I smiled. “Sometimes it helps to get a little perspective from an outsider looking in.”
“So insider, would you like this outsider to give you some perspective?” DeAndre asked.
“Me? No, I’m a listener not an expresser…remember?”
“Well, if you ever decide that one day you want to be an expresser, I’m happy to lend and ear.” He winked.
“Good to know.” Maybe one day, I would actually take him up on that offer.
CHAPTER 7
THE WEEK WENT on, and the tour was totally living up to my expectations. It was everything I hoped it would be from the time Evan and I had first read about it online. The picture-perfect landscapes, the idyllic little towns, and the festive Christmas markets were exactly how they appeared on the computer screen. But the sense of closeness I felt with a group of individuals who had been mere strangers less than a week ago was something I hadn’t bargained for.
Everyone in our group was great, but I found that I couldn’t wait to have my morning coffee with DeAndre, Kate, and Theo. They made me smile, they made me forget about life before these ten days and beyond it, and they gave me hope that maybe things would get better in time. I had planned on using this vacation as a way to reflect, but instead I found myself actually enjoying it. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a pang of guilt from time to time, wishing Evan were here to be experiencing it as well. But if he had lived, would he be here? Would I be here? We had planned this trip a year ago, when we were trying to work things out before we had separated four months later. Neither one of us had given much thought to it, and I only remembered when my credit card got charged sixty days before our departure—two days after Evan’s funeral.
We had spent the day in Strasbourg, a French city with German influence, and my favorite stop so far. It was truly magical. A labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys that begged to be explored with endless shops and restaurants. Each and every building decked out with Christmas displays, one more beautiful than the last. The numerous bakeries and the impeccable windows full of French pastries, cookies, and tarts, tempted you to come inside while you walked past with your mouth watering. I found myself stopping to take photographs at every winding turn. It was the perfect day, and I was sad when we boarded the bus to leave.
Once we were back at the hotel, I grabbed a sandwich from the bar to take back up to my room, along with the bottle of wine I had purchased earlier in the day. I was waiting for the elevator when I turned around to find Kate striding toward me. “Oh hey!” I greeted.
“Hello.” She smiled and unbuttoned her coat, shifting the small paper bag she was holding into her other hand. “You didn’t join the others at the Italian restaurant up the road?”
DeAndre had tried his hardest to get me to go with the small group of them who had made plans on the bus ride home, but I was craving some alone time. “No, I just wanted to grab something small. I think I went past my calorie quota sometime after the chocolate croissant this afternoon or maybe it was the cinnamon pastry.” I smirked guiltily.
“Oh, I hear ya…that hot chocolate.” She closed her eyes and shook her head.
“So good!” we said in unison.
“I got some soup to go.” She held up the paper bag. “I’m pretty tired and didn’t want Theo feeling like he had to cut his time short because of me.”
The elevator doors opened and we stepped inside. “Which floor?” I asked after hitting number three for mine.
“Oh, I’m three as well,” Kate replied.
We reached our floor and headed down the hall. “Hey, Kate?” I asked as I stopped by my room. “I have a bottle of wine that needs to be drunk.”
Her face lit up in a smile. “That sounds lovely! Do you mind if I just put my coat in my room and put on something more comfortable?”
“Not at all.” She took a few more steps to a room that was across the hall from mine and a couple of doors down while I let myself into mine. I put my sandwich down and changed into my sweats and a T-shirt, then went into the bathroom and rinsed out the two water glasses the hotel provided. Tonight, they would be makeshift wineglasses. Kate’s faint knock came just as I exited the bathroom. I opened the door to find her holding a small pink makeup bag and her soup in one hand and two bags of chips in the other.
“I don’t like to come to people’s places empty-handed, so I grabbed these from the vending machine.” We both laughed. I was happy to see that she had changed into what I was assuming were her pajamas as well, pink flannel drawstring bottoms and a pink sweatshirt. She stepped inside and immediately looked over my shoulder and out onto my balcony. “Oh my God! That view!” The sun was just setting. The peach-colored sky reflected onto the lake with the trees from the Black Forest serving as the border of where the sky ended and the water began.
“Oh wow!” I exclaimed, noticing it for the first time myself. I grabbed my phone and opened the sliding glass door. We both stepped out to the balcony into the cold and began to snap away, unable to get enough of the beautiful light show Mother Nature was providing us. As the sun faded away some more the sky burst into a magnificent shade of purple, changing the lake to the same color right before our eyes. It was the most striking sunset I had ever seen. I stood there for some time in awe, just
