Chapter 1
May 16, 2016
The train had cleared the station long before Chelsea turned towards the window. The scenery that passed by didn’t register in her mind, nor did it matter. After gazing through her reflection for a while, she turned her attention back towards her hands on her lap, the left cupped over the back of the right. Her body swayed with the train’s movement. When she closed her eyes, even for a moment, the image of them kissing would appear and force her to open her them again.
“Where did I go wrong?” she mumbled softly to herself. “When?”
She contemplated in silence. Was it at the beach just seven or eight hours earlier? Was that when she’d lost him? He had joked about going topless; something she couldn’t bring herself to do. Then SHE came along and had no problem popping off HER bikini top.
“Who am I kidding? I could have been naked, and he wouldn’t have noticed with HER boobs waving in his face,” Chelsea muttered.
After a few moments comparing herself to the French girl that had captured Trevor’s attention, Chelsea realized she had lost him before they had set foot on that beach. She looked further back on the day before SHE had arrived. He had seemed different that morning; occupied and troubled by something. It was present at dinner the night before. He seemed angry and downed one beer after another.
After a brief reflection on the past twenty-four hours, a pang of regret wrenched at her stomach. She recalled his words as he lay beside her on the bed and traced circles around her naval, his fingertip gliding softly over her bare skin. Lies! Every single word a lie. Words he probably used on all the girls. Two nights earlier, that must have been when she lost him.
SHE probably knows a hundred ways to please him. That’s probably what SHE’s doing right now, Chelsea thought in silence. How could I be so stupid to believe him?
“Billet,” a voice chirped in her right ear.
Chelsea didn’t respond until the man repeated the request in English, “Your ticket?”
She turned to look at the man for a moment, still not registering his request. When the man’s face donned a concerned appearance, she snapped out of her haze and fished out the ticket from her backpack for inspection. Maybe that is where she went wrong, buying that ticket. Should she have put on her new black dress and fought for him? The idea of having to fight for someone’s affection seemed ludicrous. If any of his words that night were true, she shouldn’t have to fight off some French girl in a skimpy blue dress.
No, the ticket she shouldn’t have purchased was the plane ticket that brought her to Europe a week earlier. As for when everything started going wrong, she looked back much farther. Years earlier. Perhaps a mother-daughter talk that fate had denied her might have changed things.
