Me Without You

In truth, I wasn’t paying any attention to the stories Ciara was telling me as we wandered down the high street. I was too busy turning over the phone call between Jack and I the night before. He wanted me to come back. He had told me so, straight out. No embellishments, no batting around. I want you to come back home to me. The exact nine words he had spoken to me. Yesterday morning I would have dropped everything and ran to him. Home was with Jack then. Wherever he was, that was my home. But now, after remembering what it was like to be surrounded by my family, surrounded by people who unequivocally loved me, I wasn’t sure where my home was.
“Jay?” Ciara stood with her hand on her hip, staring me down. “You weren’t listening to a word I said, were you?” I gave her a sheepish grin and shook my head, running a hand through my loose hair.
“Sorry, Lep.” She cracked a t smile at the old nickname. “I’ve been a bit distracted.” Ciara sighed and grabbed my hand, dragging me a couple of stores further before dragging me into Café Mocha.
“Two mochas with whiskey please, Roanne.” Ciara ran off an order to the young girl at the counter and then slid us into a near-by table. “Tell me what’s wrong.” I sighed and leaned back in the chair, wondering where to start.
“It’s all a big mess.” I grumbled, throwing my head onto the table. “Nothing’s simple. Jack and I are getting married in October. That’s if we’re getting married at all. And then there’s the twins! I don’t even know whose kids they are, Ciara.” I watched the people walk past in the sunshine and groaned. “Everything’s so much easier here. My families here, I don’t have to worry about being chased by my fiancés fans every minute.”
“Then stay.” I turned my head so I could look Ciara in the eye and she raised her eyebrow. “What? You said it yourself. It’s easy here. You’d have the whole family by you. We could easily find you a cheap house, there’d be no problem in getting you a job. Everyone would pitch in when the babies get here.” It didn’t sound like an all too terrible idea. I would finally have a proper family around me. Blood family, not just people I’ve adopted into my life like the Fuentes’. I would never have any trouble with babysitting. I had dual citizenship I wouldn’t have to worry about any immigration issues. Everything would be easy.
“Except for the father.” I mumbled and Ciara hummed to get me to repeat myself. “Everything would be simple, except for the father of the babies.” Ciara waited to reply as she thanked Roanne for the coffees and took a sip.
“Well, would it really be so different?” She asked, placing he cup back on the table. “I mean, all of them are in bands, so all of them would be touring. Would it really be so different for the twins to grow up in Ireland with their family and hardly see their dad than it would be if they were raised in the U.S?” I made sense to me. There was no way I was uprooting my kids to constantly travel the country. Their entire relationship would mostly be on Skype anyway. The only difference would be that they would have to come to Ireland at the end of tour for a while instead of going home.
“What about Jack?” I whispered into my cup. “I love him.”
“And if he really loves you he’ll respect your decision on what’s best for you and the twins and work with you on it.” For an eighteen year old, the girl was smart. I nodded slowly and we made small talk about life in Ireland while we finished our coffees.

I giggled as Ciara told me about her friends as we wandered around the gardens outside the castle.
“No, seriously, he did.” She laughed. “He set the curtains on fire.” I shook my head and shoved my hands into the back pockets of my jeans to keep me warm. The air got cold quickly here and the sun was quickly fading behind the horizon. I should have brought a second jacket.
“Let’s head home.” I grumbled, pulling my jersey sleeves down over my arms. “It’s getting cold.” Ciara mumbled that I was a pussy before leading the way back to the house and the warmth of the fireplace that awaited me. By the time we reached the house Ciara agreed that the temperature had dropped and we quickly bundled ourselves inside.
“Took you two long enough!” Liana called from the kitchen when she heard the door slam. “You’re teas just about ready.” I smiled at the thought of food and quickly ran upstairs to swap my shoes out for my slippers. I stared at my phone sitting on my bed and toyed with the idea of telling him my possible plans. I let my inability to keep a secret get the better of me and dialled Alex’s number.
“You!” He yelled down the phone and I quickly pulled it away from my ear. “You didn’t say goodbye to me last night after your talk with Jack.”
“I’m sorry. I just needed some time to think.”
“Yeah, well. Why are you calling me, Roberts?” I took a breath and suddenly felt nervous about the topic. But what was there to be nervous about? It was only a simple idea. It probably wasn’t going to end up happening anyway.
“I was thinking about, uh, staying.” I muttered quickly.
“What? You made no sense.”
“I was thinking about staying in Ireland.” I blurted out.
“Oh, that’s cool.” I was slightly concerned about how good he was reacting to it. “You can fly back to us whenever you want. We’re on tour for a couple more weeks.” There it was. I stammered over how to say it, how to tell him.
“No, Alex.” I began slowly, my tone catching his full attention. “I meant stay as in… permanently.”

Notes

As you can tell, I've currently run out of creative chapter names. But here you are, it's getting better.
Enjoy!
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