Many Miles Apart

14. Alfie

We left fairly early, as after the last few days, we just wanted to get home. The journey was quite quick, and we were home by midday.
Once Zoe had parked the car, she lay back into the seat, and was asleep within seconds.I couldn't help but chuckle at how adorable she was. She looked so cute, with her hair hanging round her face having fallen out of the bun it was in, and her top caught in the waistband of her jeans. Normally she was always the first to want to get home, which just showed how drained she was from the last couple of days.
I climbed out of the car and unlocked the door, then walked round to the drivers side, scooping her out her seat and into my arms. She stirred slightly and looked up at me, then smiled and wrapped her arms around my neck. She was so light that I had no trouble carrying her inside and up the stairs, tucking her into the bed. She went straight to sleep, so I just turned out the light and shut the door behind me.
After bringing our bags in, I headed into my study to edit my daily vlog from the day before. Nala trotted in and curled up on my lap while I worked.
Once I was about halfway through, I allowed my mind to drift to the conversation at Jim and Tanya's.
It had only been once I'd sat down facing her that I truly made up my mind about the trip. I knew that I would come to that conclusion eventually, but it was in that instant that I finally decided. I don't know why, it just all suddenly made sense.
The one thing that I was confused about was her response to what I told her. I didn't understand at all how she could be so happy about the fact that I was leaving her. I didn't get it.
Eventually I got so tired that I turned off my computer and went to join Zoe in bed. 

The next few weeks seemed to pass really quickly, despite how much the two of us tried to cling onto every second that we had. A couple of days after we'd got home, I'd rang Mark telling him that I was going to go. Then I just left it to him. I knew that he'd sort everything out, as it's all that he seemed to care about.
I'd tried to not think about the trip, just my time with Zoe, sharing every spare moment with her, but I had to start sorting things out, and before I knew it it was the night before the flight left, and all that I could think about was whether I was ready to go, and whether I'd made the right choice.
"Alfie, I just folded them!", Zoe laughed nervously, sitting in the bed, surrounded by clothes and other miscellaneous objects, Nala asleep on her lap. There was a tension in her tone like she was trying to act normal and hide how she really felt. I didn't read into it too much. I felt the same way.
I was frantically searching through the piles, trying to find things that I thought that I'd put on the bed, but I wasn't sure.
I looked over to my gorgeous girlfriend. She may be grinning like an idiot, but underneath it all, I could see the pain that this was causing her, and it killed me to know that there was nothing that I could do.
"Zoe, I could just not go you know", I said, the tone suddenly getting more serious. "I could just cancel the flight, and stay here with you" I fell onto the bed next to her, wrapping my arm around her small waist.
"Don't be stupid Alfie", she said, turning to face me. "You have to go, and it's too late to pull out now anyway"
I lent in and gently kissed her. "You know that I can come home at any point, if you need me to. Just give me a call and I'll be on the first plane back here", I whispered, her face inches from mine. She smiled, but it was strained, fake.
"Yeah", she replied, before leaning over to start shoving some of my clothes into one of the cases. "Now let's get on with this, I don't want to spend our last night together packing."