I Always Will by Jacqueline Ramsden

Author:Jacqueline Ramsden [Ramsden, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-11-15T16:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

Eighteen years ago

Alexandria’s foot bounced nervously under her desk. She was sure several other people in her class were nervous, too, but she doubted it was about all the same things. They were, after all, in the middle of a presentation about polishing their personal statements for university applications. It was a stressful thing to do, a stressful time to be in.

Not everyone in the room would go to university. Yesterday, they’d had a presentation about writing cover letters for jobs—with more to come throughout the year—but today was about universities. And, given that the October 15th deadline for some places was coming up fast, they really had to get on it. They’d been working on them for months, but it was time—time to polish and finish and submit.

With submitting came decisions. Decisions on where you were applying and what would happen if you got in.

For as long as she could remember, Alexandria had dreamed of going to Edinburgh. She’d seen pictures and shots of the city and the university when she was younger and it had felt so magical to her that she couldn’t help but feel drawn there. Delighted that she wanted to study maths, and eager to encourage what they saw to be a serious pursuit, her parents had been more than willing to take her to open days. She’d gone to the local ones, the ones that were away but close enough to visit often, and then she’d gone to Edinburgh.

She’d struggled to explain it to Hailey. They’d talked about how she had always loved Edinburgh and wanted to go, but it was only when she’d mentioned that they would be attending the open day that she’d realised Hailey had thought she just meant she wanted to visit it for a holiday, not go to university there. It had been an awkward moment, but Hailey had eventually laughed it off with a joke about how it snowed more in Scotland, Edinburgh was famously hilly, and did Alexandria really want to spend her uni years slipping down pavements?

Alexandria had awkwardly laughed along, agreed she probably would fall over a lot, and headed off on her weekend trip to Scotland filled with trepidation. If she loved it as much as she’d always suspected she would, what would she do? What would happen to their friendship and… whatever it was that they were these days?

Of course, she loved it. For so long, it had lived inside her, been a cornerstone on which she was building her dreams and her future. She’d been doing it for so long that she’d honestly wondered, as their car sped north up the motorway, whether it could possibly live up to what existed in her head. It had become like a fairytale, a magical world that couldn’t be as wonderful in real life as it was in her head.

Then they’d arrived.

It had been late on a Friday night that they’d pulled into their hotel. The city was lit by warm, soft, glowing windows and

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