Tutti Italia: A Novel (15 page)

“I couldn’t help but notice that you’re here on your own. 
We were wondering if you wanted to come over and eat with us.”  Rachel picked
the girl’s words and actions apart in her mind to see if there was a trap
anywhere in there.  She couldn’t see one, but that didn’t mean that this was
purely a humanitarian mission that she’d sent herself on.  After a pause,
Rachel finally answered her.

“Um, sure.  Yes, I am on this trip by myself, and I have to
admit that it’s a lot more fun with other people.”  Rachel shut her mouth with
a snap.  She didn’t want to sound like she was desperate. 

“Yeah, I know all about that.  I’ve been there, too. 
That’s actually how I met these guys.  I was on a trip by myself, and they were,
too.  They invited me to hang out with them, just like I’m asking you.”  She
smiled at Rachel.  “We’d like to pull you into our group.”  Rachel took her
beer with her and followed Anna over to the table.  The guy that had looked at
her the night before was looking at her again, and Rachel couldn’t help but
stare at his beautiful blue eyes.  She had to jerk her eyes away from him in
order to be polite and smile at the other guy.  “Guys, this is Rachel.  She was
my roommate last night.  I know what it’s like to be on a trip alone and I
didn’t want her to have to deal with that so I invited her over.”  The guys
were both smiling at her now, and Mr. Blue Eyes spoke first.

“Hey.  I’m Erik.  Nice to meet you.”  He stuck his hand
out, and Rachel shook it.  The other guy waited his turn and stuck his hand out
as well.

“I’m Ryan.”  Rachel shook his hand, too, then sat down next
to Anna.  She was a little shy, and she kept herself to herself while the
conversation picked up around her.  When they started talking about beer
flavors, and where the most unusual ones were, Rachel had to speak up.

“Honestly, I think the best one is in Berlin.  There’s a
beer there that has a raspberry flavor, and since I’m addicted to raspberries,
I’m a little biased.”  There was silence around the table for a few minutes.

“Raspberry beer?  Really?”  Anna looked like she was in
shock.  “I love raspberry, too.  Is there any way we can get some here?” 
Rachel grabbed her beer and held it up to the light.  When the light filtered
through it, they could see that the color was pink.

“This is a raspberry beer as well, just not the one that I
was talking about.”  Anna squealed with delight and tried to flag down the
waiter.  When he arrived, she ordered what Rachel had and couldn’t sit still
until he’d come back with it.  She gave her beer glass to Ryan, and dove into
the new beer that the waiter had brought.

“What is this for?”  Ryan seemed a little confused.  He’d
looked down at the table once, had one beer in front of him, and when he looked
down again there had been two.

“I don’t want that beer anymore.  They have raspberry beer,
and I only want to drink that.  So, this one is for you.”  Ryan shrugged his
shoulders, picked up the glass that Anna had given him, and promptly finished
it.  Then he went back to talking to Erik, intermittently sipping at the beer
he’d ordered himself. 

“This is absolutely delicious!”  Anna was gushing on and on
about the raspberry beer, and Rachel could tell that she was tipsy.  This girl
must be a lightweight, she thought.  The boys had considerably more empty
glasses in front of them, but they both seemed more sober than Anna was. 
Rachel kept on drinking her beer, and she was listening in to the boys’
conversation instead of paying attention to Anna’s drunken ramblings.  They
were talking about going up to the castle on the top of the mountain. 

“I vote to go up there, too.  I love castles, and I
wouldn’t mind hiking up there to visit the museum that’s up there.”  That
caught Anna’s attention.

“There’s a museum up there?  You guys didn’t mention that
there was a museum up there!  What are we waiting for?  Let’s pay and get up
there!”  Both of the boys rolled their eyes at Anna.  Rachel could tell that
they were getting fed up with her.

