Our first papers were, happily, ungraded. Sean spoke to us about them during the coffee break of our theory class, following my surprisingly unremarkable—by which I mean I managed not to shame myself, which is not the same thing as being impressive—presentation. The coffee break thing was supposed to suggest an air of casualness and nonchalance, but in reality just made me hyperaware that all my classmates could probably overhear Sean denigrating my attempts. On the other hand, like that was anything new, and I was just pleased I hadn’t fainted during my little spiel about feminism. I was finding class difficult enough these days, what with inconvenient memories of Toby and his lips intruding at the strangest moments. Which I refused to think about. The very thought of that kiss made my stomach tense. Not that I was considering it in any detail.
“You’re very passionate, Alex,” Sean told me in that rich voice, and Toby and his lips disappeared from my head entirely. I no longer really heard British accents, but I could feel Sean’s in my toes. He actually smiled, a bona fide smile, with no supercilious undertones. “Passion is good, and the profession always needs it.”
He went on to point out some weaknesses here and there, which involved leaning his head in closer to mine. He smelled like pine and something soapy. I broke out in goose bumps.
“Overall,” he was saying, “I’m quite pleased with it.”
I must have been giddy from the unexpected lack of sarcasm, coupled with his dizzying proximity.
“I wasn’t really sure I was cut out for this,” I told him in a rush, as if he’d asked.
“Anyone who thinks they are tends not to be,” he said quietly. “This is a solid piece of work.”
“Thanks,” I said, delighted.
“Even,” Sean continued, deadpan, “within the constraints of the bankruptcy of academia.”
I felt myself jerk, and then blush deep and bright. The sound of my drunken words coming back at me was not the most pleasant of echoes.
“Um,” I said, intelligently.
“Keep it in your papers, Alex,” Sean suggested. He leaned back and offered me that lazy smile.
I had the strangest feeling then, as if I could actually read what went on in his baffling eyes. I was suddenly absolutely certain that he knew how he affected me. And that he enjoyed it.
“Please ask Evelyn to come over next,” he said.
By the time I got to my feet I was convinced it was just my hyperactive imagination. Who could possibly read an enigma like Sean? And even if I could—as if he would be intelligible, much less even peripherally interested in getting me rattled and breathless. You wish, Alex, I jeered at myself.
That was a problem, though. I really did wish.
Seven
There’s just nothing pleasant about the night flight from JFK to Manchester. It’s always impossible to actually get any sleep, unless you happen to be traveling in first or business class. Which I didn’t happen to be able to afford. You leave at about 8 p.m., have an uninspiring if not revolting in-flight dinner, and then it’s still only about ten o’clock and you’re wide awake. When the plane lands at eight or nine in the morning British time, it is only three or four in the morning in New York. And in your body. The five minutes you closed your eyes and fruitlessly ordered yourself to sleep were not at all rejuvenating. Which means, if you were me, you ended up staggering around the airport with as much luggage beneath your eyes as on your trolley. And if you were me, that’s a whole hell of a lot of luggage.
Some people are addicted to illegal drugs or unsuitable lovers, gambling or shopping sprees. I was addicted to books. Which is why each one of my two duffel bags weighed in at about forty pounds. I had been veering toward the psychotic while packing up after Christmas at home, and could therefore blame only myself when I wanted to weep from exhaustion and yet still had to lug all that weight around the city of Manchester.
And I do mean the whole city of Manchester.
The great thing about Manchester Airport on a normal day is that the train station is attached, and you can just pop off the plane and wheel yourself down to the train tracks with minimal fuss. This was not a normal day. I had to wrestle my enormous bags onto one bus, then onto another completely different bus, then across a largely underwater Manchester city street, then onto a train that turned out to be taking a scenic route across the country. Thus becoming a three-and-a-half-hour journey as opposed to a two-hour journey. By the time I discovered that I was on the wrong train, I was too tired and cranky to bother myself to move. Also I had used up what puny arm strength I possessed.
