3. Need A Hand?
3
NEED A HAND?
KYLIE
I peel my eyes open after being rudely awakened by the alarm on my phone, smacking my hand around on the bedside table while trying to find the source of the noise.
“Time to get up, sleeping beauty. I’ve been up for an hour and am all packed,” Tara says, grinning at me from her perch on the edge of her bed.
“Ugh, since when are you the morning person and I want to stay in bed? And you were the one drinking last night, too!”
Not that she drank much. She’s never been much of a drinker, sticking to one or two cocktails at most. We had stumbled back to the hotel with the guys around two in the morning, and I knew I’d struggle to get up in only a few hours. Now that the reality is here, I’m even less impressed with last night’s version of myself and her poor decision-making skills.
“True. I guess I’m just excited to see snow soon.”
I drag myself out of bed, and once I’m showered, I forego makeup and rake my hair into a messy bun on top of my head. Feeling semi-awake, I throw my belongings haphazardly into my suitcase, ignoring Tara’s comment about how it’s going to be impossible for me to find anything without some organisation. Organisation and I have never been close.
“As much as I love how we get to see so much of this continent this way, I can tell already that I am going to hate the sight of this damn thing in the next few weeks,” I say, sitting on top of my suitcase to attempt to zip it closed.
Tara stands at the open door, waiting for me, but she turns when I look up to ask her for help, distracted by something in the hall. Lincoln and Seth appear behind her, each rolling a medium sized suitcase behind them. How do guys manage to travel so light? Mine could fit a small army inside of it and it’s still not big enough.
“Need a hand?” Seth asks, seeing me still sitting on top of my overstuffed suitcase.
“Yes, please.” I give him a cheerful grin, and he smirks a little while he squeezes past Tara and enters the small hotel room.
He’s so tall and broad that he looks out of place in this tiny space.
Crouching in front of me, he pulls on the zip that I’ve been struggling to move more than a few centimetres. The strength in his fingers makes it look so easy, and I watch him zip it closed, bringing both zips together between my legs before looking up at me with a smile. There’s something about the look in his eyes, though, that gives me pause, and I find myself holding my breath for a few seconds, lost in those beautiful blue eyes.
“All done,” he says, and I detect a slight wobble in his voice.
He hesitates momentarily before rising again, putting his hand out to help me up. I place my hand in his and allow him to pull me up, pretending not to notice when his grip tightens a little before he lets me go. Although he’d taken a while to come out of his shell yesterday, after dancing with him for hours last night, I feel like we’re on our way to becoming friends now, and I am glad we’ve found some others to team up with on the tour. I’d noticed a few other women on the tour checking the two Canadians out, and I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve enjoyed the jealous looks thrown our way last night, now that it seems as though they’ve decided to hang out with us.
“All ready to go?” Lincoln asks, and Tara and I nod. “Well then, after you, ladies.” He waves us ahead, and Tara and I join them in the hall, leading the way to the elevators.
“How are you guys so cheerful? I’m barely functioning right now,” I grumble, and Lincoln shrugs.
“We went for a run earlier. It’s all the endorphins.”
Tara shudders. “Ugh, exercise while on holiday? No thanks.”
I consider the two men for a moment. “Next time you go, can I join you as well? I haven’t felt safe running in strange neighbourhoods, but I have missed it since we’ve been here.”
“For sure! We go every day,” Lincoln replies while Seth nods.
Once an empty elevator arrives, we all squeeze in together. With very little room to move, I find myself with my back pressed up against Seth’s chest, the pair of us sandwiched in between our suitcases. Tara and Lincoln manage to find room without touching, and the doors close behind us.
“They really didn’t take Canadian lumberjacks into account when they designed these Parisian hotels,” Tara says.
I feel Seth shaking with silent laughter behind me while Lincoln snorts. “No, they really didn’t. But those two seem comfortable over there.” He nods towards Seth and me.
