Chapter 7

Trying to avoid my mother, who happens to be staying a few doors down from me, in a foreign country is quite the challenge. Not only do I not have money to do anything, but I have to see her at breakfast too seeing as I hate the thought of stranger bringing food straight to my door. It seems that Ernesto is staying at the hotel too, or not far from it because every time I catch a glimpse of mum, the Spaniard Stallion is linking arms with her. It doesn’t really have the same effect “Spaniard Stallion” as “Italian Stallion” does… I’ll think of a new nickname for him. Zack goes into some sort of Epileptic fit every time he sees them together, poor V having to calm him down every time, I just watch the drama from a distance. 

Mum doesn’t know about Harry, but there is no need for her to know. After all, she hadn’t told us about Ernesto for ages so why should I give her the favour?

My eyes crackled open, the sleep covering my eyelashes made it hard to see through. The air-conditioning had turned on automatically during the night since once it gets to a certain temperature the machine could sense it. I reached over to the TV remote on the bedside table and flicked the plasma on to MTV. Jersey Shore was on TV, and I can’t stand the sight of Snooki, so I then changed it to National Geographic, a David Attenborough special. It reminded me that I still had work to do for school. School, the place which I had been dreading returning the most.

5 days had passed since I forgave Harry. I was so glad that I did otherwise I wouldn’t have experienced the things that I did. He was such a gentleman, taking me to the beach every day and paying for the taxi’s wherever I wanted to go and never coming onto me. Surprisingly, the beach was empty EVERY SINGLE DAY, and this is the main beach I’m talking about. I was pretty sure that their school holidays had started…

Harry has a remarkably vast knowledge of the city, considering he had only been in Valencia once before. Every day he found a new local restaurant or street stall for us to have a traditional lunch in with not one tourist in sight. The first 2 days we just stayed in the hotel and went down to the pool. On Tuesday, we went scuba diving a little bit out of the city. You wouldn’t think that in Spain that there would be coral or anything interesting but I was seriously mind blown. Wednesday, he took me to a club soccer match. Apparently that particular match was called an ‘El Classico’ because 2 big clubs were playing each other. It was absolute madness. Harry seemed to know who was who and what was happening; I just stood there and cheered when everyone else on our side cheered. Thursday… I didn’t or hear anything from Harry on Thursday. He had my number and I think I developed OCD on checking my phone every 5 minutes. That day, I had I didn’t know what to do with myself. That day was yesterday.

You’d have thought that mum would’ve noticed me missing but honestly, through the past 5 days I had only seen her once and that was when I needed to borrow some shampoo from their room since I had run out of the hotel stuff.

Maybe Harry had gotten bored of me. I would’ve been bored with myself on the first day. I’m not really that interesting, or so I have been told by many people.

The sun had risen high enough for it to start peeping through the gaps in the blinds and it was extremely irritating. Someone knocked on my door. Mum must’ve had the decency to order me room service breakfast since I heard from V that she was meeting with Ernesto for breakfast down at the Bistro.

“Who is it?” I croaked awkwardly.

“Room service.” My prediction proved correct.

“Come in!” I had never been good with dealing with strangers. V was always the one I nudged forward when we dealt with unknown people at our door.

The sound of the click of the key card and the trolley being pushed through the door before it being shut echoed through the room. This trolley was squeaky and the high pitched noise added to the headache I was developing. Hola the waiter man whispered as his back was turned to me. I didn’t really pay attention to him pouring the coffee and all, my brain felt like it was going to pound out of my head.

David moaned on and on about the elegance of the blue whale in the Pacific Ocean, he was also starting to irritate me. The waiter pushed the trolley to my bedside and put sugar in the the coffee with a plop!

“Scotch fingers, miss?”

A British accent. I turned my head up to the waiter and unsurprisingly, it was the curly headed boy… again. He cheekily grinned down at me as he usually did.

“Good morning sunshine! Have a nice sleep?” He lay out the scrambled eggs on the plate and sprinkled chives on the top.

I stared as blankly as I could at him, trying to not show the immense excitement I felt in seeing him again. The thought that he would prank me like this again really unusually flattered me. “How did you know I like Scotch Fingers?” I felt like such an idiot. How had I not noticed that it was Harry?

He laughed, “One of your Facebook status’ from 2009 told me so. You practically gave out enough information on what you were doing back then that someone could write an autobiography about your life in that time period.” He held out the cup of coffee.

“You creep,” I joked as I sniffed the coffee. Bleh, I put the cup back on the trolley. “I hate coffee!”

Harry drank the coffee himself. “Just have water with your breakfast then. Make it quick Tilly, because I told Felipe that we’d be there at 10!” He checked his watch quickly then turned his gaze back to me.

“Felipe? What? Where are we going?” My mouth already half full of the eggs, I was excited to get going, wherever we were going.

“You’ll see… I need to go and get changed but I’ll be back and I expect to see you ready by then, Ok?” He was almost out the door

Concentrating on finishing my food quickly I managed to choke up “By the way, you look great in the waiters outfit.” He winked at me and sped out the door. I wasn’t lying, he looked pretty good in the outfit. Harry could really suit anything I supposed.

