Billy and Gemma
He sat looking out across the skyline, eyes tired from scanning the roads below for any sign of her. The fairy lights that looped across his balcony began to make starbursts on the back of his retinas so it was hard to tell if his eyes were watering from the strain of concentrating hard or if tears of disappointment were trying to escape.
She wasn't coming.
This knowledge made his stomach twist because he'd been certain that she would. Lying underneath the quilt, having her so close to him, he'd used every ounce of his self-control. Now he wished he'd just gone for it, to hell with everyone else, why hadn't he taken that chance?
When she looked at him with her cat-like eyes, her blonde hair pushed back to reveal the faint lines on her forehead, all he wanted to do was cup her perfect face in his hands and kiss away all the worries she carried around with her.
Choose him or Tom, he'd told her straight that she had to make a choice, he couldn't take being around her any longer if she wasn't his. The idea of her ending up trapped with a man she didn't love was impossible to contemplate, but she wasn't here was she? So it figured that she was with him. How could he compete with all that money, all that security, that respectability?
He didn't hate Gemma for making that choice, but he hated the idea of a future without her. Of avoiding the family, confusing his best mate because he couldn't bear to be near her, and what about the girls? He'd miss them too, they all felt too precious to him to just walk away.
Since the first moment he'd laid eyes on her, the day he and Alfie pitched up after travelling, she'd been all he could think of. Now he was going to have to admit that she didn't like him enough to risk it, to risk everything to be with him. That's why he didn't hate her for staying away; there was so much at stake. He had no clue what she was battling with, he only wished he had a way to give her strength enough to face it and choose her heart over her head.
The bottle in his hand was empty now and if he ate another scotch egg he'd be sick, the cold was creeping into his bones and the damp air was making him shiver. Enough, enough dreaming, he takes one last glance over the balcony. What's that? A flash of blonde hair and an arm frantically waving a crumpled piece of paper, a cry of apology drifts up towards him.
Of course she got lost, she has no satnav, no sense of direction, no ability to time keep even. He flies down the stairs to the front door, regretting every scotch egg, but it doesn't matter, nothing matters because she has come!