Here is a book taste

I am going to insert a taste of the book here ... I would love to hear feedback, inspirations, thoughts ... anything really :0) I have the book laid out in my head, I just need to get it together on paper .. ugh ... the editing part is the part I HATE ... Thank GOD my husband is an EXCELLENT editor ... he helps A LOT ... not willingly, but he does it :0) Okay here it goes ...


Found By: Jan Julio


Chapter 1


The sun felt warm and inviting as it touched my skin. It had been so long since I
had relaxed like this. So long I could not even remember it. Maybe I had never given
myself this gift before. For once in my life the relaxation felt so deserved that my mind was at ease. I had made it through the plane ride, which I was sure would be certain death and here I was stretched out on the warm sand looking out at the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Perched on the soft pillow of warm Italian earth, the sun blazed and the sea glistened.
Through my eyes everything was a hazy overcast of intense blues and shadow from
laying here in the sun with my lids closed for too long. I took a moment to ponder why
this happens and the science behind how my body works, before I caught myself. “No
work! No Learning! No thinking! Samantha just feeling and relaxing!” I barked in my
head the mantra ... I had been telling myself for weeks leading up to this trip to Italy.

I have just spent the better part of my life studying and I had finally reached a
milestone in my life. Graduation from The University Of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League
college, in Engineering with a minor in Psychology had not been a simple task. It
required me to focus almost all of my energy on my studies, leaving very little of me left for anything else. I had known all along that this would be my path. I am driven with a great ferocity that is pushing me to yet another level of achievement. I have already been accepted at Drexel University to finish my studies and eventually receive my Ph.D. So I know that I have four more years ahead of me filled with dark libraries, computers, books, lectures, papers and no warm soft sand and no glistening water.

I live in Philadelphia, so even in the summer there is an inherent darkness that is
always with me. The streets are lit from the sun and touched by the heat, but the old
buildings, the nineteenth century architecture and the narrow streets still lend
themselves to a darkness of the heart. I love the city and have always wanted to live
there. The crowded busy downtown streets and the more deserted alleys feel like home and have always comforted me as a family would have.

My name is Samantha but Andrea always calls me Sam, so naturally I call her Andy but the rest of the world knows us as Samantha and Andrea ... But now I am far from the city basking in the warmth of this Italian beach perched upon a towel. Andrea is my best friend and maybe the only person in my life I could actually consider to be my friend and as you would expect she is lying on the towel next to me.

“Andy .... Andy .... are you sleeping over there?” As I looked directly at Andy I still
couldnʼt tell the answer to my question. She was grinning ear to ear, but she was
completely motionless and of course my eyes were still trying to adjust to the
unforgiving sun. I moved my hand to shield my eyes and squinted as hard as I could.
“Andy!” Slowly and with no urgency at all, Andy shielded her eyes with one long elegant hand and turned her head just enough to see me. “Whatʼs up?” she asked in a soft raspy whisper. “Hunnnngry” I whimpered back. “Alright ... alright. Lets go grab a bite to eat. I saw an amazing place on the way down here with fresh breads and cheeses.”

Andy was packed, things stuffed into her bag, up and ready to go in a flash and I
took forever as always, but she patiently waited for me to get myself organized, a word
that I both used often and was often, organized. As we walked together Andy chattered about this building and that, this fact about this architect and this artist. I listened to her as if her words were music. I was completely paying attention to nothing but her, but I was also not following along with what she was telling me. More I was letting the melody of her voice play like great classical music in my head, enjoying the highs and lows, listening for the changes in melody and feeling comforted to have the music traveling along my side. Andy was almost always a comfort to me. It had taken us many many years to get to this point, to a place where I was both comforted by her, trusted her and was not afraid to be close to her.

“Are you listening to me?” Andy broke into my thoughts. “What ... yes of course I
am, why?” I stuttered a response broken from my lovely concert. “If you were listening to me, then you wouldnʼt be asking me what.” “okay ... okay I was kind of daydreaming.” I offered in return. “What I was saying was ... do you want to go tonight? It will be so much fun. I know it is not really your thing but ...?” Shit ... now I was in it ... wasnʼt I. She was asking a question directly related to the things I was not paying attention to. There was two ways to turn. Ask her to recant the entire last ten minutes of conversation or just surrender and utter a yes.

“Sure” I answered with a grin. “Really ... cool, I know you are going to love him. I hear he is amazing and I know you love to learn about new amazing things and that can be people sometimes ... I swear.” In my head I am screaming out. I should have just fessed up that I was completely not listening, maybe even told her about the music thing, that is nice and endearing right. But no, I had to cover and now I have myself set up to meet a guy tonight. Great!

Andy was always trying to find me love. She made it a regular mission. I usually divert her with school. I am too busy to take part in any hair-brain scheme she has concocted to set me up with a guy, but this time it was vacation and I was weak with all the relaxation.

She was absolutely correct about the little restaurant down the street from the
hotel. It was fabulous. The bread was crispy rugged, the cheese was amazing and the
fruits and wines were all perfect. Not versed in wine, cheese or any food really ... Andy
began to give me the tour. “Ok so this crostini is amazing. Try it with the sun dried
tomatoes in olive oil and spices then put a little of this goat cheese on top. Isnʼt that
delicious?” Andy chirped happily as we ate. “Yes” I started to murmur as the taste was
really starting to bloom in my mouth. It really was exquisite. The soft buttery cheese with a pungent tang and then the unexpectedly sweet burst from the sun dried tomatoes followed by the crunchy bits of bread. It was as Andy always said “a dining experience.”

