I left my room the next morning fully intending on talking to Fletcher and sorting this whole thing out. A full night of sleep combined with a long period of thinking in the shower had convinced me that I did not want to part from Fletcher on a bitter note. I’d rather view this summer as a once in a lifetime experience than have it marred by a stupid fight from lack of communication.
That wasn’t to say that I was sure that everything would return to normal between the two of us, my flight was leaving almost first thing tomorrow and I could not see any way to repair whatever we had in that short space of time.
Dad noticed my change in mood and sent me a small smile when I met him in the corridor before the three of us headed down to breakfast.
Unlike previous days - where breakfast had been rushed in a bid to get down to the pool as soon as possible – breakfast was a tranquil affair, perhaps because we realised it was the last real day and we wanted to drag it on and make it as good as it could possibly be.
And so I did not reach the swimming pool and the sun-loungers until slightly later than usual. And they looked so tantalisingly comfy – and for some reason I was still tired – but I reminded myself that I might as well get the awkward conversation with Fletcher over and done with, I had a feeling that I was going to be even more in need of a lie down after that.
I stood still for a few moments, deliberating over where to check first. I didn’t know where Fletcher might be, hell he might have been on a trip for all I knew but I decided to do a quick lap of the pool to see if I could spot him.
My search for him was fruitless but just as I was about to let out a scream of annoyance I spotted his parents sat talking on their sun loungers.
“Hi Mr and Mrs Sullivan,” I greeted.
“Oh hello Eleanor, can we help you?” Mr Sullivan asked.
“Uhm, I was kind of wondering if you know where Fletcher is?” I told them nervously.
“Fletcher?” Mrs Sullivan repeated confused, “he said he was going down to the beach to meet you.”
Oh. It seemed that Fletcher wasn’t exactly telling everyone the truth either.
“Oh...yeah, of course,” I said, “silly me, we agreed to meet there and I forgot.”
“Well have fun!”
“I will do, thanks.”
“It’s no problem, just make sure that Fletcher is actually back in time for tea today, he was late back because of you,” Mr Sullivan said jokingly.
I nodded and laughed but left very confused. Fletcher had not been spending time with me yesterday so who on earth had made him late for his tea? I presumed that he had been spending time with Leah or Paul, I suppose I could always ask him – or Leah if the conversation between us didn’t go well – if it really started to bother me that much.
Heading down to the beach I was still unsure whether Fletcher would actually be there, sure, he had told his parents he would be but he had also told them that he was meeting up with me so I couldn’t really take anything he had said as law.
The beach was busy when I arrived, or it might just have seemed that way because I was alone and people seemed to be accidentally walking into me or cutting off my path all the time, that and I really had absolutely no idea where I was going. Fletcher could be anywhere. Was he sunbathing or in the sea? Was he alone or with Leah and Paul?
I really had no idea what to keep my eyes peeled for.
The beach had a surprising amount of rocks on it – rocks that I hadn’t noticed during the beach party a few nights back - and so I stumbled along the sand, my gaze flickering everywhere looking for Fletcher. I seemed to have spent a worrying amount of time this holiday looking for the boy.
There was no sign of him though, not on the stretch of beach that guests were allowed on and not in the sea, there was no sign of Leah or Paul either, my search was not going well.
Remembering that the last time I had been on a search for Fletcher he had been on the golf course I decided to go there next, hoping that he would be there. My legs hurt and the walking I had to do was not helping with that. Not that I was complaining, just stating a fact.
“Hey Nell,” a soft voice said to me.
I looked up from the floor to see Paul; we hadn’t spoken in a few days, not since before everything went down between Fletcher and me. But it was nice to see a familiar face of a similar age and I smiled properly for the first time that day.
“Hey Paul,” I greeted, “how are you?”
“I’m fine, how are you?” Paul’s tone was one of concern and I realised that Fletcher might have actually told somebody that we were no longer exactly on speaking terms.
“I’m fine.”
“I heard about what happened between you and Fletcher.”
“And let me guess he hates me?”
“He doesn’t hate you. He’s extremely pissed off but he doesn’t hate you,” Paul reassured me, “I think he’s just annoyed at the whole situation, thinks he could have handled it better himself.”
“He did nothing wrong,” I pointed out.
“That doesn’t stop Fletcher from beating himself up about it,” Paul told me, “and apparently he said something really shitty to you. He didn’t say what but he did seem really sorry about it.”
“It was nothing, but I don’t suppose you know where he is?”
“So that’s what you’re looking for, I saw you walking down the beach in the opposite direction looking like you were on some sort of military mission,” Paul teased.
“Not quite,” I replied.
“As for where Fletcher is, I don’t really know but he was with Leah the last time I talked to him, she might know where he is.”
“And where’s Leah?”
“You’re hopeless at this,” Paul teased, “but I think she’s at the ice-cream place.”
“Thanks Paul.”
“No problem Eleanor.”
I walked away, sighing at how far away the damn ice cream place was, and it was all an uphill climb, but at least it meant that I could check in at the golf place on the way, just in case.
My pace hurried slightly, I wanted to find Fletcher as soon as possible. The longer it took me to find him the more the nerves were building up in the stomach, the more monologues I was preparing and the more monologues were being rejected. I was over thinking everything. Did I start with hello? Or sorry? Or just launch straight into my mini speech?
There was a part of me that was pretty sure that Fletcher would not be worrying about all this if he was in my position and another part of me that knew that Fletcher would never screw up this badly, truthfully he didn’t seem to have a bad bone in his body. All the things he had done wrong had either been exaggerated in my head or were accidental slips, although his last few words to me had been quite malicious.
I began to quicken my pace again although slowed it quickly after as I was pretty sure that I was a second away from falling over. I was not exactly a clumsy person but my flip-flops and the newly washed floor (I don’t really know why either) could not make a great combination.
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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