[Updated on : 10th August, 2020 on 4:10 AM (Monday)]

So here, I officially present you the Part One of the Epilogue of 'For His Sake'

Are you excited to read it?

A little fun I did with my own writing. Read ahead to know lol.

Emily's POV:

"Ugh, this is too damn hard! I can't do it anymore!" I sighed loudly, letting the laces of the red dress I was wearing fall down to my sides.

Closing my eyes in frustration, I looked at the phone screen to see Mia muffling her laughter with her palm. We had been on a video call for an hour. She was teaching me how to wear this new dress my mom had made it necessary to gift to me as the part of my effort in changing myself all over to an elegant lady which she had always wanted me to.

Which I might add, would be the absolute brutal unnecessary death of my tomboyish-ness someday.

"What?" I asked her, somewhat irritated by her laughter.

"Nothing, " She answered me. "It's just seeing you trying to put on a dress reminded me of my own self."

I stared at her, in confusion.

"You know, when I tried to walk outside my apartment, wearing over-alls. Without makeup. Taking short walk around the neighbourhood, my hands into my pockets, whistling to some song related to women empowerment. My feet dipped in some bland looking shoes, my hairs folded and curled into a disaster. People were staring at me. I felt self-conscious. It was so sudden I was damn sure I had been..." She avoided my eyes. "looking exactly like you."

I glared at her. "How's that supposed to teach me how to tie these ketchup coloured laces?"

"But I didn't go back to my apartment that day, " She looked at me, smiling softly at me. "I didn't run away from people's stares, I didn't let their judging stares get into me."

"Why?" I asked, feeling pleased. "Don't you hate it when they just stare at you for nothing? When they talk behind your back like they have known you forever? When everything you do, every effort you put into being you, being yourself, looks just like a bloody mistake to them? When they don't know what you've been through but only know to vent out their frustration on you for no reason?"

Mia smiled and rolled her eyes, probably at those hypocrite people who leave no rocks unturned to make our lives trash. "I've stopped caring, Emily. You start ignoring them too. Besides, I wasn't ashamed of you, or being you that day, the reason I didn't care what everyone thought of me. I just felt like wearing what I wanted, I didn't want to drown myself on makeup, I didn't want to torture my poor hairs by slapping them off with burning sheets to style them or curl. Just a loose bun that day ended up giving me relief from my painful migraine. Then, I didn't care if I looked like you or me. I was at peace. That's what it all mattered."

"But still, those half-burned peanuts lining the street must've passed on some filthy remarks-"

"They did. But as I said and believe, I don't care. I don't need to. As a matter of fact, why do I?"

"But what they speak of me matters a lot to me. I don't know why it always gets at me. Or through me." I whispered, looking down, suddenly feeling under-confident. I twirled the red un-done lace in my fingers, feeling tiny fibres rub against the tip of my thumb.

"Emily, " Mia called my name and I looked up at her. "Sometimes, what a woman needs is not some dashing swoon-worthy man's presence in her life." She looked at me, scrutinizing me. "It's her self-confidence, self-respect and self-comfort what matters the most. What makes her love herself, above everyone else, every guy in her life. It's like, if you'll not love yourself first, who will want to love you? Have you ever asked this question to yourself?"

I nodded. "I don't know. I tried to love myself. I really tried a lot. I just..." I stopped, feeling my eyes moisten as my mind mercilessly recalled every heartbreak my poor heart went through, every word I want to say to mollify my bruised soul, every syllable I want to utter to confess my feelings to the one person who'll probably not reject me the same day I'll confess to him.

I was afraid he'd keep trudging me along with him, giving me false hope, giving me mixed signals while he would keep smiling at me, talking of his life and future with me, whispering sweet-nothings in my ear of how I meant the whole world to him, of how he didn't want me to leave him, ever, of how he didn't want me to see with any man other than him.

Of how he was always in pain because of me. Or how he was always jealous of his own cousin, just because he thinks I'm in love with him. I still remember the day he told his heart was in pain because I chose Eric over him.

And while he does all that, brutally crushing my hopes everyday, his heart would always go to his first love, Lara Williams, because that's where it all started from. That's when everything started to go wrong. For me. Because that's when I fell deeper in love with him while he was already dating the woman he chose.

Over me.

Sometimes, I wonder what's in her that I don't have? That I couldn't possibly give him? Is she too beautiful that I couldn't even imagine to be like her? Or does Edward simply hate the idea of being with me? Did he find it too gross to even consider it in the first place? [ Author - Arghh, *facepalming whole day* ]

Or he also thinks I'm a man, just like most people around me think? Or maybe, it's his some secret oath that he'd never fall in love with a friend, let alone date her? Or marry her, with the worst selfish reasons ever?

