Beyond This Moment

15 Day Seven- 9:18 A.M.

I wake up to a warm smell that makes me think that I've woken up in a bakery. It smells delicious but I'm curious as to why I smell bread baking in our nice hotel room. The bed is empty which makes sense because Elias, being the gentleman that he is, slept on the couch instead of on the bed with me. I didn't tell him to, I even told him that it was unnecessary, but he insisted. I think he feels weird about last night.

Gabe and Cassie aren't in their bed either, I notice when I sit up, and I only see Elias in the room, standing in the kitchenette by microwave.

"What're you making?" I ask him with a yawn as I'm stretching out on my bed in an attempt to wake up faster. "It smells really nice."

"Breakfast," He tells me as he shuts the oven again and then looks up at me with a charming smile. "Good morning."

"Morning," I sigh, standing up from the bed. "Where are Gabe and Cassie?"

"The car garage called and said that there were some complications with the car and it's going to take a little longer so they went over there to see what's going on," He says. "There's a little bakery down the street so I got the closest thing that I could find to bread. Limppu. This is the best that I could do and it tastes pretty good so I'm toasting it and making microwave bacon which sounds gross but we don't have a stove."

"What's with the fancy breakfast?" I ask him as I join him in the kitchen, noticing a toaster to the side on the counter.

He shrugs. "We're almost done with this half of the road trip so I figured that I might as well show you what I'm talking about when I say that your bread is weird. I would bake it completely by hand but it takes too long. Also, you have shitty pizza here."

"You're going to bake us a pizza too?"

Elias grins at me. "If I get the chance, yes, I'm going to try my best. Although, it probably won't be too great, I can't make pizza, I just eat them really well."

"I can make a pretty good pizza," I say gloatingly. The microwave beeper dings so he pulls the plate out with the microwave bacon on it and puts it on the counter.

"Do I hear a challenge?" He raises his eyebrows at me.

"Bring it on," I say jokingly just as the toaster pops with his limppu bread, whatever that is. "My pizza will eat your pizza for breakfast, and then spit it out because it's so much worse than my pizza."

He laughs at that and I'm thinking that maybe things won't be weird, even after what happened last night, which I'm relieved about. I don't want to lose him as friend, especially not on this road trip because I'll definitely need him to be there for me during this wedding. I know that Gabe and I had a pow wow moment last night but I know that we're still going to fight, especially when we actually get to Seattle, and I need Elias to be there to hear me rant.

"Can we eat now?" I ask him, eyeing the dark bread that really looks like sliced rye bread.

"Yeah," He says, turning around to grab two paper plates. He sits a piece of the bread on each plate along with a few floppy pieces of bacon.

"I'll grab the coffee," I say, seeing two cups of coffee sitting by the coffee maker. They were probably both for him but I'm going to drink one anyway.

We sit down on the couch with our breakfast but I wait for it to cool down before I start eating.

"So did Gabe say anything about how long we're going to drive today?" I ask Elias while I wait.

"He wants to be on time so that we can get to Seattle tomorrow, right on time," He says it in a way that shows that he knows how ridiculous that plan is too.