1 The Train Journey

Trees fly past my window as I stare blankly out at the beautiful scenery passing me by. I always lose myself staring out of the window on long journeys, dreaming about the unforeseen possibilities of the future. The world just seems a lot kinder in my head than in reality.

I'm yanked from my dream-like state by a man yelling at the end of my carriage, I look around to see that it is the ticket collector. He has started making his way down the carriage I am in, stamping everyone's tickets as he goes. I start to gaze back out of the window when I realise that I need to get my own ticket out, as he will soon reach my end of the carriage.

I start to rummage through my bag, getting more and more frantic as the seconds go by. My arm is fully engulfed in my bag when I realise that the ticket officer is standing next to my seat, staring at me.

"I'm so sorry sir, my tickets in my bag somewhere I just can't quite reach it. I'll only be a second, I'm sorry." I muster up with an apologetic smile. Surprisingly, he just smiles back, patiently. I thought that he would get annoyed by me holding him up, but I guess with his role he will be used to dealing with all kinds of people.

"Got it!" I practically screamed in the mans face. My cheeks start to turn pink out of embarrassment, at my sudden outburst, as I hand over my ticket.

"Have a nice day, Miss Alexandra Rosalie." He says looking at my ticket, his eyes lock with mine as he stamps it. They start to wander across my face as he hands it back to me, giving me one last look with a shy smile before moving onto the next passenger.

I could've sworn I saw him blush a little as he walked away. But I quickly forget about the interaction as my mind wanders back to what I was dreaming about before. Home.

I'm finally coming home. After four agonisingly long years, I've finally finished high school and get to come back home for good. Don't get me wrong, I loved school it was great and I had amazing friends who made the experience even better, but attending a boarding school comes with its troubles too. Homesickness is the worst. Especially for me, because of how far away my school was from my home I would only return for the summer holidays. My father and I decided that it wouldn't be worth the eight hour train journey to go home and then back for every holiday. Luckily my school has things in place for students not going home for holidays like Christmas and thanksgiving. Although that doesn't make it that much less lonely.

Me and my dad get on really well, he didn't want to have to send me away, he just didn't have the time or strength anymore to look after a teenage girl, all by himself. So we decided that attending one of the best boarding schools in the country would be best.

My dad pretty much constantly works, and so that on top of his health issues meant that he couldn't properly take care of me. I also didn't mind too much about the new scenery, it was nice to go somewhere new where I could just start over. So after I finished middle school in my local town, my dad transferred me to Blackbrook High School for Girls.

I was excited except for the fact that it was eight hours away by train. But I love train journeys they help me relax and I can lose myself in my thoughts. I always end up daydreaming staring out at the beautiful places that we quickly pass by.

During most of my journeys I'm usually excited and happy to be travelling. Not just because of the destination but because of the journey too. However, they also usually make me sad as well because although I know I'm coming home and get to see my dad again, I also know that in not too long I'll be back on the train having to say goodbye for a whole other year all over again.

Not today. Today I'm solely happy and excited and it's purely because of the destination because I get to stay for good. I never have to leave again, at least not for such long amounts of time. I get my life back.

I'm going to start helping my dad run our family business. He owns one of America's biggest and best (in my opinion) wineries. It's been in our family for about forty years. Our home is next to the vineyard and winery headquarters where my dad works. He also has other vineyards all across the country but due to his age and health problems, he hired others to oversee all of the other branches. But no matter what, he refuses to stop working at our home vineyard. Even though he's struggling to keep up with all of the physical demands of his job. He has a team of about twenty people who work there with him. These have all been working at our family vineyard since my dad first built it with his father, when he was about ten years old. So although they are great and very loyal, they are also getting old and consequently slower and slower at their jobs.

Because of this I kept trying to persuade my dad to hire some new younger workers to help him out. He would always refuse, saying that he didn't need help, that he was the only one who could do his job and he couldn't trust anybody else. That it had to stay in the family. He classes the twenty workers as family because he has known them his whole life, so that's why they are the only people he allows to work with him.

