30 Hours With You [Completed]

Hour Eleven

Ellis 

We are actually at the zoo. I bought our tickets and Thea bought us popcorn that we are eating as we try to navigate our way through the curving walkways and steep hills.

"What do you want to see first?" I ask grabbing a handful of salty popcorn and shoving it into my mouth. She looks closer at the map.

"Hmm.. I think the tigers," Thea says.

We wander along and watch the zoo quickly fill up with large families, screaming kids, and animal noises. We walk into a gift shop to buy a couple of bottles of water. We've already walked a mile and we haven't even made it to the tigers yet, we've seen a few animals along the way though.

Luckily we haven't seen any peacocks.

"Yes!" Thea exclaims rushing over to me with the biggest smile on her face. She is holding two baseball caps in her hand. One is decorated like a peacock with a feather tail that sticks up from the back and can be seen fanned out from the front. The other hat is a tiger stripped hat with a tail dangling from the back.

"I'm not wearing that," I say shaking my head trying to hold back a smile.

"Please, Ellis. This will prove you're over your fear."

"I don't care about proving I'm over my fear. I'm not over my fear!" I say laughing.

"You're scared of peacocks?" The guy standing behind the counter asks smirking at me.

"Yes," Thea answers for me, "he was chased once. It was very traumatic."

She stands on her tip-toes to plant a kiss on my cheek then she grabs my hand and basically drags me to the register. Before I have time to protest again she pulls out her wallet and pays way too much money for stupid hats.

Thea places the hat on my head and her hat on herself. She goes over to a family of five, they have two babies in a double stroller and another kid walking besides them, "can you take a picture of us? I'm not really a selfie person." The man laughs loudly and walks over to us as Thea hands him her phone.

"I've never gotten into the selfie thing either," he laughs again then counts to three before he takes the picture of us. We both thank him before we all go on our way to attempt to find the animals that we most want to see.

We finally arrive at the tiger exhibit and watch the giant cat pace back and forth in front of the glass. Thea's eyes are wide as she watches it and when she spots another tiger she points eagerly towards the corner of the exhibit.

"Do you think he's happy?" she asks resting her head on my shoulder.

"I'm not sure. I think they're hurt and they rehabilitate them here."

"I hope you're right. I'd hate to think of him pacing around continuously looking for his family that is still in the jungle, or something."

I take Thea's hand and pull her away from the exhibit before she makes everyone around us question the morals of the zoo, which I guess we should question the morals.

We quietly walk down the hill towards the main path, her hand in mine. It's insane that the thought of leaving her actually makes my heart beat faster and my hands sweat. I don't want to leave her until she leaves New York. Or maybe there is a culinary school in Michigan.

I internally scold myself because following her path is almost the same as following my parent's path. It's something I just can't do. I have to follow my own dreams for once and that dream is sending me far from her.

For all I know this whole thing is all in my head. How can this deep of a connection be formed in this short amount of time? I don't believe in love at first sight. Hell, I know I'm not in love with Thea but I know I want to continue learning everything about her. I want to learn how to make her laugh when she's sad, what makes her cry, all her likes and dislikes, everything from her biggest fears to her favorite color.

I want to know her.

She continues to draw me closer with every word she says and every time she laughs.

"Lets go!" Thea rushes forward towards the line enclosed in metal barricades for the carousel.

The carousel is decorated with brightly colored bugs of different varieties and Thea is scoping out each one as they pass, "I think we should take the red and green grasshoppers. What do you think?" she asks.

"I think you shouldn't get your hopes up because those could be taken by the time we get up there."

She rolls her pretty eyes and moves closer to me, "as long as they're right next to each other it doesn't matter."

We ride the carousel three times, visit a few more animal exhibits, and eat a bunch of greasy food. Two hours pass and we decide to call it a day and head towards the parking lot.

When we reach my bike she pulls her helmet over her tiger hat and says, "thanks for everything, Ellis."

"It's not over yet, right?" I ask suddenly in a full on panic.

She laughs, probably at the look on my face, "you said that you're holding me hostage until you have to go to the airport."

I kiss her, I mean it to be quick but she wraps her arms around my neck and deepens it. I can not get enough of her.

"I'm just making sure you didn't forget," I say then we head back into The City.