Where I Found You

Chapter 25 - Will here.

Chapter 25 - Will here.

Obviously, we need bread and milk on a Saturday morning. Obviously, I have to go get it.

I take one look at the way Leila is sprawled across the chair with her boyfriend Ben and his terrible blond haircut, and the way my mum keeps walking in and out of the room to check on them and put tea towels in the drawer, and the way my dad is upstairs hiding in the office. And I realise that I just need to get out of here for a while.

I never thought I'd miss being at Cambridge but I do. I miss Sterling and I miss Miki and the Scottish twins, Anthony and Martin, and the girls from the Mardi Gras. Even Keira. But more than any of that, I miss Alyssa and Kingston and God I never thought that I'd say this, but Kingston Grammar School, too.

From being at Cambridge though, I miss just the whole thing of having to actually be somewhere at a certain time. While I'm here I can get up at any time I want to, which for some reason I hate because there isn't anything governing my life here like having to attend lectures and work. There isn't anything to keep my mind off Alyssa.

The only person I've had contact with is Oscar, my friend from the past two years in Oxford at sixth form college. The guy who got me into the parties. The only guy I can really stand around here. I wish I had my old friends instead - Niall and Katy and Tai and Lewis and Evan and even Jordon. I never thought I'd miss a whole bunch of people so fucking much. I miss Alyssa with everything in me. And I know that you can love someone so much, so much it hurts, but you can never love a person more than you miss them. That's what it feels like to me right now, and I've learnt this the hard way.

I climb into the God-forsaken, old silver Toyota that I own and begin to drive up the road. I sigh and I want to curl up somewhere and just hide from the world for a while. I want to hide and try to sort things out inside my mind; find a place for every thought and every need and every expectation and every idea and every plan. And I could stay there for ages but to the rest of the world it wouldn't even be a millisecond and I could come out again, without having missed anything.

I turn on the radio for spite and it's one of those mainstream radio stations that only find the latest crap and play it on repeat alongside a load of irritating adverts. And then you get this woman who talks about either food or Twitter for the whole of her shift.

I decide to drive further than usual. I don't go to the usual Tesco or Asda - I find my way to a ginormous Sainsbury's next to a massive twelve-or-something-story-Ikea and I park in a giant car park. I've been driving for about half an hour and now it's about one in the afternoon. I think I'm somewhere halfway between Kingston and Oxford. The sun's so bright - way too bright for even August, never mind November - when I climb out of the car that I have to stare right down at the ground to shield my eyes until I get into the store.

"Hello. How are you today, sir?"

I look up and meet a pair of bright blue eyes so striking that I have to step back. I then focus in on the whole picture - a woman of about thirty with blonde hair and a bright orange Sainsbury's long-sleeved shirt. She's got a whole stack of leaflets in her hands.

"Um- Good, thanks," I reply awkwardly as I stand there. I spot a group of girls go past laughing and looking back at me, their cheeks red and their hair windswept. I wonder what the hell is going on before I see about three more Sainsbury's people in the doorway trying to grab various people's attention. All the shoppers are ignoring them. And I'm the only idiot who decided to actually stop and waste my time.

"Great!" The woman grins. "I'm Sandy, nice to meet you! Are you interested in our new student away from home gift card? Basically, you give this-" she holds up a card, orange, of course- "to your parents or whoever there is at home. And they can top up money onto your account so that in one of our stores near your college, you can use this." I watch as she holds up a smaller, but still orange, card.