His loosely laced Vans disappeared around the corner as my eyes froze in embarrassment, realizing that my peripheral vision had been subconsciously searching for him again. For the third time that morning.
His face had looked sad when he realized I wasn’t on the elevator with him right?
I thought back to five minutes prior, when Tyler had realized that I hadn’t made the cut amidst thirty other shuffling tourists into the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower. He had looked around for me, I’m sure of it.
As the French tour guide recited the history of the tower, I let my mind wander and tried to dissect the meaning of the waving hand and teasing frown I saw as soon as Tyler had turned and realized my absence. My eyes traveled upward with the glass elevator as my chances of being forcefully squished next to him in a crowded elevator were…squished.
Someone asked the Australians next to us if they knew their country was upside down and I was brought back to my own elevator ride as Paris shrunk beneath my feet. Was Tyler on this floor or the next?
He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me…He loves me…not. Ugh.
………
The sun peeked through the bus windows and outlined an unfamiliar silhouette. The curve of a strong cheekbone slid smoothly into a slight cleft chin.
My mind often wanders back to the first time we met. Technically, before we met. The bus bumbled along the lush, country roads of Northern England on what must have been the second day of the nearly month-long school trip through Europe.
His eyes were blue. Pretty. His cupid-bow lips were more pronounced as his mouth remained closed and the group next to him chatted on about what London was going to be like.
Tyler, I think? He was quiet. But then again, so was I.
As I sat there diagonal to him and examined the manly aspects of this stranger’s face for probably a minute too long, I wondered what it would be like to have a conversation with him. What it would be like to know him, to be the subject of those blue eyes that stared ahead at the trees and “baa”ing sheep we passed.
And while those thoughts processed and my eyes remained, I felt something I had never felt before. My body, my mind…everything, told me that this boy was important. To me? To someone? I have no idea. I let my eyes break from my view and focused on the road ahead.
…….
I hadn’t thought about Tyler again since the day before, on the bus. We were in Chorley, where the locals like to ask you what in the world a group of Americans was doing meandering through their cobblestone streets.
I had signed up for the tour with Nikki, a friend of mine who I met on a Mediterranean school tour two years prior. We were talking when suddenly she realized that we needed more than a group of two to have fun on this tour, so she went off to make new friends while I walked and felt just the slightest of abandonment (it’s ok, I forgive her because she basically kicked off my whole whirlwind romance with this move).
My mind went through about thirty seconds of slight panic, thinking I was destined to make no new friends on the tour when a deep voice found it’s way behind me. Who?….
“Are you enjoying the tour so far, Deven?” I look up and see a pair of kaleidoscope blue/green eyes.
Ummm….wait…that’s what your voice sounds like? Ok, you’re like a man….Wait wait wait. Deven. That’s my name. That’s me.
I thought back to the castle I had talked to him and another boy briefly at the day before.
“Umm yes. Yeah. I like it, it’s cool, I liked the bird show.”
What?? Why would you say that? He’s so nice. He’s actually really, really cute. And tall. I looked up (literally) to get a better look at his face.
It was as if before, on the bus, I was looking through the eyes of an observer and not an admirer. It wasn’t an attraction, but simply taking inventory of the face that was three feet away from mine. And now…not quite a burning flame, but a sparked interest. He had come and given that quiet, handsome demeanor a voice, a personality. And I liked it… even if it was just in the slightest bit.
One minute was all it took for Tyler Chamberlain to realize that I was basically a mute, and he walked ahead. That did it. I wanted more. I wanted a redo. Another try, please, thank you very much.
…….
I quit my pretend interest in eyeing the British World War II fighter jets for the better half of an hour and decided to whip out my phone and show my friend a video of Ariana Grande singing an a cappella version of “Into You”. I looked up from the video to see Tyler walking over.
“Is that Ariana Grande’s a cappella video for “Into You”?
I had to look down to make sure my jaw wasn’t actually laying on the floor beside my knee-high suede boots. Is this boy for real? What boy appreciates Ariana Grande? What boy actually knows what a cappella is?? Oh yes. We could be friends.
……..
My head came crashing down on my not-so-soft pillow and I stared at the cracked walls of our Paris hotel room and waited to hear the Kim Possible beep-beep-beep-beep of my phone lying on my stomach. We had just gotten back from a dangerously-close-to-curfew-breaking crepe run at the Eiffel Tower and everyone had separated for the night.
My phone buzzed as Tyler Chamberlain’s video message was delivered to me through Facebook. I pressed open and laughed out loud again at our friend who sang karaoke in Spanish on the Paris metro with a French stranger who held the microphone up to his lips before Tyler took over.
