Beauty and the Beat

Beauty and the Beat (13)

I was awakened by my stomach growling loudly the next morning. I sat up, rubbing my eyes and looking around. For a moment, I forgot where I was. I had to blink a couple of times before I realized that I was in a hotel room, still on the school field trip.

I looked over at the empty take out box in the trash. I had sucked it all down like a vacuum before I went to bed the night before, and I was still waking up hungry. I let out a sigh before rolling over and checking what time it was. It was barely even ten.

Perfect. The hotel offered free all-you-can-eat breakfast for the students and faculty from our school until eleven, which meant I could go downstairs and I’d get free food. Just what I needed.

I didn’t take too long getting ready, even though I could have taken my time. I lazily pulled on regular clothes and only brushed through my hair, choosing not to do anything fancy with it. I was either just going to go back to bed or go into the ocean, getting it wet like the rest of my classmates.

I yawned as I pushed the button for the elevator and waiting for it to get to my floor. I was happy when it finally got to me and I saw that no one was in it. I stepped inside, letting out a slow breathe as the doors closed and the elevator began to move down.

The first thing I saw when the doors reopened was the buffet. No one from my school was there, so I assumed they had all already gotten their food and were now on the beach. But there were still a lot of people there, like older couples or families. I assumed that they had paid for this along with their food, so it wasn’t free like ours.

I filled my plate with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, and other breakfast foods before taking a seat at a table by myself. I looked around, feeling a little lonely as I looked at all the couples and families eating breakfast together, while I was all alone.

But before I could dig in, I heard the seat next to me scrape against the floor as it was being pulled out. I looked up in surprise to see Ethan now sitting in the seat, his own plate of food right in front of him.

“Um…” was all I was able to say at first. “Hi.”

He smirked at me. “Hey.”

I didn’t say anything to him; I stayed completely silent. He was the last person I expected to come eat breakfast with me, even after everything he said to me the night before. I almost thought that I had dreamed that he had said all of those things to me the night before.

“Is everyone already at the beach?” I asked him now, curious over the fact that no one from our school was around. I was also surprised he wasn’t being swarmed by a ton of girls.

He nodded as he took a sip of his orange juice. “Everyone woke up around eight and had breakfast then. Freya told me she didn’t want to wake you because she didn’t know if you were feeling better or not.”

“I feel fine,” I shrugged, because it was the truth. “I definitely don’t feel like I fell off a cliff.”

“They arrested those guys who threw you off the cliff, by the way,” he informed me nonchalantly now, as if it wasn’t even a big deal at all as he reached for a piece of bacon.

I just stared at him. “But… but they didn’t throw me off the cliff!”

Ethan rolled his eyes at me. “First, they were trying to take advantage of you. Second, they were the reason you fell. So close enough.”

I didn’t say anything back to him about this, because he was the adult and I was sure he knew more about this subject than I did. So I just continued eating, trying to push those three drunken idiots out of my mind forever.