***

It was 8 minutes before Harry zipped back in. I had managed to eat, get changed and put on some foundation. Hopefully it wouldn’t melt in the heat outside. Harry was wearing a pistachio bluish sort of polo shirt with cargo shorts and white converse. I felt like my eyes were going to water, he looked perfect.

“Tilly? Are you alright? Are you ready?”

I must’ve zoned out for a bit. Mesmerised in Harry’s appearance and wondering what exciting activity he had planned for today. “Let’s roll.”

I walked past Harry into the corridor and he shut the door behind me. “Why do you still have my extra key card?”

He pocketed the card and smiled. “Just in case I want to check on you through the night my dear Tilly.”

I smirked and we walked into the lift. I started to feel really hot and nervous; I have had bad experiences with lifts. Harry was staring at me through the mirrors that covered the walls of the lift. To wake him up I pinched him in the bottom and he jumped up in shock. “Hey! That was cheeky!” Harry rubbed his backside and smiled at me. I smiled back.

“Why do you wear that crap?” He asked.

“Wear what crap?” Level 8, the doors opened and people tried to walk in but Harry pressed the close door button and shouted “Sorry no room!” He turned back to me.

“Make-up.” He continued staring at me.

I didn’t really have an answer. “Well… I don’t know. Other girls do I guess.”

Harry reached his hand up to my face and began wiping it off my cheeks, “You look beautiful without it Tilly. You’ll always look beautiful.”

A nivel del suelo, tener un buen día. Ground level, have a nice day. Harry and I were still looking into each other’s eyes as he wiped of the make-up when the door’s to the elevator opened up.

“What the…” Zack exclaimed as he stood at the doors in front of us.

We woke up and turned to Zack. Harry looked as shocked as I was. It definitely wasn’t what it looked like. “Hi Zack. Bye Zack.” I grabbed Harry by the arm and pulled him out of the elevator and quickly rushed away and out the door of the hotel. I could feel Zack’s prying eyes following us out.

I breathed a sigh of relief and leant back against a wall of a nearby shop. Zack was long gone but my heart was still pounding. “Well. That was awkward.”

“Tilly, who was that?” Harry gave me one of those puppy dog looks when the turn their heads to the side.

“Have I told you about my brother Zack?”

“Yeah… The one that went crazy when he saw your mum and..”

 I quickly cut him off, “Yep. That was him.”

Harry held out his hand and helped me stand up straight again. “You’re going to have to properly introduce us, I think we’d get along.” We smiled at each other. “But we can’t linger on that moment, we need to go!”

He held my hand tightly and gestured to the road up ahead and we started to jog up the road, hand in hand. Eyes followed us through the streets, some people even whistled but Harry just politely smiled back at them. Thank goodness for the shady apartments and houses, otherwise I would’ve frizzled in the sun.

After about 20 minutes of slow jogging, we finally reached the corner of a backstreet. It was a small apartment with a shop underneath. “Wait here.” He let go of my hand with a smile and walked inside. That part of town was very quiet, but not an eerie sort of quiet… It was tranquil. I sat down on the side of the road and chucked a small pebble as far as I could at the opposite wall. A dog a large brown dog came out of an alley way and trotted up to me, seeming intrigued. My mum would always tell me not to touch animals in foreign countries, but my mum wasn’t there. I started to pet it and it lay down at my feet. I smiled and scratched it behind the ears.

I didn’t even realise but Harry had been standing behind me for a while, grinning very quietly. “Looks like you’ve made a new friend.” I stood up and the dog sat up as well. “He’s cute isn’t he?” I looked down at the dog and he resembled a toy, he didn’t look real.

“Yeah he is. His name’s Ferny by the way, he’s Felipe’s dog. I’m not much of a dog person myself…” Harry knelt down and clicked his fingers to Ferny, “Here doggy.” Ferny barked and ran inside the shop. “See?” He stood up again.

“What’s with the bikes?” I gestured to the two bikes that I suspected he had brought out and leant against the wall.

“We’re going for a ride! How does that sound to you?” He picked up a bike and pushed it across to me.

“Sounds good. I hope you know where you’re going. Wait, of course you do haha” I hopped on and turned the bike around. “By the way, I like your shirt.”

Harry got onto his bike and rode it over to my side. “Thanks! Orange and green are my favourite colours.” I looked over to his bike and sure enough it was orange. My bike was a metallic blue. I had always liked the mixture between the colours.

Before I realised, he had started peddling up the road and was almost at the end where it dropped off. He waited before I came a little closer and then disappeared. “Harry?” I peddled up to the drop off and looked down. The road had a massive hill and all I could hear was Harry screaming YEEEEEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I hesitated to follow. Harry was already down at the bottom of the hill. “COME ON TILLY!” Without realising I peddled over the dropping point and I picked up speed. The road was so smooth and the ride was amazing. The wind pushed my hair back and the adrenalin pumped through my blood. Everything zoomed past beside me. As soon as I was at the bottom I laughed and rode past Harry, “Catch me if you can!” I called behind me. I had a feeling it was going to be a really great day.