Flight K109 (#1 ¬ Aiello Racing Series )

Mia James

I feel like a wreck through the week. I force some distance between myself and Elliot. What happened after the party can't happen again, ever. No matter how much I want it to, or how much it hurts to pull away from him.

I keep thinking of the moment at the party without meaning, where we where so close I thought he was going to kiss me right there in front of all those people. And the fact that it wasn't the first time something like that has happened. It had been so intense, I can almost feel him against me still. I'm scared of whatever it is I'm getting myself into: I don't want to fall into anyone's hands, not even Elliot's.

I have to protect my heart, and the best way to do that is to stay away from anything that makes me feel so much when he gave me so little. I can't give that power to Elliot. If I do he could be the one person with the ability to destroy me. And I'm scared that he already is.

Keeping that power away from him means keeping myself away too. I try my best to keep our text conversation short, and I make myself busy, I hang out a lot with my dad, at home of course, because I'm not going to risk running into Elliot. It's nice actually, I haven't really hung out with my dad like this since, well.....London.

Still, my blond estonian boy is still front and centre in my mind throughout the week, no matter how much I try to push him aside. It might be worse even, because making a conscious effort not to think about him just completely backfires into me thinking about him more.

But I'm stubborn as a mule, which means that instead of trying to figure out my shit or just giving in to what I know will be inevitable, I let myself sit in my miserable, lonely, Elliot deprived existence for the entire week I'm in Estonia with Dad.

What makes it worse is that I don't talk to Andy and Claire either, I just can't bring myself to do it. It feels like we're on completely different wavelenghts this summer, they're living on entirely different planets to me right now and I can't bring myself to exchange meaningless conversation with them whilst we wait to be reunited in the fall. I know it doesn't make us any less friends, once we're back in school in September we'll be thick as thieves again, but until then I just have to accept that I'm all alone.

I spend countless hours staring up at the ceiling, wondering how the hell I ended up here. How did I get to this point? I used to be the bravest person I knew, nothing scared me, ever. Now look at me, I'm so scared of having my heart broken that I've never even had a semblance of a relationship and I might just be screwing up a great one before it starts. 

I wonder where it went wrong with my parents, what happened? What on Earth could possibly have happened to make the greatest love story I ever knew end up in sadness and hatred? They'd been perfect, they'd met in sixth form, started dating during their A-levels, somehow stayed together during uni, even when all their friends' relationships were crashing and burning. They got married almost right out of university, bought a cute little house and after a while had me. And they were good, they were good at all of it, communicating, learning, parenting........and yet.

A therapist would have a field day with me.

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The flight back to Taranto is the first time I see Elliot in person after waking up with him on Sunday. We sit next to each other on the flight, because we always do, and because I don't think I'll survive if we don't, at this point I'm so Elliot starved that I've resorted to watching cheap interviews he's done completely in estonian without subtitles, simply so I don't crack and beg him to come over. A new low for me.