Lost in Love (The Miss Apple Pants series Book 2)

by Charlotte Roth

  “Huh.” Mom turned another page and nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  “Over my dead body.” Dad got up on one knee and pulled the magazine right out of Mom’s hands and tossed it in the trash can. “Potty break now. That shit can wait.” He looked at me and winked.

  “One penny,” Alfred and Ava yelled in unison.

  ***

  Ella. R. Jensen is feeling tired.

  #Day two (or whatever it is in my confusing time zone right now). Jetlag is a bitch (pardon my French). Alfred was a mess when we first landed, fussing over every single thing like the color of the rental car seat, the smell in the car… One minute he’s begging for water, but if I try to offer it, he’s no longer thirsty. Poor little guy. He was so tired but when we finally arrived at the hotel, he, Ava, and Mrs. Rockefeller were sound asleep. Thankfully, Dad and I managed to get them transferred to their cribs without having to wake them up (not Mrs. Rock, of course, she was escorted by another set of strong, young men, carrying her monstrous suitcases).

  Mom and I—tired but even more hungry than tired (...why does jetlag makes you crave comfort food?)—stepped out of the hotel, in search of a place called Bagels & Beans, which—according to Mom’s comprehensive Europe Celiac research (what would I do without her, my very own gluten-free Hercule Poirot?)—offers not only gluten-free bagels but some of the best in Amsterdam. They were delicious, and we promised we would be back in the morning, which they informed us was techinally now. As I said, jetlag is a bitch. It’s now 11.30 a.m. and I’m gonna take a nap right next to Alfred. Poor boy will be even more confused when he wakes up by dinner time. P.S. It’s pissing-down rain here. Please don’t tell me we brought the gray with us? LOL. Goodnight wherever you are...

  When I woke up later, I was as disoriented as Alfred had been only a few hours earlier. It was pitch-dark, and it was not until I saw a small crack in the big heavy black-out curtains that I realized it was still light outside. It was still day.

  “Morning or evening?” I turned toward Dad’s voice and the small beam of light coming from the hallway. Dad was standing in the doorway with Alfred in his arms.

  “Mommy, you awake?”

  “I am.” I sat up against the headboard and patted the bed. “Come sit. When did he get up?”

  “I would say, um, thirty minutes ago.” Dad dropped Alfred on the bed right next to me, then circled around the bed and sat down on the edge.

  “Come here, big boy.” I placed Alfred in my lap and gave him a big kiss on his lips. “You feel better now?”

  “Uh-huh. Mrs. Rock gave me a red soda, but she calls it a pop.”

  “Did she now?” I looked over at Dad, who was shrugging as if to say, “It wasn’t me.”

  “She did. Some kind of Dutch red soda. She says it’s what they drink here, so … anyway, we’re going downstairs for dinner soon, or breakfast or whatever we should call it.” He ran a hand through his tousled hair and smiled. He looked tired, like he hadn’t closed a single eye.

  “You didn’t sleep, I reckon.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Best way to beat jetlag is not to sleep until it’s actually bed time.” He stood up. “You should probably get up. Go wash your face. I’ll take Alfred with me. Come on, buddy.” He held out his hand.

  “Okey dokey.” Alfred grabbed my head between his little sticky hands and pressed his little snub nose against mine. “Do I get one more Dusk pop soda?”

  “Not sure. Let’s see about that.”

  “Mo-om!” He looked up at Dad for help. “She said I could.”

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Rock fellow,” Alfred informed me, adding an important nod. “She’s very nice.”

  “I’ll bet she is. Bribing can get you a long way.” I looked up at Dad and smiled.

  “It sure can,” he agreed with a cheerful voice. “It got your Mom a lot of things, I tell you.”

  “Like what?” I demanded, laughing.

  “Well, I don’t know … like everything you ever wanted. Including that laptop sitting right there.” He nodded toward the bedside table right next to the bed. “And I charged it for you with my special EU charger.” He winked at Alfred. “Come on now. Maybe we can find another one of those dusk sodas.” He smiled.

  “Yay.” Alfred let go of me and together they skipped out of the room, both humming unrecognizable tunes.

  I swung my legs over the soft bed, removed the warm blanket and reached for my laptop. There were ten likes and three new messages, but still no sign of Aaron.

