Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns "Twilight" and its characters. This story is just for fun; no profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

Chapter Two

I ran down the hall and through the side lobby, hoping Bella hadn't already gone. If I didn't catch her and something happened to her, Mother and Father would have my head. I didn't need another reason to feel like a disappointment to add to the already monumental list.

Luckily, she was just reaching the front door of the main lobby when I saw her.

"Bella!" I called. "Wait!"

She turned and saw me there, and her mouth fell open in surprise. "Hello," she said.

"Uh...hi," I said awkwardly. "Uh... I just... I thought I should come with you. I mean..." I swallowed hard and quoted my mother: "You shouldn't be alone out there."

She sighed. "Okay, fine."

And with that, she flung the front door open herself and stepped outside before I could open the door for her. Oh well. She probably wasn't used to being treated like a lady, seeing as how she really wasn't one.

The gray sky was spitting light rain as we stepped out into the alley, turning the sand and dirt into a sticky mush that clung to the bottoms of my shoes. Good thing I had decided to wear my old Sperries and not my brand new white ones; they would have been ruined.

"Perdon!" said Bella, stopping the first person she saw in the alley: a woman carrying a baby. "Un hombre con un mochila?"

The woman stared at her, bewildered by her broken Spanish and distinctly American accent. The neon tie-dyed T-shirt probably didn't help much either.

"Un hombre!" shouted Bella in frustration. "Con un mochila!"

I was just about to step in and speak some real Spanish to this poor woman when another girl walking by stopped. "Si, si," she said to Bella, pointing down to the end of the alley, where it opened up into La Rambla. "Alla."

Bella and I both turned and looked to see a man nearing the place where the alley intersected La Rambla, glancing furtively to each side. Mother's backpack was slung over one shoulder casually.

"That's it," I said. "That's Mother's backpack."

He was far enough away that we could never catch him if he started running, and I knew he would run if he figured out we were onto him. He wouldn't even have to run very far; once he reached the center of La Rambla, he could blend into the crowd of people with ease and we would never find him. I figured our best bet would be to follow him at a distance, keeping our eye on the bag, and then maybe we would come across a policeman or someone else who could help us.

"Look," I said to Bella in a low voice, "if he runs, we'll never catch him, so lets just sneak up behind - "

She ignored me and ran headlong down the alley, towards the man. At the sound of her loud footfalls, he turned and saw her coming towards him and his eyes widened.

Just in case he had any doubt that she was after him, she yelled, "Hey, asshole! Give that back!"

And then he was running, too.

"Oh, goddamn it," I muttered, and ran after Bella.

Bella chased the thief out of the alley and across the sidewalk where we had first met the Dwyers. The thief ran out into traffic and she followed.

"Bella! Stop!"

But it was too late; she wasn't listening to me, or maybe she couldn't hear. Didn't she know that traffic was different here? That cars weren't as careful and forgiving of deviant pedestrians as they were back in America? What a stupid, stupid, stupid girl.

Or maybe she was just crazy. Or brave.

Tires squealed and horns honked as cars slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting Bella and the thief as she chased him into moving traffic. A cab driver rolled down his window and yelled at her in Spanish. One car nearly hit her but stopped just in time, so that its front bumper nudged her hip lightly.

"Sorry!" I heard her say, holding up a hand to the driver of the car. "I'm sorry! Lo siento!"

And she kept running.

What was wrong with her? What the hell did she think she was going to do if she actually caught the man? Wrestle him to the ground and take back the backpack? We were in Barcelona, for God's sake! The man would probably whip out a knife and stab her or something.

So now I had to make a snap decision: to follow her and try to help, or stay behind and let her run off on her crazy death mission alone.

Back home in America, I hadn't been stupid or crazy or brave. I had never done anything remotely noteworthy in my life. And while this girl was nothing special - dreadfully average, in fact - I still felt an inexplicable urge to protect her.

"Jesus," I groaned. There was no way around it: I was going to have to follow her across traffic. I didn't have time to wait for a red light.