I roll my eyes and shake my head, catching sight of Seth’s face in the mirrored wall while he glares at his friend. But he makes no move to put space between us - in fact, he seems to have moved closer. And I don’t mind a bit.
Once we get on the bus, I slide into a seat towards the back, and Tara sits down beside me. Lincoln and Seth sit down across the aisle, squeezing their tall, broad frames into the small space. Tara and Lincoln immediately start chatting, but I’m still sleepy, so I pop my earbuds in, ball my jumper up to use as a pillow and lean my head against the glass .
I don’t recall drifting off, but when I wake up, I find Seth sitting beside me, reading a book. Outside, the Parisian streets have been replaced by rolling green pastures and stone houses.
“Hey,” I say, sitting up straighter and pulling my earbuds out.
Across the aisle, Tara has taken Seth’s seat next to the window, beside Lincoln. The two of them are still chatting away animatedly.
“Hey,” Seth replies, holding his finger between the pages of his book so he doesn’t lose his place.
I notice that both guys have their legs stretched out into the aisle. “Get a bit too squished over there?” I ask.
“Yeah. There were no spare seats, otherwise we’d try to have one each. Tara suggested this would be better, at least. Is that okay?”
“Of course it is .” I smile at him.
He nods towards the earbud in my hand. “What are you listening to?”
I hand him the earbud. “The classics.”
He raises an eyebrow and takes it from me, holding it to his ear. He listens for a few seconds and then glances at me. “You didn’t strike me as a Green Day fan. What else have you got on there?”
I grin and pull out my phone, handing it to him so he can scroll through my playlists. “Have at it, buddy.”
He smiles at me, and we spend the next few hours scrolling through both our playlists, comparing favourite songs. As it turns out, he’s a fan of 90’s music as well. He still isn’t overly chatty, but it’s nice to find common ground with him. And I can talk more than enough for both of us.
Eight long hours later, we arrive in Engelberg, a tiny village in Switzerland. I climb stiffly down out of the bus behind Seth and Lincoln, closely followed by Tara. I watch while the guys stretch, trying not to appear affected when Seth’s shirt rides up when he lifts his arms, exposing a tanned, toned abdomen.
The air is crisp, and I look up at the mountain before us to distract myself, smiling when I spy a hint of white just below where it disappears into the clouds.
“Tara, look.” I point towards the snow.
My best friend squeals, causing the guys to look at her with raised eyebrows.
It’s been years since I’ve been even close to snow. I have fond memories of running around my grandparents’ yard in Calgary in the winter, hurling snowballs at my older brother Will, and making snow angels with our younger twin sisters, Emma and Dayna. But we haven’t been back since I was a teenager, and I look forward to introducing Tara to the joys of snow tomorrow morning when we catch the gondola up to the top of the mountain.
“It still blows my mind that you’ve never seen snow,” Lincoln says, shaking his head with a grin.
“Well, believe it, buddy. The day it snows in Brisbane, hell will have frozen over,” Tara chirps back, and we all laugh while helping the bus driver pull suitcases out from under the bus.
Once they give us our room information, we head inside the small hotel, and the guys once again let us go ahead.
“Such lovely manners. Are all Canadian men so nice?” One of the other Australian girls on the trip, Georgia, I think, levels them with a flirtatious smile, her eyes drifting over them both when we file past her towards the stairs.
“Only the good ones,” Lincoln replies, and I turn back to see him giving her an easy smile and a wink while Seth shifts his weight a little beside me.
I’ve noticed he isn’t comfortable around new people, preferring to leave Lincoln to deal with them while he remains silently watchful. After just one day, I feel honoured to have made a little dent in the armour he has up around him.
Almost as though he felt my eyes on him, Seth looks over at me and gives me a small smile before nodding at me, a sign I take to mean to keep going, so I turn and keep heading up the stairs, a similar smile of my own playing across my lips.