The extra-long train ride gave me time to think. If you could really call it thinking. More like jet-lagged obsessing: heavy on emotion and light on sense. I had, very deliberately, chosen not to think about my life in England at all while I was home, beyond the glowing press releases I issued to family members and the slightly more in-depth descriptions of Sean’s hotness I shared with friends. When it came to compartmentalizing my life, I was already a master.
I felt like I needed a vacation to recover from my vacation. Holiday cheer took a lot out of me. Too much racing around the city pretending to be back in college with Michael and pretending to be grown-up with Robin. Thirdhand tales of the happy new life of my hex—I mean ex. Unpleasant fights with my father that I had the sneaking suspicion were word-for-word reenactments of battles fought when I was thirteen, and would probably still be fighting when we were both toothless and in diapers.
Nor were my battles over, I discovered when I arrived in my frigid university town. It took ages to get to a taxi when I got into the train station, and even longer to lug my bags into my house, and even longer than that to drag them up the stairs and into my room. Once they were inside my bedroom, stacked haphazardly in the center and therefore taking up the entirety of the floor space in the little cell, I passed out across my bed. The moral of this story: leave the books at home.
I slept the sleep of the dead, and when I woke I saw that it was dark already. I stumbled down into the kitchen and was faced with the complete lack of anything edible on my shelf in the house’s shared refrigerator. I looked at Cristina’s and Melanie’s respective shelves, from which I often pilfered in times of need, and saw that they had nothing either. This meant that I had to go out of the house.
I stamped back to my room and yanked on the nearest coat. Muttering crossly, I shoved my feet back into the boots I’d worn on the plane—and which had not exactly helped during the later Manchester trek, what with their three-and-a-half-inch heels—and rummaged around for appropriately British currency. I paused as I shoved a handful of pound coins into my pocket and got a glimpse of myself in the mirror above my sink. The Bride of Frankenstein had nothing on me after a transatlantic journey. My hair was piled around on the top of my head and my eyes were still carting hefty bags. I was dressed like a homeless person in a flannel shirt three sizes too big for me, sweats, and the incongruous boots, all bundled under a black trench coat. This made me cackle at my own reflection. If you have to look like a wildebeest, you might as well look like the queen of the wildebeests, I always said.
I pushed my way out into the dark. It was barely four-thirty and could as easily have been midnight. The small convenience store—and I call it that not because it was actually convenient at all, with mysterious hours and odd personnel, but because it was close—sat in the center of Fairfax Court and sold the kinds of things students were most likely to want. This, apparently, meant pasta of every description, milk and yogurt, beer and wine, cigarettes, and minor toiletries. No produce, just canned goods. I could whip up an excellent pasta with cream of mushroom soup as a sauce, but that was pretty much the extent of my range. Mostly I used the place for cigarettes and beer.
I stormed into the little store and didn’t even bother looking around, just went and gathered the few items I required to get me through the night. Milk. Beer. I was trying to summon the enthusiasm necessary to choose between a questionable British boil-in-the-bag curry and an even
dodgier, supposedly Thai dinner. Which would be the least likely to nauseate me? A hard call to make.
“Alex?”
I knew that voice, but it was impossible that I would hear it in the tiny little Fairfax Court shop, so I was scowling when I turned my head.
And because my life is an endless farce, it really was Sean.
He was holding a bottle of wine and looked delicious. Dark trousers, a dark sweater, his dark hair slightly damp from the weather. Gorgeous. Much more so than I’d remembered, and my memory was both detailed and vivid. I felt his hazel gaze flash over me, and suddenly found myself much less amused with the whole “queen of the wildebeests” thing. His mouth curved.
“Did you have a pleasant holiday?” he asked.
I was clutching my beer and my milk and my revolting dinner choices. I stared at him.
“I did,” I said. “I actually just got off the plane. I mean, earlier today, but I’m pretty jet-lagged. So.”