  Maddie S. Camden

  Hey Ella, jetlag is a bitch LOL. Well, at least you didn’t wake with a massive hangover. I did. Why do we keep doing this? Love, M.

  Bill Dresden

  Peace on!

  Martha Jensen

  Hey Ella & everyone. Glad to hear that you’ve made it safely there even though it’s hard on the little ones. Hope you all can get some rest. Even after all these years, I still remember how badly Thomas was affected by jetlag. I don’t think we ever left the hotel for the first two days. Hopefully Alfred will do much better. He probably will. Thomas was (and is) always so cranky when he doesn’t get his sleep. Anyway, good to hear from you. Frederick says hi. All the best. Martha. PS. I’m so happy to hear you found bagels. I know it can’t be easy to travel with celiac.

  Thomas T. Jensen

  Dear Ella, so, you have arrived, which means you’re almost right in the neighborhood. Good to know. I talked with Mom … speaking of, @Martha Jensen, you do know I can see all your comments, right? I do not get cranky when I don’t get any sleep. Now, Eleanor on the other hand, wow, she’s been very cranky today. This morning she refused to eat the scrambled eggs because they were too yellow. She claimed they tasted weird. I thought they tasted lovely, and probably how eggs SHOULD taste. She also claims that time seems to stand still in England and that the weather is even worse than back home. I could agree with that though. It’s still gray here and it might be affecting everyone’s mood (and no, @Martha Jensen, I DID sleep!). She says she’s homesick and misses everything and everyone at home. Don’t tell her—or anyone else for that matter—but I do feel a little bit the same, a weird churning in my stomach. Maybe it is the eggs … LOL or something else entirely … I will be thinking of you, E. I know you’ll be in Germany soon… I hope time doesn’t stand still right now … tick-tock, tick-tock. Thomas <3

  Tick-tock, tick-tock. I looked down at the digital clock on the bedside table and suddenly I remembered what Dad always used to say when I was a kid and we went somewhere. I would ask impatiently every five minutes when we would make it there or what time it was.

  “Ten minutes to right now,” he would tease. “Five minutes to five minutes away,” or, the most annoying one (in the opinion of a ten-year-old), “One finest hour to an even finer one.” It used to drive me crazy and I would yell at him that he was an old hippie, or worse. On my thirteenth birthday—and after reading Anne of Green Gables—I finally understood what he had been trying to tell me all those years with his silly time remarks, when he presented me with a supersized birthday card with the words: remember to make every second count.

  My eyes moved to the words on my screen, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with homesickness, too. I looked up into the empty hotel room—at the dark oak furniture, the heavy velvet carpet, the drapery, the framed photos of the Dutch royal family (as the bell boy had pointed out when we arrived). Maybe it was all normal to feel lost and homesick when you were so far away from home, jetlagged and tired on top of that. Or maybe my body was just preparing me for, or warning me about, tomorrow night when I would be in Berlin, only “a day away from another day.” I looked down at Thomas’s words and took a deep breath. Or maybe it was something else. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

  CHAPTER 11

  Pot pies

  “You sure this is one of those webs?” Mrs. Rock was charging ahead of me, her legs moving like a pair of hungry chopsticks.

  “Web cafés,” I helped, “and ye
s, it says so right here.” I looked down at my phone, which showed we had reached our destination.

  “It looks more like a, you know, that kind of place.” She looked over her shoulder before she wiggled her painted eyebrows at me.

  “Not every little shop is a sex shop in Amsterdam.”

  At the mention of sex, the old woman’s entire body stiffened, and I couldn’t help laughing, thinking that the word had the exact same effect on Dad. He might be very liberal and forthcoming, but some topics were harder than others when it came to his little daughter—me. Poor guy.

  “So, we just go in?” She slowed down and pointed toward the tinted windows straight ahead of us. “Maybe we should go home and sleep like everyone else. I mean, this whole notion of jetlag might all just be in our heads?” She pointed at her head and her twenty-something curlers hiding under a big pink silk scarf.

  “Nope, it’s real. We did try to go to sleep, remember?”

  She looked amused. “I guess,” she said, looking down at my feet. I was still wearing the off-white hotel slippers. It was not until we had turned the corner of the hotel that I noticed.

  I lifted one of the slippers and returned her smile. “We did leave in a hurry.”

  “We did,” she said, laughing.

