Jess is finally going! That New Zealand holiday is at its dawn, and all she can think of is landscapes, walks and adventures. But what she does not expect to find, is what is waiting around the corner - someone.
Someone who will turn her holiday up...
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If Aunt Charlotte had been lucky enough to have the ability to read minds, she would have had much more success in her little quest. Jess was now pondering some things that could have been rather helpful.
"You... really?"
"For the longest time. I just... didn't know how to say it."
"But you do?"
"Yeah, I do."
If Jess were a dog, her ears would be flapping about her head, in her attempts to shake off the thoughts that were now floating about; the memories, that were expanding, outshining every other capacity she possessed.
Jess had woken up rather suddenly this morning, eyes widening as she had opened them, and stared around the bedroom. Her mother, wonder of wonders, had woken up before her, and she'd had the room to herself. It was almost eerily silent - no birds, no voices, no TV.
But then, it could just have been that after the deafening, thunderous feelings and truths that had crashed upon her skull in her sleep, everything else paled.
For days - no, she realised, weeks - she had been trying to deny it. Trying to forget and disprove, a little half-heartedly, the realisations that had hit her those weeks ago, as she had clutched her phone to her ear, and listened unhearingly to the voice of her friend, telling her of a boy from tuition she may have liked.
But in sleep, she had no control over her subconscious. In that realm where you are allowed to live all your craziest fantasies, Jess could not resist; could not refuse. She could not lie to herself.
And it had finally come flying into her, last night, in full force and with much exaggeration that somehow, in that moment, felt entirely fitting.
It had been thrust undeniably before her tightly shut eyes, just how much more she felt than she had let herself believe.
She wanted it. She longed for it - to know he felt it too. She longed for him to know, so she could express all she felt, to the only person to whom it could ever matter.
But she dreaded it - the conviction of going against her mother, or worse, the mortification of her finding out. She shrank from the thought that maybe her mother was right, and that maybe it was, after all, a bad idea. She thought reluctantly of the hurt, and confusion, of the past, and wondered if anything good could truly come from it. Wondered if it could happen again.
But she knew - somewhere deep down - was almost certain, that it could not. He would never.
And then, there was that small part of her - the one that quaked at the notion of boarding a plane, all the things in tow - her, her bags, her mother, her feelings - but without him.
