Most Everything (Hartbig AU)

xi. // epilogue

I glanced at Hannah, who was sitting across the table from me. She was laughing at a joke, squished between Ingrid and Chester.

Yeah, it was still really weird seeing our two exes among our closest friends.

It's funny, really, how time did fix most everything.

Chester and I started talking things through the same morning Hannah and I made up. It was awkward and uncomfortable at least 127% of the time, but the pain was worth it. It nearly always is, when it comes to repairing relationships. He forgave me for anything I needed to apologize for, and I forgave him for things he didn't need to apologize for, but it was a good conversation. A healthy one that we both needed to have at some point to be able to ever move on with our lives.

Hannah and Ingrid, however, didn't make up quite as quickly as Chester and me.

It took a solid month and a half for Hannah to even hear her name without tensing up, and two more for her to consider listening to what Ingrid had to say. I only know the gist of it, no details, and from what Hannah told me, I don't want or need to know more. Some things are meant to stay private.

She told me Ingrid had broken up with her because it was obvious she wasn't fully invested in their relationship. I didn't bother to ask what Ingrid had meant; I didn't need to.

And for the most part, that was that.

Mamrie was seated to my left, and at Hannah's laugh, I could see her eyes light up. From what Hannah said, she gave me the same look when I laughed. It couldn't have been easy or pain-free to watch your best friends torn apart from one another.

And Hannah and I never truly got over what we put her through: months on end of he said, she said, weeks of balancing time between the two of us, days of being torn in two directions. We constantly pampered her now to make up for it, but I knew it would never be enough.

She had actually re-enrolled in a local university, and was going after a mixology degree. With the amount of drinking she did, and the knowledge she already had of mixing drinks, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that she would be top of her class.

Chester was finally moving on to a career he enjoyed, too; acting. After we ended things officially, he devoted himself fully to his singing, and was finally picked up full-time for a traveling performance group, which toured the US once a year.

And Ingrid was actually taking off in the makeup industry, not that anyone ever doubted she would. She was in the middle of producing her second line of cosmetics, after the first one had literally sold out of stores.

It was reassuring to know that we had all let the past be the past. We were whole again, and time had fixed most everything that had gone wrong.

I remember hoping that the unexpected ways of the world would align with the directions I wanted to go. In truth, they really didn't. The path I had planned was not the one I travelled, which in truth probably was for the better. My path had been bland, white-washed walls, normal, predictable, uninteresting. The path I had taken lead right to a set of crystalline blue eyes and fluffy blonde hair, soft pink lips and smooth peach skin. My path was perfectly unexpected and unexpectedly perfect.

And I wouldn't want most everything to have been fixed any other way.

//

Thank you so much for reading!! Hopefully my writing improved from the first couple chapters (which I still can't read back without majorly cringing - my bad). I appreciate every comment, every vote, every read. It means the world to me that you actually enjoyed something I produced.

If you'd like to read my other stories, I have a collection of oneshots that are updated every once in a while, and a new (troyler) story called A World Alone. It's going to be fucking awesome and I hope you stick around for it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Anna