That Summer - Jure Maček

Vacation

Drops of sweat are glistening on my forehead while me and my friends find us a place to sit. We're on vacation in Split, Croatia, and it's 3PM. We're burning up, but every other tourist seems to have had the same idea and every single restaurant that has airconditioning is full.

"No, he wasn't!" I argue.

"Yeah he was, and it gets worse," Lucia says, a devious smile on her face. I can see my other friend, Lauren, cover her mouth with her hand.

"Oh my god, don't bring that memory back," she laughs.

"He put his whole hand-"

"No, no, no, I don't even want to know! Stop!" I practically scream. I rub my eyes, sort of to rub the thought of him out of my head.

The night before, just like every other night, we had gone out to a club. I met a guy there, we made out, and later someone came up to me to tell me he's some kind of serial player. How was I supposed to know?

Apparently, Lucia and Lauren kept their eyes on him that night and saw some pretty disturbing shit, and now they're tormenting me with it.

"Ew, I don't even want to think or talk about him anymore. I will literally delete him from my kiss list," I make some fake gagging sounds, which causes Lucia to laugh and spit out some water.

"Yeah, you go girl," Lauren says, and gives me a little pat on my shoulder.

We finally find a restaurant with a table available. We all sit down and sigh. Lucia grabs her new bought fan and starts to dramatically wave it in front of her face.

We order some cold cocktails and then we discuss the upcoming night.

"Okay.. so you know how I saw this place on TikTok right? It's this beautiful cliff where you can sit and it has an amazing view over the sea. I would love to see that at night," Lauren begins. I take a sip from my Moscow Mule.

"I'm down, as long as you two don't force me to jump off of it. You know how scared of heights I am," I strictly point at the girls.

"No, we'll just chill there, bring some drinks and snacks. Maybe a game," Lauren suggests.

"Sounds good,"

This whole vacation has been nothing but a dream. Lucia, Lauren and I met on Tumblr a few years ago, when we all just graduated high school. Lucia is from Italy, I'm originally from Austria, but living in Croatia and Lauren is from the UK, so obviously we don't get to see each other a lot. This is the sixth vacation we've been on together, and I always get so sad when it's over.

Making friends on the internet is a lot easier for me. My parents moved us from Austria to here when I was 16, 8 years ago, and I went to an international high school where most people come and go. 

There's only 1 person in my hometown who I consider myself to be friends with, but we've had a complicated past.

I decided to do university completely online, so not much came out of that either. Anyway, I'm very happy to have my girls.

We finish our drinks, and a little buzzed from the alcohol we go back to the hotel to have some dinner. We booked an all-inclusive holiday this time, simply because we're kind of lazy and knew it would be so scorching hot.

After dinner, we all have a short shower and I change into my light purple bikini, with a halter top over it and a pair of denim shorts. I love summer, even the really hot ones.

No uni work, tanning on the beach, cold drinks and ice cream to cool you down. No one expects you to do anything but relax. 

We sit on the bed and excitedly discuss our plans for the night with two bottles of white wine.

Lauren shows us the video of the cliff we're meaning to go to.

"It's cool, but also really high up," I try to swallow, but my mouth is completely dry.

"You'll be fine, Julia," Lucia slowly rubs my back to comfort me.

"We'll have the best time ever, I promise. If you dared to stick your tongue down all those guys throats the last few days, this will be easy for you,"

"Ew, what kind of comparison is that?" I laugh.

"Just saying, heights are much less scary than all the possible STD's you have right now," she takes a long gulp from the bottle of wine.

Lucia says the weirdest shit sometimes, but honestly that's a reason I love her so much.

"Okayyy.. enough with the STD talk, you guys are insane," Lauren laughs.

"Let's pack our bags and get going!" 

It's not a long walk from our hotel, maybe 15 minutes. But of course, once we get there, we still have to climb all the way up.

It's a rough climb, especially with the wine-filled backpack on. Even though I'm afraid of heights, I would throw myself in the cold water right now just to cool down a bit. 

When we're finally up, we can hear that we're not the only ones who had the idea of coming here. This was kind of to be expected, considering we found this spot on social media and the video had thousands of likes.

Me and Lucia both glance over to Lauren.

"So, what do we do now?" Lucia asks her, with raised eyebrows.

"We can still turn back if you want to," Lauren says.

"Nope, not doing that. We'll see who we run into," I say, panting. Never back down, never give up, right? It was kind of stupid to expect we'd be the only ones here, and who knows. Maybe we'll meet some new friends.

"Fine," Lucia sighs.

There's a small group sitting at one end of the cliff, they have set up a campfire and are sitting around it. Honestly, there's more than enough space for both our groups to be here separately so it's not an issue.

We put our bags down on the other side and sit down, which is when the other group starts to notice us. I hear them whispering in some language, it's not exactly clear to me since they're pretty quiet, but maybe Serbian or Slovenian?

"Hi!" someone shouts over. Everyone is looking at us now. From the looks of it, they're all men. It's not a big group. I wave over there. "Hello!" 

"Do you want to join us?" one of the guys asks. I look over at my friends. Lucia is looking doubtful, but Lauren just shrugs and starts to get up. Here goes nothing, I guess.