A World of Differences [1DFF]

Epilogue

Epilogue – Charlotte's POV

Ten Years Later

One choice can change your life. After that, the choices you make continue to reflect the kind of person you are. The decisions you make are things that you will look back on forever. For me, the choice that changed my life was the decision to leave Omaha and go to school in London. The thing that fascinates me the most is just how much that choice changed my life.

Liam and I hadn't lived a fairytale but it was arguably close to that. We stayed together for three years after we started dating. The three years were split with world tours but the time we spent together was honestly incredible. I stayed close with Lauren, Amalia, and Marisa as well as the other four nut-cakes who were more like brothers nowadays.

Year three of school was by far the worst year. Liam and I cut our relationship off after a giant fight three days before they left for America. Their fifty state tour followed by a recording session in Australia for another album had left my heart a little numb. Six months was their estimated time of travel before they finally got home. One little statement on my behalf sliced the already tense air.

I had simply stated that I was concerned about the strain on our relationship. After three years of jealousy and long distance, we had both cracked. He accused me of thinking I would cheat on him, which I had never said. But then I did snap and say that he was going to be gone for six months so I would have no way of knowing if he was making out with a sexy backup dancer. Liam had taken the low blow and told me I could be sleeping with Charlie for all he knew.

He had stormed out of my dorm room and left for America four days later without saying goodbye.

Surprisingly, I didn't enter a state of depression, which was what those around me expected. Instead of accepting the reality of the split, my mind convinced myself that he was just gone. I convinced myself that he was away and nothing was wrong. I told myself that he was going to come back after they finished recording and everything would be fine.

But everything wasn't fine. We didn't talk. We didn't text. I only talked to the other boys briefly and even Marisa, who was still kind of dating Zayn, hardly talked to them. Amalia and Lauren were swamped with the tour. It was almost like the ocean cut us off completely.

About three months into the tour, Zayn offered to fly Marisa out to their show in Colorado because we had a week off school. I wasn't invited. Three months of not talking to Liam was really settling into my heart and it was killing me, but I was determined to stay strong.

When Marisa left for Colorado, I went to France with Charlie, Madison, Ryan, and a few other friends. I was living a normal twenty-one year old life. Five days later, Marisa and I met up in the airport. Our planes had gotten in within an hour of each other and we had agreed to wait and share a cab back to campus.

When we met up outside the security checkpoint she looked beat. She was a little sunburned and looked a little weary. She went on to tell me that she and Zayn had broken up. He had wanted to discuss their relationship in person and they had come to an agreement that they were just too far apart to continue.

From that moment on, Marisa and I made a pact to continue on with our heads held high. The rest of the year passed quickly and I hardly thought about Liam. He remained a contact in my phone that I never texted. I briefly talked to Louis or Niall when I would be on the phone with Lauren or Amalia but that was it.

The second to last year of school ended and I received an internship at a local recording studio over the summer, meaning that I would be in London rather than heading home. Despite my parents' urge for me to come home, the internship was exactly what I needed. I had no reason to go back home. The only people in Omaha I still talked to were Chance and a few girls that I randomly chatted on Facebook. Meghan and Sophia hadn't made an effort to apologize to me and I didn't feel like I had a reason to apologize to them, so we had a clean cut. Marisa and I bought an apartment close to school, leasing it for the summer and through the next and final school year. Life was moving on.