Mary
Kate never said one word about needing support herself. But now that
Stacey brings it up, now that I bother to think about it, I remember
the slump I’ve seen
in MK’s shoulders,
the way her head hangs heavy on her neck. “I’ve
got to go talk to her,”
I say, pushing past Patrick and Stacey without another word.
I
fight through a particularly thick crowd of people around the bar,
and eventually burst into our back room, only to find it filled with
complete strangers this time. Of course, if MK was here on her own,
she probably wouldn’t
want to stick around the booth just waiting for us.
I
think for a moment, then wind my way back through the bar into the
cramped bathroom. Sure enough, I spot a familiar pair of high heels
under one stall, from which a distinct sniffling sound emits.
“MK?”
I knock softly.
There’s
a really long sniff, and then the door unlocks and swings inward.
She’s fully dressed,
perched on the lid of the closed toilet, daubing at her eyes with a
wad of toilet paper. “I’m
sorry,” she murmurs
for no comprehensible reason.
“Hey,
hey.” I suck in my
stomach far enough that I just manage to squeeze the door shut behind
me. Then I cross my arms and lean back against it to study her
expression. “What’s
going on?”
“It’s
nothing.”
“Okay,
now you
definitely
have to talk to me.”
I reach across to squeeze her shoulder. “What
happened? Come on, you’ve
been here for me this whole time, the least I can do is the same
thing for you.”
She
pauses to cram half the toilet roll into her face, which does wipe
away most of the worst mascara stains from her cheeks. Then she sighs
and gives up, dropping the roll into the trash bin. “I
broke up with Nick.”
That
is . . . not
what I expected to hear. He’s
annoying as heck, sure, and I can’t
understand what she sees in him besides that he’s
American and she seems to like the frat bro type. But they seemed
fine. In fact, he’s
been doting on her harder than ever the past week, constantly showing
up with flowers and leaving boxes of chocolates around her flat. I
crouch down beside her. “How
come?”
She
shakes her head. “It
wasn’t real. It
never was. He’s been
sleeping with other people the entire time and I—”
“Excuse
me, he
what
?”
Any good feelings I ever had toward Nick vanish that instant. My
hands ball into fists of rage as I think about the glowering
expression on his face when I saw him last. “Where
did he go? I’ll tear
his damn balls off.”
“No,
no, Harper.” MK
grabs at my arms. “It’s
not like that. I knew about them.”
“
How
dare he fucking—
wait,
what?” I stammer to
a halt, as my brain catches up to what she just said.
“It’s
complicated, okay? But we . . . When
we started hooking up at the start of the semester, he asked if I’d
be okay with an open relationship. I said sure, because . . . uh,
to be honest, I wasn’t
really feeling anything beyond the physical with him. And he was
hooking up with other people, but it was also only physical for him
too, I mean, he never wanted anything serious. But last month,
I . . . I
met someone else, and. Shit, this sounds so idiotic.”
She buries her head in her hands, but I rest my hand on her hair, the
same way she’s done
for me a hundred times.
“It
doesn’t sound
idiotic, MK. It sounds like life.”
She
snorts into her palms, then groans. “Anyway,
I, uh, I think I’m
starting to have feelings for the other guy. Real feelings.”
“Wait,
whoa, who?” I gape
at her. I can’t
believe she hid all of this from me.
Then
again, I hid an awful lot from her this semester, so I suppose I
can’t really talk.
Mary
Kate shakes her head. “You
don’t know him. That
whole thing is a mess anyway, but . . . ugh.
It’s happening, so.
I told Nick that we had to end it. Um, but it turns out, he started
to have real feelings too. For me.”
She grimaces, biting her lip. “I
feel like such an arse.”
“You’re
not an arse. You can’t
stay with someone you don’t
truly care about. That’d
never work.”
“Yeah,
I know, but . . . ugh.
Nick made so much sense! He’d
met my mum, my brothers, my step-dad. He’s
majoring in the same thing as me, we have all the same friends. I
should have feelings for him, you know? I just . . . don’t.
And now I don’t even
know why I’m crying
except ’cause I feel
super guilty,” she
adds with a derisive snort.