Chapter 20

The bills were paid, and the four of them were planning
their excursion up to the castle.  It was going to be a bit of a hike, and the
boys didn’t want to take Anna along with them, but they couldn’t really leave
her behind anywhere, either.  Rachel could see immediately that the boys had
wanted to go on this trip, and that Anna had simply tagged along.  Rachel had
to laugh.  When they looked over at her, she just shook her head with a smile
on her face.  It was almost like she was watching three kids in her class.  The
road up to the castle started almost directly outside of the little bistro that
they’d eaten at.  Erik, Ryan, and Rachel set a good, steady pace for the hike. 
Unfortunately, they had to keep stopping for Anna because she was lagging
behind.  Ryan even grabbed her hand at one point so that he could drag her
along behind him.  Even though he succeeded in getting her to move a little
faster, the group still had to make a lot of stops for her.  Rachel was up in
the front of the group with Erik.  Ryan and Anna were out of earshot, so she
decided to ask the question that had been plaguing her since the bistro.

“Hey.  Can I ask you something?”  Erik stopped walking to
look back at the two that were trailing.  Rachel could tell that he was a
little irritated.

“Yeah.  Go ahead.”  Rachel took a deep breath. 

“Why did you guys bring Anna when neither one of you want
her along?”  She’d said it, and there was no taking it back now. 

“I didn’t even want her to come.  That much is true.  Ryan,
on the other hand, is trying to get with Anna.  He’s my best friend, so I
couldn’t very well tell him no.”  Rachel could understand that.  She’d done the
same thing before in high school.

“I’m sorry.  I know what that’s like.  I’m sorry, but I
don’t know if I could handle having her along for two days like you guys have. 
That takes a special kind of strength.”  Erik looked over his shoulder to see
that Anna had made Ryan stop again.  He sighed heavily.

“Why do you think we’ve been drinking so heavily?”  Rachel
had to tamp down the volume of her laughter.  Erik looked at her for a second
or two before he started laughing, too.  From behind them, Anna heard the
laughter and increased her pace so that she could get in on the joke, too.

“What’s going on up here?  What did I miss?”  Erik just
shook his head.

“Why couldn’t you get up here that fast a few minutes
ago?”  Ryan was at the end of his rope it seemed, and some of his anger bled
through in his voice.

“I don’t know.  I was just tired.  And my feet hurt.”  Ryan
crossed his arms over his chest.

“But when you think you’re missing some kind of gossip,
none of that shit matters, does it?”  Anna just stood there and looked at him. 
Ryan huffed angrily and walked away.  Erik followed him and tried to calm him
down.  That left Anna with Rachel.  Rachel was
not
happy about it.  She
tried to make pleasant small talk with the girl, so she would stay here and not
run away before the boys could come back.  When they did, Ryan looked a little
calmer.  The first thing they saw when they entered the castle’s gates was
another little bistro with outdoor tables.  It was warm, the wind was a gentle
breeze, and Rachel thought she might be able to help calm the situation down. 

“Hey!  How about we stop here and grab something to eat? 
Look!  The sign even says if you buy that beer special, you get to take the
glass home.  What about it?”  She had plastered one of her fake smiles on her
face, but they didn’t know her well enough to realize that it was fake. 

“Yeah, that sounds good.  Let’s do it.”  Erik was on board,
and he was looking at Ryan to see if he was down for it as well.  Ryan took a
minute before he agreed.  No one asked Anna what she wanted.  She was forced to
tag along behind them.  The sad but true part was that they didn’t care about
her wants anymore.  They sat down at a table and ordered some food and more
beer.  Ryan, Erik, and Rachel were enjoying everything and keeping a
conversation going, while Anna was twisting paper napkins apart. 

“I’m going to use the bathroom.  I’ll be back.”  No one
really paid much attention to Anna when she excused herself.  After a while,
she still hadn’t come back.  Ryan asked Rachel to check the ladies room to see
if she was still in there.  Rachel did as he asked, and came back with the bad
news.  Anna was gone.

“That dumb ass.  She’s always causing problems for us! 
Ryan, look, I’m sorry, man, but she’s not coming on any other trips with us
after this.  I can’t handle it.  She’s ok in small doses, but forty-eight hours
in a row is
not
a small dose.”  Erik was very annoyed, and Ryan was
getting to be that way, too.

“Hey, guys, it’s ok.  Look, we’ll pay, then we’ll go find
her.  She couldn’t have gotten far.  Once we get her on the bus, that’s it. 
You don’t have to worry anymore because she can’t get lost when she’s on the
bus.  It’ll be ok.”  Rachel was the calm voice of reason, and it was plain to
see that the boys were glad that she was around.  Rachel split up the castle grounds
into three sections, and assigned one to each of them.  Then they dispersed,
looking for the wayward annoyance that everyone was tired of by now. 

