Knowing Shelby would likely be in the same inebriated state as Maxine, Keira decided it was best to leave them to their party.

“Enjoy your evening,” she shouted down the phone.

She heard a garbled reply from Maxine, the sound of hollering and laughter, a booming drum beat, then the call cut out.

As soon as the call to Maxine ended, her phone began flashing again with another incoming call from Cristiano. She hit the red button and then turned her phone off. The last thing she wanted right now was a stream of endless calls from him.

Keira sighed sadly, wondering what to do next. Cristiano had all the details of the hotel and the directions to get there. She could call Heather to ask for the information or to book a new room but she was too embarrassed. She didn’t want to reveal what had transpired between her and Cristiano.

So instead, she wandered away from the busy Venetian streets, heading toward the darker, quieter part of the city. The first hotel she came across that didn’t look like a glamorous castle torn from the pages of a fairy story, she went inside.

It was a backpackers hostel, filled with foreign students playing cards.

“Do you have any spare rooms?” she asked the person at the desk. He had a baby face, looking like he’d barely gotten out of high school. “For tonight.”

“Nothing private,” he told her, “But there’s space in the dorm.”

Keira chewed her lip. She was exhausted, physically and emotionally, and her clothes were still wet. At least here she’d be able to shower, and put her clothes on a radiator to dry, since she’d be wearing them again tomorrow.

“Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll take it. Thanks.”

She handed him a soggy bill and some euros from her purse, then went into the dormitory, selecting the bunk bed right in the corner for maximum privacy. There was no one else in the room at that point, as they were clearly all out enjoying an American-style Halloween and everything the city had to offer. Keira was glad for the moment’s solitude.

She washed in the shower, which was weak but hot, and wrapped herself in a towel. Then she began the painstaking task of removing each of her wet items from her purse and spreading them out on the radiator. There was no way of salvaging her notebook and she lamented all the lost pages. But that was nothing compared to the fact her laptop was in her case, which she’d accidentally left in Cristiano’s possession. How was she supposed to work now? She felt like even more of a fool than ever before.

Keira took her phone out of her purse and decided it was safe to turn back on now. As it updated, she noticed amongst the missed calls and voicemails left by Cristiano, there was a text message. To Keira’s great surprise, the message was from Shane.

Why now? Keira thought desperately.