Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Three years, two months, three weeks earlier
Edinburgh, Scotland
I’ve been sobbing for forty-five minutes—grotesque, phlegmy, shoulder-quaking heaves—when it occurs to me that there is someone I could call.
My older brother.
Eli is by no means my first choice. He is, in fact, so far down the list, I don’t even consider him until a blond tourist walks past me in a navy blue Penn State shirt. She briefly glances at me before turning to her boyfriend, no doubt to exchange a What the fuck is wrong with the raccoon-eyed girlie covered in snot sitting in St. Andrews Square Garden at sunset? look.
I glare resentfully at the way the two hold hands, picture throwing a knife at her back, and that’s when the letters string together to form something with meaning.
Penn State Field Hockey Team.
Field Hockey.
Hockey.
Eli.
As far as free associations go, it’s pretty weak—my brother used to play the ice variety of the sport—but who cares? It reminds me that I’m not completely alone on this shitty little rock of a planet. The last of the daylight may be slipping away, but someone exists who is related to me by blood. Our shared genes might compel him to pick up the phone. Or even just the fact that I’m calling him for the first time since I was back in Texas for the summer holidays. Last year.
Conversations with my brother—not my most beloved pastime. But beggars can’t choose shit, and I haven’t given myself much of an alternative, in the four years since I moved to Scotland. I barely kept in touch with my Austin friends—from high school, from figure skating, from those grief groups I was forced to attend once every two weeks. New country, I thought, determined to leave behind the bullshit of my teenage years. New social circle that will not see me as a bereaved, defective human. It made so much sense, especially after I met Rose on the first day of S1.
“Excuse me,” she asked after tapping my back. “How comfortable are you with me touching your arse?”
I glanced behind me. Took in a beautiful, upturned nose and bottle green eyes. “ Not very .”
“You’ll want to get over any reservations in the next few seconds, then.”
“Why?”
“Because you clearly sat in pigeon poo, and the back of your jeans looks like you shat yourself.”
I tried to look over my shoulder. Saw nothing.
“Not gonna work, not by yourself,” she said sympathetically, before smiling and adding, “ Someone will have to cop a feel. It might as well be me.”
Rose was right: I needed her in my life for many reasons, most of which were not even tangentially related to dry cleaning. She was irreverent, and kind. Always honest and never judgmental. I adored her from the start, and then I adored her even more when she introduced me to Georgia, her wild, party-minded cousin. I’d always wanted to be thirty-three percent of a trio, and boy, did they deliver. For the past four years, they were there through it all: Exams, navigating a new country, figuring out what the hell I wanted to do with my life. The small tragedies and the overwhelming joys of everyday life.
Except, Rose and Georgia are currently unavailable to me. They, unfortunately, are busy taking each other’s side. As well as Alfie’s—the guy who dumped me exactly six days ago, after one and a half years together.
“It’s not working,” he told me with a pained wince. “Sorry, Maya. It’s just not.” I’d been wondering why he was so light on the details, and…
Well. Now I know, don’t I? And I’m here, wiping boogers off my face with the sleeve of my sweater, scouring my contacts for my brother’s number. I use it so little, I can’t immediately find it. Did I not save it under Eli ? Or Killgore ? How the fuck did I—Ah. There he is. I must have been feeling super witty on that day.
Zilla, Bro.
I listen to the ringback tone. Take a deep breath. I don’t want to sound like I’m having a mental breakdown as I tell Eli that…
What? What am I going to tell my brother? Hi, some asshole I’ve been dating but never even told you about just broke my heart. I mean, what am I trying to accomplish with—
“Harkness Group, how may I help you?” a woman’s voice asks. It’s kind, with a slightly plastic beat. Reception-y. Did I accidentally call my brother’s job?
“Hi. I was looking for Eli Killgore. I thought this was his phone number?”
“Mr. Killgore is en route to Australia, and for the next few hours his calls are being transferred to me. Who am I speaking to?”
“Maya. I—”
“Ah, yes. We were waiting for your call.”
“You…were?”
“Please hold.”