I had been in this country for less than an hour, and I already felt like I was living someone else's life. I guess you should be careful what you wish for and all that. Although when I had pictured myself embarking on wild European adventures, I hadn't figured an American girl wearing pink lip gloss, absurd ladybug earrings, and a tie-dyed T-shirt into the equation.

I waited for a gap in traffic, and then I ran as hard as I could, staring straight ahead so I couldn't see the cars coming at me and chicken out. One car got so close that I felt the back of my shirt ruffle as it sped by me; a motorcyle headed straight for me had to swerve to miss me at the last second.

And then I was on the other side of the street, panting and sweating and gasping for breath, but all in one piece, thankfully. I gave myself a second to catch my breath, leaning forward to brace my hands against my knees, and then I searched the crowded sidewalk for Bella.

Her bright multi-colored tie-dyed shirt and billows of dark hair made her easy to spot; she was several yards ahead of me, still in hot pursuit of the thief. There was nothing for me to do but keep running after her. I pushed my way past Barcelona natives and other tourists, tripping and stumbling and apologizing as I went.

We were running parallel to La Rambla, and the crowd on the sidewalk was beginning to thin out as we neared the end of La Rambla. Soon, we were nearing the huge monument at the end of La Rambla, around which a busy traffic intersection was built. This road was much more dangerous than the small roads we had crossed earlier; there was no way we could run blindly across traffic without being hit here.

"Bella! Stop! Just let it go!"

And then the incredible happened: she stopped.

I was so surprised that this crazy American girl actually listened to me that I almost smacked into her. I stopped running at the last second, my feet slipping along the dirty sidewalk and kicking up dust.

"Jesus," I panted. "What - "

Then I looked up and saw that she was holding the backpack.

"How - what - "

"He dropped it," said Bella, smirking in triumph. "He threw it down when he figured out that I was about to catch him. He actually looked kind of scared."

Well, I'd be pretty scared too if some crazy teenage girl dressed in hideous mismatching clothes with wild hair was chasing me down, I thought to myself.

Out loud, I said, "Okay, well... Thanks."

As I reached over to take the backpack from her, a strange look came across her face suddenly - a wistful sort of smile.

"Hold on," she said, pulling the backpack out of my grasp. "Did you really follow me all the way out here?"

"Well... Yeah."

"Across traffic and everything?"

"I had to, didn't I? I mean..." I shrugged and adjusted my glasses - a nervous habit. "I wasn't going to let you chase down a thief alone."

Her smile widened, revealing rows of straight white teeth. I tried to imagine what she would look like in the braces she must have worn at some point, but suddenly all I could think about was how much prettier she looked when she smiled.

I shook off those thoughts and took the backpack from her. "Anyway, thanks a lot," I said. "I hate to think what my vacation would be like if my mother lost this. She'd make Father and I miserable."

"Yeah, mothers have the tendency to do that sometimes," said Bella, grinning. For a moment I felt a sort of vague affection for her - but then she tucked her hair behind one ear, and the sight of the garish ladybug earrings destroyed all feelings of fondness I might have had for her otherwise.

I slung the backpack over one shoulder and we started walking back the way we came, leaving at least a foot or two of space between us. We were walking against the flow of the crowd, and we had to keep dodging people here and there. Once we both had to move in to let people by so much that our shoulders smacked together.

Bella giggled nervously, blushed, and jumped away. I apologized and adjusted my glasses again.

"So," I said as we waited for a red light to cross the street, "that was pretty intense - you chasing that guy down, I mean. I've never seen anybody run across traffic like that before."

"I spent a whole summer in Philly once," said Bella, shrugging. "That's nothing."

I frowned at the memory of my own week-long trip to Philadelphia with my parents. I was fourteen at the time and my mother was desperate to see some kind of Galileo exhibit at a museum there. Almost everything we wanted to see was within walking distance, but Mother had insisted on taking cabs everywhere - she said it was dangerous to walk there. "I'm surprised there aren't more hit-and-runs here than there are," she said once, shaking her head as she watched hoards of pedestrians jaywalking through the cab window.

