Watercolour

Thirty Three

This chapter's pretty short and I'm so sorry about that but I promise the next few chapters will definitely make up for it... (Merry Christmas!)

Luke's P.O.V

By the front door was a suitcase with Al's previous flight tag on it. From the moment she had arrived, I'd tried not to think about the leaving part but now everywhere I went and every conversation I seemed to have, always ended up spiraling my thoughts back to the same thing.

"You ready to go?" she asked and I turned around to see her with shoes on and bag in hand - ready to go.

"Yeah," I replied, grabbing the car keys out of the glass bowl sat on the sideboard. "Have you said goodbye to the others?"

"No, not yet."

She lingered in the hallway for a moment longer before making her way back into the living room with me following closely behind.

"You going now?" Calum asked as the three of them stood up and slowly made their way to our side of the room.

"Yeah, gotta go," she replied before hugging them each in turn and then stepping back to look at them all. "Thanks guys... you're the best."

We made our way back out towards the front door and as she said her last goodbyes I took her suitcase out to the car and within another minute or so we were both in the car and on the road.

We stayed silent the whole way to the airport only breaking it once we'd pulled up in the car park.

"What time's your flight again?"

"Half four," she replied. "So I should be checking-in in about 20 minutes or so."

"Do you want to go in now?" I asked, knowing it wouldn't take long to find where Al had to check-in as the airport wasn't very big and we both knew it back-to-front anyway.

"We might as well - don't want to lose track of time and be late."

Alana's P.O.V

We walked through the airport, Luke dragging my suitcase along beside me as I frantically checked my pockets for my passport every few minutes. It was relatively busy - probably due to the fact it was the end of February half term back in Europe - and I was silently glad of my decision to leave the car when we did.

As the signs pointing towards the check-in counters became more and more frequent I couldn't help but think about how much I didn't want to be checking onto a flight out of here. Yes, there was a part of me that knew I had to go home; there was so much I needed to do and probably so much I'd missed while I'd been away but there was not a single piece of me that wanted to leave Australia. I loved it here - the country itself along with Ash, Cal, Luke and Mikey. And not knowing for certain when I'd be able to see them again hurt like hell.

"Looks like they've opened check-in for your flight slightly early," Luke pointed out as we looked up at the giant plasmas up on the wall.

"Think my flight's gonna be a busy one so I should probably take advantage of that," I replied, turning to face him before we pulled each other into a hug.

"Thank you so so much for this week, Luke. It's meant the world to be able to see you all again."

"My pleasure," he mumbled into my shoulder. "I'm glad our plan worked."

"What plan?" I asked, pulling us apart in response to my confusion.

"To make you happy - whether you liked it not - for, at least, the week you were with us."