A brief parenthesis of jazz-adjacent elevator music is quickly interrupted by a curt, “Yes?” It’s a male voice, richly toned, crisply articulated, with a slight rasp. Familiar, but I can’t place it. Not my brother’s.
What the hell does one reply to Yes ?
I clear my throat. “Hi. I’m looking for Eli?”
“Eli’s currently on his way to you.”
“…Is he?”
“Correct.” There is an accent. Not Scottish nor American. “In the meantime, I can discuss the financial incentives.”
My nose dribbles, and I try to keep my snuffle quiet. “That’s very generous of you, but I’m good.”
“I see. It was communicated to me that you were worried about the carveouts, and—”
“I’m not. Because I don’t know what a carveout is.”
“Excuse me?”
“All I want is to…” I get the tremor in my voice more or less under control, and restart. “Is to talk with Eli, so—”
“As the managing director,” he interrupts, firm, “let me reassure you that while Eli is in flight, I am more than capable of—”
“Are you capable of putting me through to Eli? Because that’s all I’m asking for .”
Yup, that was an explosion. Followed by a silent, drawn-out beat. And: “There may have been a misunderstanding. Am I speaking with the Mayers CEO?”
“I’m Maya. Maya Killgore. Eli’s sister.”
“You are—” A deep sigh. “Of course, you fucking are.”
And that, at last, is when I finally place the voice. It belongs to Hark. Or, Eli calls him Hark. Full name, Connor Harkness.
No, the Irish spelling. One n . That’s what the accent is.
Conor Harkness.
He’s my brother’s good friend. The best, maybe, though adult men rarely dole out the label. Our orbits have overlapped dozens of times, but unlike Minami, Hark never showed the slightest interest in me. I have faint recollections of him sitting in our living room, drinking beers with Eli, wearing high-finance clothes, saying high-finance things. I cannot remember him ever glancing my way or initiating a single conversation. Frankly, that was a relief. It wasn’t fun, being that young, feeling older men’s eyes on me.
I never made overtures, either. I can list few things that would have interested teen me less than a guy twice my age. After moving to the UK, I didn’t return overseas for a while, choosing to spend my holidays with Rose and her family, then with Alfie. I did briefly go back last summer, between my third and fourth year, but I must not have crossed paths with Hark, because…
Frankly, I’d forgotten that he existed.
“Did you think I was Mayers something or other?”
“Yeah. Be nice if you introduced yourself at the start of a call. Maya .” He sounds annoyed, which perfectly matches my recollection of his temperament. Bit of an asshole seemed to be his dominant personality trait.
I’m not the type to crumble under the weight of a rude reply, but right now I’m not at my most emotionally regulated. “Okay, well…Can I talk to my brother?”
“His plane just took off. It’ll be a while.”
My stomach drops. “Is there any way to get in touch with him?”
“You can text him, but after he boarded the pilot announced that the Wi-Fi wasn’t working.”
I might have to scream. Or not. I’ll have to wait and see. “How many hours is the flight?”
“No clue. Twenty?”
“Twenty?”
“Might be more. Or less. I’m not a licensed air traffic controller. But there’s this new tech you might use to figure it out.”
“What tech?”
“Google, it’s called.”
I close my eyes as tears start trickling out once again. I cannot deal with—I can’t. Not right now. “Well, if you hear from him before I do, please tell him to call me back at this number .” I barely manage to spit out the last few words before hanging up and bursting into a fresh bout of tears.
I sob for a few seconds, then fold over to bite into the ball of my denim-covered knee. Fuck him. Fuck him , and fuck all fucking men. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be sitting in a fucking park past fucking dark—
My phone rings. I pick up, too hopeful and bleary-eyed to check the caller ID. Stupidly ask, “Eli?”
“Are you crying ?” It’s Conor Harkness.
Again.
“No,” I snarl. Between hiccups.
“You are crying.”
“What do you care? Why did you even call me back?”
“Because you are Eli’s family. And you are crying.” He sounds accusing. Like he is being personally victimized by the worst week of my life.
