Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 65

‘What, so you’ll just help me?’ I ask, moving double step to catch up to her. She’s already steps ahead, moving down the street. ‘Just like that, weren’t you doing something?’

‘Well yeah,’ she replies, cocking her head to the side. ‘We’re always doing something, but some things are more interesting than other things. Life would be one dull long river if we stayed doing the same thing forever.’

I walk beside her, matching her steps. I don’t even know where we’re going. Still I walk with her, feeding off of her confidence.

‘Now I was going to Vatican City. I could have transported myself up to the top of the Basilica, see the view. But where’s the fun in that? I walk places so I can get distracted. That way I know when pretty strangers come tumbling out of hotels, adventure written all over them, I can throw caution to the wind.’

‘I have a girlfriend,’ I say instinctively.

She looks at me, brow crinkled. ‘Good for you, human cannonball.’

‘I, just, you called me pretty?’

‘I made an observation, I didn’t throw myself on the pavement and sigh ‘take me’,’ she throws a hand up over her forehead like a swooning maiden in a book from the eighteenth century.

‘Oh, right,’ I say. We walk in silence for a few seconds. Elle seems quite content to, looking up and down at the beautiful yellow stone buildings either side of us. She’s wearing a pretty summery dress, with big boots that don’t match. I wonder how she died of cancer dressed like that.

‘Go on then loverboy,’ she says, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘What’s she like, you’re obviously dying to tell me.’

‘She’s –‘ I pause. I’m a little nervous all of a sudden. I don’t really talk about my feelings. Especially not to someone I just met. ‘We died in a car crash together.’

‘Where is she?’ Elle asks.

‘I’ve been trying to find her for two days now, ever since it happened. I’ve met a few…interesting characters along the way.’

‘Why thank you,’ she says. ‘A guy who knows how to woo a lady.’

I look down at my shoes. She punches my arm.

‘Lighten up, Easton,’ she says. ‘I’m not after another gal’s man.’

‘Where would you go?’ I ask. ‘If you died with your boyfriend and you got split up.’ It was a long shot, we’re different people. Who’s to say we’d have ever gone to the same place.

She thinks about it for a moment. ‘Somewhere where I’d be easy to find,’ she says. ‘But I’m sure you thought of that already.’

I nod, then turn to her. ‘Where are we going, Elle?’