𝑶𝒏𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆 | 𝐙𝐢𝐜𝐤 [𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐙𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐲] ✔️

𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒆𝒆.

February 1981

It had been more than a year since we moved in.

Here I felt freer, I was no longer the weirdo from Shadyside, the one who survived...

Nobody knew anything about what happened in '78, nobody treated me differently, even as the days went by I made some friends, who had now become my best friends.

I never talk to them about what happened, my mother doesn't say anything either. We both wanted a new beginning and we had made it.

The pain was still there, even now, but I had learned to deal with it but like everything had the good and the bad, sometimes I feel it consumes me.

"I don't understand," Alysha, my best friend, suddenly mentions.

"What don't you understand?", I ask picking up the dirty dishes from the table.

"Luke" she says. Luke is my best friend.

I stay silent waiting for her to continue. Alysha reminded me a little of Joan, in the way she acted.

I feel a pang in my heart and it's as if I can hear the screams again. I close my eyes and push the thought away. I'm not going back to that, not again.

"He almost treats you like a queen," Sarah ─another of my best friends─, continues.

I furrow my brow as I set the dishes down in the sink and turn around so I can look at them.

"What?" I ask in confusion.

Where did that come from?

"It's obvious he likes you, he treats you well and is a nice person, I don't understand why you haven't tried" Alysha says.

I lower my gaze.

"Nick Goode, nice to meet you." I almost smile at the memory.

He doesn't make me feel like him.

He betrayed you.

Another pang in my chest.

"I don't know what you're talking about, I just see him as a friend."

"Oh, come on, Ziggy, don't you like him even a little bit?" insists Alysha.

"Haven't you ever thought that if you care so much about him you should be the one dating him?" I reply.

Sarah laughs and Alysha rolls her eyes.

"You haven't dated anyone since you got here and look, you have suitors" she starts "I just thought you were secretly in love with him."

I roll my eyes.

"I'm not," I assure.

"Maybe she's in love with someone else," Sarah says, suddenly.

My gaze wanders off somewhere.

"Because, uhm... yeah! I do like the weirdo from Shadyside".

"Now?" he asked. "Now", I said.

"Ziggy!" Alysha exclaims getting my attention. She looks at me like I'm a basket case.

Then she and Sarah start talking, not asking me any more questions and I know I can jump into the conversation but I turn away to do the dishes.

I hear them mention Teddy.

Remember when I said Luke was my best friend? I lied, Teddy is, he knows more than the others, he knows about Cindy, he knows she died and that's the reason we moved, even though he doesn't know exactly how it happened. He also knows that someone broke my heart.

I never had the confidence to talk about it with the others, not because I don't trust them but because I don't want to be treated differently but Teddy is like a brother to me.

I feel another pang, the image of Cindy flashes through my head, I try to push the thought out of my head but it's too late.... I go back to that night, back to Nick.

Well, there are a few things I want to say.

First of all thank you for your support, I published this story three days ago and in the first two days it reached 100 reads, it means a lot to me.

In the next chapter we're going to see more about '81 but we're also going to see about Nick's perspective on '79.

What I want you to see is that despite being apart Nick and Ziggy are constantly thinking about each other, which I feel is something they showed in the movies but not as detailed and it's something I would have liked to see.

It's going to take maybe (if my calculations are correct), three or four more chapters to get to '83 ('94 part two). So yes it's going to take a while but it will be worth it in the end.

Thanks for reading. ♡