Free Lovestruck in Los Angeles by Rachel Schurig

you have shown me, if the weather was better?”
    I thought for a minute. “We’d go see the Great Lakes, for sure. They’re pretty incredible. And if we went up north you’d get to see all the forests, which are really beautiful. Maybe we’d go to Traverse City, see the sand dunes and the bay. Right on Lake Michigan.” I felt a sharp stab of homesickness that I tried to push away. There was no sense in thinking about home right now. We were going to Vegas.
    “What about Florida?” he asked, as if he knew I wanted to change the subject. “You’ve been there. What’s it like? California?”
    “I was really young. And we mostly stayed at Disney.”
    He scowled a little, and I laughed. “Sorry, didn’t mean to rub the Disney thing in your face.”
    “We need to find time to get to Disneyland,” he said, tapping his hands on the steering wheel. “Seriously. If we go home without seeing it, I’m going to be so pissed.”
    “We’ll go,” I assured him. “Though we could always go to EuroDisney when we get back to London. Take the Eurostar.” He shuddered a little, and I remembered that he was claustrophobic. He’d taken the tunnel train back from France only once and had hated every minute of it. “Or we could fly,” I said quickly.
    “It wouldn’t be the same. I want to go to Disneyland. With the palm trees and the sunshine.”
    “Okay, Thomas,” I said, turning on the voice I used when my niece and nephew were getting whiney. “We’ll go to Disneyland.”
    “And eat Mickey bars?”
    I laughed. “And eat Mickey bars.”
    “I think we’re getting close. We’ve been driving for about four hours.”
    I looked down in my lap at the guidebook he’d brought home for me. “When we pass into Nevada there’s a casino on the state line. They have a roller coaster. Wanna stop?”
    He shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind just getting there, you know? We’re going to see plenty of casinos over the next few days.”
    “True.”
    I went back to staring out the window. It really was beautiful. Almost beautiful enough for me to forget about the fact that it was the day before Thanksgiving and I wasn’t in my mom’s kitchen, helping her cook for the holiday. The day before Thanksgiving was when we made the pies and did all the prep work. For years my job had been to tear apart pieces of bread for the stuffing. We used five different kinds of bread, all home baked, to give the best flavor. If I concentrated hard enough I could smell the butter and celery sautéing in anticipation of the spicy rye bread I tore into tiny chunks—
    “Lizzie?” Thomas asked, and I turned to him. “You daydreaming? I said the casino is right there.”
    I shook my head a little, trying to clear it. Sure enough, there was a casino right there on the side of the highway. It appeared to have been plopped down in the middle of the desert. “How do they get power and water?” I wondered out loud. “It doesn’t seem like there’s anything out here.”
    Thomas shrugged. “I have no idea.”
    It wasn’t long before we started seeing more buildings along the route, which soon gave way to suburbs. “I think we’re almost there,” Thomas said.
    I felt a rush of excitement. I had always wanted to travel more, get out of my hometown. It was the main reason I had gone away to London for grad school. I had no idea what to expect with Vegas, but I knew it would be something new to see, if nothing else.
    As Thomas followed the GPS directions off the highway and toward our hotel, however, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of letdown. Maybe it was because we were approaching it during the day, but it honestly didn’t feel all that different from any city center. Lots of buildings and parking lots. When I expressed this thought to Thomas he smiled. “I think you might change your mind when you see the strip. We’re kind of driving behind all the action right now.”
    My first sight of our hotel confirmed that sentiment. A massive white