"Yeah, I guess traffic gets pretty hairy there," I said.

Bella laughed. "That's an understatement." Her eyes softened as she turned to look at me. "You've been there?"

I remembered my mother asking her the same question about New York just half an hour ago, her tone much more biting than Bella's was now. "Just once," I said, repeating Bella's words from earlier. "But I liked it."

"It's a cool place."

Traffic stopped and we crossed the street, hurrying across La Rambla to cross the second street, too, before the light changed. Then we were walking down the alley to our hotel, in silence except for the rhythmic crunching of our footsteps in the sand and the dirt. I wanted to say something, but I couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound completely stupid. My own silence was stifling.

It reminded me of every high school experience I had ever had.

We walked into Hotel Nouvel to find both sets of our parents sitting in the lobby, looking tense. Mother was chattering frantically on her cell phone, Father was staring at the ground, and Phil and Renee were whispering to each other. They all looked up and saw Bella and I standing in the doorway simultaneously, and then all four sets of eyes were fixed on the backpack I was holding out to Mother.

"Oh, honey, thank you so much!" shrieked Mother, flipping the phone shut without saying goodbye to whatever poor soul was on the other end of the line. She rushed across the lobby to me, taking my face in both hands and kissing my cheeks in the most embarrassing way possible, and then she ripped the backpack out of my hands. "Oh, where did you find it?"

"Some as - sleazebag took it, but we chased him down and got it back," said Bella, and then the smirk returned.

Mother's and Father's faces clouded over in horror, but Phil and Renee were beaming at their daughter.

"That's my girl!" said Renee proudly. "Tough as nails."

"Nobody messes with The Swan," said Phil, quite inexplicably.

"Well, the important thing is that everyone is safe," said Mother. Then she sat down on the nearest sofa and began rifling through the backpack, checking to make sure that all her stuff was still there. "Now all that's left to do is to call the credit card company and the cruise line and tell them that - "

"But your credit card's right there, Mother," I said, pointing to the little blue piece of plastic in her hand.

"Yes, but the thief could have taken it out and written down the number, couldn't he? And I had copies of our passports in here, and the papers for the cruise - he could have taken any of those serial numbers and sold them or - "

"Mrs. Cullen," said Bella, "honestly, I don't think he had time to get the numbers. He had the backpack over one shoulder and he was just walking down the street when we caught him."

"Oh, but we can't be too careful now, can we?" said Mother in her infamous "I'm-right-and-you're-wrong-so-just-stop-talking-before-you-make-yourself-look-even-stupider-than-you-are" voice. She pursed her lips and turned to me. "Now, Edward, dear. Why don't you run on down to the police station and file a police report for me? Please, dear," she added as an afterthought.

I stared. "Mother, how am I supposed to file a police report? I don't know how to - "

"Well, I'm afraid you'll just have to figure it out for yourself, dear. Your father and I don't speak Spanish - "

"Neither do I!"

"Oh, nonsense. Now, don't be silly. Run along to the police station for Mother, please, dear?"

"I don't even know where the police station is!"

"Well, neither do I, dear," said Mother, so coolly that I wanted to hit her. "I'm sure the lady at the front desk would be glad to help you with that."

Clenching my fists at my sides to conceal my rage, I stalked out of the lobby and down the short hallway to the front desk. This was so stupid! What good would a police report do? We got the backpack back, for God's sake! Technically, nothing was stolen. And even if it was, we would only be in this country for one more day! Mother had already made me go chasing after Bella From Kentucky-slash-Arizona-slash-Washington-slash-Florida Who Apparently Loves Tie-Dye and Ladybugs, and now she was going to make me go down to the police station and humiliate myself by attempting to speak Spanish when the most advanced level of the language I had ever learned was how to conjugate a verb in the present tense. Little kids probably knew more Spanish than I did, just from watching Dora the freaking Explorer during snack time every day.

Stupid! The whole thing was so goddamn stupid!

The lady at the desk tried to give me directions to the police station, but I was so annoyed with my mother that I had a hard time processing what she was saying. As far as I could tell, all I had to do was walk down the alley until I reached La Rambla, turn right, cross the plaza, and there it was. It seemed almost too easy to be true.

