Getaway

Chapter 20

And so I hiked up the pebbled path and wondered how on earth I had managed to get out of shape. Yes, I had given up volleyball but it was hardly like I’d spend all my time sitting in my room doing nothing, I still ran and yet I felt strangely out of breath as I walked up the hill and it had nothing to do with a fear of what was waiting for me at the top.

I stopped for a few moment to rest my aching legs, the stop was perhaps unnecessary, it was perhaps me trying to delay the moment I found Fletcher – which I kind of hoped was inevitable – and I perhaps was not quite willing to admit that.

Because Fletcher’s words had struck a chord, as most words do, and I now worried that it was my fault that my mother left. I knew – and Paul’s words certainly supported this – that Fletcher didn’t mean it, but that didn’t stop me from fearing that I had driven Fletcher away too, that he wasn’t going to come back no matter what I said because I had already screwed it up so spectacularly. And so I was reluctant to go up a stupid hill.

I walked into the golf course a few minutes later and approached the attendant at the cabin where you pick up the clubs from.

“How many of you are playing today?” she asked me automatically.

“Uhm, I’m not here to play golf,” I said nervously, “I was worrying if you’d seen a boy come onto the course, very tall, Australian, curly dirty blonde hair.”

The employee’s face did not show any sign of recognition but she turned to me with a pitying look, it was not appreciated.

“I’ve only just started my shift,” she told me, “but you can go and check if you want.”

Thanking her I turned and did just that.

The course was luckily not as big as I might have expected and I covered the area within a matter of minutes, there had been no sign of Fletcher and I felt my stomach sink just a little bit lower than it had been before. I couldn’t see how it had any further to drop at this point.

Dad had been playing – unsurprisingly, he seemed to be addicted – and I had quickly said hello to him before hurrying off, he hadn’t seemed concerned, he was used to my strangeness by this point.

Walking through the golf course reception area I saw that the lady from before was still on duty.

“Did you find him?” she asked me as I went past.

“No,” I admitted.

“Boyfriend?”

“Friend...I think.”

“It’ll all work itself out,” she assured me.

“I sure as hell hope it will.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

I strode out of the building and resumed my uphill trek, to be fair I had already completed the majority of it but I still had a little bit of a climb to go. My movements seemed to be wearier than before, more lethargic, as if the longer it took me to find Fletcher the more disheartened I became.

It was ridiculous.

But I carried on walking none the less, pausing only to readjust my bikini neck-tie which was beginning to dig into my neck. The prices I paid for looking semi-decent.

My footsteps got heavier as time went on and I found myself wondering how on earth this walk had seemed so short when I had come up here before. It might have had something to do with the fact that my steps were slowing and that my mind was wandering, before I had been in a group joking and talking, now I was alone and the path was eerily quiet, either nobody was visiting the ice-cream shop today or everybody was already there.

I carried on walking and was relieved when I finally reached the top, thankful that the sun had decided to take a small break today and was not bearing down on me relentlessly, it was about time something seemed to go well.

When I finally reached the top I noticed that the place was indeed quiet, or at least quieter than the times I had been there previously. But the smell of sugar still lingered outside and it was clear that somebody had dropped an ice cream recently, as a melted pool of the stuff lay on the floor, I made sure to step over that.

Pushing open the door I quickly looked around, searching for the familiar face of Leah. She was nowhere to be seen but I was yet to check the booths on the opposite side of the store.

Going over there I quickly realised that Leah wasn’t there, but Fletcher was. He was leant forward in the booth, his mess of curls hanging forward almost covering his face and his fingers tapping away at the table. He was alone but I highly doubted that was a permanent thing, Leah must have been in the toilet or something.

I planned on heading over there, sliding into the seat opposite him and getting the conversation over and done with before he had a chance to stop me and before Leah returned. I psyched myself up one time, mentally reminding myself that I had to do it at some point, after that I could stop worrying, stop stressing and make the most of my last day at the resort before we left tomorrow.

My feet started to carry me towards Fletcher before I even really processed that I was moving, it appeared that my body had taken control of the situation for me, I looked at them confused, it probably wasn’t a good thing that they were moving without my permission, it probably meant that I needed to see a doctor as soon as possible.

I looked up when I was a few metres away from the table and was shocked to see that the seat I had planned to sit in had been taken.

It was not Leah as I had expected but rather Carrie-Anne who was sat in my place – well okay, technically it wasn’t my place – and Fletcher looked like he was enjoying his time spent with her.

I thought it through in my mind. They both had – surprisingly – wildly attractive accents and were the kind of gorgeous that seemed to only exist in books and movies. They were both untroubled, with the perfect families and the perfect friends and the totally normal personalities. They looked perfect together and there was absolutely no way for me to fit into the picture without something seeming off.

I turned away without saying a word and neither of them noticed me go, they were both too engrossed in their conversation. And there was nothing wrong with that face, everything happens for a reason after all.

By this point my stomach was down by my feet and I felt a headache returning.

I knew that I had no right to be annoyed at Fletcher, just because I hated Carrie-Anne – for no apparent reason I know, call it natural instinct – didn’t mean that he had to hate her too. And that fact was especially true given the state our... friendship was in at the moment. But it still hurt to see them together, despite the fact that it occurred to me that they had probably been the correct pairing all along.

And deep down I knew that it didn’t bother me, I wasn’t going to see either of them again, and therefore there was no point me being bothered about it.

I was just going to go back to the pool, lie on my sun-lounger and eat coffee ice cream until the time came to go back to my room. And I was happy with that.

xxx

Author's Note: Hey there awesome people, so you may or may not have been expecting that. I'm estimating that there is only 3/4 chapters left and you guys might not be expecting the ending and that is all I'm going to say on the matter. The next update might not be a for a few days because Nano starts tommorow and so that is probably going to be my biggest focus.

Charlotte

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