I accepted Tyler Chamberlain’s friend request and felt deflated. I laid there and wondered what it might be like to have Tyler Chamberlain’s phone number. To text him. To have him text me back. To have my number saved in his phone. I had laughed so hard at our friend Aiden’s singing act on the metro that I had fell on the floor and couldn’t stop the tears streaming down my happy face. Surely he saw that. Surely he wouldn’t like a girl who fell on the floor laughing with her ugly crying laughing face.
That was the moment I realized I didn’t want to be Tyler Chamberlain’s friend. I wanted more. The only problem was there were only ten boys on the tour, which left thirty girls. And about five of those girls had the hots for Tyler Chamberlain. And I think one of those girls was me.
……….
By the time our bus pulled into Zurich, there was no subconscious vying to sit next to Tyler. I automatically flew to the seat next to him, which ended unsuccessfully 75 percent of the time, and left me wondering if my attempts were becoming more obvious. I swore I caught a double-take from him when I wore my brown bodycon dress and walked past him in the bus hallway, clad in a white shirt and tie (sigh).
We huffed and puffed as our group ascended the base of the Swiss Alp town of Mürren. More than half of our group wanted to stay at the base of the mountain and eat there, while my interests were more driven by my previous Pinterest-obsessed searches of Switzerland before the trip, and I knew there was a rotating restaurant that was the filming place for one of the James Bond movies at the very top of the mountain, only accessible by an 80-franc gondola ride. And nobody was interested. Except Tyler.
Frustrated with our four-hour time limit, Tyler nearly had it with the indecisiveness of four twenty-something-year-old girls. “I’m going to the top. I don’t know if you guys are coming or not, but I’m going to the top.”
“I’ll go,” I heard myself say.
Yes! This was my chance! I hadn’t been alone with him this entire trip, maybe I can—-
“I’m coming too.” Aiden, our singing friend from the Paris metro had unintentionally dubbed himself as the third wheel for many of Tyler and I’s almost-alone moments, but he was so fun to be around, so it was ok. Even if I wasn’t going to get my hour alone with Tyler, who was way more than just a crush by now.
We paid the 80 francs and rode up to the gondola to the summit of Piz Gloria. We rounded the circular restaurant and stopped short. This view still has its place in my heart as one of the most breathtaking, soul-silencing, awe-inspiring scenes I have ever seen.
I felt a sense of triumph. I had worked three jobs this summer and paid my own way to Europe and now I’m here, with this boy who probably won’t ever look at me more than just a friend, but it’s ok.
It’s ok because this view is so worth it.
……
As we waited for the gondola to arrive to take us back down the mountain, I attempted the “thrill walk” on a metal cable hundreds of feet over nothing but pure Swiss mountain air, Tyler silently stressed over whether or not the bus below would actually leave us if we missed the gondola. I thought it was cute.
He didn’t—we missed the gondola.
When we finally caught it half an hour late, I laughed as he speculated over the teacher’s choice of punishment for our hour-late tardy, helplessly falling harder and harder for the boy right in front of me. The boy who I looked up at, admiring his blue eyes and thinking “you are so beautiful.”
Little did I know that while he stood there, staring down at me, he was thinking the very same thing.
…………
The temperature dropped and the crisp air cut through my throat as the three of us picked up a light jog down the Swiss mountains towards the train station. Aiden couldn’t keep up and Tyler and I ran ahead to make good time.
My hair fluttered under my hat and we ran in what felt like slow motion down the stone streets of the tiny Swiss town. I looked to the tall body moving next to me. Tyler kept his pace, taking a sliver of a second to smile at me before picking up the pace. We were so late.
A man who we jogged past chuckled when he saw the Americans trotting down the village street.
“Trying to catch the last train down to the bottom??” he assumed at the look of our pace.
Tyler and I exchanged identical glances of terror and immediately burst into a full sprint for the last ten minutes to the train station. We are officially toast. Burnt toast. Burnt to a crisp. I don’t care, I’m running next to Tyler Chamberlain.
I can’t keep up and I fall behind with Aiden as Tyler’s legs stretch far in front of him, desperation and fear of our teacher’s actual punishment driving ahead him more than anything else.
My much shorter legs finally push me to reach the train station, and I don’t see him. I let my eyes drift back and forth between the train station and the cute cottages decorated with Swiss flags swinging in the light breeze before a full panic sets in.
Tyler bursts out of the train station doors and his eyes meet mine, frantic and searching for an answer as to why I was just standing in front of the station.
“Come ON! The conductor won’t hold the train for much longer!”
After we disappear behind the doors and fling ourselves down the stairs, it dons on me that Tyler had arrived there five minutes prior to Aiden and I, and had somehow convinced the conductor to hold the train for another minute…another minute…just one more minute, until we finally arrived, even when he was yelling at Tyler in angry German.