"Alright," I said crossly, hovering in the doorway of the lobby, "I'm going. What do you want me to tell them?"

Mother looked perplexed. "Just tell them what happened, dear."

I rolled my eyes and started to walk away, but her voice stopped me.

"Oh, and Edward, dear? Your father and I are going to take a cab down to the port, to see if someone from Royal Caribbean is there. I called the phone number they gave me but no one is answering, and I need to tell them that some of our information was stolen."

Breathe in, out. In, out, I reminded myself. Calm down.

"So we probably won't be here when you get back," she babbled on, oblivious. "You're on your own as far as lunch goes. You have some Euros, don't you?"

"Yes, Mother," I said through gritted teeth.

"Good. Now run along, dear."

Why did she have to be so goddamn...emasculating all the time? No wonder all the kids at school made fun of me all the time. No wonder they all called me "fag" and "queer" and "gay-face" - all my life, my mother had been methodically destroying what little sense of masculinity I had.

But I kept my thoughts to myself, just like I always did; instead of telling her how angry I was and how ridiculous she was being, I just turned and walked away. I wanted to slam the heavy front doors behind me, but I didn't have the guts. So I just walked down the deserted alley alone, with the front desk lady's hand-drawn map crumpled up into a warm little ball of paper in my fist, as it began to rain.

I was about halfway down the alleyway and my shirt was already soaked when I heard a voice and pounding footsteps behind me.

"Edward! Wait!"

I turned to see Bella running towards me. She had put her hair up, and now her ponytail swung neatly behind her; it was a relief after watching all that wild hair falling around her face all morning. She half-smiled at me and started to say something - but then her foot caught on one of the holes in the ground and she went sprawling.

God, I thought as I headed back towards her. I thought I was rid of her already! Jesus.

But Father always said it behooves your own personal reputation to treat all people kindly and be polite to everyone, so I would be. "You okay?" I asked, offering her a hand.

She was still lying there on the ground, in all the dirt and sand (which was quickly becoming a grainy, mushy sort of mud), as if to wallow in her embarrassment. When she finally looked up at me, she was blushing furiously. "Oh yeah," she said, "I'm fine. Just extremely clumsy."

She took my hand and I helped her up. Her knees were all muddy and scraped up; one long scrape was oozing blood. The palms of her hands were muddy, too, from the way she had caught herself, and she wiped them on her shorts. Classy.

"You should go back inside," I said. So she wouldn't suspect that I was just trying to get rid of her, I gestured to her knee and pointed out, "You're bleeding."

She shook her head and brushed at her knee, knocking the dirt and sand away. "It's okay. I've had worse."

There was an awkward silence as I realized that I had no idea what she was doing out here. Did she think we could just hang out or something? Hadn't she heard Mother giving me orders back there in the lobby, treating me like an unreasonable preschooler? How could she miss it?

"Well, um... I was just going to go to the police station, so - "

"I know," she said, nodding. "I was gonna go with you."

"Oh. Well. Um. That's okay - I mean, I'll be fine - "

"No, you shouldn't be alone. And you said you didn't speak much Spanish so..." She shrugged. "I thought maybe I could help you."

"Well, see...the thing is, I do speak Spanish... I mean, I speak Spanish pretty well. I just, uh - I was just saying that to - to get out of it," I stammered.

God! Why was I so awkward? Why was she making me so nervous? Why should I feel intimidated by her, of all people - a silly teenage girl whose IQ was probably a good fifty points below mine.

"Oh," said Bella. "Well, still..." She shrugged again, smiling shyly this time. "You could use some company, right?"

No. I would rather be alone than be with you.

But of course I couldn't say that.

"Well, yeah," I said, my voice too high-pitched and hysterical, giving me away. "But - but you're hurt, I mean, you're injured, and everything - there's no need for you to go if you're - in pain - "

"I'm not in pain. Trust me, I'll be fine," said Bella. "If I don't die of humiliation, that is."

