Infinity and Beyond

13 - All I Need

Ashton

The days we spent in Brisbane went by in a flash. We didn't have long on the first day, because we spent so long surfing, so we just wandered round the area close to our hotel before getting some dinner and spending the rest of the night in our room. When we headed out the next day, we went straight to an Escape Hunt place, which we'd booked while we were planning our trip. You had to go in this room for an hour and find and solve all the clues you need to escape. We weren't great at the challenge itself, but we still managed to make it out and we had a really good time - Emily was a lot smarter than she let on. I wasn't saying she was dumb, but from the way she talked about never being great at school she made it seem like she wasn't the brightest. In reality, though, when it came to solving and working out things, she wasn't all that bad. She certainly did a lot better than me at it, so when we got out and were allowed to take photos with all the props they had, I let her have the fake moustache (even if I did want it pretty badly). But the company wanted a photo of us to thanks us online for coming so she stuck the fake moustache on along with a top hat and stood back to back to me with a pout, while I grabbed a pair of glasses and held a fake cigar up to my mouth.

Of course, as with the previous days, we took photos at all the other places we visited too. We went on the wheel that was just alongside the river that same morning, paid a visit to a go karting place (where we got very competitive with each other, to say the least) then later that evening climbed all the way up Story Bridge. By the time we reached the top it was sunset and it was beautiful; seeing Emily take it all in in admiration was just as perfect, too. It wasn't like anything we'd ever done before and doing it together was even better. The first few days of our trip had certainly set the standards high for the rest of it.

Over the course of the rest of the next few days we drove up to Cairns, although as the journey went on the distance between our stops got longer. On the first day we stopped three times and finished at Yeppoon, but the day after that we only had one stop and it was still early evening by the time we arrived at Mission Beach, a couple of hours from Cairns that we would drive the next morning. It wasn't the most exciting part of the trip, but at least we had each other for its duration - and the playlist that we'd spent over an hour putting together.

"We had this song yesterday! Wind on," Emily pointed out when '22' came on.

"Em, you're the one who wanted it on there," I laughed but skipped past it anyway. She was driving for this part of the journey which left me in charge of the music (and supplying us with food from the back).

"You can't argue that this song is better, though," she argued when the next one played and I really couldn't. We both started singing along, loudly seeing as no one else would hear us. "3pm, I'm on my feet and staggering, through misplaced words and a sinking feeling, I got carried away!"

"Remind you of anything in particular?" Emily smiled across at me and I returned it with a nod. As well as the Coldplay concert I got tickets for my birthday and the The 1975 concert Luke and I took Emily and Charlotte to (plus a few others) Emily and I had gone to an All Time Low concert last year with Michael and Lucy, before they broke up of course. It was one of the few things Emily had actually done without Charlotte in the past year, but that definitely didn't stop her having a good time. Her and Lucy got along just as well (not that they had ever not) and of course Michael and I both got along with her great. She also got along well with a few other people too...

Lucy had just reached the front of the mammoth queue for the toilets, so Emily left her and waited with us instead in the queue to head into the arena. Because she was waiting with Lucy before Michael and I had joined this queue we weren't quite so near the front, but it was moving much quicker. I decided to go and buy us all some drinks while they were waiting the rest of the way, then just meet them in there. As I was on my way back, though, my phone started ringing with a call from Michael.