The usual witty repartee.
Sean smiled.
“Welcome back,” he said. He nodded at my armful of horrible curries. “You can’t eat that. It will remove your stomach lining. I speak from sad experience.”
Why was he being nice to me? Why was he talking to me at all? And why wasn’t he off living in his cerebral little world in his professorial refuge, wherever the hell that was?
“What are you doing here?” I blurted out. His eyes lit with suppressed laughter. The look I was more familiar with.
“I moved into one of the faculty houses,” he said. He gestured with one hand. “That way.”
“Oh.”
“You look like you could do with a decent meal,” Sean said. “And as it happens, I’m a decent cook. Why don’t you come round? It’s a vast improvement over boil-in-the-bag curries, I promise.”
“Um—”
“It’s quite all right, Alex,” he said, grinning wickedly. “I don’t bite.”
So that was how, without even meaning to and without necessarily being fully conscious, I agreed to have dinner with Sean Douglas. In a few short hours. In his house.
Oh. My. God.
I stumbled back toward my house, telling myself that a shower and a change of clothes could absolutely transform me into a vision of hotness Sean would be powerless to resist. From wildebeest to hottie in one quick shower? No problem! I was so out of it I was completely unaware of my surroundings until the figure leaped out at me.
I screamed.
Okay. It was more of a wimpish yelp, and some truly embarrassing hand flapping. And actually the figure wasn’t leaping out at me at all; I just hadn’t seen her until the last possible second. Because she was looming in the dark, waiting for me.
“I had no idea you were so girlie,” Suzanne said.
Bitch.
“Jet lag,” I snarled. “How are you? How was your Christmas?” My heart was still pounding. Which could as easily have been a reaction to Sean as to Suzanne leaping from the shadows to accost me. I tried to breathe deeply.
“My holiday was fine,” Suzanne said. She was watching me closely. Too closely. “I saw your bedroom light on,” she told me. “That’s how I knew you were back.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well.” Then, weakly: “Want a coffee?”
Of course she did.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she said, very solemnly.
I sat her down at the kitchen table and bustled about preparing coffees for us both. Instant for her, since the British were so big on drinking Nescafé and Suzanne was so big on being British, and a very serious pot of espresso for me. It occurred to me that the reason that last sentence of hers sounded familiar was because it was: right after our party, when she’d freaked at the sight of Toby and me coming down the stairs together—fully clothed and bearing wine—she had said much the same thing.
“I want to talk to you,” she’d said. “I think we need to.” I had thought we needed nothing of the sort, having heard enough talking from Suzanne to last me years, and so I was happy to use excessive work as an excuse to avoid it. Which had happened to be true—we’d all had those awful papers I still couldn’t permit myself to think about without shuddering. And Cristina had had that whole thing with the Physicist. And, of course, there had been the kissing incident, but I didn’t think she knew about that. And anyway, I wasn’t thinking about it. I had been really happy to forget all about the various dramas of life in England while caught up in the whirl of my Christmas at home.
I smiled as I sat down, presenting her with a mug and immediately sipping my own. Suzanne toyed with hers.
“What’s up?” I asked brightly. Or as brightly as can be expected when you were jet-lagged, had just had a mind-altering interaction with the smartest man you’d ever met whom you happened to have a serious crush on, and most important, when you really didn’t care about whatever she was going to say.
“Something’s happened,” she told me. “And it’s changed everything. I wanted to be the first to tell you. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if you’d heard it from someone else.”
“Oh,” I said. “Were you in New York or something? Because if you slept with my ex-boyfriend Evan, it’s really not such a big deal. As I’m sure you now know.” I waved a cavalier hand. As I did so, I thought about how strangely perfect Evan and Suzanne would be as a couple. Evan could impress Suzanne with his stolen witticisms, which she, being one of those people who refused to have a television, would find new and hilarious. Suzanne could rant at Evan for hours and he, being so genial and unassuming and (dare I say it) dull, would enjoy it. A match made in heaven.
