It's Not A Game Of Chance When It Comes To Love

Chapter 1

Chapter One…

I squeaked incredibly girlishly and completely out of character for me as I stared down my drive in awe.

At the bottom was an old and scruffy looking car, with my name on it. Considering my atrocious relationship with my parents, I was more than shocked to see that they had bought me a car, even one so shabby. I’d passed my test practically as soon as I’d turned seventeen, so that I wouldn’t have to bother when I actually got a car and I was glad of it now.

I ran down the drive and ran my hand along the red bonnet of the old banger gently before bounding towards my parents and giving them both a huge hug, something it felt like I hadn’t done for years.

It had been two months since the Zack drama and things had settled down into a normal routine. I got lifts of Matt most mornings and then I would either get a lift home off him or go to Grace’s after school so that she could give me a lift home from there. Only occasionally would I be sat in Jord’s car on the way home from school.

Me and Jord had stuck to our strictly friends pact and had barely spent any time together. That was the one thing I hated. We had gotten past the awkwardness, but it was a rare occurrence that I got to speak to him outside of the maths classroom.

As for my feelings for him, well they were still going strong. No fading had happened as of yet and I couldn’t decide whether that was a good or a bad thing. When it came to his emotions, I couldn’t gauge them at all. I assumed that he had just gotten over me, like I should have him. He probably never liked me as much as I liked him in the first place anyway. It didn’t matter though, because nothing could happen between us.

Mel and Zack had split up about a week after Leonie had ditched them both. It didn’t take a genius to work out that Zack had only been using her to tell the police lies about me, the only alteration between his original plan and reality was that he hadn’t intended on getting caught. I hadn’t spoken to either of them since Mel had begged for my forgiveness in the car park and I was perfectly content for it to stay that way.

I pulled back from the hug I had just given Harry and beamed at them. “Thank you!” I cried.

They grinned back and looked the happiest I had seen them in a long while. It was times like this when I could pretend that we were a normal family. There was no evidence of their drug abuse on them and their emotions weren’t being affected by anything, other than the happiness of pleasing their daughter.

Then the reality came whooshing back and I remembered that as soon as they’d given me the keys and laid down the rules, they’d be heading off out again, either smoking, sniffing or injecting some vile substance.

At least since they’d let me back in we hadn’t had another barney. They’d been angry with me for the first few weeks, but we soon retained our regular relationship again, which meant I only saw them for about ten minutes every week.

“We’ve paid for the car and the first year’s insurance, but you are the one who’ll be running it.” They warned me.

I was too giddy to really care was they were saying to me though and just grinned widely. “Can I drive it now?” I inquired.

They both laughed. “Sure.”

As soon as they handed me the keys, I skipped round to the drivers side and started it up. The engine spluttered a bit, but I couldn’t have cared less.

Loving the feel of the steering wheel beneath my fingers, I drove aimlessly, making sure I stuck to the speed limits and wasn’t as reckless as Matt was.

I didn’t even realise where my gut instinct had taken me until I pulled up outside Jord’s familiar apartment block. I pulled up at the side of his car which let me know that he was in and shut the engine off.