Though the wording of the statement suggested that she was joking, the look on her face and her tone of voice were both completely serious. I studied her carefully for a moment, squinting at her through the rain and trying to decide if I was supposed to laugh or not.

Just as I decided that she was actually upset, she giggled. So it was a joke, then! Tricky, tricky. I tried to laugh too, but it was a nervous sound.

"Come on," said Bella, punching me in the arm playfully as she walked past me. "Lets go find la policia, shall we?"

"Do you want to go get an umbrella first?"

She stopped and gave me this confused look. "I didn't bring an umbrella." She paused, then added thoughtfully, "I don't even own an umbrella."

I stared. "You don't own an umbrella?"

She shrugged. "What's the point? A little water never hurt anybody."

She turned and walked off down the alley, apparently unphased by the deluge around her. No umbrella? What kind of backwoods lunatic doesn't even own an umbrella?

We retraced our steps from earlier, down the alley to La Rambla, and then we turned right and walked another block or so, under the decorative trees that lined the sidewalk for cover from the rain. Then we reached a busy road that I recognized from before; it was the same road we had taken to get to our hotel. We waited for a break in traffic, and then we ran across the street.

Then we were in a big open square. "Where to now?" asked Bella.

I shrugged.

"Can I see the map?"

We sat down on a bench and Bella studied the hand-drawn map, which was simply a series of lines and a big square labeled "La Plaza de Catalunya," with nothing else drawn or labeled nearby as reference points. At the very back of the big Plaza square was a smaller square, labeled "LA POLICIA" in big letters.

"So we need to find the Plaza de Catalunya then, right?" said Bella.

"Sure."

Bella wasted no time in asking for directions. A young woman carrying an enormous black umbrella was walking by right in front of us, and Bella leapt to her feet and stopped her. "Perdon," said Bella, trying her best not to butcher the language and still failing, "donde esta la Plaza de Catalunya?"

The woman stared at Bella from underneath her umbrella. "This is it," she said dryly, in perfect English.

"Oh," said Bella. "Well, um - thank you."

The woman rolled her eyes and walked away, and Bella turned back to me, blushing only slightly. "Well," she said, "we found the plaza. This is it!"

Fighting the urge to roll my eyes as well, I removed my glasses and wiped them on my shirt. "Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? I mean, it's a big open square. Obviously it's a plaza."

"Yeah. I guess," said Bella quietly. "So anyway... I guess the police station will be back here behind the plaza, then."

"I guess so."

I put my glasses back on and we walked across the plaza. It was very pretty, the picturesque ideal of a Spanish plaza, but because of the rain, we were the only ones there. I made a mental note to come back and take pictures later when the weather cleared up, before we boarded the ship tomorrow.

"I don't see anything," I said, staring at a big museum-like building directly behind the plaza, where the police station should have been. "That doesn't look like a police station to me."

"No, I don't think it is... Oh, wait. Look, there it is!"

I followed her gaze and her pointing finger (how rude) to a set of wide stairs leading down into the ground. On the concrete below-ground landing, there was a set of glass doors; a hand-made paper sign on one of the doors read, "L'estacio de policia."

The police station was very much like a cellar: cool and dark and mostly concrete, with sparse furnishings and dim flourescent lighting overhead. The room seemed very long and wide as Bella and I crossed it to the desk in the very back of the room, where two officers in uniform sat looking bored.

"I'll take care of this," I muttered to Bella as we approached the desk. Then, to the policemen, I said, "Hablan Ingleis?"

They both shook their heads simultaneously. One pointed to a woman sitting at a plastic folding card table in the corner of the room. "You talk with her," he said in stilted English.

The woman looked to be middle-aged, too tan with saggy, freckled skin. Her hair was dyed a fake blonde color and she was wearing way too much eye make-up. She was not in uniform, but dressed in ragged jeans and a shrunken-looking T-shirt that exposed her midriff slightly. The more closely I inspected her, the more I began to doubt that she was even qualified to wear a uniform.

"Hello," she said in a thick Spanish accent as we approached. "Please, sit down."