The three of us slid into the train, and I finally got my uninterrupted shot at sitting next to Tyler. His leg brushed against mine the whole ride down.
We had just barely made our descent down the mountain on time, but I was still stuck on cloud nine.
……..
He has to know I like him by now. It’s “totally obvious”, as one of my friends on the tour so pointedly told me.
It wasn’t. At least not to him.
As I hugged the side the white-washed cliff, I looked over my shoulder at the turquoise water lapping at the base of the cliff fifteen feet below me, sending a feeling of terror rippling through my pounding heart. But then I thought of my brand new “cheeky” white one piece I was wearing that day, and the thought of knocking Tyler off, bum-first down the cliff below me was much more terrifying, and I looked for another handhold in the rock and hoisted myself further.
Finally, we are alone. Visions of me confessing my love for him at the top as I grab his face and kiss his lips right before I dive into the clear Mediterranean beneath us distracts me from the growing distance beneath us as we continue to climb to the top.
“Do you wanna go first?” Tyler puts his hands on his hips and we’re both breathing heavily from the climb.
All visions of my confession followed by a swan dive into the warm water below completely dissipate as I measure the thirty feet between us and the bottom of the cliff. I can’t do this.
“It’s ok, I’ll go first, but you have to promise you’ll come in after me!” Tyler smiles at me, then positions himself face-first and swings his head back while his feet follow into a backflip off the cliff.
“You can do it!” He yells from the water. Says the boy who just dove head-first backwards into thirty feet of nothing.
I stare at the cascade of pastel houses sprinkled down Cinque Terre’s white-washed hills, contemplating how much it would hurt to accidentally hit the rocks down at the bottom. I close my eyes, and scream as one foot leaps from its place on the cliff.
I swim to the sand where Tyler is waiting for me with a sweet smile on his face. I walk up to him wannabe Baywatch style and he reaches up his hand for a high five. I just jumped off a cliff in Italy with Tyler Chamberlain.
………
“So…Tyler’s cute…” my friend says nonchalantly as she shifts hangers around in the closet and plans her outfit for our following day in Venice.
I look up from the suitcase I’m unpacking in Milan at Paige, who might just be onto me. We weren’t even talking about Tyler. We’ve never talked about Tyler.
“Um…yeah he’s really cute!” I’m not even trying to bluff, but the topic of Tyler passes just as quickly as it came.
An hour goes by, and I can’t take it anymore. I turn to my side on the shared bed and said it for the first time out loud since I even realized it myself. “Paige…has Tyler…has Tyler ever said anything….about me?”
A flutter of laughter fills the space between us and I instantly regret the question.
“He said he wanted to kiss you on the Eiffel Tower.”
What.
What?
WHAT?!
The Eiffel Tower was a week and a half ago.
He likes me back.
Tyler likes me back!
Tyler Chamberlain likes me back. He’s liked me back this whole time. And he still has no idea that I’m in love with him.
……….
I pace back and forth in the tiny Italian hotel room.
What was that at the laundromat? We sat in there talking for two hours waiting for our clothes to dry and neither of us got close to mentioning our feelings.
The trip is over in almost two weeks. I’m doing it.
I open the door and drag my feet up the two flights of stairs to Tyler’s floor. His door is at the end of the hall. There’s still time to turn around. My feet proceed to the brown door anyway, and I stand there for what feels like minutes before I realize that if he opens the door and I’m standing here that I would probably jolt for the flight of stairs behind me and not look back.
Before I knock, I run my tongue over my teeth. I’d left my toothbrush and toothpaste at the hotel in Switzerland and had to settle for Aloe-flavored (like, what??) toothpaste and an overly-abrasive, gum-shredding toothbrush from an Italian supermarket. I sigh with unpreparedness and ask myself what I’d even need to have fresh breath for. We’re just going to talk.
After I knock, I brace myself and am met by Tyler’s roommate. Tyler is in the shower. Just great.
“Um just tell him I’ll be on the stairs..” I turn around and totally unravel. What am I even going to say?? I like you, I heard you like me too? What is that?
Tyler emerges from his room and my heart pounds against my rib cage. I want to hurl myself down the stairs and forget I even knocked at his door, but as soon as Tyler opens the door to the stairwell, I know. I know that I met him for a reason. I know that I’m ok with whatever happens because I know it’s going to be good. I know it’s going to be perfect.
…….
Tyler stands silent for two whole seconds after I spill half my heart to him and tell him how I feel.
“So…I was going to wait until the end of the tour and say that I’d love to take you out in Rexburg, because I didn’t want it to be one sided and be awkward for the rest of the tour, and I didn’t know how you felt about me…What do you want? Do you want to….see how it goes?…”
My tongue is completely nonexistent. I have no idea. Yes I do. I know exactly what I want.
