30 Hours With You [Completed]

Hour Nineteen

Ellis

We're packing.

We are in my bedroom packing up my clothes in two expensive suitcases and we are silent. We are watching the clock and realizing how time continues to move way too fast when all we want it to do is slow down. We want the seconds to turn into minutes, the minutes to turn into hours, the hours to turn into days. Instead we are waiting until we have to say goodbye just after saying hello.

Thea lays back on my bed and closes her eyes for a few seconds before opening them, "take a nap while I finish this," I say placing another terribly folded shirt into the suitcase.

She shakes her head, her blonde hair falling out of her bun, "no way."

I roll my eyes, "you're tired."

"So are you," she answers and she isn't wrong.

"Lets nap together," Thea grabs my hand and tries to pull me down, I let her, and land on top of her. She laughs as she pushes me off and gets comfortable as she lays her head on my chest and closes her eyes again.

"I have too much to do," I murmur, barely putting up a fight.

She feels so good curled into me. We fit. I decide to give myself a couple of minutes to enjoy the feeling of just being with Thea before it all ends.

***

"Ellis!" I hear a voice say as a hand slaps my shoulder. I open my eyes and try to remember where I am, who I'm with.

I look towards the voice and smile. I pull her back towards me and close my eyes again, "no, no, no, Ellis. We are wasting time!"

That wakes me right up, "what time is it?" I ask.

"6:00, we are meeting Blake and her date at 8:30. We wasted two whole hours," she groans and covers her hands with her eyes.

I kiss the hands covering her face and she laughs and pushes me away, "I'm going to have to go to Blake's to shower and change too. So we really don't have time."

"Yes we do. We'll walk to Blake's and I'll shower now and quick."

Normally I'd say we should bypass the showers and the whole getting ready to go out part because that is all more time wasted but we both need it. We've been running around New York City for hours and at the very least a shower could wake us up so we can be sure to not fall asleep again.

"Okay, wake me up when you're ready," Thea says laying back down.

***

Blake's apartment building is about a thirty minute walk from mine and we talk the whole time. We hold hands and wait at every cross walk.

"Blake's concerned about this?" I ask knowing she knows what I mean.

"Yeah, but I'm not," Thea says with a smile that doesn't reach her eyes like it normally does.

"Why is she so worried?" I ask.

She sighs, "I guess it's time for more secrets?"

I nod and she continues, "okay so I was dating this guy for a long time."

My heart kind of hurts hearing her say that, "how long?"

"Three years, probably a bit more. All through college."

I don't say anything because that's a long time. That is a long time to be with someone and then to suddenly not be with that person anymore.

"What happened?" I finally ask.

"He was a year older than me, I met him in a math class and we started dating immediately. But he was older so he graduated before me and he moved for his career," Thea says and she is saying everything as if she was telling someone else's story.

"So you broke up because of distance?"

She shakes her head, "we had it all planned out. I was going to move in with him right after I graduated. So we had a year or so of doing long distance and we figured it wouldn't matter. Alex called all the time at first and it was okay. I mean, it was a huge change but it was okay. Then all of a sudden Alex started calling less and less and then barely at all."

I nod again, angry at this guy that I don't know, "Alex told me at my graduation the day I was still planning to move in with him that he's been cheating on me. He said that he wanted us to start our new lives with a 'clean slate,'" she says with air quotes and rolls her eyes.

She keeps talking, "Ellis, I had my bags packed, plane ticket bought, I had job interviews lined up in this city I've never even been to and then it was like my whole future was destroyed."

"What a fucking dickbag," I say and it just slips out. I'm pissed off for Thea and I want to bash Alex's head in.

Thea snorts with laughter and says, "he was an epic dickbag. The biggest of all the dickbags. And that was the weird part of it. I was so upset about it all. I really was, but not even about Alex. I lived a year without him already and it wasn't bad. I was so upset that I finally had a plan and it was shredded before it even started. Now I'm back to square one," she shrugs.

"Come to Europe with me," I blurt out and Thea narrows her eyes at me, "I have an apartment ready and I won't be home all that much in the beginning so you can explore and do whatever you want while you figure out the next steps."

"Ellis," Thea says in a soft voice and jerks us to a stop, "I can't do that."

"What? Why not?"

"We barely know each other," she says.

"We can get to know each other better there," I say.

"Ellis I just told you how plans with a boyfriend that I'd been with for years didn't work out. Do you think I'd take a risk this big?"

"Yes," I say simply.

She shakes her head.

"Why the hell not? What are we doing if not taking a risk? We jumped right into this as strangers so let's go into the next adventure as something more than strangers."

"This worked because I knew it would end in thirty hours. I'm not ready for longterm anything, Ellis."

We look up at Blake's apartment building and then back to each other.

"I want to finish this," Thea says, "finish our thirty hours and kiss you goodbye at the airport. And I want you to do amazing things over there and then I never want to see you again." She has tears in her eyes that seem to be threatening to fall down her cheeks.

"I need to take a walk," I say and run my fingers through my hair in frustration. She is it for me. Thea stumbled into my life and it wasn't supposed to turn out this way but it did.

How the hell am I supposed to just let her go?

I know she feels it too or she wouldn't have told me a story about her boyfriend of three years without one tear then the thought of leaving me has her crying. Right?

"You know where I'll be if you want to keep this going," she says and wipes a stray tear.

I nod and head in the opposite direction of her.