Oh, how times have changed

The journey to the airport wasn’t exactly brimming with conversation. Still reeling, Charley and I sat pretty much in silence on the train, broken up only by the occasional ‘this stop, right?’, or ‘need help with your suitcase?’. The rest of the time, speaking for myself at least, was spent trying to sort out my mess of feelings.

I had always known that Mum and Dad could find out me and Charley’s relationship, even before it was even remotely romantic. And then when I realized I had irretrievably fallen for her, I even believed I had come to terms with the fact that they would eventually find out – in fact, if we were going to have anything serious, we’d most likely eventually have to tell them ourselves.

But for them to stumble across it literally hours after Charley and I had gotten together, and in the manner they did … it felt unbelievably shitty. Their reactions were about as bad as it could get. Especially knowing that I wasn’t going to see either of them for the next six months to give us a chance to talk about it face to face.

And yet, I undoubtedly felt the most guilt towards Charley herself. I was well aware that even though I now knew that deep down, she had actually wanted this for us for a while, it had only actually happened because of how hard I had pushed for it. Because she knew that two people in our position could have their lives and relationships derailed just as a result of the social stigma of us being together.

And then the very next morning after we had agreed to be together, one of her worst fears came true.

I didn’t say anything pretty much the whole time as we travelled to the airport. But as we actually walked into the terminal, Charley a few steps ahead of me, I couldn’t hold it back anymore.

“Charley.”

“Yeah?” She stopped and turned around.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, looking at the floor. “I know this is everything you were afraid of.”

That determination I had come to associate with her so closely flashed in her eyes, as she walked back to me.

“Hey.” She reached up and cupped my face with both hands and smiled at me reassuringly. “When I told you I didn’t care what would happen as long as I had you, I meant it. Now, this is all going to be pretty rough to get through. But when you get back, we’ll figure it out. Together.”

My gaze dropped back down again. “Stop it.”

“What?” she smirked. “I’m being a dick again?”

“Yes. I’ll cry if you keep that up.”

“Please do,” she sighed. “It’ll make me less embarrassed about crying so much yesterday.”

“True … it was a bit much, huh.”

“Hey!” She rolled her eyes at me. “I’m over here trying to cheer you up, dude.”

“You know me well enough by now,” I replied, shrugging innocently.

“Uh huh. I suppose I do.”

She began to move away, but I reached out to take her arm. “Hang on, Charley.”

“Mm?”

“Thank you,” I said quietly. “Just … thanks.”

“Come on,” she replied, pinching my cheek gently. “Let’s go get you checked in, then we can grab a coffee. Think we could both do with a pick me up.”

I dropped off my suitcase and we both made our way over to the small café by the entrance. I was painfully aware that we only had a few minutes before it became extremely irresponsible not to head off to security for my flight. We sat next to each other in the booth seats in a comfortable silence, but it didn’t stop my mind from going a million miles an hour like usual.

Eventually, we finished our coffees and sauntered over to security, and I realized I had absolutely no idea what to say to her now. I wanted to reaffirm what she had said, that we would figure it all out together. I suddenly remembered Max, that he knew about us too. And that I hadn’t talked to her at all about the last six months – my time in Japan, and also how her job was going. Most of all, I wanted to tell her just how much I was going to miss her, these next few months till I saw her again. There was so, so much to say. But right here, we had so little time.

Throughout my musing, I felt Charley’s eyes on me – looking at me carefully, trying to gauge what I was thinking. When she noticed my attention was back on her, she gave me a small smile.

“I love you,” she said.

And that suddenly made it a whole lot simpler for me. I had almost forgotten how amazing she could be at doing that.

“I love you too,” I replied.

She beamed at me now, and just looking at her made me feel like everything would be alright. I leaned in to kiss her, and she threw her arms around my neck as she kissed me back. I suddenly clocked that it was the first time we had ever been like this in public, for anyone to see – and for a first time, I guess it was pretty over the top. I wouldn’t have been surprised if we were getting looks. But after everything, I don’t think either of us could really care less.

When Charley finally pulled away, she was still smiling. “Have a safe flight, okay? And call me when you get there.”

“I will,” I said. “See you later.”

She was still stood there waving all the way up until I turned the corner to go to my gate.

It was pretty difficult just to wrap my head around how different things were from the last time I left London, as I found myself in my aisle seat settling in for the fourteen-hour journey back to Japan. My stepmum had always tried her hardest to help Charley and I connect as brother and sister over the years, even when it sometimes felt unnatural given the circumstances. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to find out about something like this with two people you view as your own children. And that wasn’t even considering my dad – as always set in his traditional ways, like he had been for my whole life. I had no idea how we would be able to reconcile this development.

Somehow though … maybe this was delusional, and I was still just riding the high of the night before – but I just had this deep-rooted feeling that with Charley by my side, everything would turn out okay.

With the two of us on the other side of the world from each other once again, it seemed like we would just have to wait and see how it all turned out.

*****

Author's note: Thanks for reading so far! Will probably be quite a while for the next chapter to drop, as I don't write linearly at all really and the next chunk of the story will take a while with me going back and forth and changing things. But I hope this point is a decent place to take a break at. See you soon!