He whistled. “Best get moving then. It’ll be busy first thing in the morning.”
Holding up the cup, I smiled. “Thanks again.”
For the coffee.
And not treating me like I’d done the walk of shame through an actual bar when, in fact, that was exactly what I’d done.
What a strange turn of events, I thought as I hustled my ass to the train station. The day before, I left my flat expecting a fairly easy day of seeing some of the sights I hadn’t seen yet. I saw some sights, all right.
The station was packed, given it was a Monday morning, and the soaring ceiling of glass and iron was high enough that I never felt claustrophobic as I waited in a jostling line to hop on the train I needed. I was at the back of it, though, so by the time the doors slid shut behind me, I settled on the floor of one of the connecting cars between trains, my head resting on the hard plastic as I listened to the chatter around me.
People visiting. People going off to work. Or like me, on their way to school.
I hadn’t traveled much, which most people found surprising, given my brother’s job in the NFL. But when Logan played, we were in school, and his mom—our nana—stayed with us. Being in a place like this was a culture change that made my blood hum happily. Days like the one I’d had, feeling lonely, wasn’t normal for me.
Maybe the night before, the hours I’d spent with Jude, was the reset I needed because my loneliness was long gone as I sat on the floor of that fast-moving train. I couldn’t really see any of the blurred scenery passing because of where I was sitting—the buildings and cars and communities that sprawled out from London—but I felt at ease, all of the ickiness from before a distant memory. I sighed and took the last lukewarm sip of the coffee Carl had so generously given me.
My phone buzzed in my purse and I pulled it out. An email from Catherine Atwood caught my attention on the notifications, and I blew a gusty sigh of relief when I saw it.
Running behind. Will meet you thirty minutes later than we arranged.
Best, Catherine Atwood, PhD
Maybe the ghosts of the Bront? sisters, who I thought of as my patron saints if I had any, were looking out for me. They saw my opportunity for the epic shag and helped a sister out. It made me smile to imagine it.
The second notification also had me smiling, but for a different reason.
Finn: Second date with Keeley went great. We’re going out again tomorrow.
My thumbs flew across the screen as I replied to my best friend.
Me: OMG I TOLD YOU
Me: Didn’t I tell you she didn’t actually think you were a nerd?
Finn: You did. She doesn’t even mind that I’m working a thousand hours a week right now.
Me: An excellent trait for someone dating a doctor.
Finn: Future doctor. I hardly have time to sleep right now. Is it stupid to try to date someone I actually LIKE?
Me: Shut up. Go out with her again. I’ll just never speak to you anymore because you’ll be happy and busy and becoming a doctor and sucking face with her all the time.
Finn: True. You’ll probably never see me when you get back either. I know how you feel about PDA.
Finn: Bauer and Claire are the WORST, btw. I saw them last week, and I swear, he forgot I was there at one point when she kissed him.
That made me laugh softly because normally, I did hate PDA. I teased Claire about the fact that she and Bauer couldn’t keep their hands off of each other, but in a strange way, her new relationship—and Finn’s, for that matter—made it easier to be where I was. She had someone. Someone who loved her fiercely, no matter how caught off guard we’d all been by my quiet sister’s relationship with the bad boy snowboarder.
Me: You’ll have to manage them in my absence.
Me: Gotta go, my train is approaching the station.
Finn: ?? You’re just getting back to Oxford??
Yeah, not touching that one with a ten-foot pole. I tucked my phone away as I hauled myself back up to my feet, following the flow of people who exited the train along with me at the Oxford railway station. The university of Oxford wasn’t a typical college, centered in one place within a city. Depending on where you needed to go, it could take another forty minutes from the train station until you reached your destination.
After two weeks, I finally felt like I had a handle on the whole “getting around” thing. At home, it was so easy to just … hop in the car. Here, it was like a whole thing. Figuring out the best/fastest way to arrive where you needed to go.
Oxford was smaller than London, obviously, though equally steeped in history. It still felt like I was walking through a movie set as I made my way back to my place. I skipped up the narrow stairs to my second floor flat and unlocked the bright blue door. With a glance at the clock, I had just enough time to change, run a brush through my hair, slap some mascara on, and get to Catherine’s office at Oriel College.
The mirror in my tiny bathroom had me grimacing because whoo boy, my hair looked like I’d spent the night having sex with someone and then bolting out the door. With a yank of a brush and a little product, I was able to braid it and wind the full length into a sedate bun at the base of my skull.
My black shirt still held a trace of beer smell, so I stripped that off and tossed it into the hamper in the corner. The leggings stayed, as did the flats, and I topped them with a soft chambray shirt and a simple gold necklace.
I shoved an apple from the tiny kitchenette into my purse, munching on it on my way to her office.
By the time I got there, I beat our postponed meeting time by three minutes. Just enough to have a nervous pit swirling in my belly.
I loved school. Loved learning. And I came this close to blowing off this first meeting with Catherine when she was doing me a huge favor by agreeing to allow me into the research cohort she was overseeing. My advisor at UW about cried tears of joy when I asked for the credits equal to a class for one semester in order to do it.
This was what you called a no-friggin’-brainer.
When I raised my hand to knock on her office door, I took a second to gather myself.
Whatever urge I’d felt yesterday, whatever feelings had swamped me during my day in London, those had to stay the frick away from me. Leaving my family, leaving my entire life for a few months had nothing to do with epic shags or morose palace viewings. I came to learn and get one step closer to figuring out what I wanted to do with all these years of education.
“You can do this,” I told myself.
I knocked, and she called for me to come in.
From her seat behind her massive desk, Catherine glanced at me over her black-rimmed glasses. “Morning, Miss Ward. Thank you for being willing to wait for me.”
“No problem.” I took a seat across from her when she gestured to one of the leather chairs.
She set her pen down and leaned back in her chair, assessing me carefully. “Let me remind you, simply because you’re not taking a typical class, this will be no walk in the park. I’ll expect world-class work from you, Lia, because that’s what I expect from everyone who learns under me.”
“I understand.” I took a spiral-bound notebook and my favorite purple pen out of my backpack. “And I am beyond ready to get started.”
She grinned. “Good.”
As she talked, I listened, I wrote faster than my brain could keep up with, and as I sat in the chair, my memories of Jude faded, disappearing like a fast-moving train.
JUDE
The moment I opened my eyes and found myself alone in that awful little bed, I knew the day would turn to complete and utter shit. A glance at my phone, left discarded on the floor in a pile of the clothes that had been torn from my body with surprising alacrity, showed a time that I hadn’t slept to in years.
Sitting up, I felt aches in my back and grinned to myself.
Sore from sex at thirty-one. What a joke I was. Not just that but she’d snuck from the room without waking me like I was some drunken tryst she desperately wanted to avoid. I could hardly hold that against her, though, as it had been the driving force behind my impulsive actions. That woman, beautiful and bold and unafraid to challenge me, had no bloody clue who I was.
Not that I was someone who got mobbed on the streets, especially when I came into London. But when she looked at me, those big blue eyes held no expectation, no weighty anticipation of what I might be like because of what I did.
And in my life, it was glorious to have that moment of respite.
Made all the more glorious when I heard the heavy footsteps of my brother tromping up the stairs to the flat.
“Are you decent?” he called from the door. “Or do you have a bird balancing on your balls?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.