That Summer - Jure Maček

Run-in

Me and Lauren are looking the location of the palace up on Google maps, when I hear a group of guys speak in a now familiar language across the street. 

I look up automatically, to see Jure, Bojan and Kris carrying some luggage towards a taxi.

"Oh shit, we have to go," I groan. 

"What? Why? I don't even know which way yet-" Lauren begins, but she's cut off by a scream from across the street.

"Hey! Julia!" I immediately recognise Jure's voice. I wave and shout 'hey', and see the three guys waving back at us. Kris shoots us a warm smile but then continues to argue with Bojan about who even knows what.

I hope that this is it, but then I see Jure crossing the street, with some angry honking as a consequence.

When he makes it over to us, his smile drops.

"Oh my god are you okay?"he asks, with that the concerned look I've seen so many times today.

He hurries up to me and softly places his hand on my jaw to examine my face.

"What happened?" he raises his eyebrows. His blue eyes are staring right into my soul, and I just can't lie to him.

"I got a little too drunk," I try to laugh about it, but no one really thinks it's funny.

He picks up my arm, and I see his eyes travel along my body, taking in all the bruises and scabs. I must look disgusting to him.

"That looks like it hurts," he frowns.

"It's okay. Thank you for being so attentive, but really, I'm fine," I smile.

"Just be careful next time okay?" the smile appears back onto his face.

"I will, I promise,"

"We have to catch our flight, but I'll text you later," he hugs me and crosses the street again while waving us goodbye.

No one says something for a while, but then I realise it would be kind of creepy if we just stay here.

"So.. should we..?" I begin.

Lauren shakes her head as if to wake herself from some kind of trance.

"Yeah, we should go. I think it's that way," she points to the left.

Lucia grabs my hand and whispers in my ear: "I think he likes you enough to keep in contact," and then winks at me.

"I don't know. But I don't want to think about it. They've gone to the airport, so there's no chance of running into them anymore. It will be just us three today," I smile and squeeze her hand.

We arrive at the palace after quite some walking, and even though my feet are still sore from last night, the pain at least distracts me from all the other things I'm feeling.

It's a gorgeous palace, and it's absolutely huge too so we spend a good amount of time walking around there. I read all the pamphlets there are to find out information about the palace, to keep myself from thinking about Jure. Thankfully it works for a while.

After an enormous amount of ice cream we decide to call it a day and we go back to our hotel to relax.

"What time was your flight again?" I ask the girls.

"Mine's at 3 in the afternoon. So I have some time to sleep properly and pack," Lauren replies. We're trying to watch a random movie that's on tv, but no one's really paying attention to it.