In Sickness and In Health

Jetlag and Gelato

Cole POV

We have just arrived in Rome after a very long two days of traveling. We are both exhausted and are just waiting for a taxi to bring us to our hotel. We are in Rome for five days before moving on to onto Athens, I plan to go on a few day trips around Italy, I've been plenty of times before but Lili has never been so I want to make sure every second of her Italian experience is perfect.

We are both sitting down on a bench waiting for she's half asleep , but leaning her head on my shoulder it's sort of comical in the sense as she's half asleep she mumbles some sort of babble every now and then mostly about me or her sister Chloe, I'm trying not to chuckle but it's quite entertaining to listen to.

We finally get our taxi so I begin to wake Lili up.
"Wakey , wakey sleepy head" I say nudging her shoulder.

" we here?" She asks sheepishly.

"Just making our way to the hotel, Lils" I say as she lifts herself of my shoulder.

"Great, I'm just so tired," she says in a yawn and throwing her arms around me.

Ten minutes later we arrive at our hotel and get out of the cab and our blasted by the warm air of the Italian sun, the weather in New York and London was miserable , just rainy and depressing.

We make our way to hotel reception and check in our bags and head straight to the dining hall as we are both starving, we did have food on the flight but it wasn't the greatest to be perfectly honest as we enter the dining hall, I get the heavenly smell of pasta, pizza and pastries. When we get our food we eat and check our social media notifications which we haven't checked since speaking to Madeline three days ago. My twitter feed has completely exploded, I'm scrolling past the threads 'Sprousehart' and 'Bughead is Real' I'm laughing so hard as some people seem to be in a 'fictional coma' after hearing the news of myself and Lili's marriage.

Lili starts giggling into her phone so I ask what's she finding so funny, she turns her phone around "This" she is still laughing hysterically I move her thumb back and I honestly have never seen anything like it, it's a very poorly done photoshop of a married couple with their faces replaced with Lili and myself faces but the most humourless part of it all is instead of the priest's face the master behind this wondrous creation has photoshopped our favourite pug, Doug as the priest.

We put our phones away and continue eating and sharing stories of our childhood, I tell the story of the time myself and Dylan accidentally lost our swim trunks when we were on a water slide in one of the many public pools in California and had to get out of the pool covering ourselves and running straight to lost property and could only find one pair swim trunks, we both rustled to get them but I failed miserably as I was a very scrawny child and Dylan was always more boisterous than me, so I ended up wearing a bright pink skirt when leaving the pool grounds.

This had Lili in hysterics and she began a few of her childhood memories,

"When I was seven and in my last year of kindergarten, I begged my mom to bring me to dance lessons, what a big mistake that was, so anyway during one of the final days of kindergarten we had to put on a show to our fellow kindergarteners and oh my god, I was hopeless," she said laughing about about she was.

"I'm sure you couldn't have been that bad" I say trying to get more information about her 'kindergarten dance experience'

" Oh Cole, you have no idea how bad I was, I remember bouncing all over the place like a complete lunatic while some random ballet music was playing and the funniest part was I thought I was amazing so when my teacher asked me to stop, I was so annoyed, she said we wouldn't have time to see everyone else's 'special talent' but really she couldn't take enough of my so called dancing." She couldn't stop laughing about her apparently awful dancing.

We payed the bill and despite it being mid afternoon and weather being simply exquisite outside we headed to bed for some much needed rest, we both crashed on the bed and fell asleep for what seemed like hours.

I wake up from a restless sleep due to the mostly due to jet lag but also due to magnificent view around me, its only early evening I glimpse at the glowing and radiant sun peaking above the horizon out of our hotel window. It extended its vivid light across the deep crimson sky. Slowly the fatigue of the long day is seeping out of me as the welcoming rays trickled in to replacing my unrest - it relaxed my body.

I turn to the other side of the bed and notice the Lili's missing body so I eventuality I get out of bed and stumbled over to the petite coffee table and make myself a quick Americano , I spot Lili in the bathroom applying some makeup fixing her hair she's let it go all natural and wavy it's beautiful.

She waddles out of the bathroom in a cute a floral teal playsuit.

"You going to get ready yourself" she teases.

"Yep, give me a few minutes," I say grabbing a pair of shorts and a light cotton shirt out of the wardrobe and racing into the bathroom blowing her a kiss closing the door behind me.

I quickly throw on the shirt and shorts and squirting some random aftershave I bought on duty free, I come out and we both head out the door and walk the short stroll to the promenade, we arrive and the views are glorious the clear blue sea in the distance and the streets packed with large Italian families eating dinner which I love, I love the way the Italians included everyone the mother, the father, the children and the grandparents, it's very sweet to see.

Myself and Lili aren't very hungry after our late lunch earlier but Lili mentions that she would like a sweet treat just before we head back to the hotel, so we stop in a small ice cream cafe called 'Giuseppe's Gelato' a quaint ice cream parlour in the heart of Venezia Square, Lili goes up and orders, she comes back with a very large ice cream sundae type thing with a small jug of what seems to be a chocolate sauce,

" Thought we could share this 'Grande Gelato con Chocolate' together!" She giggles grabbing the spoon and taking a scooping a piece of ice cream and eating it teasingly as we dive into the rich creamy  ice cream and indulgent chocolate sauce and soaking in the evening sun, I turn to look at my beautiful wife and wonder what I would ever do without her...

Hey guys, part four of the sequel! Hope you enjoy, any suggestions or questions just DM me! Love you all,
L ❤️