I was awe struck by the assortment of meats, cheeses, breads and fruits that
were laid out on plates in front of us. We nibbled our way through figs, dates, grapes
and some fruits I had never heard of. My senses were tingling and my body was more
than satiated. It was a pleasure filled experience and I was very proud of myself. We
had been there for more than two hours eating, drinking, talking and laughing and I had not thought of school, work or problem solving even once. I was in the middle of my first vacation of the mind and I was liking it. Maybe it was the house wine that was getting to me. I smiled at the idea. My cheeks were probably sun kissed, which would hide the pink in them from the wine. A smile started to creep across my face.

“What? What?” Andy asked laughing lightly as she asked. “Nothing is what” I responded with a matched smile. Andy knew me better than anyone, so I knew she understood my double meaning in nothing. That both nothing was wrong and that I was smiling because, for once in my recent memory, there was nothing weighing down my mind. There was always something, lots of somethings. I did not know if I felt comfort in my vacation or an uneasy feeling of unfamiliarity. It was so out of my comfort zone that I was really working to be comfortable in a place and time that was specifically designed for comfort.

We walked full and happy to the small private hotel and I sprawled out on one of
the luxury king beds like a snow angel and closed my eyes. I could hear Andy talking on her cell phone to someone, but I did not know who. I rarely paid too close attention to Andyʼs social life. She was a butterfly and twitted among all circles, but never made too close an attachment to anyone. There was never enough to draw me into knowing them beyond a polite smile. The idea if what her phone bill must look like with all this International calling crossed my mind, but I had to push it out with a shove. Her bills were none of my business, not my responsibility and definitely not something I should be thinking about on my, no thinking vacation. I had made promises to myself and her that for just this month in Italy, I would go with the flow, worry later, think later, just feel and enjoy.

I knew I would have another big chunk of debt, on top of the hundred and fifty
thousand dollars I already owed for school loans, plus the hundred and fifty thousand I still was going to rack up at Drexel, when this trip was done, but none of that would
matter when my degree was getting me engineering consultation jobs in a few years. So I had to keep my focus on my plan. This determination would have the ultimate pay off and my work would be rewarding, helping the greater good of the world. This vacation was the same investment. It would help the greater good of my sanity, so I could make it through the next four years of pressure, pressure, pressure.

This room had cost us a pretty penny for the month, but we both agreed it was a
great home base for the trip. It was right on the beach in the center of Italy, a little more than an hour from Rome, in a quaint small town that had two kinds of people -
Celebrities and locals and we were neither, we were aliens. Andy was picking up two
thirds of the bill and only letting me pick up the rest, which at first I protested at great
length, but she assured me it was no big deal. She had the money and would have paid for the whole thing, plus the whole trip was her idea, her mission. She had pushed me into it with all the subtlety of a tiger ripping apart flesh. So I let her pay for most of the hotel, but that was it, I planned to pay my own way for the rest of the vacation. Well more likely it was the credit card company who was going to pay for it and I would owe them for a better part of my life.

I had never had money, my family didnʼt have any that I knew of and even if they
did, there was no family left to have it anyway. My parents had died in a plane crash
when I was a child and I went to live with my dadʼs mom, Grandma Blake. She died
when I was fifteen and then I went on to live in a state run facility in Michigan before I was emancipated from the state at 17 when I was accepted to the University of
Pennsylvania. I was always an overachiever in school, it was the rest of the world that I lacked skills in.

Andy usually had to explain to people that my cold hard exterior was just an act and I was a kind loving person underneath. Honestly, I disagree with her. I am warm to her. I love her, but I would agree with peopleʼs first impressions of me. I am hard, cold, detached, analytical, cynical, private, strong, determined, angry and most of all not looking for an attachment to any of them. Isnʼt that what they really mean when they are asking about me to Andy? They really mean “why doesnʼt she like me? What is her problem? Why wonʼt she make an attachment with me? Why doesnʼt she want to be friends and put herself out there socially to make friends? That is what they really mean. Why doesnʼt she like me?

Well my answer, if I was ever inclined to give one, which I wasnʼt, would be: It
has nothing to do with you. Believe it or not I donʼt have enough interest in people to
bother to get to know them to even decide whether I want to like them, befriend them or hate them. With Andy she was relentless and most of all honest. She did not ask
someone else why it was hard to talk to me or why I did not want to be her friend, she
asked me. She told me that we would be friends, that she knew I was kind and loving.
She knew that I had a wall up and that was okay, she was willing to earn a friendship. It was the only way to really have a good one she would tell me.

Of course, Andy, like usual, was right. She did earn it and I did have kindness
under my hard armor and we were great friends. So she won, like she always did and I
was eternally grateful. I donʼt know if I would admit it to her, but I am a better person and my life is more fulfilled to have her in it. I donʼt really know what or who I was before her. She has colored so much of my life path for me and hopefully I have had the same affect on her.



*****
That is Chapter one ... what do you think?????