The Other Charming

Something I wanted to share

First of all I hope you all had a good holidays! Second of all I will be updating again very soon because I'm sick af and have nothing else to do. And third of all I'm working on my own fiction story with my own characters, which I am sure I have mentioned before. This is the first chapter and I was wondering if you could all take a look and give me some feedback. Did you like it? Did you hate it? Do you want to read more? Should I write the full story? Let me know. Thank you. H xx

1 – The Big Questions

There are a vast amount of questions in this world. The five W's: who, what, why, where and when and of course the how's;

Why is my hair blonde?

When are you free?

How could someone do that?

Where are you?

Who am I?

What is my purpose in life?

My most important question however, was about my best friend. Jacob Fortier. The boy with chocolate brown hair that always looked windswept off his face. Eyes that looked like an extract of the sea, mixing between the shades of blue and a light but startling green.

Jake was a mystery: an enigma. I was the one person who knew everything about him, yet he was still a mystery to me.

But why? Why was he a mystery? What was his secret?

He took off for days at a time and didn't call. I was used to it after all these years but it still terrified me each time. He had his own world and left everyone else begging to be let in. He always carried around a tattered brown notebook. He had had it for years but it had never disappeared and never failed to be by his side.

I will always remember the first time he took off. It was 5 years ago. We were 13 and we had just broken up for summer. I had planned to go to his house and watch movies all day, eating popcorn until his parents kicked us out of the house because it was sunny outside and we were wasting our day.

As soon as I knocked on the door I had an uneasy feeling. I could sense something was wrong. Almost as if we had a best friend radar. His sister came to the door, crying. Her big blue eyes were rimmed red and she had mascara streaking down her cheeks. She held a tissue in one hand and a picture clutched to her chest as if her life depended on it.

"Are you okay?" I asked softly. Jake's family was like my own. I basically spent all my time there to get away from my own parents' constant fighting. I cared about them all.

"Um... Mia. You better come in." She mumbled almost inaudibly. The bad feeling in the pit of my stomach rose as if I was about to vomit it out.

I walked into the Fortier's living room expecting to see Jacob sat there with the same sad face. Instead I was met with his father's crying face. I immediately sat beside him.

"What's wrong? Where's Jake?" I asked, rushing over my words as if they would never be spoken if I didn't get them out now.

"Jake needed some time to think. We got a call this morning." His dad started, but began to sob hysterically. I looked at his sister, Katie for answers to all of my unsaid questions.

"Our Mum, she died in a car crash. She didn't see it coming." She cried and clutched the picture next to her heart even tighter as if her life depended on it.

I was feeling a lot of things. Sadness and sorrow to lose someone who was more like a mother to me than my own, worry for my best friend grieving alone, pity for him and his family and regret that I didn't say goodbye. I felt the tears pool into my ears and attack their way through my façade and slip down my face as a sign of defeat.

"She's gone?" I asked. His dad pulled me into a hug and I held onto him as tight as I could in case he slipped through my fingers too.

It took Jacob 3 days before he came back. When he did I was waiting for him. I had spent the 3 days in his bed, grieving over the loss of his Mum. My parents didn't care anyway so I stayed there for my own sanctity.

"Where have you been?" Was my first question. Then "Why did you go?" and finally "Are you okay?"

They came out in a string of garbled nonsense as I clung to his body and sobbed into his chest. He stroked my long blonde hair and whispered calming things into my ear softly.

"This should be the other way around." I giggled sadly. He looked at me and gave me a small smile.

"I know you were close to her. She was your Mum too. It's okay. I'm okay. I just needed to think but I know she's gone for a reason, and that she's watching over all of us right now." He spoke sadly. I tugged him over to his bed and we laid down, me in his arms cuddled up to his chest while he played with my hair.

"It's going to be okay." He whispered, to himself more than anything. Those words became his motto and security blanket.

Him running away became regular occurrence. Whenever he needed time to think, or just be alone he ran. He ran from all of his problems until he found the strength to deal with them. Nobody knew where he went. Nobody knew what his problems were.

The last time he ran away I asked him. I felt fed up of the mystery and needed to know the answers to all of my questions.

"Jake where did you go this time?" I asked as he sneaked through my bedroom window at 12am.

"Same place as usual." He smirked as if this was some sort of game. He climbed up my bed until he was sat next to me leaning against the headboard. He put his tattered notebook beside him and looked at me.

"And that is where?" I asked curiously.

"A secret." He smiled softly.

"Jake, I don't want to have secrets anymore. I'm tired of you being a mystery. I need answers." I sighed and looked into his eyes. His eyes made me melt every time I looked into them. I felt as though I had discovered something exciting through his eyes, as though they were a map leading me to my sanity.

"Mia you don't need to know everything. There's no excitement when you know everything." He said and gave me a cheeky smirk.

"Can you stop being a puzzle for once and listen to me? I need to know this. I'm your best friend and I feel like I know nothing about you." I spoke and looked at my hands which were dancing together.

"Do we really even know ourselves though?" He asked thoughtfully.

"Jacob Fortier will you stop that and do this for me?" I chastised jokingly. I was getting annoyed but didn't want to fight with him.

"Amelia Maddison you do not need to know," He spoke. "But I will let you in this once because otherwise you'll kill me." He smirked.

He held out his hand towards me. I looked at the tanned outstretched palm that was so dark compared to my own pale skin. I contemplated for a while whether I actually wanted to know or if I wanted it to stay a mystery. I hesitantly took his hand and he intertwined his fingers with my own.

"Welcome to my life." He spoke as he helped me out of the window and then we took off into the night.