Reel or Real

Epilogue

It's been weeks since Alex had to go to London to fix whatever it is, she had to fix, and it's been weeks since we've last heard of her... again. None of us knew why she kept disappearing on us, especially when we started to think that everything was getting better. Even Mrs. Moore tried to reach out to her, to the people that she was supposed to be with, but it's just like she vanished.

We also tried to return to Elaine's house, but she, too, had vanished. There was another family living in their home and they had no idea where Elaine was, let alone who she is since they had bought the house from a different contact.

When Mrs. Moore tried to reach out to their people in London, they said that Alex had only been there for a day and was able to resolve everything quickly, immediately leaving after. Not wanting to cause panic within the business again, Mrs. Moore just claims that Alex had other business to attend to and was just making sure that she's right on track.

As smart as those people in the business industry are, they still bought Mrs. Moore's lie.

Then it was Amanda's turn to look, but even her had ended up in a dead end. Then we all lost hope.

"Maybe she's just not happy with us" Jace had claimed, his voice filled with defeat as we gathered around a table outside the school, all of us barely had enough energy to keep ourselves up.

"I thought she was" Sandy had spoken next, her eyes heavy with sadness as we all stared at the table.

"Maybe we just need to let her go" Ethan stated, but we can also hear the hesitance in his voice. "There must be a reason why she left. Maybe she's always being reminded of everything that she's lost when she's here. It hasn't been long when things went to shit and we can't expect her to move on that fast"

Rachel suddenly wrapped an arm around me and pulled me closer to her. That's when I broke.

Letting Alex go was something that we tried to do, we tried to stop thinking about her, stopped wishing that she would contact us, but every night, Jace and I would always be on the phone, crying our hearts out to each other.

"I need to tell you something" I sniffed and wiped my tears away after Jace finished talking.

"What is it?" he croaked; his voice scratchy with all the crying that we've done.

"It might be too late to say it now, but... I think I love her"

The boisterous laugh that came next had taken me by surprise and made my tears return inside my tear sacs. "Did you... hear what I just said?" I asked, confusion heavy in my voice and I'm pretty sure it's also very evident in my face.

"I did. I did" Jace said, but I barely understood him because of his laughter.

"Then why are you laughing?"

"Because we all knew that you like Alex. It's written all over your face, you just didn't know it yet. You might as well have a neon sign floating above your head saying 'I like Alex' and, honestly, it took you long enough to notice it"

It took me a while to process what he said and, when I fully understood what he said, I wasn't able to stop the laugh that escaped from my mouth and we laughed together like maniacs.

When our laughter had died down, we released a deep breath and had been encased in silence once again.

"It doesn't matter now, though"

----

"Are you guys ready for the next chapter in our lives?" Rachel asked, a big smile on her face, but everyone in the group can still see the sadness with it. It's been almost a month since Alex had disappeared, by now, all of us were able to receive acceptance letters from the universities that we've applied to and, even though we all had celebrated, all of us were still wishing that Alex is with us. The soccer team had even approached us to ask where Alex (Austin) was because they wanted to thank her because they all got accepted to their dream universities as well with full scholarship.