  We had literally bumped in to each other, in our matching complimentary silk robes, as I had started pacing the tenth floor.

  “You can’t sleep either,” she had whispered, her voice smooth from the huge night (cognac) cap she had the waiter send up to her room only half an hour before.

  “Nope, it must be the nap I took. I’m as wide awake as Katy Perry.” When she looked at me like I had already picked up Dutch, I explained further. “Katy Perry, the singer, um, you know, ‘Cause baby, you’re a firework, come on show ‘em what your worth…’”

  “—I know who she is,” she had sneered. “I just didn’t hear you. I might be old but I’m not that old. My favorite is, ‘The One That Got Away’—the acoustic version.”

  “Hey, look at you, Mrs. Rockefeller. I wouldn’t have taken you for a Katy Perry fan. So, what now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Alfred and the rest of the Jensen clan is in there, all sound asleep, so how ‘bout we go downstairs and get some hot cocoa or something?”

  “Hot cocoa.” She had sneered, even harder this time. “And you call yourself a Katy Perry fan? How about we go explore the city instead? It’s still young. Me on the other hand...” She smiled and looped her short arm with mine, and ten minutes later, and a quick change of clothes, well, except for the slippers, we were standing in front of the web café.

  I squinted at the tinted windows. Besides a red door with a big purple sign with the words: LET’S GET CONNECTED, you couldn’t see anything from the outside. Maybe she was right after all. Maybe it was one of those shops. I looked down at my phone and read out loud: “‘Friendly atmosphere. Free Wi-Fi. Everyone’s welcome. Coffee, Cokes, and cake.’” I looked up at her and smiled. “Coffee and cake, huh? Maybe we should’ve brought Mom,” I joked, thinking about Mom all sound asleep on the floor, in between the two Pack ‘n Plays. Mom had volunteered to take them both tonight so the kids could all get a good night’s sleep, emphasis on the word kids. “We want them to be as rested as possible before we fly out tonight. To Berlin,” she had added when Dad had asked her why on earth she had made herself all comfortable on the floor. Berlin. She might as well have yelled “shark attack” or strapped me to a seat in the Guardian of the Galaxy ride (formerly known as The Tower of Terror). It had the same nerve-racking effect on me. We would be in Berlin tomorrow. In Berlin, where Hans and his symmetric face was walking around somewhere, making German women turn their heads. Hans. I looked at my own reflection in the window. I looked so much younger and older at the same time.

  “Cake,” Mrs. Rockefeller said with a giggle, bringing me back to the moment. “Ha, you sure are right about that, as far as I know her. She does like her cake and coffee. I still have a hard time wrapping my little brain around the fact that she, with that tiny figure, actually consumed two strawberry shortcakes in one sitting the very first time I saw you.” She let out a small huff. “Which reminds me,” she continued in a soberer voice, “I’m sorry, by the way, that I misunderstood you so terribly. But, I did my homework after you left, well, with the help of Lily. I felt quite silly, to be honest. Paleo.” She waved her hand dismissively in the air. “Now I know better. I also know how hard it must be for you to be a celiac.” She placed a soft hand on my arm and offered me a warm grandma-smile.

  “Don’t worry about it. I don’t expect people to be experts. I mean, I don’t know the first thing about being a diabetic.”

  “You have that too?” Her painted eyebrows almost hit the pink silk scarf on her head.

  “No, I mean, why would one know about a certain disease if o—”

  “—Phew.” She cupped the hair curlers under her scarf, her eyes darting to the tinted windows as she did so. “So, what kind of cake do you think they have? You reckon they have a gluten-free one?” We both squinted at the window, and I noticed a small cannabis plant symbol after the word cake.

  “Um, the kind that makes you giggle.”

  “As in…?” She looked at me all excited and giggled. “Goodness gracious!”

  “Yes, that kind. Ready?” I offered her my hand and we entered together—me in my fuzzy cream slippers, Mrs. Rockefeller with her pink scarf and curlers.

  “No question about it,” I whispered as an overwhelming smell of sweet, sweet pot hit me in the face. “Someone’s definitely cooking funny cake in here.”

  “It smells wonderful, and it’s so cozy in here,” Mrs. Rockefeller exclaimed out loud, too loud, as we searched for a table.

  “You just sit wherever,” a woman with a purple scarf on her head, not unlike the one Mrs. Rockefeller was sporting, yelled from the very make-shift counter in the back.