I’m
staring at the back of the door now, my mind flying a million miles
away. Because suddenly all of this sounds so very familiar.
“Hello?
Earth to Harper?” MK
waves a hand in front of my face, and I blink back to her, startled.
“That
sounds totally normal, though. You don’t
have feelings for the practical person, the one who makes the most
sense. Otherwise humans would all just be robots—program
in perfect companion settings to the computer, spit out the ideal
match, and we’re all
set. We’re messier
than that. We have to be, or online dating would work every time,”
I add with a smirk, cause god knows MK and I have both suffered
through some epic failures at that.
But
also, I’ve realized
something.
All
along, I thought Hannah was Jack’s
ideal woman. They make sense, after all. They’re
both professors. She knows his whole family. She’s
gorgeous, he’s hot.
But
maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe she’s not
right for him at all in real life, even though they’re
a perfect match on paper. Maybe she’s
the Nick to his Mary Kate.
My
heart twists. Even if I’m
right, though, it doesn’t
mean I’m the new guy
to his MK. Just because Jack doesn’t
want her, doesn’t
mean he wants me instead.
“You’re
doing the zoning thing again,”
MK points out with a wry smile. “Do
you think we should vacate the premises? Netflix and chill at my
place?”
“Oh,
no.” I unzip my
purse and pull out a whole stash of fresh makeup for her. “You
dragged me out here tonight. We’re
staying out. No moping from me, no dwelling for you, no boys—”
“What
about Patrick?” she
asks with a raised eyebrow.
“No
boys except Patrick, and definitely no not having fun.”
She
accepts the bag of makeup with the best attempt at a smile she’s
going to muster right now, and then we both suck it in so we can
squeeze out of the stall, through the crowd of girls glaring at us
for occupying the bathroom for so long, and take a stand near the
sinks to finish putting ourselves back together.
#
“One
month left,” Stacey
points out as I sit curled in our dorm room window watching
snowflakes drift across the pavement outside. “Can
you believe it?”
“No.”
I bite my lower lip. “I
really can’t.”
It’s
Christmas in three days. After that, a week of holidays, two weeks
until we receive our finals results, and then I’ll
be on a plane back to Philadelphia to finish up my last three
semesters at Penn.
I
went to my last lecture with Professor Jack Kingston today. I sat up
front this time, and I watched the way he kept pushing his hair,
which has grown just long enough to fall in his eyes, back off his
forehead every few seconds. I watched, and I noticed that the bags
under his eyes weren’t
quite so dark, and his hands don’t
hesitate when he writes quotes for us to follow on the board.
He
sent me another email last week. A follow-up, to let me know how
things went with the Eliot paper. He’s
sending it around to publishers, and he’s
planning to list me as a co-author. I didn’t
reply, though I have to admit, it did make me smile. The idea of my
name on an actual real-life published article, in my field, on such a
groundbreaking subject.
The
idea of our names on it together.
Plus,
knowing that he still thinks about me helps. Especially the way he
signed off on that email.
I’ve
told you this before, Harper, but not in so many words. Not plainly.
I’m
sorry for everything I did to hurt you.
I
only wish that were enough. I watched him pace across the classroom
this morning, and for a second our eyes met, and everything sparked
between us again. But I made myself look away, stared at my textbook
until I knew he’d
passed on to the next person, and it was gone again, just like that.
It
was never real,
I tell
myself. He never wanted me. But only part of me actually believes
that.
There’s
a knock at the door, and some stupid distant part of my heart still
jumps at the sound, because it wants it to be him. Instead, Patrick’s
head appears through the door frame, grinning at us both. “You
girls ready for dinner?”
“Do
we have to go out?”
I point at the snow swirling past the window. “We
could order instead. Eat takeout in here.”
“Where
would we all sit? Besides, Mary Kate wants to introduce us to
someone.” He
emphasizes
someone
in a way that tells me exactly who it’ll
be. This mystery man she’s
been talking about nonstop ever since things with Nick cooled.
Graeme. She won’t
tell us his last name, or anything more about him. It’s
almost like she’s
dating a spy.
