“Oh my God,” Jenny said. “I freaking love you. Was it the army guy? I bet he was fantastic. Come out with us and tell me everything.”
I moved toward my bed to put down my things. I’d not found my phone yet, but I was fairly certain it couldn’t be much later than noon.
“You’re going out now? It’s so early.”
Jenny shrugged. “We’ve got to check out in, like, ten minutes, but our train doesn’t leave until tonight. So, we figured a little day drinking was in order. You know, to end our Budapest weekend in style. Come with us!”
I worried my bottom lip between my teeth, unsure how to get out of this.
“I don’t know if I’m up to day drinking, honestly.”
“So come for the company,” John said.
I didn’t think I was up to the company either.
The hesitance must have shown on my face because Jenny picked up her backpack and handed it to Tau. “You guys go check us out,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”
John waved on his way out, and Tau nodded. Then Jenny turned on me.
“Okay, what’s up? I know post-coitus glow, and you don’t have it. So where were you really last night?”
I plopped down on the bottom bunk bed that I was currently calling home. The mattress was so thin that I could feel the wooden slats below it.
“Nothing. Just . . .” I sighed. “I’ve just had a bad week is all. Last night just continued my slump.”
“It’s probably just mental. Maybe you need a change. New atmosphere. You could start fresh.”
That’s all I’d been doing. Starting fresh. But I was learning that the stench of the past tended to cling despite changing locations.
“I don’t think that will help. I think I’m going to go home.”
“Are you serious?”
I threaded my fingers together in my lap and ran my thumb across my palm.
“Yeah.” I nodded and said more firmly, “Yeah, I am.”
She ducked underneath my bunk and sat down beside me, the bed groaning. “You can’t. Not yet. If you go home now, when you’re unhappy, that’s the only way you’ll remember this trip. Go home on a good note at least.”
I brushed my thumb across my palm again, scraping lightly with the nail of my thumb.
“You’re not wrong.”
“Of course I’m not. I get being homesick. And the culture shock can come a bit out of nowhere and bite you in the ass. But you’re going to want to look back on this trip fondly. As a good thing . . . right?”
“Right.” I nodded. Jenny’s advice sounded a lot like what I would have told myself. That is, if I weren’t so mixed up and broken down. It was stupid to try to pin all my hopes on this trip. I was expecting too much. Too much pressure.
I still thought going home was the best choice, but I was pretty sure I could handle one last hooray.
“Thanks, Jenny.”
She smiled, and lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
“I’m the queen of sabotaging good things, but I’m at least pretty good at recognizing the same tendency in others. One more trip. Do something you’ll remember, something impossible to regret. Then take that moment home with you.”
I nodded, emotion tickling at the back of my throat.
She slipped off my bunk and headed for the door. “Facebook me and let me know how it goes.”
She was almost out the door when I called, “Jenny?”
She balanced a hand on the doorjamb. “Yeah?”
“Would you recommend Prague as a place to remember?”
She smiled.
“Hell, yes, I would. And I happen to know that a train is heading that way in just over eight hours.”
Prague it was, then. My last adventure.
11
Even the train station in Budapest was beautiful. It was all archways and glass windows. The glittering night sky was visible through the windows that swept across the arched ceiling. The station was cast in a low yellow light, and the balmy night air crept in through the open archways over the train tracks. I arrived about forty-five minutes early, but didn’t see Jenny, John, or Tau anywhere.
The train Jenny had told me about traveled overnight and arrived in Prague just after dawn. I went ahead and purchased a ticket for a couchette in a random compartment, just in case I didn’t find them before the train left. There was probably very little chance I would have been able to get in the same train compartment as them anyway.
I took a seat on a quaint wooden bench. I still couldn’t find my phone, and I was working on the theory that I’d lost it sometime during the night of oblivion. Unable to listen to music, it was just me and the quiet station, permeated by the humming of the tracks as a train approached.
That hum grew into a roar, and the wind whipped my hair around my face. And for a second . . . for one tiny second, I felt good. The worries rolled off my back, and it hit me where I was and what I was doing. I was in a gorgeous European city, where most people didn’t speak English. The train station was so grand, it was easy to imagine how magnificent it had been when it was first built. There was a wide, bustling world out there, and I was a part of it.
Sure, I had no f**king clue what I was doing with my life or where I fit in this world, but I was a part of it all the same. I’d left footprints across the globe, and though you couldn’t see them and they didn’t necessarily matter, I knew they were there. And that was enough for now. It had to be enough.
The train pulled to a stop, the wind died down, and with it that spark of something more.
The moment was fleeting, but it told me something important. There was hope in this mad world, if I could keep it protected from the darkness.
