String of Fate

Chapter Eighty Two

The room around me was very white, as was the table I was sitting at. It was quite a small bistro table with me sitting opposite a man that I had come to recognise in the past four years. Since I'd turned eighteen, his face had started to appear in my dreams. Then, as the years passed, things had even progressed to the two of us sitting in the room together and talking. We knew a lot about each other, and I could even recognise his voice anywhere.

This was the man at the end of my string. The man I was destined to spend the rest of my life with even though I had yet to meet him outside of my dreams. I wished with all my heart that I was meeting him soon to spend the rest of my life with him, but I was breaking his heart.

After all, I was marrying someone else in the morning.

My alarm went off and I woke up in the strange bed. I hated waking up in hotel rooms. I sat up and turned off the alarm, getting straight out of bed and heading into the bathroom. I dived into the shower and wondered if today was going to be as dreadful as I thought it was going to be. It should be the best day of my life, but I was just dreading it.

I should be looking forward to my wedding day.

I got out of the shower and pulled the hotel robe around me, heading back out to the main room of the hotel. My mother was already in the room, sitting on the settee in jeans and a casual blouse. The two of us would be having our hair and make-up done together and then she was going back to her room to get changed, and then it wouldn't be until the actual wedding that I would actually see her. "Good morning, mother."

"Good morning, Phoebe." She replied as I sat on the settee opposite her. The suite really was luxurious, but I wouldn't be staying in this room again tonight. That thought didn't really make me feel much better either. "Are you nervous?"

"Yes." I admitted, hearing a knock on the door. I left my mother deal with it as the staff of the hotel entered with a couple of trays of breakfasts. I didn't feel like eating, but after they left, I picked up a croissant and nibbled a bit on the end. "Mother, I'm sure I've mentioned this to you before, but I really do not want to marry Harvey today. Would you mind if I ran off and married Adam?"

"Who's Adam?" My mother wondered. She seemed a little bit upset that there was someone that I hadn't told her about. I usually told her everything. I had even told her about my string the day of my sixteenth birthday, and she had let slip that I was actually due to marry someone else.

"He is the one at the end of my string." I explained to her, trying to act as if it was quite normal. "I have been having dreams about him since I was eighteen. Now, the two of us are actually able to talk in the dreams. It's quite strange."

"I know how that feels." My mother said. I was a little confused by her response, and I was glad when she expanded on her answer. "When I was sixteen, a string appeared between me and a man that was not your father. I still, to this day, have not met the man, but, like you, I had the dreams after I turned eighteen. Sometimes, I thought that they weren't actually dreams because I was able to sit and talk to this man as if we were sitting in a coffee shop. It felt so real. However, when I turned thirty, it all stopped. I don't know what's happened to him, I hope he's happy, but it seemed as if the magic that provided the string gave up on trying to get us together. I still have the string, but the dreams all stopped. If you can manage until then, you should be able to get on with your life."

"It just feel like it's all so difficult. I have to marry Harvey so that I don't disappoint father, and I really don't want to. I like Harvey, don't get me wrong, but I just don't think I could ever love him as more than a friend. I don't really want to spend the rest of my life with him." I said. Today was going to be horrible.