Hello everybody! I'm back for the first update of the week, and am hoping to stick to a Wednesday and Friday updating schedule now that uni's started back up again. I really enjoyed writing this chapter and I am so glad that you've all decided to continue reading this story and reviewing and adding it to your alerts and favourites and such! I hope you don't mind that I haven't had time to reply to reviews as of yet this week as things have been quite hectic with lectures and readings and such, but I have tomorrow off so I hope to get that done then :)

And again, I don't own or have anything to do with skins but this is based on a true story.

Chapter 7: Follow Me

The train ride to Lille was positively blissful. Emily and I were one of the only people in the car of the train, and we got big seats that reclined and had power outlets built into them as I'd made sure to buy the first class tickets. Looking out the window and seeing the snow covered French countryside took my breath away. Everything was so calm and peaceful and warm. Emily was sat across from me, a table between the two of us. She charged her cell phone and reclined her chair and fell asleep. She looked so beautiful and peaceful that I almost didn't want to get to the train station in Lille since I'd have to wake her up. Neither of us had slept very well since we got here and though I felt exhausted, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the beautiful woman in front of me.

I was so excited to finally be going home with Emily for so many different reasons. I wanted her to meet my mum and my friends and I wanted to meet hers as well. I wanted to see how she would fit into my life with the pressures of work and everyday stresses. I suppose I was a bit worried yet excited at the same time about what was to come. I knew I'd only really seen one part of who Emily was so far and I couldn't wait to find out about all her little quirks and what she did for a living and all the kinds of things you would usually find out on a first date. It seemed a bit odd to me, not knowing very much about the details of Emily's life, but then again we'd only known each other for about a day and a half. I did care for her quite a lot, though – there was something that immediately attracted me to her, from the first time I saw her with that blue hat on her head. Obviously she'd felt drawn to me too, for whatever reason, since she chose to come and talk to me, ask me for a cigarette when she could have asked anybody else around us who was smoking. It was all a bit mind-blowing really, to think that if I had decided to stand somewhere else, or had argued a bit more with the airline attendant that I wouldn't have been at that place at the moment Emily decided to walk out into the cold. Would she still have found me? Would we still have developed the same relationship that we did?

Regardless of what could have been, I was immensely happy to have what I did now. It finally looked as though I'd be home in time for Christmas, and I'd get to see my friends and my mum and maybe even ring in the New Year with Emily and kiss her at midnight.

I stared out the window into the vast French countryside and smiled to myself.

I was happy.

"Fuck, Naoms, I'm fucking freezing, I think my nose is going to fall off," Emily said through chattering teeth as we queued up at the Lille Europe train station. I was watching the departures and arrivals board, watching as many of the departing trains turned from the green "on time" to orange " delayed" and then red "cancelled". It was frightening to say the least.

"I'm sorry, Ems, d'you want me to find another jacket for you?" I asked as I tried to move us closer to the sporadically placed heating poles which everybody was crowding around for warmth.

Emily shook her head and held her hands up in front of her once she managed to get a coveted spot by the heating pole. "It's alright, I'll be fine now, Naoms," she said quickly before sneezing. God, she had a cute sneeze.

"Okay, just try to keep an eye out for where I am and don't let me get too far ahead in the line. We've got to stick together, yeah?" I said, kissing her on the cheek gently as she nodded at me and smiled her thanks.

The line moved quite slowly and eventually Emily had warmed up enough to come stand next to me again. A EuroStar representative flowed through the queue and asked to see people's tickets. From what I could see, she was marking who was first class and trying to create a designated line for them. I was so thankful we'd bought those first class tickets as the representative approached us and asked us for our tickets. She smiled at us and moved us into the much shorter first class line. We got through customs easily enough and were seated in a warm waiting area for our train. The company even dropped off warm dinners for us all while we waited as our train was delayed by about two hours due to the poor weather conditions.

"We couldn't have done this without each other, could we, Naoms?" Emily asked me as she slipped another forkful of rice into her mouth.

"No, Emsie, I don't think we could have." I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. I watched as the corners of her mouth turned up before she continued to eat her dinner.

I'd never really depended on anybody other than my mum, but this trip had definitely forced me to depend on Emily, and vice versa. So while Emily and I didn't have the quintessential perfect first date, or the proper factual foundation for a good relationship, we'd built something else. We built something based on trust and dependence and perseverance. That must have counted for something. I may not have known what she did for a living, or whether she still lived at home or even what she was doing in Toronto, but I knew that Emily trusted me and cared about me. I knew that she'd stick with me through blizzards and cancelled flights and closed airports, and let's face it, travelling can be one of the most stressful things a person goes through these days, especially when things don't go according to plan. But we'd pulled through. It gave me hope that we could continue to do that through whatever relationship we may form once we get back to England.

I'd never really bothered to let anybody get in too deep and meet the real Naomi Campbell. I was far too sensitive, far too soft deep down and I knew that if I really did ever let somebody in, it would have to be a big deal for me. I'd have to really care about them to let them see the real me. Emily had seen glimpses, but I was still cautious of letting her in completely just yet. While we'd built a strong bond and strong feelings for one another, everything was still too unsure for us to delve into things any further just yet. And to be honest, I was alright with that, probably because I was petrified of what would happen if I did let Emily in and things didn't work out due to circumstance or conflicting schedules or other trivial things.

But within that moment, within knowing that I couldn't have gotten through my French debacle without Emily, I decided that if and when the time came to let her in, I would do so willingly. She'd let me in, even if it was just a little bit and I owed her the same.

I heard the rumble of the train tracks and smiled at Emily as she looked up at me with a matching smile. The train was here.

"Ready to go home and face the real world, Ems?" I asked her as she dropped off our trays. She smiled at me and grabbed my hand.

"Only if you come with me," she said with a smile as she leaned up to kiss me.

I knew then that I'd follow her wherever she wanted to go.

Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know what you thought of the chapter in a review :)