Half an hour later, it was Rachel that found her, in the
gift shop, trying to buy a ton of things that she didn’t need.  Rachel made her
put everything back and almost shoved her out of the shop.  When the boys saw
Rachel dragging Anna behind her, both of their faces clouded over, and they
looked very angry.  Rachel stood in front of her, and used her body as a kind
of shield.  That slowed them down, but only a little. 

“Everything is fine.  We found her, now we can all go get
on the bus.  It leaves in half an hour anyway, and we still need to hike down
the mountain.  Everyone just take a deep breath, and Anna, you stay with me.” 
The younger girl looked at her companions’ faces and hurried to stick close to
Rachel.  It seemed like she was the protector, and Anna was clinging to her for
dear life.  Rachel ushered her onto the bus, she found her seat, and then went
to the back of the bus to her own seat.  A few minutes later, Ryan and Erik got
on the bus and took their seats away from Anna.  Erik came over to her and sat
down for a minute.

“I want to say thank you for helping us find her.  I know
that you didn’t have to, that you could have easily walked away and not thought
about her or us twice, but I want to thank you for not doing that.”  He got up
to go, and Rachel had to hurry and say something before he left.

“I just wanted to help.  I’ve seen situations like that,
and the more it escalates and people think that they only have to look out for
themselves, the worse it gets.”  She laughed.  “Well, let me say it this way,
if you need another child wrangler, just give me a call.”  She gave him her
number and watched as he typed it into his phone.  A little flutter went
through her.  The reason that she had helped them with Anna
wasn’t
out
of the goodness of her heart.  She was doing it because she had a slight crush
on Erik.  She knew that she would never see him again.  It wasn’t like she had
gotten to know them enough for them to want to see her again, anyway.  She
curled up in her seats, and went to sleep.  Every now and then she would roll
over, and she would steal a glance at Erik.  Then she would beat herself up
about it.  Why would she want to try to get close to another guy, after the
pain that had just been put on her from the last man she’d let get close to
her?  Rachel cleared her head.  The bus pulled up in the same parking lot that
they’d left from the day before, and Rachel had never been so happy to get in
her car and make a fifteen minute drive in her life.  She drove home, parked in
her dorm’s parking lot, snatched her overnight bag, and staggered up to her
room.  She jumped in the shower long enough to get herself cleaned up, then
dove into the bed without even bothering to dry her hair first. 

Monday morning Rachel was so tired she could barely drag
herself out of bed.  She just wanted to get the day over with, then go home and
go straight to bed.  She was supposed to have a lesson plan for each day of the
week, but when she went in to her room, she gave Sky control of the class, and
she sat in the back, pretending that she was doing Sky a favor by letting her
practice running a class.  Sky was ecstatic.  She did a lot with the class, and
Rachel just sat in the back and watched, trying to keep herself awake.  When
the day was over, the two of them cleaned up the room, and Rachel drove herself
home amongst a cacophony of yawns.  When she got home, she just took off her
clothes and crawled into bed.  The blackness took her until her alarm went off
the next morning. 

She reached for her phone to shut off the alarm, and
realized that her phone had gone off last night, and she’d slept right through
it.  She looked at the number and didn’t recognize it.  She opened the text
message, and she couldn’t help herself…her heart leapt and she smiled.  It said
that whoever had texted her wanted to see her again and was wondering if they
could pick her up for dinner tonight.  She felt like she was worth something,
then she took a step back and realized that she had no idea who this person
was, if the text had even been meant for her or if it had been a mistyped
number, and if it was someone that she even knew and wanted to see.  She sent a
message back wondering who it was, then jumped out of bed and commenced to
getting ready for work.  As she was brushing her teeth, her phone went off
again and she almost tripped over her feet to get it.  When she opened the
message, she almost swallowed her toothbrush in excitement.  It was Erik.  She
hastily saved the number to her phone and wrote him a message back, telling him
that she would absolutely love to go to dinner with him.  Then she added a line
about whether she had to restrain Anna in order to earn the dinner, and a
smiley face to show that she was joking.  He sent her back a smiley face as
well, and told her that it was absolutely no strings attached, and she didn’t
have to do anything to earn it.