Changes

After shaking off any bad feelings she had, Laila turned her thoughts in a more positive direction and focused on the task at hand. Looking into what had happened to Maria in this life. If they were still friends and if she lived nearby, because considering what the staff had told her about her not having any friends here after moving, Laila assumed that she no longer lived in the coastal town she had grown up in.

She opened a browser tab and went to the most well known social media platform that she knew from her timeline and to her surprise she found out that it did not exist. With a perplexed look on her face, Laila decided to just find out what social media platforms existed by opening up the search bar and typing in her own name. Considering that usually the first hits that you get are social media pages, if someone has them at least, she figured that this was her best shot. She was certain that she would have joined the most popular ones as that was something she had always done since a young age. With Noah being famous and in the technical world, she couldn't imagine having had a reason to stop doing that now. Not knowing how far the changes in the timeline had affected this world she lived in, she did not bother trying to go to the search engine she knew and instead used the pre-installed search bar of the browser itself.

In a matter of seconds she found multiple pages and profiles that matched her name and then found two that were actually her. She clicked on them and luckily she had also maintained her bad habit of having her browser save all her passwords. So, once she had found her own page, logging into it wasn't too hard. After she had full access to her account, she first started searching among those that she had listed as her friends. Sadly she couldn't find Maria among them. After that she searched in the search bar of the social media platform itself and after scrolling through a long list of Maria's, she finally found her Maria.

When she clicked on the profile, her eye was immediately caught by the all too familiar yellow bricked house. She saw multiple pictures of Maria in that house, with her neighbours having a block party and also plenty of pictures of her with one handsome guy after another. But no pictures of her and Maria together. Laila began to get worried that in this life she had done something to cause her to lose Maria and just as she was thinking what horrible thing she could have possibly done to lose a friend like that, someone who had stood by her during her terrible years with Jake and her awful treatment of her friends, asking herself what horrendous crime she had committed in this life to cause Maria to want to leave her, that is when she finally came across a picture of the two of them together. Hugging and smiling at the beach. Laila looked at the timestamp and saw that the picture had been taken a little over two years ago. Around the same time she had supposedly met Olivia.

Laila got a bad feeling about this and could already kind of imagine what must have happened but she didn't want to believe it to be true. She couldn't accept the idea that a snake like Olivia had managed to get in between her and Maria. That she had somehow managed to make them lose their friendship. What kind of spell had that woman cast on her for her to be so blinded to all her shenanigans and schemes. That she was able to manipulate her so easily. She let that woman into her house when she is clearly preying on her kind and innocent husband, she let that woman ruin her relationship with her staff and now she had found out that she was most likely the cause of her losing Maria.

The only positive thing about this all, about her not losing Maria early on but just after moving here, was that it would make things that much easier to fix. Enough time had passed to allow certain bygones to be bygones but not too much to make it impossible to salvage. Meaning that if she admitted her wrongs and was prepared to take the first step, put in the necessary effort, then there was a solid chance that Maria would be able to forgive her. Maria was always a softy when it came to her. That was why she was able to put up with her for so long and through all of the madness. It also meant that it was probably not Maria who chose to end the friendship but her. Laila was sure that Maria must have noticed Olivia being a snake when she was still blinded. She must have fought with Maria over Olivia. Olivia must have used Maria's words spoken out of directness to manipulate her into thinking poorly of her friend and after a while distance must have done the rest.

Laila clicked on the button that allowed her to send a direct message to Maria and started typing and retyping her apology and reaching-out message. After at least fifteen minutes of back and forth and staring at the screen, she looked away as she pressed send. She took a deep breath, closed the laptop back up and walked away as she was far too anxious to wait for Maria to reply.