THE UNTOUCHABLE [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER 22: A NEW LIFE

Going home was a good idea indeed.

She went back to her apartment, a tiny one-bedroom apartment that she had lived in for a few years since the beginning of her grad school years.

Meeting her friends again, getting busy with helping Dad and Ellie plan their wedding—which they finally decided to be a garden wedding, not a beach wedding (too much wind and sand for Dad's liking) or a castle wedding (too expensive for Dad and Ellie's budget), and moving to California to start her new job as a developmental psychology research scholar at a prestigious university there were good for her.

She had decided to pause her MissCharLee activities until her move was completed.

Moving to California was hard for her though.

She ended her apartment lease, packed up her stuff, and planned some goodbye events with friends. She hated goodbyes. She really hated it.

Her tears fell on the last day of her stay at her apartment.

Why does a goodbye have to be so hard? she kept asking herself. "It's not the first time you have to say goodbye to those you love, silly girl," she whispered to herself that night as she squeezed the last box into her car. She would do the 8 hours drive to the California town where her new workplace was located. Her tiny Corolla packed to the brim with stuff she would need the first few weeks in California, and the rest would be sent by some friends through an interstate moving company.

Her new apartment in California was an old one-bedroom apartment located about fifteen minutes walk from her work. It was on the third floor with the kitchen window overlooking a small urban forest with rows of old oak trees across the grass lawn, it was not a great building but she would take whatever she could so as not to have to sleep on the street or on someone else's couch.

For a few days after her arrival and moving into her new place, she was just busy from sunrise till far into the night, cleaning up, unpacking, making her new place feel more like home to her.

All her hectic schedule and busy activities did help a lot in helping her feel more like herself again after her strange feelings and experience during her vacation period. Dad and Ellie's wedding date would be next year in the spring, and Charlotte had been involved in a lot of aspects of the planning, albeit from e-mail, chat messages, and videocalls.

That night after another day of unpacking and organizing and cleaning, Charlotte sat on her kitchen counter, eating spicy ramen straight from the saucepan, her eyes watched her fridge door where she had taped the various farewell-good luck cards she got from her friends and colleagues back home. One in particular caught her attention.

A small card from the secretary of the department where she earned her Ph.D from. Mrs. Bartlett, a kind middle-aged lady who was so efficient it was hard to believe she was a normal human. She gave Charlotte the card when she attended Charlotte's farewell BBQ party. A card, simple in its blue-gold colour, and in beautiful cursive letters, a sentence was written on it: "May You Find Love and Happiness Wherever You Are!"

May You Find Love ... for some reason, Charlotte felt blue when she read that. It was a good wish, a heartfelt wish for love for her. But she felt just ... sad.

"I don't think I'll ever find love ..." she started talking to herself, throwing the rest of her noodles and grabbing that one card from her fridge door. She read the sentence over and over again before taping the card back to the fridge door.

Then she went and just laid on her bed. A single bed that creaked whenever she moved. Her mind traveled back to the vacation time.

She missed the forest there, the gentle hills, but it just felt strange to her that even though she missed all those but she did not feel like she could go back. Like something that made her feel like she was not supposed to go back again.