Thistle Hotel, London Heathrow Airport

I place the tin foil wrapped package on the bedside counter and open it. Ugh, I'm starving, we knew that I would be by the time I arrived at the hotel, hence the reason for sending me off with a supper of homemade beef sandwiches which my grandpa had kindly prepared. But things aren't looking good and the sandwiches are now suffering the same after effects of an overbooked and overcooked Sunday afternoon train journey to London that I am; a trodden on sweaty mess in desperate need of a shower. Or a bin, which is where they would be heading if only I had a better option. An offer to dine in a Michelin starred restaurant in the heart of London eating Carpaccio or oysters or something equally unpronounceable and grotesque, or at the very least a freshly packaged tuna and cucumber sandwich at the airport cafeteria; it's not like I'm fussy. But I don't have either option since I'm all alone in this over carpeted shoe box of a hotel room, wedged somewhere between the M4 and the runway, oh and it's 9pm on a Sunday night. The sandwiches are going to have to do.

In truth it isn't their battered demeanour which is to blame for making me feel queasy, it's the feeling of loneliness which they represent, a feeling which is beginning to now escalate inside me, it's torrent unearthing a long buried well of inferiority which is now threatening to drown me once more.

I should just turn back now before I've got on the plane, and save myself the torment of having to do it at the other end. I've got my conditional offer at UCL and the safety net of home and Liam close by. I've got everything to look forward in a place where I can allow myself to grow freely, but in a locality which isn't foreign enough to trip me up. So why put myself through this, why risk a relapse of my nerves and sanity by dragging myself through old mud unnecessarily?

Because I want desperately to forgive him, to tell him that I love him too, to find out what our relationship might have been. I have tried to forget and move on but in my dreams he has haunted me. I can never get to him for I'm perpetually stuck to the ground, sinking within the quagmire and screaming until my voice is no longer heard as Lottie sweeps in, carrying him away on her black wing. Each time I wake up sobbing, sobs which only worsen when I remember that it actually happened, my nightmare has come true, and she took him away.

Maybe this is her sick way of getting back at me, by doing to me exactly what I did to her? Since she is the one who has been in love with Louis for her entire life whilst I only wanted him once I had run out of options, clinging onto him like he was my last piece of Hubba Bubba. So maybe this is just karma? Was I really that rotten? Did I really hurt her so much by claiming Louis as mine? But any action of mine she has brought on herself, what with being off with every different lad who so happened to cross her path. You don't just get mono by smiling. So she took her eye off the game and I stole her prize and we all know thst she only ever let it happened because she never ever contemplated that I might stand a chance, because just like she's always saying, 'poor little Niamh', Louis would never actually want to go out with me, like for real.

And so the sensible action would be to walk away, to return home and keep moving on, just like I have been trying to do for the past year. Because for in all honesty, apart from the nightmares, once they left town, on the first leg of their journey to Kathmandu or Whoknowswhat, my anxiety level improved greatly, as I enjoyed instead thinking of all the terrible gastric diseases they might encounter on their travels, laughing at the idea that they might suffer the same dysentery that I had as a child, only they would experience it in situ, in India or Vietnam or some other humidity riddled locale with only a hole in the ground to relieve themselves in.

With Louis gone I also felt relief; relief from the persistent nag of self-doubt, the nag that said that I was standing at the wrong angle, that my mascara had run making me look like a demented Cruella De Ville, or that I might have a dangling gargantuan bogey crawling its way across my face. But the truth of the nag was the worst one, for that was the nag that always asked the hardest question; was I really, actually, cool enough to go out with someone as on trend as Louis had seemed to become? And so with him gone I felt relief; relief that I could now pass wind freely or go to bed at 8pm instead of hanging out in some sunken club pretending to make inane conversation with other over grown kids desperate to stay relevant. I even began to think that maybe mother wasn't so bad since once I turned 18 she freely began to share her wine with me, a ploy of course to make herself feel better, whilst we spent our evening's binge watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And whilst this is definitely not how I had picture my life turning out, the fact that I was having such thoughts and happily enjoying such inertia, surely that meant that I don't actually love Louis the way that I've convinced myself I do?

None the less I allowed myself to day dream about him without the reality of the cold-cuts of him being here. Whilst Mr Singh droned on, yet again, about moles in chemistry repeat class, I imagined what Louis would look like with a tan; had his hair turned lighter in the sun, how would he manage it without his mother around to style it, and what about his money and his passport, what if he lost them? But most of all I dreamt of what it would be like to kiss him again, to feel his tongue, his heat. Did he think of me too, not only of my physical image but also of my idiosyncrasies, my personality? And it's the need to answer these questions which has brought me here now, to Heathrow Airport, willingly signing myself up to the trauma of an eleven hour flight and the prospect of a second nervous breakdown, as I travel to Los Angeles to meet him.

Authors note: So this story is kind of based on my own travelling experiences. Of course not all of the plot is true but I have been to all of the places in real life so a lot of the opinion is my own true opinion. I dedicated this chapter to imaginator1D because if Anna hadn't written After then I would never have discovered Wattpad. After provided me with so much inspiration to keep writing and I am still reading the book for like the 50th time! PS - The video I uploaded is the opening credits to 1D's Where We Are tour. I thought it fitting because it shows them on their travels and creates the excitement of what might be about to happen for Niamh.