Bella and I looked at each other, then sat down in the plastic lawn chairs that were set up in front of her table.

"Yes, how can I help?" said the woman.

"Uh - well - we're tourists here, from the United States - "

"Yes, yes," said the woman, as if I were boring her with obvious details.

"And, uh, my mother - her backpack was stolen this morning."

"Ah, yes." She nodded wisely. "There is much of the stealing in Barcelona, I am afraid. It happens many times."

"So I've heard. So my mother wanted me to file a police report."

"Ahhh. Yes."

"Can you help me?"

The woman started to shake her head, but stopped herself. "I can, yes. I do not know if you should though. The police, in things such as this, we cannot do very much. We cannot stop all the stealing that is going on, yes? You understand."

"Right. But, see, the stealing - it's already happened, so we're not really asking you to stop it, we're just - "

"You want to get your things back? It is not possible, I am afraid - "

"Actually," Bella cut in, "we got the backpack back."

The woman stared.

"The man who took it dropped it on the ground," Bella went on, "so...we got it back."

"Then why do you want to make report?" said the woman, frowning so that her leathery skin puckered here and there.

Bella turned to me, as if to ask the same question. I sighed.

"I don't - my mother told me to, it's not my idea."

Suddenly, the woman threw her head back in a cackling laugh so loud and raucous and completely unexpected that both Bella and I jumped in surprise. "Well, you tell your mama you made a report, okay? Okay. Enjoy Barcelona!" she shrieked in her raspy voice. And with that, we were dismissed.

"Well," I said as we took the stairs up into the plaza, out of the dark, damp cellar of the police station, "that was helpful."

"What else can they do?" said Bella. "That kind of petty crime happens all the time here. They can't stop all of it. And technically, nothing was stolen - since we got the backpack back, I mean."

It was the exact same thought I had had just a few minutes ago, but I bristled upon hearing the words coming from her. What the hell did she know about Barcelona? She was just some hick from Kentucky, or Texas, or wherever the hell she was from. Her mom probably won some stupid prize at work for picking out the closest bracket during March Madness - round-trip plane tickets to Spain and a hotel room in Barcelona for three days, or something. She was most likely completely oblivious to the significance of all the things around her: the architecture, the fashion industry, the history, the culture. She had no idea where she was - not really. She couldn't appreciate it. And I had dreamed of being here, in this city, in this country, in this continent, for so long...

She didn't deserve to be here. None of the American Dwyers did. It made me sick to think about it.

The rain had let up and our clothes were starting to dry as we crossed the plaza, heading back the way we came. As we stopped on the edge of the sidewalk, in the midst of a group of other pedestrians, to wait for a break in traffic, Bella turned to me.

"Hey," she said casually, "you want to get some lunch, or something?"

They were the same exact words I had used almost a year and a half ago, the first and last time I ever asked a girl out on a date. Back then, I could barely speak as I forced the words out; I vividly remembered the feeling of my blood pounding in my veins, my heartbeat thundering in my ears, my face flushing. But hearing Bella say the words now, my stomach lurched at the memory.

"Uh...I don't know," I blurted out, hoping to buy time. I wanted to say no - but then I remembered that my parents were eating without me, so I would have to find food somewhere anyway. And she had chased down that thief for me...the least I could do was buy her lunch.

"Is it really lunch time already?" I said, to cover for my hesitation.

Bella checked her watch. "It's eleven. A little early for lunch in Spain. But...we could kill a little time first. You want to?"

"Um - well - "

"I mean, you don't have to," she said, laughing nervously. "I just thought - I mean, La Rambla's right here - we could just go look at all the little booths or something. It might be fun."

She blushed and looked away, gnawing on her lip in a way that made me feel guilty. Jesus. I had despised the very sight of this girl since I had first spotted her hours ago, and now here I was, about to spend the first day of my fabulous European vacation with her, of all people. I couldn't get away from her.

With a sigh of resignation, I gave in to what seemed to be fate. "Oh...sure, why not?"

