RECAP:

Another bump caused me to fall in front of Ethan's row and hit my head on the cold floor.

That's gotta be enough to wake me up, I thought.

But I continued to blink, to breathe, to get myself off the shaking ground and wipe the moisture from my face.

Only, when I examined my hand, it was completely crimson red.

More Blood.

A pen.

Clenched between my shaking hands, I knew what I had to do.

It was something that I should have done a long time ago.

I had to tell the truth -If not to Becca, then to myself.

I was ready to take the story into my own hands. If the original author didn't want to write us a happy ending, I owed it to Becca to change that.

After all, I didn't want to forget -I refused to forget. Even if the entire summer was a dream, I couldn't let a single detail slip my mind.

Everything felt so real. I thought as I leant over to grab my favourite notebook, of course it's the one that Becca bought for me many years ago as some Christmas present back in London.

We were so innocent. I continued but soon grimaced at the memory of having to explain my 'suicide' to Becca in the same pages that i pressed this ink on.

She read the letter. I reassure myself.

She understands that I didn't actually die. Right?

The next time I glance back at the book, my hand has already moved to write a string of words on the cover:

Before I know it, I'm flicking open the notebook and exhaling a large breath.

In this story, the end comes first.

I guess, It's because I've already accepted that it is the end.

It ended with the weight of the water compressing my ribs, burning my lungs and numbing my soul.

It ended when I realised there was no future for Becca and I, especially not in some alternate universe.

How we were there, yet alone together, remains unknown to me at this moment. And I doubt that It will ever be known to me.

Here, I lay upon the thin sheets of my double bed not knowing what I regret more...Leaving in the first place or not leaving soon enough.

But there was a reason for it all. A reason why I am still breathing -living- back on the very day we are supposedly collecting Becca and Ethan from the airport.

Again, I don't know how. I don't know anything about this matter. But one question still played on repeat in my buzzing mind.

Who sent me the messages? -The messages that revealed the truth about my perfect summer being a lie.

Maybe it wasn't a 'who', or a 'what'. Maybe there isn't even a 'why'. Maybe there isn't any reason behind any of this wildness.

Behind this wild lucid dream.

...Yes, you heard it.

As far as I know, our story was all a dream.

I didn't believe it at first. I mean, who would? Nothing made me believe that I wasn't falling in love with my sister's best friend. It didn't even cross my mind that my eyes were closed the entire time as I drifted off into a summer with Becca that I had dreamed of for years.

However, In reality it was nothing more than a figment of our shared imaginations. A month spent playing love games and caught up together and for what? -For me to realise I wasn't as unlovable as I felt? For me to feel empty with the fact I had to live in a universe that wasn't entirely created for Becca and I like our eventful summer?

Aggravating, isn't it? To begin a story with an ending, yet alone with the simple phrase 'It was all a dream'...

How about we start from here? Afterall, In a 'not-so-perfect world' things will not always work in our favour. We don't always get the ending we desire. We don't get the perfect wedding- No. Instead we get the Journey.

A journey of a love that wasn't destined to be.

A journey that would have never happened in the 'real world'.

A journey that felt so real that part of me never wants to admit that it isn't still perfect. That I can't just walk through the shared bathroom and find Rebecca lay on her back, tangled in her cream sheets and sprawled out hair.

Only this dream wasn't just any dream. I wasn't alone. I knew Becca was there as well. And we were together.

That was until I woke up -Gasping for air from my descent to the numbing sea floor.

My hands scrambled to my phone. Then my eyes darted to the time. Then the date.

And it was then. At that very moment, I realised It had worked.

I was back here. In the real world. On the exact same day that Ethan and Beccas flight was scheduled to take off and land.

Dear reader, Whoever you are. I may have confused you with starting at the end. I'm not sorry. Not even in the slightest. For we all know, by starting in the end at least provides hope for one thing -that is:

A new beginning.

Minutes turn into hours as the sun begins to light up my once pitch black room.

I press the pen down momentarily, moving my wrist to grant it some circulation from its strain of filling the book with every detail that comes to mind.

With a single chapter left, I found myself hovering the pen above the scruffy pages. When nothing came to mind I sank back into the ache of how lonely the bed felt.

I missed her. Too much to comprehend as I now knew things I wish that I didn't.

I wish It wasn't a dream. I wish I didn't have to ever say goodbye. I wish I could have told her I loved her one more time. I wish I never forced myself to wake up by throwing myself into those angry waves.

My brain kept swirling with regrets until three knocks spared me of this self sabotage.

Just as she looked in the dream, her hair sat in long strands off her shoulders and in classic Josie style, she was already radiating happiness.

How can someone be so happy at 8am? I thought but remembered that It was because both her boyfriend and bestfriend were to be spending the summer with us.

"Whatya writing?" She teased as she reached over me in an attempt to snatch the notebook from me.

"Just some notes at the moment." I told her and offered a small smile, thinking it was the least I could do knowing the events that would unravel later this morning.

"Ew you're acting weird. Why are you smiling like that?" She questioned and my lips instantly flattened with a complimentary eye roll.

"No, like seriously. The only time you smile at me is when Leo and Jack try flirting with me because you know for a fact that I hate those pricks." She huffed and I opened my mouth to say something but she just kept going. "Like you would usually tell me to just fuck off and now im spooked and am gonna leave from whatever manifestations you're doing in that notebook of yours." She said in one breath and ran out the door.

