Beyond This Moment

4 Day Two- 8:47 A.M.

I wake up the next morning with a plastic bag hitting my face and Elias leaning over me, grinning.

"Good morning," He greets me when he sees that I'm waking up.

"Hi..." I trail off, grabbing whatever it was that he just threw at my head to wake me up. The plastic pouch that is lying next to my face now, I can see is a yellow poncho. "Is it raining?"

"Nope," Elias declines. He's already dressed, I notice, and then I also notice by the alarm clock beside my head that it isn't even nine o'clock in the morning.

"Why are we up so early?" I ask him.

"There's a Walmart across the street and I woke up early so I decided to go shopping," He explains. I sit up in the bed and blink away some of my sleepiness but I'm still very confused about the poncho. "And why did nobody tell me that we're just a little drive away from Niagara Falls?"

"You want to go to Niagara Falls?" I raise my eyebrows at him and then I yawn.

"Yes. I figure that Gabe will be okay with it if we skip the Hall of Fame in Ohio, right? Or were you just dying to see some Elvis Presley memorabilia?" He looks very excited about this and it makes me laugh that he's so excited about seeing Niagara Falls. It does seem like a better adventure than the Hall of Fame, I'll admit that much.

"No, I guess we can go to Niagara Falls," I say with a small laugh. "Did you tell Gabe your plan?"

"He hasn't texted me back so I don't think that they're awake yet over there. So you're on board?"

"How can I say no? You already bought the ponchos," I say jokingly as I basically crawl out of bed to go wash up in the bathroom. "Even though I hate to break it to you but I'm pretty sure that they give you a poncho when you get on the boat."

"Well then we'll just put these away for a rainy day," He suggests and I can't help but laugh a little bit at his terrible pun. Before I go into the bathroom, I grab a fresh outfit from my suitcase which is just jean shorts and a t-shirt. "We have to go soon though, do you think you can wake up your brother?"

"Yeah. They probably won't want to go since they can just sit in bed for a few more hours," I mutter.

"Do you not like Cassie?" Elias asks me through the bathroom door. "Because I think that she's pretty cool."

"She's nice," I say. "She also doesn't really care who knows about what she does with my brother and it's disgusting. I hate that I know half of the things that I know about their sex life. I'm glad that she makes him happy though."

"So you didn't like her even before you broke up with Kellan?" He wonders.

Despite only wearing my underwear, I open the door only enough to peek my head out into the room. "You think that I resent Cassie and my brother for being happy just because my relationship went up in flames?"

"It's the easiest assumption," He admits from where he's sitting on his bed flipping through a Niagara Falls brochure.

"I'm not jealous of my brother's happiness," I assure him, shutting the door again to finish getting dressed. "I've never really been a fan of Cassie but like I said, she's nice and she makes Gabe happy so we get along fine. If she wasn't a nice person, we wouldn't be going on a road trip together."

"That's a good point."

Wearing my day's outfit, I exit the bathroom and start packing my stuff back into my suitcase.

"Anyway, speaking of Gabe and Cassie, I will go wake them up," I say as I'm putting on a new pair of socks and my Nike sneakers. "You're ready to go?"