Or
her professor
, points
out the wry, annoying part of my brain.
“Fiiiine,
fine, just let me find my coat,”
I say.
“Oh,
by the way,” Patrick
adds, in a very not-by-the-way tone of voice. “I
swung by the student mailboxes earlier.”
“I
told
you to stop picking mine up for me,”
I grumble.
“Yes,
but a gentleman never listens to ladies’
complaints about their chivalry. Plus, I’m
nosy.” He catches my
eye when I turn around, an envelope extended in his hand. “Trust
me. I really think you should open this.”
I
glance from the envelope to him and back again. “Why?”
“Will
you never just trust me blindly, Harper Reed?”
he complains.
“Not
on your life,” I
reply as I snatch the piece of mail from his grasp. The moment my
eyes land on the return address, I feel like I’ve
just swallowed a live snake. The Society for the Advancement of
British Poetry Studies’
logo is emblazoned across the upper left-hand corner.
I
heft the envelope in my hand, but it’s
impossible to tell anything from its weight. It’s
small. Maybe too small? Definitely not college acceptance letter
sized.
Just
open it Harper,
I tell
myself. Stacey and Patrick both echo similar sentiments, so finally,
I take a deep breath and tear into the package. The letter is
single-sized, one page. The snake wants to strangle me now.
It’s
too short, it’s
bad news, it must be.
I
clear my throat of nerves and snakes alike, and read the first
sentence out loud, just because, at least if it’s
bad news, I’ll have
immediate support from my friends. “Dear
Ms. Reed. On behalf of the Society for the Advancement of British
Poetry Studies, we are thrilled to inform you . . . ”
I trail off, failing to finish
the line.
“Read
it, read it!” Stacey
and Patrick chant, practically jumping around the room. Someone
downstairs thumps on the ceiling, clearly angry at all the racket
we’re making.
“We
are thrilled to inform you that you have been selected as the
recipient of our tuition grant this year. The grant funds will be
applicable toward your senior year of study, and can be put toward
any accredited university, college, or institution with a poetry,
creative writing, or English major with a focus on poetry studies.
All costs will be paid in full and additionally, winners will . . . ”
I pause to clear my throat hard,
blinking to fight the tears that threaten to spill down my cheeks.
“ . . . Winners
will receive a stipend to fund living expenses in whatever location
they plan to attend.”
When
I finish reading, the room fills with shocked silence. I look up to
find both Stacey and Patrick beaming at me, unable to control the
expressions on their faces.
“Guys,”
I say. “I can come
back.”
Time
flies when you most want it to hold still. One moment it’s
Christmas morning, and I’m
unwrapping the presents my parents and sister sent me over webcam,
then catching the train into London to Mary Kate’s
family’s house,
while her parents force-feed me sprouts and Sunday roast and I
finally learn what the heck Yorkshire pudding is (not a pudding at
all, but pretty damn delicious).
The
next thing I know, I’m
standing in line at the airport waiting to board my flight home.
Funny
how time does that. The weeks between Christmas and the day we all
received our results were the same length as the weeks before them.
But now, looking back, it feels like someone pressed fast-forward on
my life, made me speed through all the farewell drinks at our
favorite pubs around town, skip over the day trips we took in
Patrick’s car, just
me, him, Stacey, and Mary Kate, visiting London one day and
Birmingham the next, all of us reveling in having no classes, no
coursework imminent, no schedules to our lives.
Patrick
stopped hitting on me as much, and started flirting hardcore with
Stacey. I should be happy about that, since I sure as hell wasn’t
ready to make yet another mistake on British soil. But watching them
together made me a little sad the last couple weeks. Not because I
want Patrick.
Because
I want what they have with someone else.
“Now
boarding group C,”
the flight attendant announces.
Unable
to help myself, I cast a backwards glance through the terminal as I
heft my bag higher on my shoulder and shuffle into line. Some stupid,
overly hopeful part of me thought that maybe, just maybe, he’d
come and find me today. Chase me down in one of those dramatic
airport parting scenes to beg me to stay.