We walked down La Rambla, threading our way through the crowd as we went from booth to booth. To my surprise, Bella bypassed all the really touristy booths, decked out in postcards and Barcelona-themed magnets, and went for some of the more authentic ones. An artist had set up a booth for his original paintings and sketches, and he stood off to the side, working on his current piece; Bella watched him paint for a while. We passed street performers painted up to look like living, breathing statues, fixed in various poses - Bella took pictures of them on her phone and dropped a coin or two into their buckets every time. We stopped at almost all of the jewelry booths, where Bella stared at the array of colorful earrings and necklaces for what felt like hours, transfixed.

At one booth, she spent a good five minutes poring over a single bracelet worshipfully: a simple black cord with a wide ceramic bead in the middle, on which a moon and two stars were hand-painted. I couldn't see what was so special about it, but as I stood a few feet away, pretending to search for a gift for Mother, I watched her vacillate between buying and not buying the bracelet. There was nothing for me to do but hover around, waiting for her to move on to the next booth, and really, a guy can only feign interest in handmade jewlery for so long before his reputation is put in serious risk. As time passed, I was almost as frustrated as I was bored - here I was, in Spain, wasting my time with some random American girl when I should have been out absorbing the culture. God. The whole situation was just so stupid.

Finally, I got so sick of watching her worship that stupid bracelet that I did something rather impulsive.

"Do you want it?" I asked her, a little more harshly than I had intended.

She looked up at me with a sharp jerk of her head and a guilty look on her face, as if I had caught her doing something wrong. "Oh...well, yeah, it's cool, but I don't need it," she said, her cheeks reddening. I looked at the little hand-written tag on the bracelet: it was only eight Euros, roughly the equivalent of ten or eleven American dollars.

"It's only eight Euros," I said. "Why don't you just get it?"

"Well... I really need to save my money," she said, avoiding my gaze in hideous embarrassment.

Jesus.

"I'll get it for you," I said. The sooner I got out of there the better, no matter how much I had to pay.

She fixed me with a withering glare. "I'm not a charity case."

Oh, God. She was one of those girls.

"No, I know, I know, I just... I mean, you helped me with the thief, and then the police station, and all that... It's the least I could do."

Apparently that was the right thing to say, because her posture relaxed and the glare melted away to be replaced by a soft look of gratitude.

Phew. Nice save, Cullen.

"Well..." she murmured, suddenly shy, "if you really want to..."

So I bought her the bracelet. The woman at the booth took my money and slipped the bracelet into a tiny paper bag. She winked at Bella as she handed her the bag.

"You nice to boyfriend now, eh?" she said with a knowing smile.

"Oh, no," said Bella, so quickly that I was actually a little offended. "He's not my boyfriend."

"Oh, okay," said the woman. And then she laughed as if Bella had just told the funniest joke she had ever heard.

We turned and walked away from the woman and her booth, both of us trapped in an embarrassed silence. I was racking my brain for something to say to ease the tension (as always) when Bella stopped in her tracks and turned to me.

"Hey, are you getting hungry?" she asked. She paused to check her watch. "It's almost noon now."

"Uh, yeah. Actually, I am." I guess chasing down criminals in a foreign country really burns up some calories. "We can eat now, if you want to." Then, still caught on my generosity streak, I added, "You pick the place."

"Really?" She flashed me a brilliant, thoroughly American smile - the kind of smile you see in ads for lipstick and toothpaste. "Sweet!"

Then, boom! - instant regret.

God. I couldn't believe I was doing this. I was in Barcelona, and having lunch with some redneck in a Fudruckers T-shirt. And I had told her to pick the place. She would probably make me take her to McDonalds or something.

Oh, don't be a pansy, Cullen, I said to myself. It will only take an hour or so. It's just one lunch, and then you're through with her forever and you can have your European vacation, just the way you imagined it.

With a sigh, I resigned myself to the task ahead and followed Bella down La Rambla as we retraced our steps, doubling back the way we had come.

Footnotes:

1. Euro (sign: €; code: EUR): the official currency of the Eurozone: 16 of the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU), including Spain, France, and Italy.

(Definitions from the always reliable Wikipedia.)