Beyond This Moment

29 Day Twelve- 6:42 P.M.

When the plane lands in Manchester, there are no more kisses and no more flirting. It's a bummer but that doesn't take away from our friendship because even on our way to baggage claim, he makes me laugh a whole lot. Of course, he has to get another coffee before we actually leave the terminal though, so we grab his coffee and then we head to get our luggage.

Elias texts his mother to tell her that we just got off of the plane and I call my mom but unsurprisingly, she doesn't answer the phone so I leave another voicemail.

"She'll be here soon," Elias tells me when he gets a text back from his mother. We get to the baggage claim belt but the luggage hasn't started circulating yet so we just wait with the rest of the people from our flight to get our luggage.

"So when does training camp start for hockey?" I ask him curiously as we wait.

"Not until July," He assures me. "I've still got a while."

"That's good. For me, anyway," I add. "I mean, obviously, you have other friends to hang out with but hopefully, you'll make some time for me in your busy schedule."

"I'll be sure to add you to my calendar," He says jokingly.

"Good because right now, you are technically my only friend," I admit to him. I had a lot of friends in high school but they weren't close so we never planned to stay in contact after high school was over. I had Heidi and that was enough for me but that didn't go as planned.

"You'll meet people when college starts," He assures me. "It might be a slow summer but once you're around more people, you'll find people who see how amazing you are and want to be around you."

"I appreciate your confidence in me," I say with a small smile as the belt starts moving so we step closer to it and wait for our luggage to come through. "Maybe I'll join a sorority or something."

"There's an idea."

"But they have to do like, volunteer work and stuff like that. But I say that like it's a bad thing and it's definitely not. I don't know, I'll think about it," I decide even though I never really considered joining a sorority before but I think that maybe it'd be really cool to have a strong bond with other girls and to make that many friends.

"You should," He confirms.

"I'll have to find some friends to at least go to all the hockey games with me," I add. "I bet Gabe and Cassie would go with me."

"To every game?" He wonders with raised eyebrows. "You won't get bored?"

"Nope, I won't," I shake my head at him. "I'll be the one using a megaphone every time you score a goal and I'll paint my face blue and white and I'll be like, the hockey team's number one fan."

"That would be amusing to see," Elias laughs at me and he can tell that I'm joking because I don't think that I'll go that far to support the team. I will, hopefully, go to all the games though. I do like watching hockey, I went to most of Gabe's games in high school and they were pretty fun.

Once we get our luggage off of the belt, we roll it away from the belts and get to the passenger pick up area of the airport where we stand for a moment as Elias looks for a familiar car. Obviously, I have no idea what the car or the woman looks like so I just stand beside him and wait until he points to a silver sedan that's pulling up to the building.

It squeezes into a spot by the sidewalk that we're standing on and as soon as the car parks, there's a blonde head of hair popping out of the car with a wide, toothy grin.

The woman starts barreling toward Elias, who looks a little bit embarrassed, and then she hugs him close to her. "I missed you so much. How was the trip? I want to know everything," She gushes. She has an accent, like Elias, but hers is less pronounced, probably because she's been in the US for so much longer.