However, because of the constant pressure from me and his friends he decided to hire a couple of young men to help with the more physical aspects of his job. Somehow even without my knowledge, my dad managed to hire the boy I've had had a crush on since we were young, Noah Tracey. He also hired Noah's best friend, Elijah Knowles. The boys were the sons of his four closest friends, the three couples had been friends for as long as they had all been married and some of them even longer. So they watched out for my dad while I wasn't around. Which I was very grateful for. Due to it being their sons, I'm nearly positive that their parents forced their kids on my dad rather than him actually asking for their help. It seems like something they would do.

Because of how close our parents all were, me and the two boys were really good friends when we were younger. We all always went to the same schools up until high school, when I left to go to boarding school. In elementary school we were inseparable, the three of us would go everywhere together. But I always had a bit of a school girl crush on Noah, he was always so sweet and kind to me, and the cutest boy in school. He was my first kiss when we were nine. It wasn't much of a kiss just a little peck, but I still think about it. How I wish it could happen again. It never did, because of how young we were, we were too shy to do anything about our feelings toward each other. And when we started middle school people started to mock our friendship. They would always say that I was weird for only having boys as friends.

Because of this we drifted apart, we stopped hanging out as much and we all got new friends. Well I got new friends, they stayed best friends of course. I still would talk to Noah sometimes if we had classes together or if we saw each other in the halls, but Elijah and I completely ignored each other. As soon as we started Middle School he started giving me dirty looks all the time and would make snarky comments at me when I would go up to them both. So I just stopped altogether. It didn't stop the bad stares but it didn't happen as often, because I barely saw him anymore.

This all changed when we started high school of course. I was only ever in town during the summer holidays, so that was the only time I could ever see Noah. He started working at his parents leisure centre during the holidays, so I would always go whenever I came back from school so that I could run into him. We would always end up having a long chat and he would end up asking me to hang out some other time when he wasn't working so that we could catch up. That would always lead to us hanging out pretty much whenever we could during the holiday. But I would always have to leave and go back to school right before we could figure out if we could actually be anything more than friends.

But not this time. This time I would be staying for good, so we finally had the time to figure out whether we could ever be more than friends, or not.

I was so happy when my dad told me he had hired some new workers because I was worried about him over exerting himself. But when he told me who it was that he had hired I was over the moon. I knew that that meant that me and Noah would be able to spend so much time together since we would be working together. And even though my dad wants me to stay on the business side of things, so I won't be at the vineyard as much as Noah will be, the vineyard is still close to my house so we will always be close to each other.

My mind constantly shifts between my excitement to see my dad and my longing to see Noah. The intensity of my emotions and the rocking sensation of the train cause me to slowly start to fade into sleep.

...

I open my eyes and think that I'm still dreaming as I see the outline of a man standing over me.

"Noah?" I rubbed my eyes to stop the bright lights from hurting my eyes. As I took my hands away from my face and opened my eyes again, I almost jumped out of my seat in fright.

"I'm sorry Alexandra I didn't mean to scare you. I was just walking past when I noticed you was asleep and I remembered from your ticket that this was your stop. So I thought I should wake you as to not miss it." He said while looking down at me with an unusual look in his eyes. It made me feel uncomfortable and I subconsciously angled my body away from him. I nodded up at him with a weak smile as I was still too tired from waking up to fully comprehend what he had said. I just hoped he would take the hint and leave me alone. Which thankfully he did. I watched him walk down the aisle and out of the carriage I was in.

After he left I felt a lot more relaxed and looked up at the screen and saw that this stop was indeed my stop. So as much as he made me feel uneasy I was thankful for him waking me up.

I quickly gathered my things and put them in my bag, as excitement started to build back up inside of me as I walked to the train door. When I stepped off the train I breathed in the familiar smell and realised that this was it. I was home. For good.