“Alex,” Suzanne said. “I’m really serious on this.”
“Sorry.” I took another gulp of hot coffee and smiled encouragingly, while visions of Evan and Suzanne’s eco-friendly wedding danced in my head. I managed not to grin, and ordered Evan out of my head.
“It’s between Toby and me,” Suzanne said. She sighed. “I know how close you are with him, Alex, and I want you to promise me that no matter what, we’ll keep the lines of communication open between us. I don’t want you to feel as if you’re losing friends, either Toby or me.”
I had a little inkling with that, but was far too annoyed with her dragging it out to pretend to understand. I thought: Toby, how could you? I utilized a handy blank stare.
“I also want you to know that I would never poach on your territory, but you did say you and Toby were just friends,” Suzanne said. She was looking at me with a great earnestness that I somehow couldn’t believe.
“Suzanne, I’m tired and I’m out of it,” I said evenly. “I had a very strange trip home, which I am still processing. I have two duffel bags the size of elephants to unpack, and I have laundry I should have done before I left. I have a headache and I desperately need a shower.” I smiled thinly. “But what I do not have is ESP. So please, please stop talking in circles.”
Her green eyes gleamed with something that could have been malice, or even triumph. “Toby and I are together now,” she said. “This will obviously change things, and I wanted you to be prepared for it. I didn’t want you to walk into something, not knowing how everything was.”
“You sound as if there’s been a coup,” I said lightly. “I’m glad you and Toby are together, if that’s what you wanted.” I thought about that kiss at our party. When had he decided Suzanne was what he wanted? What happened to not having a position on Suzanne? Not, of course, that I cared.
“It is.” She watched me. “But I think you wanted something else.”
I groaned. “Suzanne, I really couldn’t care less if Toby dates you or Margaret Thatcher or no one at all. I couldn’t care less who you date either, as a matter of fact. Go crazy.” And again: Toby, how could you?
“You were the leader,” she said. She propped her chin on her hand and stared at me. “Everything is different now.”
“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes. “I mean, okay, fine. I really don’t care. Is this what you wanted to talk t
o me about before the holiday?”
“Toby and I only got together recently,” Suzanne said, frowning. She sat up. “Oh, you mean after your party?”
“I guess.”
She laughed. It was a girlish, innocent peal of laughter. “Can you believe how paranoid I was?”
Suzanne then performed one of those intricate hair flips that you can only do in public after extensive practice in private. One of those flirtatious, self-aware girl moves that looks sexy and is all about power. That single motion completely undercut her attempt at innocence. I watched her through narrow eyes as her bright red hair settled back down into place.
“Paranoid?” I asked. Which was as good a word as any to describe her, I thought.
“I just wanted you to promise me that you and Toby weren’t going to get together,” she said. Smugly. “Silly, right? Anyway, I just hope you’re not too disappointed.” Her eyes swung back to meet mine.
“You can stop letting me down easy,” I said, with a ghost of a smile. “I’m really fine with the whole thing. You clearly don’t believe that, and I don’t know what else to say.”
“I believe you,” she said.
She could just as easily have said: I believe that you want me to believe you. It hung there in the air between us, unsaid.
“So,” Suzanne said, leaning back and smiling at me. “What was so strange about your trip home? What happened?”
I thought about telling her. Family and friends and all the joy and horror that entailed. The unsettling realization that lives I used to star in ran with perfect smoothness without me. Robin’s disappearance, which had turned out to be Robin and Zack moving in together, like grown-ups, and so okay with that decision, like grown-ups, that it had just happened without the usual twenty thousand phone calls. The predictable issues with my parents and the typical misadventures with Michael. Or the current excitement of dinner with Sean, which I knew would really, really bother her. I really wanted to tell her, I realized, and only to make it perfectly clear that I had better things to think about than any piddling romance she was having with Toby.