Forked Roads Back

42 - TESSA

THE NEXT MORNING, THE boys are awake first, attempting to keep things quiet, but failing miserably.

Charlotte stirs shortly after I do and she grins at me, wiping the drool off her chin.

"How you feeling this morning?" she asks, stretching, making a weird squirming noise.

I shrug and curl myself into a ball, yawning before I look at her properly. "I'm okay. I just want to put it behind me."

She nods and smiles. "Yeah, good idea. No point dwelling on it."

"Exactly," I say, just as I hear a pair of footsteps coming up the stairs. I'm hoping it's Jamie, but when the door opens, it's Danny.

"Heyyy," Charlotte grins, stretching out her arms for Danny to come over. He does so and wraps his arms around her, kissing her cheek in the cutest greeting. "How was your night?" she asks when he sits back up.

He doesn't answer immediately, and from the look on his face I can maybe tell he had a weird night, same as us.

"What happened?" I ask, sensing he's about to say that something happened.

"Nah, nothing happened. It was just a bit meh. I like Jamie, but Harry is a bit of a bore... not going to lie," he chuckles, looking at Charlotte. "Bless him."

Charlotte shrugs, seemingly agreeing. "He's a lovely guy, and will be a great doctor, but yeah he's not great on having a personality, and not easy to hold a long conversation with." She laughs too. "He's my lab partner for one of our seminars and he can list all bones in the human body but can't name any of the Bond films."

"Ooooh, ouch," I giggle. "But to be fair I think that suits Chloe perfectly, seeing as she didn't have an interest in film at all. She only went along because Matt wanted to."

"Oh my God, yes! She fell asleep through Return of the King, do you remember!"

We all laugh for a moment before I smile. "I'm glad she's happy though, and he seems to really like her?"

"Oh yeah, he does. You should have seen it. You know in a film, where the two leads lock eyes across a room and then everyone else just disappears...?"

I nod. I knew all about that. It's happened to me twice. Once with Archie, and then again with Jamie.

"Was that them?" I ask.

"Yup."

"Cute! Did Greg turn up at all?"

He shakes his head. "Nah. He did text though, saying he's around today if we wanted to do something." He looks at Charlotte with a grin, and I know he's asking if he can tell people about them being engaged. I can tell all he wants to do is shout it from the rooftops, and as she grins, nodding, he throws his arms around her again, pressing her back into the mattress giggling.

"Right, I'm going to leave you to it," I say when Danny drops a long kiss on Charlotte's lips. "But please don't have sex in my bed. Save that for your own bed pleeeeease! Thank you kindly."

I leave them to it and follow the smell of bacon, finding Jamie standing at the hob, his shirt and trousers all creased from sleeping downstairs.

"There she is," he beams when he sees me, opening up his arm as I get closer to him. He kisses the top of my head as I squeeze him and I feel like I'm floating on clouds I'm so happy. "How was your girls night?"

"Aw, it was so good." I don't want to mention my argument because I wanted to convince myself that dwelling on it was not the right thing to do. "My head's a bit sore though. I think I had four mojitos too many."