I sign, closing the book for now and begin to rummage through clothes for the dreaded journey to the airport.

Although, I already know exactly what I'm going to wear as I've lived this moment before...Or atleast, I lived it in another world.

"AND WE CANNOT BE LATE ASHTON TO PICK ETHAN AND BECCA UP AS YOU'RE DRIVING REMEMBER!" I hear Josie yell up the stairs at me and I respond with a loud 'YEAH' before slipping into the spotless bathroom.

Count on mum to clean every room in the house for Becca and Ethan. I smile to myself thinking of the years both Josie and I have been compared to the tall and tanned siblings. Sometimes, I would wonder if she wished to have children more like our best friends. Afterall, they didn't ignore eachother, or tell eachother to fuck off every two seconds, they actually enjoyed eachothers presence.

Until you slept with your best friend's sister and made Ethan hate Becca for the last few 'days' in that other world. I remind myself, but somehow cannot make myself regret it all.

After waiting a moment, the shower water heated up and I removed my clothes before stepping into the calming water.

Other than to remember what the 'summer' brought us, I knew there was nothing I could do.

The future was written, the ending complete, everything was out of my control.

I hate it. I hate not having control. I know it, even Becca did when she would use my shirt to tie my wrists against the bedpost.

But she never actually did... Did she?

The rest of the morning felt eary. Every step. Every breath. Every action was exactly how I had dreamed. Quite literally.

Even to the point where Josie nervously tapped her leg in the footwell of the passenger seat in my car, eagerly glancing for a message to appear on her phone.

In our dream, I brushed this off.

But I know now. I know too much as I know what will happen next.

However, I remind myself not to let it show as my hands tighten slowly on the slick wheel, my knuckles whitening through the movement.

I know now that Josie isn't just excited to see her best friend, as she is also meeting her boyfriend for the first time since they began dating.

She isn't just happy as I thought before -She's in love.

Just like me, She was in love with someone she could never have.

This realisation of this dawned on me faster than I anticipated as my jaw clenched and heart ached.

My car stopped abruptly and all of a sudden we were climbing out to the many families holding various signs for loved ones.

This only made my heart ache more.

Because this wasn't going to be just Becca and Ethan's lifes. It was hundreds. Hundreds of loved ones were going to be lost. Hundreds of families in mourning and grief.

I glanced around, pacing just as I did before almost expecting for the two of them to walk straight out of the glass automatic doors.They never did.

We waited for fifteen minutes.

Then half an hour.

Then an hour.

We had no warning before the multiple TV screens scattered around the building flickered to the images that relieved roaring flames surrounded by violent black smoke.

I didn't think it was possible for a person's concept of time to slow.

I knew it would pass faster if the ticking wasn't drilled into your brain but I never knew how it felt to be alive and yet have no desire to live.

Each tick of the clock was no longer a countdown to a perfect and unflawed summer. It was a constant reminder that I was here and she was not.

Becca. My Becca.

Pronounced dead on the 15th of july at 2:03 pm along with her beloved brother.

That's what the Pastor said with his head bowed and hands tied in an awfully rehearsed manner.

Looking around the service, Josie was still the broken doll that she was the day of the crash. Shattered across the floor, her porcelain pieces would cut you if you tried to put her back together.

Mum and Dad were the same. Although their marriage was far from perfect and edging on a divorce, they sobbed together as Dad ran comforting circles across her back.

Ethan and Becca's Dad sat beside them. Being childhood friends with them both, my parents were all he had left of a family.

Their Mum didn't show. Ethan had been feeding Becca false hope for years, saying that she would return but the family had zero contact with her.

As for the rest of them, they were all old friends and distant family who wept together over the two ever-so-perfect siblings who died in each other's arms.

That's what they told us at least, apparently the bodies had been burned off all flesh and were hardly recognisable.

My head remained low. No one knew about Becca and I.

No one knew that I wanted nothing more than the world to swallow me whole after bringing a knife to my own throat.

No one knew that I was diving myself into the waves again every night to go back and see Becca.

No one knew that the regret was killing me.

All because I couldn't save her again. Not like I did on the night of the party. Not this time. I didn't even have the chance to be the fucking hero.

The family members that weren't yet a puddle of grief offered speeches. However, I didn't listen to them all.

I block everything out now.

Voices resemble distant echoes.

One voice, though,was a louder echo. Their Dad.

"I remember when she was eight you know." I turned around to meet the ageing man who smiled at the memory he was about to tell me.

"Bossy little thing she was." He tutted. "But you did everything she told you to do." He shook his head in amusement. "Ethan would always call you to play with him on his DS or whatnot but you wouldn't budge. All you wanted to do was play dress up with her or run around chasing her as she wanted. She had you wrapped around her little finger" He grinned at last and brought me into a hug as my eyes welled for the first time since I came out of the dream.

"I think I would have really liked her, you know." Maisy teased from beside me with a nudge."Bossing you around and all."

"Oh you did" I smiled and wiped my salty cheeks. "You liked her alot".

.... of our story. But of a million more.

'When we sleep in this world, we are awake in another.' -S a l v a d o r D a l i