Eight | W2S

SIXTY FOUR.

Ummm...surprise I guess??

SIX WEEKS LATER.

Six weeks had passed since I'd fallen out with Sam.

Four weeks had passed since we'd arrived back to the UK from Italy.

I had been very busy since arriving back. Sarah, loyal as ever, had ended up flying to the UK, becoming — well, there wasn't really a word to sum it up. She was everything. My agent. My manager. My assistant. My confidante.

We were on the search for an independent record label, which would allow me to release my new songs. I wasn't planning on doing anything big. Nothing like I had before all of the drama.

I just wanted an outlet for my songs, and to go through an easy process to release them, rather than doing it all by myself.

That wasn't the only thing that had happened, either.

I'd met with Sam upon my return home. We'd met in a mutual place. I didn't want him back at my apartment, so we'd met up in a park in between us both.

It had gone just as expected. He'd grovelled, and I'd emphasised just how much it had hurt. But, I had also told him that I knew he hadn't meant for any of it to happen.

It had left us in a little bit of a pickle, because we weren't on bad terms, necessarily, but there was now a lot of history there.

In the end, we'd agreed to try being friends again. That was enough for now.

And that brought me up to right now. The present moment.

June 6th.

So far, in my life, a completely insignificant day. But now, I was sat in my bathroom, on top of the toilet seat, waiting three minutes like instructed.

I didn't dare look at the object on top of the sink, because it terrified me.

Whatever it was going to tell me, I was terrified.

Terrified that if it said negative, there was something wrong with me.

Terrified that if it said positive, then this was really happening.

My phone alarm beeped, signalling that the three minutes was over.

"Ken, I can hear the alarm going off. You okay?" Harry shouts from outside the bathroom, waiting patiently. He'd been waiting patiently for nearly half an hour, because that's how long it had taken me to muster up the courage to take the test.

I still wanted to do this — regardless of what the test said. But I'd be lying if I said that the realness of the situation hadn't scared me.

"Yeah," I lie, fumbling around, looking anywhere but at the test. "I'll look in a sec," I promise.

He calls out some reassuring words, but I tune them out, instead reaching up to the sink with shaking fingers, grasping the test.

My eyes are shut, and I hold them that way so tightly I begin to see white spots.

I open them.