Or am I too precious for him to actually confess to me and destroy our twenty years of friendship for his feelings which he couldn't let it go, no matter how much he tries to?

[ Readers - *whispers to themselves* umm bi...bin...bingo, right author? ]

I shook my head at my own stupidity. I won't be optimistic anymore. I've had enough shares of rejection for my age already. I'd promised myself to move on. Get over him, completely.

[ Readers - *blinks with black circles under eyes* Please, author, let it be the truth this time. No eating up her own words this time Emily please.]

If I continued being like this, chances are, I might need to take a second birth to forget all about him.

[ Readers - Book - II is the real top-quality birth we all need.]

"You're still thinking about him, aren't you?"

I broke from my reverie to stare at Mia styling her hairs, curling them with machine. "You're also going somewhere?"

"Also?" She blinked. And then she clapped her hands in excitement. "I knew it! I knew you're also going somewhere right?"

I ignored her usual hyper-self and tightened one lace in my finger. Curling it around the sleeves of my dress, I slipped it inside the hoop and knotted it like a ribbon. "Is this how you do it?"

Taking one more lace in my hand, I turned towards the mirror to see where that one went. After a minute of unwavering torture, I looked at Mia, my eyes pleading for silent help.

"Come on, Emily! It isn't that tough, you know! You just have to pull your dress up a little, " I lifted the fabric, my long legs coming into view "Like this?" I asked.

Mia nodded. "Now the lighter one goes around your waist, " I pushed it in the way she wanted me to, "No! Don't slip it in that harder. You're gonna crease the fabric, you idiot, "

After cursing her silently, I succedded in tying some four laces around my poor body. I was just wishing myself best in case I needed to go to washroom and one of these snake-ly poisonous laces won't come out. In usual scenario, I would have aborted the mission a long time ago. But since I wasn't usual anymore, I decided to go with it.

"You still didn't tell me where're you going?" Mia asked, applying lip gloss on her lips.

After pondering over her question for a minute, I decided to spare her some curiousity in her critical stage of pregnancy. Mia was now three months pregnant due to her accidental casual unprotected intercourse with Jake. She was pretty healthy and was coping up fine with sudden foetus roaming around her belly, of course, excluding some major mood-swings, minor cursing battles, heavy emotional drama, unnecessary blaming on anyone, unexpected parabolic ejections of digested food and vegetables.

And untimely urge to devour just anythying and everything around her. Sometimes, even I'm scared to be in front of her. Who knows when she might end up spraying ketchup on my butt and whooping a whole ass-cake out of my pretty bottom.

But since she's still in New Jersey, living with Jake for a month now, I didn't have to worry about coming in front of her. She had decided to live there for few months more and would land on California only when her tentative delievery was three months due.

"I'm going to meet my senio-" I started but Mia beat me to it.

"Oh God! How did I forget such an important event?" I looked at her in understanding, knowing very well what she was thinking. I shook my head in refusal before she could utter a single word about it.

"Why? You're not going?" She asked me, her brows knitted together in confusion.

After braiding my hairs side-wise, I took some bobby-pins and slipped them underneath to support the weight of my curls. "What's the point of me going there anyway? I've embarassed myself enough already. Going there now will only make both of us hurt more-"

[ Author - *cries* Just go already, don't make me write the second book. Please. ]

"But it's his birthday, Emily! He has been celebrating it together with you for twenty years now. It should not matter what happened between both of you. It's an old event which you two always shared as best friends, "

"I'm afraid we aren't friends anymore-"

[ Author - *with swollen red eyes* Don't do that to me. Please be together. Okay I'll stop now lol, this is a serious topic. But you guys can continue these reactions in the comment section with me lol. 'Cause where there is a drama, there are endless reactions too. Anyways, go on with the reading.]

"Emily, " She pleaded with me. "Don't be like this. I agree he's the biggest asshole out there, he shouldn't have used you like this, he should've treated you better from the start, he should've understood you and your feelings like you did, with his. He shouldn't have made a total fool out of you by dragging you in that fake marriage for his girlfriend, "

Hearing the truth from her mouth loudly made my heart ache so much, I had realised for the umpteenth time that day how much I actually miss Edward. How much he still means a lot to me, how many times I failed in getting over him these past three months.

How much of an idiot I was for still loving someone who kept me hanging in between his fake-wife and best friend, by barely an inch of my dignity. Most of all, he must think of me as a complete fool now, his puppet who doesn't have a heart, who doesn't feel anything.

