Two Weeks With Chelsea

Chapter 24

Trevor awoke a while before Chelsea's eyes fluttered open. He lay motionless studying her face. He looked for patterns in the barely visible freckles that traced across from one cheek to the other. Only a few inches separated the tips of their noses. He could feel one of her feet against his leg. Around school he had never noticed the soft smile he saw on her lips that morning. It was contagious and grew wider as her eyes opened.

"Good morning," he said softly.

"How long have you been awake?" she asked.

"Just woke up," he replied. "And, my pajamas are still on."

"Good," she said as her stomach rumbled loudly. "Guess I need to eat something!"

Trevor nodded, "We can head down the street to that bakery. I could do with some coffee and one of those— what was that bread thing I had yesterday?"

"Brioche, I think," She replied, still lying motionless beside Trevor.

"Well, we better get moving. We can talk about what we're going to do over breakfast."

Neither moved for another five minutes.

While Trevor was getting ready in the bathroom, Chelsea dressed and wondered what Trevor meant when he mentioned talking about what they were going to do. Her only plans focused finding a hotel room. Shopping for some clothing was another option she hoped to explore. Perhaps it was touristy stuff that he wanted to talk about.

At the café, Trevor took a sip of his coffee then began pulling off a bite sized piece of his Brioche as he spoke, "So, instead of wasting hours looking for a hotel, why don't you just stick with me?"

"I... well, I would like that, but—" Chelsea paused, "I don't want to stop you from having your, ahhh, FUN, 'getting drunk and scoring chicks' or something like that."

"FUN—", Trevor said after another sip of coffee "don't worry about my, FUN. We only have a day and a half left in Barcelona and I don't want to waste it going around looking for hotel rooms. WE need to spend that time having fun."

"What?"

"Sorry, a different kind of FUN, as in tourist attraction kind of stuff."

"No, the 'only a day and a half' part. What do you mean we only have a day and a half left in Barcelona?" Chelsea said with a worried expression that encompassed her face and voice.

"Yeah, wait, you didn't notice my hotel reservation was only up until tomorrow?"

"No, I just..." Chelsea started.

"Okay, well, no big deal, you can still come with me. If you want, that is," Trevor replied.

"Where? Where are you going?" Chelsea responded. "I thought you were leaving from Barcelona in two weeks, not two days."

"We'll be back here for our flight home. Just, tomorrow we would go to France, tour around there, make our way back to Spain, a day or two in Madrid then back to Barcelona for another day or two, in time for the return flight."

"France? How? Where in France? Paris?"

"Paris, sure, eventually, I suppose," he said as he chewed a piece of Brioche.

"I would love to go to Paris!" Chelsea replied with a smile.

"Great! Well, I guess we'll have to go to the train station and book you on the same train. Hopefully we can change my reservation and make sure we are seated together. We'll have to go back to the hotel to get my tickets, then go to the station, then touristy stuff."

Chelsea sipped her coffee and ate her raisin bun with a smile on her face and visions of walking through Paris, hand in hand with Trevor. It would certainly be romantic. Memories of the shaky start of this adventure and the disappointment of watching him flirt with another girl on the beach had been pushed to a back corner of her mind. She was no longer imposing herself on his trip. He had just invited her to follow him on the vacation tour through France. She had never heard of most of the places he had planned to visit, Béziers, Toulouse, Brest; the list of destinations was exciting, and too long to spend much time in any one place, but that detail escaped her and didn't seem to matter to Trevor.

By the time Chelsea had settled back to Earth, she had a package of train tickets in her hand and was waiting on the Metro platform beside Trevor. She squeezed the envelope in her fingers and smiled at him, her body trembling with excitement.

"When we are on the train you should put that in your backpack, but only if we can take a seat and it's not too crowded," Trevor said as the Metro train arrived at the platform.

"Oh, yeah, I guess I should. Where are we going, now?"

"We'll take this train to the Paral-lel station, then the funicular up to Parc de Montjuic." Trevor said as he pointed at his pocket-sized metro map. "I figure we can walk around there for a bit, then maybe, after lunch we can head over to Sagrada Familia. We probably won't get tickets to go inside, it'll probably have a crazy long line, but we can at least look at the outside. There's a lot of the stuff to see on the outside anyway."

Chelsea sat on the Metro with her train tickets stowed in her backpack and a wide grin on her face. She continued to wear the smile as she followed Trevor through the Paral-lel station. The excitement continued with the wonder of the funicular, with its slopped station platform and the stepped floor inside the car.

"This is a funny train car," she said as she looked at the car from the platform. "It just goes up the side of the hill?"

"Yup. Do you want to be facing down the hill or up?" Trevor asked. "I think we'll be walking back down so this is probably the only time we'll be on this."

People were already boarding at the top end of the car, so Trevor and Chelsea sat at the bottom end and looked down the hill. Either end would have suited them. The ride, however enjoyable it might be, wasn't the source of their mutual contentment.