The cold mountain air whipped around her ears and settled in her still damp hair, sending a chill down her back. Her gaze skimmed over the beautiful view from her wooden folding chair on the balcony of the gas station. Miles of crystal blue lake stretched out to her left and right, with iced capped peaks beyond the water's edge. The sun was slowly reaching the horizon, painting the quaint houses with a slight orange glow that sat hundreds of feet below her.
Camila sucked in a large breath of crisp air, her mind still screaming from what she'd seen just over an hour ago. She replayed it over and over in her mind; whether to torture herself, or to remind herself it was real, the brunette didn't know. The instant she walked out of that stall, fire blazed deep in her stomach and made it physically impossible for her to move, or form coherent thought. She stood stock-still, and watched, and waited. She stood until Lauren turned around, covering herself with a t-shirt and quirking a perfect eyebrow.
"Like what you see?"
Camila had gawked at her and let out an uneasy cough, her face flushing a deep crimson at her words. She'd made a move to grab the backpack and busied herself with her own clothes, all the while feeling Lauren's eyes burn a hole in the side of her head.
What was she going to do?
She felt helpless and defeated; her chest ached so much she felt like she would explode, or have her heart stop at any moment. She knew how to make it stop. And if she was back in Ohio, and it was anyone else, she'd already have them up against a wall. But this wasn't Ohio, and Lauren just wasn't some random at a party. So that solution was just not an option at this point, especially when she still had over two weeks left with the girl.
What if she did make a move and Lauren rejected her, or her feelings weren't returned? Then she'd be stranded in the middle of a foreign country, making the situation even more complicated and more fucked up than it already was. Or worse still, Lauren did feel the same way, putting their time together on a timer. A slow agonizing timer that would inevitably run to zero, and then they'd be saying goodbye to each other, possibly forever.
This vacation had gone from rebellious escape to personal hell within one train ride. A part of her wished she'd just shared a cabin with a creepy Italian guy, or a screaming family of four. The other part couldn't help shake the feeling, no matter how illogical, that they were fated to meet. That her waking up to blinding light and even more blinding beauty was beyond her control.
How she wished Alex were here. She always had a way of making her problems seem less important, or less daunting somehow. Just with a smile, or a playfully nudge to her side she would forget about her troubles and relax into her bubble of pure sunshine. God she missed Alex.
She got up from her chair and paced to the cold metal railing, gripping it tightly. The icy sting on her palms helped to filter her thoughts, and let her concentrate on the speedboats and swimmers that looked like ants from where she stood. It let her concentrate on the faint ripples on the glass-still water, and on the birds that shot out the sky and dove into the ice blue surface.
"Hope you're hungry."
And just like that, her world was plunged straight back into the deep end, where her body seemed content to drown. Camila stole herself the last few seconds of clarity, before turning around to meet those emerald eyes and that bright smile that had become like a drug to her over the past three days; high inducing, addictive, but overall damaging.
"I got Goulash, Schnitzel, and Almdudler."
"Almdudler?"
Lauren handed Camila the bottle of deep yellow liquid with a smile and took her seat opposite her on the back deck of the large service station. Their bus had stopped at the roadside services for dinner before they were to enter Vienna, Camila all too happy to let Lauren do the ordering at the buffet.
