Life After The Villa

26. I Love You

"You really do look beautiful, Asher." I tell my best friend as we get left alone for the first time today. "Taylor's a really lucky guy, you know that right?"

"Of course." She smiles widely, looking herself up and down. "Look at me, who wouldn't be lucky to have me?" And of course she's joking, she's not big headed enough to actually think that, but I realise that she's not big headed at all. Every time she bigs herself up, she's either joking, or doing it to make herself look strong, so that no one will try to cross her. But she doesn't actually believe it, and I don't think she ever has.

"No, seriously, Asher." I tell her, taking both her hands in mine, looking her dead in the eyes so she knows that I'm being serious. "You're so beautiful, on the inside as well as on the outside. You're my best friend, you've been there for me through the good and the bad and it pains me that you don't realise just how perfectly amazing you are." I pause ever so slightly to take a breath before continuing, but as I do my eyes start to tear up. "I can't think of a single time since we've become proper friends where you haven't put a smile on my face just by being you. And I know this sounds like I'm declaring my undying love to you or something but you just needed to know how much I appreciate you being there for me, how much I value our friendship, and how much I aspire to be you. You're a hardcore friend and I can't thank you enough for that." 

"Vee, come here." She says, pulling me into a hug. "Do you know how crazy you sound? Claiming that you aspire to be me when I model myself on you." She laughs a little as she says this, then goes back to holding my hands. "Everything I am, I am because of you. I was a bitch, Vee, and you know it. You made me want to be a better person. So shut the hell up, don't you dare say that I'm a better friend than you deserve because I owe you everything." 

"I don't know why I'm getting so emotional all of a sudden." I laugh, wiping a tear from my eye, it's your wedding day, you should be the one crying, not me."

"Maybe you're pregnant or something." Asher says, raising her eyebrow playfully. 

"Absolutely not." I tell her, "James and I are being extra careful now, one baby is difficult enough at the moment, we don't need another right now."

Asher looks around her briefly, then drags me to the corner of the room where there's nobody around us. "I know you don't want another baby any time soon, but how about a godchild?" She asks, a wide smile on her face.

I look down at her belly, even though I know there's no way she'd be showing. "You're pregnant?" I ask in absolute shock, how did I have no idea that this was happening?

"Eight weeks." She smiles, placing her hand on her belly. "I'm going to be a mum, Vee, I'm so happy."

"Does Taylor know?" I ask, wondering how he reacted to all of this.

She nods her head, her smile not fading for even a second. "He was so excited, we both can't wait to start this little family."

"Wait a second," I start, suddenly processing what she said just a few seconds ago. "Did you say eight weeks?" She nods her head in reply, not saying anything. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I found out just after your wedding, whilst you were on your honeymoon." She tells me, sounding a little bit upset, almost as if she doesn't want to tell me whatever it is that she's about to say. "I was going to tell you as soon as you got back but then you told me about your little breakdown, about how you needed a break from responsibilities for a while, how you want to live your life. I didn't want you to think I was burdening you."

"Asher..." I start, realising now that she was trying to shield me from the truth, not that it would do any good, sooner or later she'd start showing and I'd figure out that she was pregnant. "I needed a break from my life, not from yours." I smile warmly at her. "Just a couple days a month to see what life would be like if it didn't get so messed up along the way." I let out a long sigh, almost out of relief. "But I want to be there for you, and that's the responsible me and the reckless me talking." This causes us both to giggle a little. "I want to be there for you more than anything, I'll never see it as a burden, ever."

"I don't deserve you." She tells me, pulling me into another hug, and I want to tell her that she definitely does deserve me, and that she probably deserves better. But we get interrupted by a guest at the wedding wanting to talk to her, so I leave her be to mingle with her guests, and go to find James. 

I spend the whole night with him, occasionally talking to our old friends from the villa here and there, but we always find our way back to one another, right until the last song of the night, and we find that it's time to go home. Now the thing about James and I that most people don't know is that whenever we go out drinking, we always walk home together, hand in hand, looking up at the stars. We've always found it so romantic. Problem is, it's a long way back to our house from the wedding reception, so today we decided to walk to the nearest town from the reception, then get a taxi from there. 

"You think your dad got the kids to bed okay?" James asks, making conversation as we walk down the street together.

"I hope so, if they're screaming their heads off when we get in I don't know what I'll do." I laugh, accidently dropping my purse onto the pavement, so I bend don to pick it up but as I do so my lipstick rolls out of it. "Oh, for God's sake." I whisper to myself, then take a couple steps out into the road to pick it up. 

But as I bend down to get it, I see a bright light coming towards me, and I just freeze, terrified. "Violetta!" I hear James scream, and before I know it I'm being chucked out of the way of the car coming towards us, hitting the concrete hard. I catch my breath and sit up from where I lay, turning back to see James. But when I look at him, he's on the floor, holding his arm in pain. 

"James!" I scream in horror, running towards him, out of the corner of my eye I notice that the car has pulled over now and the driver is getting out of the car, but they don't matter to me, all that matters is James. I hold him in my arms and am instantly soaked, I look down and see that he's completely covered in blood. "James, you're going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay, I promise." I quickly turn my attention to the driver who's now stood by our side. "Call an ambulance." I tell them hastily, and they quickly pull out there phone, and knowing that ambulance will be on their way, I go back to comforting James.

"Vee," he starts, his voice groggy, and it's heart-breaking to hear how much pain he's in right now because of me. "I love you so much-"

"Don't you dare say that." I instruct him, cutting him off. "That's what people say when they think they're going to die." I prop his head up on my leg, hoping that somehow it will take some of his pain away. "You're not dying, James. You're going to live."

"Right as we start living the life we want to live and fate has to go and ruin in all." He jokes, which is typical him, trying to make the best of a bad situation. It's one of his traits that I admire the most, one of the reasons I fell in love with him in the first place. 

"This is all my fault." I sob, blaming myself for being so stupid. Why didn't I just look before walking into the middle of the road? And now I might lose the only man I've ever loved. 

"I'd die for you, Violetta, I said it in the villa, I said it when we were engaged and I'm saying it now as your husband." He reaches up and places his bloody hand on my cheek. And as he speaks, his voice gets more coarse, like it's harder for him to talk, that he's not strong enough. "I hope I'll see you again, somewhere better than this, where we can both be together again."

And as his hand slips from my cheek back down to the floor, and as the blue flashing lights appear, I whisper, "I love you."