CHAPTER FOUR 

❝ Five things I learned last night: 1. Most people really don't like sharing their homes. 2. Scottish bar owners can be quite scary. 3. Sleeping bags don't help against the cold when there is a snowstorm outside and you are sleeping on the floor. 4. If you can't sleep because of the cold, there might be a small chance you might end up sleeping closer than you usually would to the only person near you. 5. Waking up really close to said person can be startling. And uncomfortable.

Besides that, I think I still haven't gotten quite over the fact that Scotland's national animal is the Unicorn. I was certain there was a mistake on my guidebook until I saw this unicorn flag on the bar we stayed in last night. Weird. And cool. But mostly weird.

Connor is threatening to steal my journal if I don't hurry up. We have to be out of here before seven and it is... 7:06. Perfect. ❞

Elle's journal: The Europe Trip, day 10, entry nº1

The next morning –after folding their blankets and leaving everything perfectly ordered and clean– Elle and Connor picked their things and left the bar. It was amazing and startling, how everything had changed within hours.

People were walking around, enjoying a morning without rain or falling snow. The left out tourists were taking pictures of the beautiful little village that, covered in white, looked like it belonged in a fairytale.

Despite everything that had happened, Elle couldn't help marveling at the sight in front of her. Strand was beautiful.

"Close your mouth, tough girl," Connor teased as he eyed her.

"Shut up," she complained, but she was smiling too.

For the following couple of hours, Elle and Connor walked around asking fellow travelers for news, but no one seemed to know anything. Eventually, they decided to have lunch in a little restaurant.

"So," Elle said to Connor as they both were handed a menu. "What's your story?"

Connor raised his eyebrows. "My story?"

"Yeah. You, know. Like... Just tell me about you or something."

"Quite the eloquent one, aren't we?" he teased and she glared. "What would you like to know?" he asked, leaning forward, closer to the table and to the girl in front of him.

Elle though for a while and settled on an easy question to go with first. "You sound British, so that's probably were you are from–"

"Great deduction skills there, Sherlock. But British is not really a country."

Elle glared again.

Connor laughed. "Okay. Sorry. Go on."

Elle sighed and rolled her eyes at him. He could be annoying sometimes. And the accent didn't help. "Why were you visiting Greece?"

"My dad is British but my mom is Greek. I was visiting family."

"Cool," Elle said, looking away.

She hadn't chosen her question carefully enough. She knew what came next, him asking her something fairly similar, and she didn't really want to answer that. She didn't want to talk about her aunt or her parents. And she didn't want to lie to the only friend she had there, either.

"I would ask why you were there, too. But let's not talk about that anymore."

Elle looked up at him. He was eyeing his menu, trying to look casual. Still, the serious look on his face (the same one of the night before, when he said he never gave up) told Elle he had noticed something was wrong. And that made Elle think that maybe he understood. That maybe he also had something he didn't want to talk about.

 "So," he said, letting the menu fall back down on top of the table. "How about we talk about my three annoying older brothers and their tendency to get into trouble?"

Elle smiled.

They spent the next few minutes talking about everything and nothing at all. It was astonishing, how for the first time in a long while, nobody asked Elle if she was all right, if she was managing to deal with everything okay. Like it was something that could just be dealt with and then forgotten.

With Connor, it was all about the little things. And she liked that. She felt like she finally could forget where she came from and focus on where she was now. No past, no future, just present. Their present.

When they were finished, Elle and Connor decided to keep looking for answers about their flight, but nobody seemed to know anything useful. Eventually, they gave up on their fellow travelers and decided to walk back to the airport. Just as they were about to head back down the long road there, Connor saw the pilot of their plane walking out of the town Hotel.

"Hey!" Connor yelled while running towards the pilot.

As they got closer, Elle realised he wasn't the pilot. He was the co-pilot. And he looked a little bit too young.

"Hey, kids," the co-pilot said when he saw them. He was smiling and had a piece of chocolate cake in his hand. "What's up?"

"We were wondering when are we leaving," Connor asked, surprisingly calm.

The man was chewing on his cake, and Elle felt the urge to tell him to act more professionally. You know... like without smudging chocolate cake all over his face.

"I just finished speaking with Leeds and Bradford," he said, some of the cake inside his mouth visible. Elle cringed. "They say we'll be able to leave four days from now in the early morning."

Elle and Connor looked at each other. Once they had both processed what they had just been told, they turned back to the man again.

"What did you just say?" Connor whispered, stunned.

"What are we supposed to do until then?" Elle yelled at the same time.

The man was way too calm but, of course, who wouldn't be if they could stay in a hotel instead of having nowhere to sleep for three more nights.

"You wait," he said simply, smiling as if he were talking to two little kids who couldn't get something so obvious.

"Great!" Connor muttered and walked away.

Elle could sense he was angry without even looking at him, and that confused her. She had grown used to see him act careless and positive all the time. She had known him for less than a day, but she could still tell that him being mad wasn't a common occurrence.

