Free (Sequel to Through The Dark) Complete

Chapter 23

A few weeks had passed since the interaction between Julie and Harry in the beach house.  Per typical Julie, there had been no contact between the two of them since that evening.  It was now into March, and even interaction with Amanda and Niall was purposely being avoided.  Julie was so confused. The conflict going on between her head and her heart was at an all time high.  Staying busy and focused on other things was her best friend.  The less down time she had, the less she had to think about her feelings.  Even she knew she was digressing, but right now she didn't feel up to dealing with all of it.  She did concentrate on herself more, and there were things in the works for her personally; but of course no one, besides herself, knew anything about them.  As she finished emptying the bags and storing everything into the refrigerator, her phone rang.  "Hey, Panda.  I just finished putting all the groceries away.  I was going to check out everything and then leave."

"Hey, JJ, um, well, about that.  The snow storm seems to have closed everything down, and Niall and I aren't able to fly into Tahoe."  Amanda looked at Niall who gave her a surprised look.  She'd had Julie go ahead to Tahoe to make sure everything was set up for them, without telling Niall.  Amanda had thought it would be a nice surprise, so that Niall wouldn't have to do it when they arrived.  She was going to surprise him with their destination too, but she wasn't able to keep that secret for long.

"What?"  Julie asked.  It had been snowing pretty hard when she arrived about an hour ago, but not bad enough where things should be shut down.  She went to the window and opened the curtains.  She was met with nothing but a blanket of white.  You couldn't even see her rental car parked like 50 feet away.  "What the hell?  How am I supposed to get out of here?"

"Well, I'm guessing you're not.  From what I hear they've closed the roads leading down the mountain.  Please don't try.  It will be extremely dangerous."  Amanda advised.  "JJ?  JJ?"  Amanda looked at her phone.  Seemed the call dropped.  She looked over at Niall who had a concerned look on his face and was trying to make a phone call, she could tell he was getting frustrated as he couldn't reach whoever he was calling on the phone either.  "Niall?  What's wrong?"

Niall tried to get his call to connect one more time.  "Why didn't you tell me you were having JJ go ahead to Tahoe?"  He asked looking at Amanda.  He shook his head.  "Never mind.  I get it, seemed I had the same thought, because I asked Harry to go ahead and set things up.  Now I can't get ahold of him."  He tried again and then looked at Amanda.  "You know they are going to think that we set them up."

Amanda just stared at Niall.  "Are you serious?  I mean, I'm not going to deny it sounds like a good plan, and something I may have done, but that sure wasn't the plan.  JJ was supposed to be gone before we got there."  She tried to call JJ again, but the call wouldn't connect.  The snowstorm must be interfering with the cell towers.

Niall sighed.  "Yeah, same with Harry.  Now I can't get him on the phone.  I wonder if he got there."

"Well, he hadn't yet, or I would have gotten an earful from JJ as soon as she answered. I guess there's nothing we can do now, except go home and wait for the storm to pass so we can get there."

Niall couldn't help but chuckle.  "You're enjoying this now, aren't you?"  He asked as he stood up and took Amanda's hand to help her up.

"Well, it wasn't planned.  But now that we can't do anything about it, I hope Harry did make it, and they are able to work through some things."  Amanda replied grabbing her carry on and walking out of the airport hand in hand with Niall.

"Yeah, sure, or it could go really bad, and we both have our best friends hate us, forever."  Niall said opening the car door for Amanda.

"Yeah, well, JJ already hates us daily, remember?"  Amanda smiled at Niall.