Fake Tales

Chapter 33- Epilogue

Chapter 33- Epilogue (18 months later)

I don't think I'd ever been so nervous in my life. Everyone always talked about university like it was such a great thing, but all I could think about was what I was leaving behind. Was I going to make any friends? What if they were all weird and hated me?

"Ready?" Mum poked her head round the door, smiling excitedly. She was deliberately over the top positive about my leaving, perhaps in an attempt to make it easier for me to leave. Safe to say, it wasn't really working.

I nodded, clearing my throat. I shook away all the unwanted worries, trying to focus on the positive.

"Yeah I'm ready" I muttered. I stood up from my bed, feeling the mattress spring up as my weight was lifted from it.

"Everyone's downstairs." She said and I looked at her accusingly, knowing she must have dragged them all here just to cheer me up.

"Don't look at me like that!" She cried. "Greg thought it would be nice for you to see everyone before you went" She explained.

Greg had enrolled the do his final year at the college in town, thinking that being in my year would both be distracting and strange. He had never come out and said it, but I knew that being at school without Tom would have been too weird for him. He was too far behind to go back into his original year, which meant he was going to university a year later than originally thought. At the same time as his little sister, which she liked to remind him of at every opportunity.

"Of course he did" I grumbled.

Greg had been irritatingly chirpy and evasive about his university plans until results day. Then he had announced he was going to Manchester, whereas I was going to London. I had grinned and bore his jubilance, but in truth I had cried in the car with mum on the way home.

I couldn't get over the blase attitude he had used ever since. Why wasn't he upset that we were going to be 200 miles apart? I was: he'd made me happier than I ever thought I could be over the last year. Did he want us to try long-distance? Or was he simply waiting for me to say we should end it? I hadn't got any better at guessing what he was thinking.

I reached the bottom of the stairs and saw them all sitting in the kitchen, like it was any other day. Mel, Dom, Dean, Lily, Ana, Joe and Greg. The planets orbiting my personal universe for as long as I could remember.

"Hey" I smiled, trying hard to swallow my sadness. But it kept on like a mantra in my mind: you're leaving.

Mel was first to stand up and pull me into her arms. I took in the familiar feel of her, my throat inevitably thickening so much I couldn't swallow it down.

"Don't cry" She ordered as she pulled away. "If you cry, I definitely will" She whispered.

I chuckled. "When are you leaving?" I asked her, looking at Dom also. They were going to Surrey together. Which was marginally closer than my boyfriend, but still seemed too far away.

Mel's eyes shone slightly as Dom stood up and wrapped an arm around her.

"My Dad wants to leave in half an hour" Dom answered for her.

Dom bit his lip, hesitating slightly, before deciding it was the right thing to say.

"I'm going to miss you so much Mad" He said, coming other and hugging me. I took a deep breath in, thinking about how long it would be until I saw the two of them again. When he pulled away, he took Mel's hand and squeezed it. Her eyes never left mine, her breath shaky.

"We can't ever thank you enough...." Dom said, looking to Mel to finish.

She smiled, but her hands were shaking slightly from the tears she refused to let fall.