Chapter 2 #2
“Why?” I asked, swiping the card, and the door clicked open as I helped Mila squeeze her cello through the doorway.
“Because he comes from a poor family with no name. He’d never let me marry him, so we’d have to run away and get hitched.” There was a glimmer in her eye as she spoke of the clandestine affair and adventure they were planning to take together.
“Wow, he must really love you,” I said as I breathed in the scent of polished wood, and then groaned when we came to a set of wooden stairs and I couldn’t see an elevator.
“Yes, he does,” she grinned, blushing as I ignored the creeping jealousy in my stomach of a girl who had never fallen in love.
I’ve had only two boyfriends over the past three years, and I wasn’t particularly fond of either. I only dated them because they asked me, and I never once blushed or giggled over them like Mila did over her boyfriend. Perhaps I was dead inside.
We laughed as we dragged our luggage up the stairs, only to find a landing with another set of stairs. “What floor are you on?” I asked her while I grabbed the cello, climbed the stairs, and leaned it against the wall before running back down to get my luggage.
“Um, third floor,” she groaned.
“I’m on the first floor, so I’ll drop my bags off and then help you carry your cello up the stairs,” I explained, panting.
I was unfit and decided in that moment that to survive the next three years, I would have to strengthen my mind, body, and spirit.
First step: find a gym. Second step: eat only healthy foods…
Yeah, I don’t know if I could give up milk chocolate, burgers, and potato chips, but I’ll try.
Or maybe, it could allocate one day per week where I eat anything I like, then back to the chicken salads the next day.
“Okay, deal,” Milo smiled as the muffled sound of my phone beeping in my bag, but I didn’t want to seem rude by dropping everything to check it. It was most likely my father, anyway.
I found my room, number four on the first floor at the back of the hall, opened the door, and dragged my luggage inside.
A single bed with a desk pushed against the wall, a single window facing the park, a chest of drawers, a closet, and, to my relief, a small bathroom with a shower, toilet, and basin.
The room was about a third of the size that I was used to at home, but as long as I had a locked door to feel secure, then I would be happy.
“Oh,” Mila said, disappointed, “Is this a self-contained suite? I expected them to be bigger.”
“It’s fine for me,” I assured her, then grabbed my phone to check the message while we were catching our breath. “I don’t need a lot of space.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, and I could almost hear the cogs turning behind her eyes, reminding her that we’re not in our cushy homes anymore.
When I looked at the screen of my phone, there was a message from my mom’s account. I hadn’t deleted her number from my phone because it was too soon, I wasn’t ready, and sometimes when I felt low, I’d read her messages dating back years.
Her phone disappeared after she died, and I assumed Dad had it somewhere, and I didn’t know whether anyone had disconnected her phone account.
He asked his personal assistant to cancel or close her bank accounts, insurance, retail accounts, credit cards, etc, so maybe she her phone account.
I knew Mom used this number only for close personal contacts such as Dad, me, family, and her close friends.
Obviously, it had to be a mistake, but I was still baffled and a little creeped out by it. The message said, 'Hi,' but that was enough to send a shiver down my spine.
Mila muttered as I peered at it, and I missed what she said. “I’m sorry?”
“Are you okay?” Her big blue eyes flicked to the phone in my hand. “Bad news?”
“Oh, no,” I laughed, tossing the phone onto my bed next to a white pastry box. “Sorry, I’m a million miles away.” I didn’t want to turn the message into a big one, as it was most likely a wrong number.
“A million miles away is a good place to be sometimes,” her eyes dropped to the white, pastry box on my bed.
“That must be a welcome gift.” She pointed at the pastry box, and I opened it to find two cupcakes with chocolate icing and the Castlehill University seal as an edible sweet laid over the top.
I shut the door behind me and helped Mila carry her cello up the next two flights of stairs, and we were exhausted by the time we got up there, laughing at how unfit, sweaty, and out of breath we were.
She found her room, and I was surprised at how much larger it was compared to mine, and she seemed a little embarrassed by that, whereas I pretended I hadn’t noticed.
After all, she was a Wolsey and I was Boleyn and most likely much wealthier than my family.
“Oh, fabulous,” she cooed, seizing the pastry box left on her bed, then flipped it open to discover that they were raspberry flavored. Then shot me a look, “One for one?”
“Sure,” I laughed and retreated to run back down the stairs to grab my pastry box with the chocolate cupcakes. “We need to exchange numbers as well.”
“Absolutely,” she grinned as if I were the first friend she had made in a long time.
I doubt we’d have much in common when it came to our classes, since she was studying music and the arts, and I was studying boring subjects like Finance, Digital Transformation, and Innovation at Castlehill School of Business.
This was what my father and I agreed on.
Today was the day I forcibly started my fitness program by running back up the stairs with my pastry box to Mila’s room on the third floor.
“I’ll need a sleep after this,” I panted as I handed her the box. We each exchanged a cupcake, so I had one chocolate and one raspberry, and I retreated because I wanted to unpack and reexamine the strange message from my dead Mom’s account.
Once I was back inside my new room, I collapsed on my bed as a gloom of loneliness came over me. Here I was in the middle of nowhere, so far away from my home and father, my mom was dead, and… ants were crawling up the wall of my bathroom.
I stood in front of the line of ants, wondering where they came from and where they were going because they seemed determined to climb up into the ceiling.
But I was glad they hadn’t found my cupcakes yet.
Speaking of cupcakes, I bit into the raspberry one with pink icing that I swapped with Mila, shoved it into my mouth, savoring the sweet taste, although it wasn’t as good as my mom’s recipes.
Excitable shouting outside my window urged me to peer at the view of the park, where a group of six broad shoulders, tall jocks playing a friendly game of ball throwing or something.
“Huh,” I couldn’t help but find them utterly enticing to the eye, but then I noticed the group of cheerleaders hovering by watching, trying to grab their attention. Cringe.
I wiped the crumbs off my boobs and was about to pull away from the window when I spotted a familiar figure.
Bulky white T-shirt, but he had put on a grey hooded sweater, which is why I didn’t notice him at first. Messy dark blond hair, thick across the shoulders and chest, tall—maybe about six-foot-three.
That triangular shape some men have when they work on their upper body.
A jock tossed him the football, and he grabbed it with one hand, then did a faux throw, pretending he was about to throw in one direction before throwing it in another.
As I watched him, I tried to figure out where I’d seen his face before, but still I couldn’t place it.
Did he attend my high school, and was maybe a year or two above, and I took little interest in him because he was popular.
Or perhaps he was the son of one of my father’s business partners or golfing buddies.
His head turned in my direction, and his gaze lifted, and it took a few seconds for me to realize that he was looking right at my window. My heart jumped, and I propelled backwards, hoping he didn’t see me, and I continued to unpack, staying away from the window for the next hour.