Page 40 of I Always Will

“Don’t throw away everything you’ve ever wanted for someone who will either hate you or be an inconvenience in five years,” her dad told them over and over

“Do you think we’ll still know each other when we’re forty?” she asked Farid.

He grinned. “Statistically, it might seem improbable, but I like our chances. I think we’ll defy the odds. Just like you and Hailey will.”

She thought about that. She liked the idea. Her parents, and every other adult around her, were right—university was going to bring so many changes. Lots of them were wonderful and exciting, but some were terrifying. She was going to be left in a city she barely knew, all alone, and she was going to have to make new friends and meet new people, and maybe it would be easier to stay here where she knew the places and the people, but it wasn’t what she wanted. As terrifying as it was, she wanted to move away. She just wanted to do it with Hailey by her side, even if it was just metaphorically.

Farid, too.

Maybe they could defy the odds.

She looked at him warmly. “Do you think so?”

“I do.” He nodded solemnly, looking wise beyond his years again. “But you do have to talk to her first in order to manifest all of that. And, once you do that, I look forward to you telling me how right I am when we’re all forty and old.”

Alexandria laughed. Her mum insisted forty wasn’t old, that it was when your life began, but she couldn’t deny that, to her seventeen-year-old self, it seemed a ways off.

She didn’t know if she’d know Farid then, or Hailey, but she hoped she would. Could she be married to Hailey? Their contract would have expired five years prior, they might have been married for half a decade… She didn’t think that would be the worst way to get old.

But Farid was right, to get there, she’d have to talk to Hailey. And she didn’t like that at all.

Sixteen

Present day

Hailey locked the doors behind herself and Homer, sending them off for the night and heading for her car. She usually took the bus, but, knowing she was working a long day and would be using her lunch hour to join Esme’s bridal shopping expedition, she’d brought the car. Now, in the frosty night air, she was extra glad of it.

She turned the car on the minute she slammed the door behind her and waited for the sound of the locks clicking into place, cocooning her safely in the little red car. Knowing it was too soon and she was going to get blasted with cold air until the car warmed up didn’t stop her from turning the heating up high and rubbing her hands together as she waited for the warmth to come. She shivered hard, pulling her phone out to place it in the holder, and was surprised to find it already ringing.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach as she registered that it was Alexandria calling her. The initial flash of excitement at seeing her name there faded quickly into the fear that something was very wrong. It must be if Alexandria was calling her.

“Hello?” she said urgently into the phone upon answering. “Is everything okay?”

There was a loaded pause. “Hi.”

“Hello,” Hailey repeated, more than a little bewildered that Alexandria had called her and yet seemed unaware of why they were talking to one another.

“Hi. Sorry. I didn’t mean to call. Well, I did.” Hailey could practically hear her shaking her head. “I mean, I guess I did mean to call, I just didn’t think you’d answer, honestly.”

“Oh.” Hailey wasn’t sure what to do with that. “Do you want me to hang up and you can call back and speak to my answering machine?”

Of all the things she’d been expecting, she hadn’t been expecting Alexandria to laugh. “Ananswering machine? How old are you?”

Hailey had no idea what was happening, but she was happy to hear Alexandria laughing and assumed nothing bad was actually happening. It still did something to her when Alexandria joked so casually with her. Those glimpses of her soft heart were, even now, the greatest gifts Hailey could ever have received. “Ninety. But you’re older.”

“You know full well I’m younger than you, and I’m not the one who calls my voicemail an answering machine.”

Hailey was certain the warmth flooding through her wasn’t just from the car heating up. It was a dangerous game talking about ages with Alexandria, but Hailey would gladly play any game with her so long as she got to hear her laugh.

“So,” she said when their laughter subsided, “did you just need a break from Daley family time? Is that why you called?”

“Oh. Uh, no. I’m back home.”

Disappointment flooded through Hailey and she realised she’d been thinking about how, if Alexandria wanted to talk, Hailey could have gone over to the Daley house to hang out. Presumptuous, perhaps, but it still came naturally. Being around Alexandria came naturally. “Oh, cool. So, what’s up?”

She hesitated and, in the moments of loaded silence, Hailey’s brain filed through a million things she wanted to hear and a million she didn’t. “Well, I guess it was about my family.”

Not the worst it could have been. Not the best.

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