Where I Found You

Chapter 49 - Will now.

Chapter 49 - Will now.

I think about Alyssa a lot and all the things we both said in the park and the coffee shop an awful lot over the next few days, which then turn into the next few weeks.

At Cambridge, after the Easter break is over, I often drift away from what I'm studying late at night for the exams coming up and I just think about nothing but her - not things that she does or says, or has done or said, just purely Alyssa and the way she is, and it ends up hurting me in this crazy, self-harming way that I can't help or control.

I told her that she could call me or anything any time she likes, but as three weeks stretch by I can't help but think she really does not want anything to do with me, and we're never going to even be friends.

I don't want to call her, even though after all this time her number is still stored on the favourites section in my phone, because I realise she needs space and I don't want to be a harassment or anything.

It's hard to be excited and everything like my friends are when I just keep worrying about Alyssa. That Irene has started hanging around us all the time, too, and is convinced that all of us are going on a European tour together this summer. Sterling is only happy because he wants summer to come so that he can quit his job at the cinema down the road, Martin and Anthony are busy making huge plans with all the girls, and Miki keeps telling us how excited she is to be going home to Japan. I can't blame her.

"Will, it's not going to be expensive." One morning as I am having a rushed breakfast, Anthony comes barging into mine an Sterling's apartment. He's been trying to persuade me to come on this holiday with the rest of them; Sterling, too.

"We'll just stay in hostels," he goes on. "We can get the ferry to France, and move around by train to other countries later-"

"I have to go." I cut across him and push him lightly out of the way to get my bag.

"Anthony, it's no use. He's all hung up about Alyssa," Sterling calls from his laptop in the corner.

Anthony gives me an irritable look, then fixes his glasses. "What's she got to do with stopping you going on a tour of Europe? Will, we're gonna go everywhere - Paris, Madrid . . . Barcelona, Lisbon . . . Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm . . . Helsinki-"

And I quickly take my exit out the door, leaving him reciting the names of various European cities to himself.

-

In May I go back home to Oxford for a week and I still haven't heard from Alyssa.

I still can't get over the fact that she is a mother, and she has a child, and it's a combination of hers and someone else's combined genetics and now that other person is gone and she has been left alone.

And I want so badly to be able to help her in any way. When I told Leila and my mother she was pregnant, they almost fainted, saying that they thought it was crazy and Alyssa was the last person they'd expect to get into a situation.

When I come home in May, my mother just tells me to ring her and ask her to meet up.

"Forget trying to not harass her. Ask her out! Will, it doesn't matter about her having a baby, and it doesn't matter about what you did before - you love her, and I know that somehow she will still love you." My mother says this all very fast as she's folding up some washing out in the garden when I go to ask her what to do.

So I follow her advice. Alyssa picks up on the fifth ring, or something like that.

"Hello?"

"Alyssa, hey." I glance over at my mum, and she watches me with encouraging eyes.