Sliding Doors - 2 (English Version)

Chapter 31 - Jo

Josephine

"No, you won't give him our address!"

"Jo, calm down, breathe!"

"Don't tell me to calm down!!!"

Mia has gone mad. I don't want to talk to anyone, let alone HIM!

"I don't want to see or hear him!"

"You should talk to him instead, you just assumed he had..."

"No!" I interrupt her "I did well instead and I will not go back in my decision!"

"Jo..." she sighs Thank God she's driving home. I wouldn't have been able to drive like this.
Tears cloud my sight and anger seethes in my veins like fire.
How could he do this to me?
How can a person tell you they love you a few hours before and then find them clinging to a stranger?
That's not possible, and I'm an idiot for thinking it could work.
It can't. And this is the most obvious evidence!
My biggest fear just materialized in front of me, and I can't take it back.

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A few hours before...

"Do you know if they arrived? Alex did not answer me..." Mia approaches me so she doesn't hear from the other guys who are at the table with us to eat.

"No..." I look around "I told the waiter to book that table over there..." I point to a spot not far from us "For now it's empty..."

Mia nods and sits back composed next to me, while the boys continue to talk about basketball and hockey.
I don't understand anything and I just smile, listening to their speeches.
I haven't seen Hero in a few hours, and I already miss him.
I don't want to be the uptight girlfriend who bombards him with phone calls and texts, but I'd love to know what happened to him.

"Did you hear that Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes broke up?" asks surprised Joshua, a friend of Mia, raising his eyes from his phone "I just read the news on social..."

Ah social.
What a fantastic world social is.
I really hate them.
Everybody knows everybody's facts, you freak!

"Well it couldn't last..." comments with my great surprise Mike shaking his head "Long distance relationships never last... there is always some insurmountable problem..."

"What do you know? Your girlfriend lives on the same street as you..." makes fun of him Michael burst out laughing.

"I know, it happened to me before Haley... I had a girlfriend who lived in Lisbon!" He sighs as if remembering the moments they spent together "We couldn't make the relationship last... the distance was terrible!"

Terrible.

"When you work around the world, constantly in different places, finding yourself and being together is almost impossible..." he adds after a while, waking up from his thoughts...

Impossible.

I listen to everything very carefully. It's like my fears are taking shape through their words spoken out loud.

"Hey Jo, what's your work partner's name?" Asks Jack, leaning towards me.

"Who?" I emerge from my thoughts "Which colleague?"

"The one from After..."

At the sound of that word the heart starts to beat very fast, while the brain takes a few more seconds to understand who we are talking about.

"Hero?" I ask with a thread of voice

"Yes right! He's busy uh..." He smiles amused looking at his cell phone.