How I Met You

Chapter Fifty Six

WARNING: CHAPTER MAY INCLUDE SOME EXTREMELY CUTE & ADORABLE SCENES, SO BEWARE.

 

- chapter 056 –

I could hear the ambulances and I could see the sirens as the car was being consumed by the dancing flames. Her scream pierced my ears as he was taken away on a gurney, and her arm was bleeding heavily. All I could do was stare at the scene before me. It was chaos; it was maddening.

 * * *

Thirty Minutes Earlier

The pang of leaving hit me again—as hard as a diamond. It came at me from out of nowhere. Suddenly, eight days left, was all I could think about as I sat in the car and looked out the transparency of the window.

        It was still hard for me to fully understand, to get through my head, that I was scheduled to leave soon. It was surreal almost. I dreaded boarding that plane that was supposed to fly me, along with Peyton and my parents, home. Mostly because this, this right here in California, has been my home for the past three months and saying that I wasn’t ready to leave yet would be a massive understatement.

        I had been in Florida my whole life, since I was born. I was tired of seeing the same environment. It’s getting old. California was refreshing and new to me. It felt good to have some new surroundings. And unfortunately for me, I had become attached to them. Huntington Beach would be forever missed, since nothing compares to it. My family here would be missed. The memories, the people, the fun and the excitement, the scenery—all of it. Just thinking about leaving dampened my mood along with my entire day.

        And don’t even get me started on Jake Austin Carter. I could hardly stand the thought of leaving him. Sure, I’d miss everything else formerly mentioned, but Jake? I didn’t even want to imagine it. If thinking about leaving the scenery behind dampened my day, then the thought of Jake being here and me being there put a whole rainstorm into the equation, entirely flooding my mood with sadness.

         Leaving him and putting a three hour time difference and a whole lot of the US between us killed me.

        I sighed, reminiscing on the memories of when Jake and I hadn’t even met each other in person yet. When we Skyped all the time, when I would get in trouble at school for texting him in class. When we had our late night phone conversations.

         Sure, all of that was pretty damn fun and amazing, but the real deal was a million times better. You can’t exactly kiss someone through a screen. And wow, I would miss his kisses. I hadn’t even thought about that until now.

         To be honest, with the gnawing, aching inclination of my lips on his in the back of my mind most of the time, I could hardly even go a couple days without kissing him. Living without him until Christmas, when we would fly out to see family, would be a very, extremely hard challenge for me.

         I wasn’t sure if loving someone to this extent was very healthy. And if it’s not, then I would need some pretty amazing professional help.

         A car horn yanked me back into reality, as I jolted up in my seat. We were stuck in traffic.

         Still. It had been a good amount of time since we first got caught up in the horrifying maze of cars that sat ahead of us, thirty minutes at the least, and from the looks of it, we hadn’t moved much. The street had turned into a parking lot in a matter of minutes. I just wanted to get to wherever we were going.