felt a stinging blush break out across her cheeks. Ok, so there was still work to be done and if the way to beat anxiety was to face it willingly, then she would just accept this particular bout for now. Because there was no way she was looking back at this guy. He walked further down the aisle and, with her eyes firmly to her lap, it seemed to her that he paused slightly as he passed her seat, before continuing down to the back of the bus.
    Ten or fifteen minutes later they reached the small mountain village of Montagna Del Mare. The photos she had browsed online before setting her destination—the ones that had filled her with such warm romantic wonder—in reality didn’t do the place justice. The pale white-bricked buildings were even more quaint, even more magical in the warm blue of the real sky than they had seemed on the screen of her worn-down old laptop. But what was she going to do now that she was here? What next?
    The other passengers disembarked, while a fresh wave of painful anxiety came over her. Just what was she doing here anyway, she wondered?
    This time she didn’t notice as he passed her, she was too caught up in her own personal misery to see that now he really did pause and consider her carefully as he went by, before gripping his suitcase and stepping off of the bus. Now she was the last remaining passenger and she had to get up—there was no other option. She glanced into her bag again, picked it up in one hand and stepped off.
    Outside, the heat was amazing and the blue sky above seemed to sprawl across the entire globe, bathing everything in its powerful glow. Come on slugger, she told herself (that was what her dad always called her, “slugger”), you can do this. Make the most of this, all this beauty. She looked down the road as the bus turned and went back the way it had come, rumbling down the steep mountain road and disappearing around the bend. Ok, what now? She began walking towards the village and she’d barely passed the corner when she heard a voice call out from across the road.
    “Excuse me!”
    She turned to the sound of the voice, soft but deep and thick with the Sicilian accent. She felt a jolt as she saw that it was the guy from the bus, who had taken up a seat at a small metal table in the corner of a wide sunbaked courtyard outside a café across the street.
    “Speak English, yes?” he called, “American or British?”
    Rebecca smiled, hoping that her uncertainty wasn’t showing. “Um, yes, American,” she said, “you’re from here?”
    “Sicily yes, though far across the island.”
    “It’s very beautiful.”
    His eyes lit up with delight and he smiled beautifully, broad and honest and gleaming. “Yes, it is.” He gestured to the seat across from him. “Please, it is hard to talk across the road, no? Will you join me? Unless… you are waiting for somebody else?”
    Her smile faltered slightly. What was she waiting for exactly? She began to form her polite refusal, but it wouldn’t come out . Live in the moment, run towards that which you fear… that is how you grow . Before she was even aware of what she was doing she found herself walking across the road towards him and, as she did, his smile broadened even further. He stood to pull out a chair for her.
    “My name is Piero,” he said, “and I would be honored if you would join me for a coffee while I wait.”
     

2

     
    Oh My God. Her heart raced and her mind was awash with