Chapter 2
Two
ADDIE
Itold Becky I would think about her job offer because what she was asking for was a complete upheaval of my life.
She said she understood, but the moment I hung up, she forwarded an email with all the details that I would need, and I was reading it as I brushed my teeth.
Nothing was out of the ordinary. All things considered, it was an easier job than the one I currently had. Which would mean that I would have more time to work on finishing my PhD. Or dare and try to achieve the elusive work-life balance.
More importantly, I would be home.
As I spat my toothpaste into the sink, a text came through.
Proof of life?
I was supposed to text Tori when I got home from any sexcapades.
She rarely read them when I sent them because I did so in the early hours of the morning.
But she also seemed to have a sixth sense for when I hadn’t sent them.
And then I felt bad because she was awake at half three in the morning, worrying about me when I was fine.
I threw up a peace sign and took a photo of my reflection.
Braids in the loosest bun in the world on top of my head.
An oversized Cookie Monster T-shirt that fell off one shoulder.
Green eyes still rimmed with black eyeliner.
I realised that I had only taken one set of eyelashes off.
Which meant I had also probably only taken one contact lens out.
I usually did them in pairs. Fuck, I was tired.
Home
Sorry, Becky called the moment I got through the door and I forgot
Everything okay?
Yeah
And suddenly, I knew that I didn’t have to think about this decision at all.
Might have some news though.
Brunch on Saturday?
B&D?
It’s a date
Brooks & Draper sounded like a law firm but was actually a cute little restaurant that did brunch like nobody’s business in Montreal.
It also happened to be owned by a family friend.
An old colleague of my dad’s, because apparently, when the stress of being a lawyer became too much, it made perfect sense to start a restaurant business.
It meant that even though they were usually fully booked on a Saturday, Blake found a way to sneak us in.
Tori and I were sitting in a corner on the outside patio, surrounded by way too many trees, but they provided a certain amount of privacy.
My skin was drinking up the warmth of the sun, and the ice in my coffee was hitting just right.
We were both waiting for pancakes, which were going to be amazing. They always were.
Tori was my opposite in a lot of ways. Five foot on the dot, but never not wearing a four-inch heel of some description. Blonde hair that I had never seen grow longer than her jawline, currently in a pixie cut. She wore a lot of pastels and patterns.
The only things we had in common were our love of Shakespeare and French as a first language.
We met when we were both TAs for a professor who wanted to be anywhere but teaching the youth, and bonded over the horrors of dealing with someone who had one foot out the door.
We liked teaching, even when it was hard.
She got out before the English department burned to the ground, and I found myself in the ashes trying to build it back up.
She had moved to teaching high school, which sounded like hell on Earth, but she liked it.
“So, you’re leaving me?” Tori asked as she stirred the ice around her iced coffee. I noticed how she said ‘me’ and not Montreal. Like, somehow, she also knew that I hadn’t been fully committed to being in this city for a while now. It was more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if’.
“In layman’s terms, yes. I am.”
Tori sighed. “When?”
I took a deep breath. I knew she was expecting at least one more summer together, given that universities across the pond started much later in the year.
I’d wanted to give her one final summer.
I’d planned to have one final summer right up until I booked my flight home.
Now that the path had been cleared to go back, I wanted to be back in London as soon as possible.
“A month from now,” I said slowly before I pulled the straw of my drink into my mouth. Her face fell.
“A month? You only found out about this job two days ago, and you’ve already got plans to move in a month?”
“That’s the amount of notice I had to give on the flat.”
Tori nodded. Her eyes moved through a range of emotions and eventually settled on resolve.
“We’ve gotta make a list. All the things you wanna do one last time before going home. Do you need help packing all your shit up?”
I hadn’t allowed myself to get excited about going home until I had officially told Tori, but now that I had, and she didn’t seem to hate me, it felt like a weight had lifted.
Tori pulled out a notebook and pen from the ether (her backpack—she was never without it) and opened it to a new page, writing in all caps:
ADDIE’S FAREWELL TO MONTREAL TOUR
She looked up at me. “Where should we start?”