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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
James's head hurt.
Except now, as he strode across the grounds of Whakahi College, the pain was much less severe than the last time. It was not the sharp, piercing pain he had felt over a month ago, on that fateful day when Catherine had, in a way, started it all. No, today it was more of a dull ache, centring aggravatingly around his eyes.
He knew the ache wouldn't normally have bothered him so much, but it was the emotions that went with it now which were the problem. The strange emptiness, the sadness, the constant waiting and waiting which he knew would never end- those were the problems.
James worried, as he made his way to his next class, that his eyes were puffy and tired, and would betray to everyone his sleepless nights.They came so suddenly, the swiftly, silently flowing tears, with almost no warning - that was what made them so terrifying.
He could get through the day with her being only a shadow in the back of his mind; then it would all rush upon him out of nowhere. And yet it made sense: of course it would be hard. Of course he would spend each day suspended in a state of futile anticipation. He would walk out each evening in that wretched habit that now, for the first time in his life, he wanted to break - but could not. Even after a week, still he looked around, and expected to see her stroll around the corner, dog at her feet, absent smile on her face.
All the while, he had to go about his days as though nothing remotely life-changing had happened in the last six weeks. He entered his first class - physics - and suppressed a sigh. He actually liked this class; something in the way the diagrams and formulae mapped out the world. Complex, maybe, yet definite. All the chaos and endless possibilities boiled down to simple facts. To sense.
So he sat, put down his bag and pulled out his notebook, and listened - as the teacher came in, late (as usual), and began to speak of forces and momentum and objects colliding. About impulse, and the conservation of momentum and how it could be transferred between things.
Emerging from the classroom an hour later, James felt satisfied with an hour well spent. All he had wanted was to think of something other than the pain behind his eyeballs, and the girl he could see so clearly, who was forever miles away. And for the most part, he had.
There were moments - brief and fleeting - when the memories and thoughts tried to muscle their way through the barricades he'd set up. But then again, it was not exactly his fault he had begun to yield, when everyone's minds were buzzing with the thought of things colliding. How could he forget, then, the way their paths had done just that...?
James was jerked from his thoughts by a sneering voice.
"James Easton."
He blinked, then rolled his eyes. They were behind him again - sneaking up on him the way they always loved to.
"Your girlfriend left you already?" Catherine spoke to his back, eyebrows raised questioningly, as though he could see them.
He did turn then, though, and suppressed the urge to roll his eyes again. He supposed she must have noticed that Jess had left the neighbourhood.