“Can we please just hang up? You have a Mayers to talk to, and I would love to not go through this shitty moment with someone I barely know.”
“Why shitty? What’s wrong?”
The question is…whatever the opposite of solicitous is. “Why would I tell you ?”
“Because your brother is unreachable, and I’m a fucking adult, and you aren’t. It is my civic responsibility to make sure children aren’t being abducted, or some similar horseshit.”
“ Children? Are you for real? Do you even know who you’re talking to?”
“Aren’t you Eli’s baby sister?”
“ Baby sister? How old do you think I am?”
“You’re thirteen, or thereabout.”
I exhale, shocked. “I was thirteen. Seven years ago.”
“What? You’re not twenty.”
“I sure am.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Christ.” He mutters something sweary about the passage of time, and I roll my eyes.
“Now that I’ve caught you up with the rotations of Earth around the sun, goodbye.” I make to hang up, but—
“No, not goodbye. ” His speech is short. Authoritarian. It’s painfully obvious that he’s used to people doing as he says, no questions asked. “Tell me why the hell you’re crying, so we can establish that it’s just a load of inconsequential shite, and I can hang up the call with a clean soul.”
What a piece of shit. “Okay, first of all, your soul has never been anything but coal smeared. I bet you burned ants with magnifying lenses when you were a toddler, back during the Protestant Reformation.”
“That is patently libelous, and I do not deserve—”
“Secondly, I do not see why I should be wasting my time on you, an absolute no one in my life who clearly thinks I still play with Polly Pockets despite the fact that I’ve been registered to vote for two dozen fucking moons. Dude, I barely know you, and what I’m discovering is not flattering. So forgive me if I don’t share my life story and tell you that my boyfriend of over a year dumped me last week for a g irl who not only happens to be my best friend’s cousin, but also my roommate. And yesterday, when I came back from the gym, the three of them were waiting to give me some kind of makeshift intervention and tell me that it would be infinitely selfish and evil of me to stand between their whirlwind, star-crossed romance. And since they were ganging up on me, I got so angry that I forgot to do my stupid breathing exercises, I forgot the counting, too, and then I yelled that they could go at it on every surface of our apartment for all I cared, and that I wished them a life full of painful, pus-infected STDs. And this m-morning when I woke up they were there, in the kitchen, watching a panel show, making out under my cupboard, where I put my emotional-support Tunnock’s wafers, and they t-told me that I should be ashamed of my behavior last n-night, that they are afraid of my anger and of my d-disproportionate reactions, that I am the one at fault for being aggressive, and I couldn’t s-stand it anymore so I ran out of the d-door and now I never ever want to fucking g-go back .” The last part comes out as a weepy, babbling, maniacal screech. I can tell from the way passersby turn my way, and from the fact that Conor Harkness, clearly not one to ever shut up, has fallen quiet.
I bury my face into my legs again, wishing to become one with the roots of the cherry tree under which I sit. Now , I tell myself, would be a good time to end this call.
I’ll do that. Then maybe find a pub where I can get wasted, and—
“Well,” Conor says. “Fuck.”
Something about the word—the slight accent, maybe, or the hushed quality of it, has me snorting. “Indeed.”
“I don’t know what the hell to do with this information.”
“That’s the exact point I was trying to make, you prickhead.” I’m too emotionally exhausted to charge the insult with any heat, but it still reverberates between us—until I hear a deep, rich chuckle.
Unlike everything else about this conversation, it’s warm and it feels a little like…not a hug, no, but a hand rubbing soothingly up and down my spine.
So I laugh, too. Even as he says, “I am willing to concede that ‘load of inconsequential shite’ might not be the most accurate description of your predicament.”
“Yeah?” I tilt my chin up. Smile at the blackening sky. “How magnanimous.”
“Is there anywhere else you could stay for a while? With a friend?”
My friends are the ones I’m trying to run from , I don’t say. My heart is already too close to breaking. “A park bench. Does that count?”
He scoffs. “I’m going to book a hotel for you to stay at. And pay for it.”