Connor walked for a while, Elle following silently behind, until he decided to stop next to an old lady that was selling apples on a small street market.

"Two, please," he said handing her way too much money and taking the apples.

"Here, have one," he said, throwing one at Elle once she had reached him.

She took it and thanked him with a smile.

"So? What do we do now?" he asked her.

A part of her felt relieved that he still wanted to be with her. She couldn't even think about being alone in that place, no matter how pretty it looked during daytime. She had been alone for too long, and she didn't really want to go back to that again.

Before responding, she eyed him carefully. He seemed calmer now, more like himself. There were still some traces of annoyance in him. His lips lacked their usual smile, his forehead was creased.

"I don't know," Elle whispered. When she looked back towards the market for a second, she had an idea. "We could ask her," she said, pointing towards the woman.

Connor nodded and they walked back.

"Hi," Elle greeted.

"Hmm," the woman mumbled back.

The woman was rearranging her perfectly ordered apples in a pyramid. Elle had the feeling she wasn't in the mood to talk to them.

"Would you happen to know someplace we could spend the night in?" Connor asked her.

The woman sighed heavily and finally looked up at them. "No," she grumbled.

"Thank you, anyways," Connor replied, forcing a polite smile.

Before they could even turn around to leave, a man selling potatoes in the next stand yelled after them. "You could always ask Crazy Stelle."

The woman with the apples frowned. "I wouldn't do that."

"Why not?" Elle asked, not really caring what that grumpy old woman had to say about what could possibly be their salvation.

The two vendors exchanged a look that Elle couldn't quite decipher.  

"She is a strange woman," the woman said with an indifferent shrug and went back to rearranging her apple pyramid.

"And may we ask why?" Connor asked the man.

"Look, kid. Stelle lives in a little house up the hill and deep between the woods. She has no family and hardly leaves her house to come to town. She has a place for you, for sure, since I doubt any of your friends from the plane have found her cabin. If you are lucky, she might be willing to let you stay with her. Still, though, I am not sure I would go there if I were you."

"How do we get there?" Connor asked.

"But–" the man tried to keep speaking. He threw a quick glance in Elle's direction, probably wanting to see if she was as stubborn as her friend was.

And she was. "How do we get there?" she echoed.

After a long sigh that came accompanied by a shake of his head, the man gave them the directions. They both thanked him and left towards the woods and Crazy Stelle's hill.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Elle asked. "I doubt they call her Crazy Stelle for nothing."

"And I doubt we have another choice," Connor replied. "We have to stay three more nights here and we need somewhere to sleep. Unless you think the owner of the bar will let us stay there again, I don't think there's anything else we can do."

Elle sighed, knowing just how right he was.

 ❄

Trekking can be tricky. Elle had known that since that one time when her dad had decided they had to take a family trip. Long story short, Elle's younger sister ended up crying, her older brother got a bruised knee, her parents got a headache that would seemingly last for the rest of their lives, and Elle bowed to never trek again.

Funny how things didn't seem to go as she wanted them to lately.

"So? What's with the dress?" Connor asked as he helped her jump off a rock.

Elle grimaced as she looked down at her jeans and the fancy dress she was wearing on top of them. She had searched for a bathroom to change on the bar, but it seemed like the only one they had was located on the second floor, and she really didn't want to go up there and run into the grumpy owner. She could have changed in the restaurant during lunchtime, but frankly she had forgotten, her sole focus on figuring out what their fate would be for the coming days. And so now she was wearing a shimmery blue party dress, a pair of worn out jeans, and sneakers. She probably looked stunning.

"I was going to a wedding," she explained.

"Really? In York? I didn't think you'd know anybody there."

Elle grimaced. What would happen if she just told him what had really happened? Would he laugh at her? Tease her? She wasn't sure she was ready to go through that. But, at the same time, that would have been better than the usual sad look everyone was always giving her.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Connor said as he scrutinised her expression. He seemed to do that quite a lot, read her like that, just by looking at her face and her eyes. Elle had to wonder if he was able to see anything else.

Elle shook her head. She was probably never going to see him again anyway, so why not just tell him? "I don't know anyone in York. The wedding is in New York."

"Oh."

Elle could tell he wanted to ask, or tease, or even laugh. But he didn't. He didn't say anything. And she immediately relaxed when she realised he wouldn't.

"Well, then. They are probably missing you right now," Connor commented.

"Shit," Elle exclaimed, just then remembering her unsuccessful call at the airport. "I should really call my parents and tell them I'm not getting there on time."

Connor nodded, a small teasing smile on his lips. "I think you really should."

"Let's hope Crazy Stelle has a phone, then."

"If there is an accurate reason as to why people call her that, I don't believe she does."

"Let's hope everyone is wrong then. My phone doesn't seem to get signal anywhere around here."

Now it was Connor's turn to grimace. "Neither does mine."