Cecilia – One
The seatbelt tugged sharply across my waist as the plane wheels kissed the tarmac with a firm whack. That moment used to fill me with dread.
Every other time I’d landed somewhere, it came with a weight in my chest—a lurching reminder that the escape was over.
Holidays had always felt like a brief shedding of expectations.
You bathed in sun and food and culture, only to be slapped back into your old life the moment you stepped off the plane home.
But this time was different.
Because I wasn’t going home.
This time, I was starting something new. A whole summer stretched out in front of me—unmapped, unpredictable, and gloriously mine. Three months of backpacking across Europe with my best friend, just like we’d always promised each other.
“Cece,” Siena hissed, yanking her hand away. “You can let go now. We’re not dead—just the circulation to my fingers is! ”
I blinked and looked down to see the death grip I had on her hand, her knuckles white beneath my fingertips. “Shit—sorry,” I laughed, loosening my hold just as the pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom announcing our arrival in Bordeaux.
“It’s official!” Siena grinned, her voice high with delight. “After ten years, our plans have finally made it out of the group chat. We’re in France!”
I couldn’t help but beam back at her. There was nobody else I could imagine doing this with.
Siena and I had been best friends since we were sixteen after meeting at school and we had seen each other through it all; messy breakups, bad job decisions, university dramas, and countless hungover brunches.
We’d spoken on numerous occasions about our trip of a lifetime over the years, but after breaking up with Adrian it felt like the perfect time to finally book our plane tickets.
And now here we were, standing at the start of something we'd dreamed up so many times we’d lost count.
Three countries. Three months. Two backpacks stuffed to their absolute limits.
We’d both quit our jobs – I decided my life could be a lot more interesting than boring admin work and despite Siena loving marketing, her boss has been a complete sleaze.
So, we had emptied our savings and crammed everything we thought we might need into 65-litre rucksacks that had nearly killed us as we tried getting them onto the plane.
“You ready?” Siena asked as she unclipped her belt and stretched dramatically, earning a few unimpressed looks from the row in front.
“More than ready,” I said, the grin still tugging at my lips.
We didn’t so much glide off the plane as stumble out into a wave of sticky evening air, shoulder bags already slipping off shoulders and hair frizzing at the edges.
“Why do I already feel like I’ve done a full body workout?” Siena groaned, readjusting the tote bag digging into her shoulder as we followed the stream of passengers into baggage claim.
“I think my hoodie is welded to my back,” I muttered, tugging at the damp fabric.
We dodged rogue trolleys and crying toddlers, weaving our way to the carousel. Neither of our backpacks had made an appearance yet. We stood clutching passports and overpriced airport water bottles, watching suitcase after suitcase revolve past us.
“What’s the likelihood my backpack has doubled in weight since London?” Siena asked.
“I think mine’s grown teeth. It’s going to eat me alive.”
Our bags, of course, were the last to appear.
One came out upside down, half unzipped, the other wedged behind a bright pink hard-shell case shaped like a unicorn.
Siena practically threw herself onto the carousel trying to wrestle hers free while I stood holding a stranger’s backpack we’d nearly walked off with by mistake.
“Can’t take us anywhere,” I muttered as she staggered back toward me, red-faced and triumphant.
Twenty minutes later, we were standing outside the terminal with our bags, peering hopefully at a stream of strangers holding signs and shouting in French.
“Did you book the taxi under your name or mine?” I asked, scanning for anything that vaguely resembled either.
Siena pulled out her phone and squinted at the screen. “Yours. I think. Or maybe I used your email but my card.”
“So…neither of us has a clue?”
“Basically, yes.”
After some panicked scrolling and a phone call that involved me trying to explain where we were to a man who only understood about four words of English (and one of those was "baguette"), a battered Peugeot pulled up and we collapsed into the back seats like broken deckchairs.
Bordeaux rolled past the window in golden fragments—old buildings lit up like postcards, the sun finally giving way to indigo skies and flickering streetlamps.
“God, it’s pretty,” I whispered, forehead against the glass.
Siena grinned. “Told you.”
Our Airbnb was near the famous Pont de Pierre bridge, nestled down a narrow street that looked more like a film set than a real road. The car came to a halt beside an old stone wall, and the driver pointed vaguely at an alleyway with a murmured “C’est là.”
We looked at each other.
“Did he just drop us in a murder alley?” Siena asked .
I opened the booking instructions on my phone. “Apparently the keybox is… tied to a wire fence just off the main road. ‘You’ll spot the blue ribbon.’ Sounds dodgy. Should we go together?”
“One of us should stay with the bags,” she said.
“Okay, but what if someone kidnaps the one who goes?”
“Then the other one gets the passports and flees the country.”
“Fair.”
We rock-paper-scissored for it. I lost.
I stepped out of the car into the warm hush of a French summer night.
Somewhere in the distance, a moped buzzed.
The air smelled like hot stone and exhaust fumes.
I made my way down the alley, heart thudding just a little faster than I cared to admit, until I spotted it—a tiny key box tied to a bit of fencing with, yes, a cheerful blue ribbon.
Only in France.
I punched in the code, retrieved the key, and made my way back like a victorious explorer, brandishing it at Siena through the open window.
“Mission accomplished. Still alive.”
“Excellent. Let’s get inside before we both melt.”
The flat was up three flights of crooked stairs and smelled faintly of wine corks and furniture polish. We dropped our bags the second we walked in.
It was cute—tiny kitchen, shuttered windows, exposed beams. Very ‘we’re romantic and 26 and free’ in theory. In practice, it was also thirty degrees Celsius and the only cooling device in sight was a desk fan the size of a dinner plate .
“Brilliant,” Siena muttered, peeling off her top and standing directly in front of it like it might whisper sweet nothings into her pores.
“This is going to be a glamorous three months,” I said, kicking off my trainers.
We laughed—because what else could you do?
We were sweaty, tired, starving, and definitely a little bit delirious.
But we were here.