“That’s nice, but…money is not an issue.” Eli has always made sure of that. Being financially independent from him is a priority of mine, and I’m here on a scholarship, work a part-time job. I try not to touch the funds Eli provides for emergencies, but I could book my own hotel.
Conor’s words, though, resurface a faint memory. Wasn’t Conor the one who paid for my travel, back when I was fourteen and did an internship with that California local news station? And the next year, when Eli left for a work trip, didn’t he drive me back and forth from school for a whole week?
Hang on. Didn’t Conor used to date Minami, too? Yeah, he did. And it feels…wrong. Minami was as close to a mother figure as I got after Mom died, and I will forever worship her. So I might be biased, but…how did Conor Harkness, supreme asshole, manage to pull someone like her?
“Where are you, anyway?” Conor asks. Something seems to occur to him. “It’s slowly coming back to me. You moved to Europe for uni, right?”
“So you do know that. Did you think thirteen-year-olds went to college in foreign countries?”
“Can’t say I ever thought about it. Where are you, precisely?”
“I’m not telling you , a stranger, where I live.”
“Come on, Maya. It’s not like I don’t have the resources to find out.” A tapping, rhythmic sound. Like he’s typing, or drumming his fingers. “Let’s see. You mentioned Tunnock’s. Probably for sale anywhere in the world, but particularly popular in Scotland.”
I exhale. Too loudly.
“Ah.” He sounds obnoxiously pleased. “St. Andrews? University of Edinburgh?”
Motherfucker , I mouth.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll figure it out. Back to the topic at hand—I’m not going to berate you for your choice in friends and roommates.”
“You’re too kind.”
“Oh, I’m not. I’m not even kind enough . I’ve just made similar mistakes. What I don’t get is, why should you not feel angry about them bringing their relationship inside your house?”
“Because,” I say. I hope he reads in my tone that what I really mean is: fuck off.
“Because…?”
“I don’t know. I was—I shouldn’t have yelled at them.”
“Among all the blows being dealt, here, that seems like the least egregious.”
“I know, but…I have anger-management issues.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. With some people. Not everyone. I don’t, you know, get mad at the customer service guy at Costco.”
“Is Costco in Scotland?”
“Yeah. For a while now.”
“But you don’t berate their workers.”
“No, I…” I swallow. “It’s mostly with people I care about. When I feel hurt by them, I tend to lash back.”
“Hmm. Right. You drove Eli absolutely off his rocker when you were a teenager, didn’t you?”
I laugh. “I may have, and look where it got me. He and I barely talk. But when I moved here, I decided that I wanted to become a better version of myself. And since most of my issues boil down to how angry I always am, I started doing all that shit. Therapy. Journaling. Identifying triggers. And it works, for the most part. But now I…I’m furious at them, and I can’t figure out if this is me backsliding, or a righteous, legitimate feeling. Should I just bottle this up? I just…I wanted Scotland Maya to be grounded and easygoing and carefree, but…”
“It sounds like Scotland Maya is more like a plastic doll than a real person.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. The night air is getting cold. “Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Scotland Maya is a bit of a pick-me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s just a…” I sigh. What the hell am I doing, playing thesaurus for Conor Harkness? “Listen, I’m gonna hang up now. And…”
“Are you going to do something daft?”
“What? No . It’s not like that. I’ll just…I’ll go home, I guess.”
“To your roommate. And your ex.”
“Yeah. I…Yeah.” I rub my face. “Actually, maybe I’ll go to the library for a couple of hours. Just to maximize my chances that they’ll be asleep.”
“Maya.” It’s so weird, hearing him use my name. “I can find you another place to stay in a second.”
“Are you handy with Booking.com?”
“No, but I have an executive assistant at my beck and call.”
I shouldn’t laugh, especially considering that Conor Harkness must be a bitch and a half to work for. “The problem is, that is my apartment. And I have a couple of months left in the semester. And my graduation ceremony—I have first-class honors. I worked hard for it. I’m not going to drop out of my life, or even out of our shared D&D campaign. I’m n-not going to run away like I’m the one who s-should be ashamed.”