My train arrived just a few minutes prior to the scheduled time. I picked up my backpack, and did one last sweep of the platform to look for Jenny and the guys.
I didn’t see them, but maybe I’d be able to find them once we got to the station in Prague.
I stepped off the platform and up onto the stairs leading into the train. An attendant helped direct me toward my compartment. I slid open the door and shouldered my hulking backpack through the narrow opening. The compartment held six bunks that folded out from the wall bunk-bed style. There were three on each side, each with a pillow and a blanket. I checked my ticket to find that I was on one of the middle bunks. I was not looking forward to climbing into that space. There was only about two feet between the top of my bunk and the bottom of the one above me. Not enough space to sit up unless I wanted to crack my head against the couchette above me.
Now that I knew where I was, I exited my compartment, following the flow of people looking for their own places. I peeked past open doors, checking for a familiar face. I walked nearly the entire length of the train before an announcement came over the speakers. It started in Hungarian, but I didn’t need to wait for the translation to know what it meant. We were leaving. And I still hadn’t seen Jenny or the guys anywhere.
I was about to turn around and go back to my compartment when I heard a commotion. The train started moving, but the attendant was still at the door, calling out something in Hungarian.
While I stared, a hand took hold of the bar next to the stairs, and a running body pulled itself up onto the train and into the cabin. The person held out a ticket to the conductor, and after they spoke for a few seconds, stepped out into the light.
A small part of me had thought maybe it was Tau or John, and the others would be pulling themselves onto the slowly moving train any second now.
It wasn’t.
But the face was a familiar one after all.
The train picked up speed, and I had to brace myself on the wall to keep from falling. He finished tucking his ticket into the pocket of his dark jeans, slung low on his hips, and then his eyes met mine.
Hunt.
I had the strongest urge to run. Or to throw myself into his arms.
He moved forward, reaching a long arm up to the ceiling to help keep his balance.
“You left,” he said, his expression troubled.
“I—what?”
“And you left this.”
He reached into his pocket again, and pulled out my cell phone.
I stretched for it. “Where did you get that?”
“You left it in your room.”
“What?”
My room? The hotel room?
He passed the phone to me and said, “I came over this afternoon to check on you, but you were already gone. I went to your hostel, but you were already gone from there, too. I got lucky and ran into Jenny and Tau at a bar near the hostel. They said you were leaving for Prague tonight.”
I was still stuck on that first sentence. “You came over . . .”
He had been there last night. He could tell me what happened. He was obviously involved with me ending up in that hotel room. Did he pay for a room for me? How did we go from arguing to him taking care of me? The empty space in my head was infuriating.
His eyebrows tilted, his tanned skin wrinkling across his forehead. “You didn’t read my note, did you?” I didn’t even have to answer before he was replying, “Damn it. I’m sorry, Kelsey. I thought you would have seen it beside your bed.” He came closer, until I could have reached out and traced a finger along the bare strip of skin that showed every time he checked his balance against the wall or ceiling. “I should have stayed. I never meant for you to wake up that way, confused and scared.”
“I wasn’t scared.”
My eyes stayed steady, and my lip didn’t wobble. My voice was calm and even.
He paused, his mouth still open in the shape of whatever he’d been planning to say next. “Kelsey . . . you don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?” I looked away, unnerved by the way he seemed to see right through me.
“I promised you I would stay, so that you wouldn’t wake up and not know what had happened. And I was going to stay, I just . . . I’m sorry.”
If he’d been there, I wouldn’t have freaked out. I wouldn’t have had to think about the past at all.
“Why didn’t you?”
He cleared his throat and scratched at his neck. “I—uh. I needed a bit of distance. I booked the room across the hall.”
I wanted to ask why, to push for more of an explanation, but I didn’t want him to know that I cared, and that I had been more than scared. I’d been terrified, split open, and even now I was only barely stitched back together.
The train was at full speed now, and the conductor was sliding open a compartment just a few doors down to check people’s tickets. I needed to get back to my seat. I was the one who needed distance now. But I had to ask, “Did you just jump on a train to Prague solely to bring me my phone?”
He smoothed a hand over the stubble on his jaw and shrugged.
“Are you crazy? It’s just a phone.”
“And it’s just a train. If I weren’t on this one, I’d be on another one. Prague is as good a place as any.”
I pushed my phone into a pocket on my backpack and surveyed him. He was a soldier . . . or had been. His hair was still cut short, so either he preferred that style or he’d been in service very recently. But it sounded as if he was wandering just as aimlessly as I was, and I wondered briefly what he was hoping to find here. If he was having better luck than me.