When An Accident Prone No One Marries A Celebrity There Will Be Chaos...

Chapter 17

Home. There is nothing quite as comforting as stepping back into your house after time spent away. It was a comfort when I returned from LA and even more so now. Time had stood still in the house, it had frozen the moment I had left and it had simply waited to welcome me warmly on my return. There is absolutely no better way of finding security in a storm than to surround yourself in the places you know. Coming home is the best thing for me right now.

So I have been so excited to return home as I know the problem will never truly be solved until I was safely back in the house I belong. I can’t even communicate the rush of comfort and joy I feel as I step back through the door. With a thrilled smile I attempt to haul my suitcase through the door. I don’t even get frustrated when I get the case stuck in the door. Instead I just mindlessly tug at it while smiling around the entrance hall.  “Here let me get that,” Ollie says while picking up my suitcase for me and navigating it through the door. “Oh sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” I explain smiling at my own haphazard stupidity. I take a deep breath of content as I gaze around the room. Taking off my shoes and coats and in a daze dumping them on the floor, I explore the home which I had missed so much.

Reaching the door to the kitchen I get down on my hands and knees to search for the dent. It didn’t take me long to find the noticeable chunk missing in the wall. “Remember when I did that?” I ask Ollie with a small chuckle. He drops the suitcase in a similarly lazy manner and joins me on my knees just outside the kitchen door. “Of course I do. I also remember the mark on that door, the chip on that vase which is why it is facing the wrong way and that mark on the carpet and that’s just in this bit of the house,” he says while gesturing to my marks on the surrounding areas. “I really have utterly ruined our house,” I laugh.

“I don’t mind at all, before you moved in it didn’t feel quite right,” he reassures me.

“It didn’t looked lived in,” I add, recalling the first time I walked into Ollie’s house. Even when I first moved in I felt ever so slightly uncomfortable as it was too big, too fancy and too neat. With each stain, mark and accident the house became less and less Ollie’s home and more and more my home. Until there are so many traces that I can finally see this as our home. “Yeah,” he agrees. “But it was also missing you which is why I can put up with the destruction of our home,” he jokes.  I smile still tracing the dent remembering how it came to be.

“Come on then, up we get,” he says while rising to his feet and handing out his hands to pull me up similarly to how he did all that time ago when the dent was first created. “Yeah, can I eat lunch now?” I ask in excited anticipation. “Of course you can,” he says, doing a very bad job of hiding his sheer delight.

“Did you get in some French bread?” I ask. I’ve forgotten how much I missed eating. Looking back I don’t know how on earth I survived all this time without food. And yes I missed sweets and chocolates and desserts but I have always been a savoury person. So what I desperately missed was carbohydrates. Bread, pasta, crisps. So as much as I am able, I am stuffing myself with bread and pasta and crisps. “I did,” he confirms to my elation.

So after thoroughly stuffing myself with bread, bread and more bread I am already forgetting the ordeal I have been through. For the first time in a very long time I feel like myself. I am Izzie again. I don’t care about what petty strangers think. Who cares what they think of me? Does it really matter about what some random stranger I have never, and never am inclined to meet, think? Of course it doesn’t. And I was an idiot for ever thinking otherwise. I have a great job, great friends and a wonderful fiancé, what on earth have I got to worry about?