“You shouldn’t,” he agrees. Like no more obvious sentiment has ever been stated.
“It’s just…rejection. Alfie was my first long-term boyfriend, and one of the people who knows me best in the whole world, and it’s mortifying that one morning he woke up and decided that I wasn’t smart or funny or hot enough for him. Georgia is so effortless and beautiful and everyone wants to hang out with her. In the meantime, I…I feel like the odd man out, and I’m starting to wonder if this is what the rest of my life is going to be. So knowing that for the next two months those two will be pitying me, and basking in their togetherness, and maybe constructing five to ten percent of their pillow talk around how I’ll undoubtedly die alone…” I’m crying again, and this is way more than I ever meant to open up about, more than I remember admitting to anyone, and…
Fuck it.
I can’t.
“Thank you for talking to me. I feel better now.” I don’t, not really. But I hang up anyway, even as he starts saying something I refuse to listen to.
My phone is drenched in tears. I dry it as best as I can, then decide to turn it off, just in case. I dust myself off, grab my backpack. Even in the sudden collapse of my life, I have a single certainty: next week’s nuclear astrophysics test.
The uni library is open, so I make my way to George Square, and let its pretty bookshelf-like exteriors soothe me. Under the barrel-vaulted ceiling of the hall, I have to force myself to take a deep breath. I’ve been here with Alfie and Rose more times than I could count on my hands and toes . Georgia would join us, too. She and Alfie both smoke, so they’d frequently step outside for breaks and come back looking flushed and smelling like cigarettes. Even though I never enjoyed the scent, it had become so dear to me that…
I’m an idiot. I’m a fucking idiot.
I deserve this.
I refused to be jealous, or suspicious. Aren’t relationships supposed to be built on trust and mutual respect and love? What’s the point, otherwise? Am I supposed to live on high alert when—
“Watch where you’re going,” a guy hisses at me after I bump into him. I mutter an apology and sit at the closest table, making a superhuman effort to focus on orbital periods.
So the numbers and the words get blurry every once in a while.
So I barely get done a fifth of what I manage on a regular night.
So my head is pounding and my body weighs a million stones and—
Fuck it. It’s been over three hours. I’m going to bed.
It’s late, but it’s also a Friday. The streets around campus are still bustling. I drag myself toward my Potterrow apartment, wishing I’d thought of grabbing a thicker jacket before running out this morning. It’s nearly midnight when I say one last Please let Alfie and Georgia be in bed prayer and stick my key into the lock.
As soon as I open the door, animated voices drift from the kitchen.
My stomach twists into itself and shreds like confetti.
Don’t barf, I remind myself. Or you’re going to have to clean it up .
Alfie and Georgia are laughing, and there’s no way to my room except past their obnoxious mirth. I toe off my shoes, square my shoulders, and forbid myself from cowering with embarrassment.
“Hey,” I say, forcing my voice into a semblance of politeness.
“Hey, Maya.” Georgia, a vision in her riotous blond curls and satin lounge set, greets me with a loving grin. Clearly, she drank her own Kool-Aid and is convinced that her only sin was to fall in love and be loved back. Next to her is Alfie, with his ever-messy hair and charmingly crooked teeth.
He, at least, has the grace to look remorseful. “Hiya.”
They are not alone, but the third in their group is not, as I assumed, Rose. As close to the opposite as one could get, in fact.
Leaning against the counter is a tall, handsome man. He has dark, thick hair, A square jawline covered by the shadow of a beard. Strong brows that accentuate his light brown eyes.
He is familiar, but…why? I take in the tailored suit, the way his biceps fill rolled-up shirtsleeves, the droopy, hooded eyelids that make him look a mix of sleepy and irritated, the loafers crossed on the linoleum floor…
He’s smiling at me. A faint, barely-there, sharklike curve of his full lips. I feel as though I should be scared. But…of what?
“Maya,” a warm, deep, recently heard voice says.
That’s when it finally hits me.
Conor Harkness is in my kitchen.