Tyler reads my mind and slides next to me on the step I’m sitting on and lowers his lips to my ear. I can feel his breath on my neck, and it sends chills down my arms.
“What if we…just…” his lips graze my ear as his voice lowers.
I turn my head and my eyes meet and our noses touch before my lips surrender to his. My skin pulsates, each cell feeling as though it was quickly inching away from the heat of an unrefined fire. His hand cradles my cheek and he kisses me again, and again and again.
……..
I still can’t believe it. I’m beyond cloud nine. I’m on cloud one hundred and nine.
All worries of this being a one-kiss-wonder fade as Tyler gives me a sly smile the next morning at breakfast and waves hi.
That night, we talk, and we talk and we talk some more. He walks me to my room and right before i go, he reaches for my hand and pulls it up to his lips. Is this real? Is this actually real??
He ends the night with one kiss for my hand and one for my lips.
………
The streets of Munich bustle with BMWs and Lamborghini as Tyler and I walk hand-in-hand to our first real date at an overly-crowded German cafe, where the close quarters land us right next to another couple at the same table. I love everything about it.
After we decide that “meatloaf” in Germany definitely does not mean “meatloaf”, we share four colossal Bavarian pretzels and make our way outside.
I stop and about-face to the cutie standing behind me. The flow of a nearby fountain waterfall blends with the background noise of the city. Couples dot the steps of the fountain, and a colorful light bounces off the steeple of the old church peeking through the 19th-century buildings bundled in the center of the city square.
I raise my face to his, and he kisses me. And I kiss back, still wondering if this is real or if I’m going to wake up in the tower of one of Germany’s castles, thinking I’d dreamed up the most perfect Prince Charming.
………..
Somewhere, deep in the dark, between the caves of Germany and Austria, I feel five fingers tickle the palm of my hand before they slide in between each of mine.
Our hands are invisible, but the view around us is unreal. The reflection of the water beneath our boat shimmies up the stalactites and the cave bursts into purples, greens and muted reds.
Everyone’s “oohs” and “ahhs” are background noise to the sound of my heart beating as Tyler’s hand nestles in mine and rests in between our matching blue miner’s jumpsuits.
I sat there in the pitch black and thought about the stranger I sat three feet across from in the bus just two weeks ago, his fingers now laced through mine.
A stranger’s hand intertwined in mine. He’s not a stranger, I thought. Not anymore.
……..
The hum of the forever-long escalator trickles upward after the late-night metro pulls into our last stop.
Tyler is standing behind me and I’m startled when he leans forward and puts his lips against my ear.
“You’re making everyone else look bad tonight in the dress you’re wearing.”
I look down at my black, long-sleeved body-hugging dress and smile. Tyler kisses my cheek and prepares to step off the escalator.
It’s our last night in Prague—our last night in Europe. We set out with Aiden in tow, in search of some virgin Mojitos and stumble across a forsaken looking restaurant bar.
Aiden disappears downstairs in search of a bathroom and runs back up glossy-eyed and excited with the news that there is, in fact, a club in need of dancers downstairs. We follow him down the stairs, and are greeted by blue, pulsating lights and a DJ who beckons us to come to his dance floor. Why not?
We all start out a little hesitant except for Aiden, who warms up with “the worm” right there on the floor.
A new EDM song comes on, and Tyler takes this as his cue.
He looks at me and smiles, and then hurls his body backwards into a perfect backflip, and goes straight to the floor, his hands balancing his 6’2 body as his feet whirl through the air in four perfect windmills.
Ok. So he’s perfect. He’s literally perfect.
Tyler recovers quickly from his hidden talent and hops over to where I am, grabs my hands and starts to shuffle, trying to teach me how to move my feet. I love this boy.
The lights flicker between blue and red, and we’re the only ones on the dance floor and there’s no way I’m showing off any kind of dance moves after Tyler just did that, but it’s ok because he’s holding my hands and dancing with me and everything is perfect and life is perfect and he’s perfect.
………..
I didn’t know that when I slid into my seat on a plane headed for Europe that the love of my entire life was just a couple seats away.
I had no idea that I would meet a perfect man who steered me away from puddles in the rain so I wouldn’t get my shoes wet. Who took my hands in his and dared me to dance with him in a random club in the basement of a restaurant in Old Town Prague. Who insisted that I lay my head in his lap so he could scratch my back while we watched “The Proposal” on Austrian Netflix, which will always be better than American Netflix. Who took me to get that pastel watercolor painting of Prague that I couldn’t stop thinking about even though we had to rush to get back to the hotel in time. Who I felt like I already knew my whole life the minute we became friends.
And little did I know that when I was walking alone in England that day and Tyler Chamberlain walked beside me, that I’d never have to walk alone again.
