Chapter 17 - 'Esty! We were 16!'
Ash and Esther continue to email and make plans to meet again
Welcome to my serialised romance novel Love You Too, Esty Mackie. If you’re new here, you might want to skip back to the start. This is another two chapter weekend, so look out for the next chapter tomorrow!
If you’d like a little catch up, here’s last week’s chapter
Previously: Whilst celebrating Neil's birthday, Esther receives news from Gloria
Ash/Esther
Hi Ash,
God. Brighton, yes. Haven’t thought about that for a while.
Remember how much trouble we got in when we arrived home. I’ll never forget how my Dad looked when we walked into my living room.
Worth it though!
Esther x
Esty! We were 16! No wonder your dad went mad. And he absolutely knew what had happened on that trip. The look he gave me was chilling, proper sleep with one eye open stuff. Probably why Mum yanked me out of there so fast.
Did you know I saved all my money from my Tesco job for weeks, and I was so nervous that somehow I wouldn’t be able to pull it off.
Anyway, of course I remember. Angry dads aside, it was perfecto!
Ash x
Ash, Can I ask you something? I’ll say now, it’s a weird question.
Of course!
Did you ever feel like people might wonder why we were together? I did at the beginning, because you could have gone out with anyone and the fact it was me made me feel all elevated. To be honest, I reckon college would have been a very different experience if we hadn’t been a thing.
Not to be negative, but you were always going to go places. You were always the sort of gold dust person who grabbed at everything and had it all pay off. And I’m still here, and always have been. It’s fine though, we can’t all be gold dust people :)
E x
Eh? I never felt like that for a second.
Is everything ok? You seem quite down on yourself and you shouldn’t be. Look at where I am now. Emailing under supervision in rehab because I spent a lot of time off my tits. I’m not allowed my phone. The only friend I’ve got here is a twenty-two year old called Daisy who knows an unsettling amount about me via the medium of Heat magazine. I’m trying to get divorced, and almost every minute of my days are planned out, and a lot of it involves time spent sitting in a circle talking about where it all went wrong. It’s not exactly going places and definitely not dusted in gold. Fuck knows what things are going to be like when I leave here. Probably Daisy will sell her story.
I’m kidding. She’s decent.
So I’m glad you’re still around and if you’re still up for coming again maybe we can arrange that? Maybe without being chaperoned by my mother? Maybe we could hang out for a bit longer than 20 minutes?
Ash x
I’d still like that. And I promise I’ll be nicer this time :)
Haha! Esty, you were fine! Can you come on Thursday?
Not this Thursday, sorry. I’m looking at a house. I assume Gloria will be visiting you on Sunday? If not, I could.
Oh, well how exciting. I hope it’s the house of your dreams! Mum’s in London visiting Tyler this weekend so that works. Sundays are free visiting hours after lunch so come anytime after 1pm. Hopefully it’ll be a nice day and we can take a walk or something.
Sunday it is. See you then. Around 2.
xx