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Rockefeller waved her hand in the air as she started dragging me across the room. “Over there.” She pointed at a table, almost hidden behind a big, worn-out foosball table.

  “Isn’t it cozy in here?” Mrs. Rockefeller said again as she carefully sat down in the little plush armchair.

  “It is.” I took another look around the room. The dimmed light combined with the old fuzzy furniture gave it a somewhat homey feel, unlike so many other gaming and computer shops I had been to back in Hartford. “But, if this is a sex shop, they are hiding it really well. And why would they? We’re in Amsterdam, after all.”

  “We sure are.” Mrs. Rock leaned all the way back in her chair. “And they speak perfect English.” She nodded discreetly in the direction of the woman with the purple scarf. “But how did they know that we speak English?”

  “Really?” I lifted an eyebrow and my left foot displaying one of the fuzzy slippers. “Do I need to say more?” I didn’t mention the fact that she was wearing her little Montblanc stars-and-stripes broach, or the twenty-something curlers clearly showing under her pink scarf, or the very loud entrance she had made. We couldn’t be more American. It was like American tourists 101.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, and giggled, scanning the menu card, which had been glued to the table, functioning as a placemat as well. “Do we dare get the cake?” She pointed at the menu card slash placemat and read out loud, “‘Self-service, heel erg bedankt.’ I can go get it.” She looked up and offered a crooked smile.

  Was she seriously suggesting this? She was going to get high—here, at a web café, with me, in Amsterdam?

  “You’re not serious, are you?”

  “Well, it’s legal back in Washington, too. My best friend, you know, Betsy, the one I was telling your mom about—the one with osteoarthritis in both her wrists, poor thing. Well, she has it every morning—gummy bears.”

  “Funny Bears,” I corrected her, which made her giggle.

  “Yes, her quality of life has improved a lot, so why not? Besides, who doesn’t li
ke to giggle? It makes you live longer.” She stood up. “On that note … I’m getting coffee and cake.” She grabbed her little pink purse from the table, and I watched her walk across the room, her loud and pitchy American voice already filling the little room.

  I grabbed my phone and checked for messages. Colin, an old friend from high school had liked my post about checking into the “hotel with the funny-sounding Dutch concierge.”

  “Nice crib,” he had commented, followed by, “hashtag Ella,” with hashtag spelled out, which, I guess was him trying to make a funny comment about me being in the city of legalized hash and smoke shops. Colin had always been the class clown—the one to always get the last (funny) word, even if he sometimes did embellish the truth to do so. When I looked at Mrs. Rockefeller balancing a tray with what looked like two cups of hot beverages, two glasses of water, and two humongous pieces of funny chocolate cake, I couldn’t help thinking that this time, he—class clown or not—was spot on. I was hashtag Ella.

  “See, if this wasn’t meant to be, I don’t know...” Mrs. Rockefeller’s voice trailed off, and she nodded excitedly down at the tray. “It’s gluten-free or glutevrij, as they say here.” She placed the tray on the table and sat a cup and the gigantic piece of chocolate cake right in front of me. “And it’s safe for you, I mean, with the gluten and cross-contamination. The woman told me she and her daughter both have severe allergies and all they serve is gluten, nut, and soy free. So, voila!” She clapped her little gnarled hands together and smiled. “If it’s safe when it comes to the, um, pot,” she whispered, slightly looking over her shoulder. “That I don’t know.” She smiled and sat down with her coffee and cake. “You know, first time I was here with Mr. Rock, I wanted to try it. We were young, not much older than you, and we had the world at our feet. “Why not?” I asked him, but, no, he wouldn’t have it. He said it was a drug nonetheless and highly inappropriate, but I told him that smoking a few joints was probably not half as dangerous as the five-finger bourbon and Havana cigars he always indulged in on a good night, but he just brushed me off.” She waved a hand in the air, impersonating her late husband, I figured, before she continued, “Well, I told him to live a little and let his hair loose, which of course, pissed him off. He didn’t have much hair, like me, and he was very vain about it. And, there we were, on a beautiful night like this, in Amsterdam, having one of our biggest fights. So, this…” She picked up her spoon and scooped up a big piece of cake. “This is my revenge. No disrespect, Richard.” She looked up at the ceiling and sighed, then looked at me. “Cheers.”