After a meal that was clearly aimed at tourists which had far too much melted cheese for my liking, we take ourselves for a walk through the small town. A few others on our tour join us, and our little group of four has become a party of ten while we stroll through the darkened streets. The others chat amongst themselves, but for the most part, it’s still Tara and me with the guys.
“So, when was the last time you were in Canada?” Lincoln asks me, draping his arm over my shoulders while we walk.
He links his other arm through Tara’s, while Seth walks quietly on my other side, his hands in his pockets.
Lincoln is possibly the most easygoing guy I’ve ever met, all smiles and jokes. The guys we hang out with back home are similar, but something about Lincoln draws you in. I can see why Seth hangs back and lets his more outgoing friend handle most of the socialising. Seth reminds me a little of Brianna, although even quieter and more withdrawn in large social settings. Since we’ve been with the larger group, Seth has kept his head down and barely said anything.
“My parents took us back when I was fourteen, just before we moved to Brisbane. We went for Christmas, so I had the full white Christmas experience for the first time, and it was amazing. We’d been back for winter before, but never Christmas. My little sisters still believed in Santa at the time, so my grandparents went all out to make it as magical as possible. I think it’s one of my best childhood memories, actually.”
“You said it was your Dad who is Canadian, right? Where’s he from?”
“Calgary. We’ve got family all over, but he grew up in Calgary, and that’s where my grandparents live,” I reply, and Lincoln cocks his head to the side.
“Calgary, huh? Is he a Mounties fan?” he asks, glancing over at Seth, who has stiffened slightly.
I recognise the name, remembering my grandfather talking about his favourite team. “That’s the ice hockey team, right?” I ask, and Lincoln nods. “Would you believe my father has no interest in hockey? Besides the few games our friend Chris has forced us to watch in his attempts to get us interested, I have never watched a game all the way through and don’t understand the rules.”
I notice Seth’s shoulders drop back down and wonder briefly what that’s all about.
“A Canadian who has no interest in hockey? It’s a good thing he left because otherwise, we’d have to revoke his citizenship,” Lincoln says with a laugh.
I shake my head. “You joke, but honestly, he is the most unCanadian-Canadian you will ever meet. The first thing he did when he got to Australia was take surfing lessons, and he had us in Little Nippers the second we could walk.”
Seth looks over with a confused expression. “What on earth is a Little Nipper?” he asks, finally breaking his silence for the first time since we left the hotel.
Clearly, curiosity got the better of him.
“It’s part of the Surf Life Savers. At the beach, it’s the kids who learn to become lifesavers–or lifeguards, as you would call them,” Tara pipes up from Lincoln’s other side.
I nod while still looking at Seth, whose eyes are running over me, a small smile playing over his lips.
“So you’re a lifeguard?” he asks.
It’s hard not to preen a little under his attentive gaze, but I push aside the desire. I am determined to avoid falling into any old patterns while on this trip, and hooking up with an incredibly hot guy on the second night of the tour would definitely fall into old patterns. I’ve avoided drinking so far, and with a bit of luck, I’ll have proven to myself by the end of this trip that I’m capable of keeping my impulses in check for a change.
“Not anymore. When we moved to Brisbane, it was too far to go to a surf beach each weekend, so I kind of stopped that hobby. I still surf when I can, though, when my brother is going. It’s kind of our bonding thing now.” I try not to look at Tara at the mention of Will, but out of the corner of my eye, I notice her stiffen a little next to Lincoln.
“You alright, Tara?” Lincoln must have noticed Tara’s reaction.
“Completely fine,” my friend responds with the most fake smile imaginable.
Lincoln is obviously smart enough not to push it, so he changes the subject, and our group continues down the cobbled street. But I notice Seth watching us again and can tell he picked up on the weirdness. It’s the first time since we left Australia that I’ve spoken about my brother in front of Tara, and I’ve been constantly walking on eggshells around her for months. I’m beginning to wonder if things are ever going to be entirely normal between us all ever again.