But despite everything happened between us, I still want to be with him. Call me a fool, call me a love-sick bitch, I prefer to be none but his. A lone tear trickled down my cheek, without my consent. Quickly I wiped it with the back of my hand and applied foundation over it. But it didn't go unnoticed by Mia who regarded my state with sympathy.

"I know what he did to me, Mia. You don't have to list it in some orderly fashion because that's the least I expect of you, " Dusting the imaginary dust off my dress, I looked at my phone screen. "Besides, it's not like it's all his fault. Most of it is mine. I agreed to this facade in the first place. He didn't make me do anything I didn't want to. I did everything because I wanted to do it for him. For our friendship."

"But you also can't deny you'll always hold the first place in his life, no matter what woman he falls in love with. You're his priority, you'll always be the first person he'll come to, for anything or everything going on in his life. He must be regretting everything he's made you go through. I'm sure he's missinng you as hell now. He needs you there with him-"

"He doesn't need me anymore, Mia. Actually, he shouldn't need me, to be more precise. We both are grown ups now, we can take care of our own selves. We shouldn't always need to be the other's babysitter. We have succeeded enough in our lives, I'm in the process of being reinstated in the State Hospital too. And he, no doubt, has definitely made it big and dreamy in his life. Also, to be honest, " I looked at the mirror, brushing one lone curl behind my ear and said, "We should've stopped being in each other's lives a long time ago."

Mia was confused and lost at my words. "Stopped being in each other's lives? What's that supposed to mean?"

I winced slightly as the pin I had been adjusting around a stubborn frizzy curl made every possible measure to poke my fingertips and, eventually, did succeed in bringing a gasp out of me. "I should've taken those little hints too, Mia. Considerable of all, when he decided to go on a separate path all by himself, most of which didn't involve we being together."

Mia looked at me with something akin to pity. Something that I loathe her for giving me every time our conversation loops back to him. "That was one heck of an immature decision on his part, Emily. You know you'd never mean anything less to him than-"

"I'm tired of meaning everything to him, and at the same time, just nothing to him. I don't know how long it'll keep going like that, Mia. How long are we supposed to play this game of a cat and a mouse?"

Taking the alcohol based cotton swab, I rubbed it against my blood-laden fingertip, lightly closing my eyes in a slight burning pain. "I don't have that confidence left in me to wait anymore. Just when will we eventually find the courage to speak out our grudges and pains comfortably with each other and be free of all these baseless ridiculous misunderstandings threatening our already spoiled friendship?"

Mia sighed, as she, for once, sat on the bed quietly, leaving her hairs half-untied. "Emily," She sighed, as she said, "That's the question you yourself know the answer to. My question will be, just how much you'll want to be hurt more to stop ignoring the only solution you have with you, for all the misery you've been through so far."

I chose to remain silent at her too straight implication.

Discarding the cotton, and bandaging my finger, I went back to the previous but tedious task of dolling myself up.

"Don't try to avoid the direction where this conversation is going, Emily."

"I'm not avoiding it, Mia. I'm just over that path and I'd like to lock that solution within me for as long as I can."

"That would mean you'd probably never get the chance to confess your overly emotional and unique feelings towards him, even in the after-life too. Because that's the real damn stupid, naive, foolish, dramatic, stubborn and wailing excuse of a worthless woman you are!"

Stopping mid-way to my task, I gave her a side glare.

"When it comes to Edward, of course." She added in a haste, smiling sheepishly. "Jokes apart, I still believe he deserves to know what you've been keeping from him since forever. Maybe it'd work as a catalyst in his case for speeding up his tortoise shaped brain cells when it comes to his best friend, which, eventually, in a long run, will help him realize what a total loser he has been so far in handling his own feelings."

"That's the most common assumption I've been hearing for half of my life-"

"Then you, my girl, are some leaked broken product of a real stupidity for not even considering it once. 'Cause for all I know and I'm damn sure I'll be proved right, along with many others, once you do it my way, and, of course, the right way."

I looked at her with confusion, though knowing inside the rough outline of what she has been implying.

"That the stagnant status of your relationship will change as soon as you take the right time, the right place and the right words in your consideration, serious one this time, to speak out all to him, with everything you have in you, to make him understand it in a more bolder, more forward and a more broader way. Sometimes, probably, the most easiest way with the words works wonders too."

Sighing to myself, I pulled the drawer near me and picked a set of glittering red-blue earrings. "But that'd mean seeing him after all this time we've gone without-"

"Then that wedding ring placed so comfortably under your right drawer, that you still didn't find the chance and of course the right time, which you must know is the lamest excuse you use everytime, to hand it over to him till now. " I looked at her, as her eyes shone with sarcasm. "So, are you planning to keep it with you as well, for as long as you can, for, maybe, I've mistaken it as some kind of life-time insurance policy oath you've habit of taking all by yourself, when it comes to stuffs related with him."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "I'm not planning to keep it with me forever. I just really didn't get the right time to return it without looking miserable."

"Then do both of you a favour, and be on your way. It's even his birthday today, such a cool timing, I must exclaim. After all, when will he be at his most happiest than to receive the lost ring from his ex-wife he didn't love, or as he claimed, and, that best friend whom he tied to a loveless marriage, just for him, whereafter, whom he had a break-up with in such a messy way, right?"

I rolled my eyes at her words. "You couldn't have put it in a more dramatic way. "

"Well, I can. Try me. I've more than enough juice from your story to keep it interesting for you as long as you want to hear."

Ignoring her rhetoric banter, I said, "But that'd be too rude of me to return him the ring on his birthday, Mia."

"Why not?,"She replied," If he can gift you the divorce papers on your birthday while he comes back home after celebrating his girlfriend's birthday bash, totally forgetting about his own best friend's birthday which happened to be on the same day as her, then yes, you can do that to him too. No one will judge, I promise. No one will even want to, I bet."

"That's not about revenge, Mia. That time, he didn't know about my feelings-"

"Well, surprise, but after a whole fake marriage chaos, your mother forcing your way out of his place, the almost animosity erupted between the two families, that total disaster of the divorce paper signing event organised by your father, and the after-effects of these depressing three months for you, he still doesn't know about them. Poor him though. I'm sure he'll be guessing all sorts of weird possibilities the whole time you two have been apart, which I guess is the longest you both have ever gone without each other."

"I asked him to give me distance, Mia. For some time. For some space, without him being in my life. To be away from each other for as long as I want."

"Creating a distance doesn't feed you with miraculous solutions, Emily. Taking action and doing it right, and doing it yet again if not done right the first time, well, these two things sure do help you in the long run."

"Then what do you propose should I do now? I'm at loss of what to decide next."

"First of all, do something about that gift that you wrapped so beautifully and with so much care that it really doesn't deserve to be stuffed so back-way inside your shoe-cupboard, among those used footwears."

I grinned shyly at her choice of words. "You sure remember most of the things you shouldn't."

As I opened the cupboard doors, and pulled out the gift, I could feel Mia's growing curiousity poking my inetstines now.

"Are you sure you're not dying to tell me what's inside this really romantic looking box?"

Face-palming at her words, I said, "Just because it's wrapped in red doesn't mean it looks romantic. It's just a color, Mia."

"You still look you're dying to tell me what's been placed inside it."

I smiled. "Take your tricks over the train, Mia. I can tell your pregnancy is getting on your brains."

"Oh really. For a brief time, I totally forgot I was three months under. That really defines the intensity of my curiosity to know what's inside it-"

"It's a script. And some photos. Nothing much."

She scrunched up her nose and asked, "Script?"

---Author's Note---

So guys, how was the Part One of Epilogue?

Did you like it? Even a bit? Was it---

Emotional?

Balanced?

Entertaining?

Interesting?

Frustrating?

Are you satisfied even a little with this update?

That part to make fun of my own characters was so not on my plan lol. Didn't know where it came from. *covers her face with embarrassment.*

I'll delete the side comments if it's distracting. Tell me if you want me to.

Lol, I know it doesn't even feel like an epilogue as I've never written an epilogue before.

Do you guys also think this Chapter/Epilogue would've better suited as a Chapter One of the Second book of FHS - Behind Your Smile as it was originally planned to be?

-----

There is Part-II to this epilogue too, this isn't the end. Though second part may take few days to be fully written and edited as I need to add some parts to it too.

Just don't ask me how many parts there will be, I don't know that myself, that solely and really depends on how much plot I had actually covered in a single chapter.

Which is going messy for now as I'm having serious writer's block too. But I'm still writing to overcome it somehow.

So you may find the talks and plot to be repetitive for now. But that's transient, as I promise to bring my real skills in the subsequent chapters anyhow. I'll try my best.

Also, do tell me if you want the second part of this epilogue or not.

Or you're just not enjoying it all after a long time?

Did you even forget about the plot too? Lol. *face palms*

---Note---

Book - II still does not have any timeline decided to be written and published here yet as I'm having my first final main medical professionals just around the corner. Sorry for that. I can't control my life events so it's really not under my control.

Still, thank you for having me as your author.

Yours, Lily. ♥