Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
LUCY
It’s started raining by the time I finally trudge up the last road to the station, and honestly, I welcome it. I’m glad the weather isn’t as lovely as the rest of the weekend was. I’m not sure I could bear it. Every plop of rain on my face validates my sorrow just that little bit more.
I know that’s not a very Glass Half Full Lucy Partridge thing to think, but I’m not feeling very Glass Half Full Lucy Partridge right now. The glass isn’t anything but smashed against a wall, fragments of said glass cutting into me as I walk.
It’s a beautiful building, the station, with five stone archways that stand tall over the entrance. I didn’t appreciate it in the rush of my arrival. I’m not sure I’m appreciating it much more now.
I think part of me thought that Bram might change his mind, maybe chase me through the streets like they do in romance books, but it hasn’t happened so far.
And the streets themselves look different, painted in darker shades by the rain, and so far utterly devoid of goths.
It feels like a different place. That fits, I guess, because I feel like a different person. I definitely acted like one.
For a while there, I forgot that everyone abandons me in the end. Why did I believe Bram would be any different?
A rain-soaked curl slaps against my cheek, and I don’t even jump. I barely notice it clinging to my face. I’m a hollowed-out version of myself, a million miles from the person who got jump-scared by an inanimate vampire.
I duck into the station and look up at the boards. My train is on time, already waiting for me on platform one.
I briefly consider not getting on it. I imagine walking back out of the station and searching for Bram and telling him that he’s wrong – that he can give me everything I need and much more – but then I remember his face as he told me to go, and I can’t do it.
I can’t bear the thought of disappointing him.
He asked me to go home, and so I’m going.
Like I said, people-pleasing is in my DNA.
I haul my bags onto the train and shuffle down to an empty double seat by the window, stowing my things on the seat next to me.
The window is dappled with rain, slow drops which merge into rivulets as they fall.
I watch one as it tracks a lazy path down before seeming to vanish into the small puddle at the bottom.
Beyond the window a few people mill about on the platform, some glued to their phones, some in small groups, huddled against the chill of the wind.
Out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of black, and my stubbornly optimistic heart leaps, but when I turn to look, all I can see is a young goth couple hugging goodbye.
A man sits down in the seat opposite mine, and as our eyes meet, he smiles.
It’s fleeting – a shy, polite flash of a smile before he looks away again – but it’s long enough for me to notice how handsome he is.
It’s the kind of handsome that would have made my heart leap in my chest once upon a time, but my heart’s too far away now, stuck in a tiny cottage annexe with a man who thinks he can’t give me what I need, or can’t give me what he thinks I need, or whatever.
I look back out of the window and sigh so deeply that I almost pull something.
This is what Bram wants me to do. He wants me to meet a normal, human man in a normal, human way and live a normal, human life – marriage, babies, all of it. And if I’m honest with myself, I did want that when we met. But that was mainly because it had never occurred to me to want anything else.
And now? Now I don’t know what I want. Beyond him, anyway. He’s the one thing I’m sure about.
Was sure about.
The train jerks into motion, and I watch the countryside speed past outside the window, shades of green and orange and red which blur together, shapes distorted by the pattern of raindrops on glass.
With every minute that passes I’m further away – further from the place where I found something I’ve spent my whole life looking for.
My entire life, I’ve felt out of context.
A jigsaw piece the right colour but which just doesn’t fit into any of the spaces.
And I should have felt more like that this weekend, by rights.
I mean, I definitely didn’t fit. But somehow, after the initial double-jump-scare, almost-death-fall business, I slotted right in.
I finally felt as if I was in the right place.
I should have known not to trust it.
And now I’m speeding back to my old life – back to a job I tolerate with a boss who, I’ve recently discovered, is a massive arsehole. The only thing I’ve missed about my life in Leeds is Mina, and it’s not lost on me that Mina is everything I loved about Whitby. She’s the spirit of the place.
We’ve been texting a little – after I wore her out that first night, I’ve been careful to let her rest – but I haven’t properly spoken to my best friend in days.
I was excited to tell her all about me and Bram, but now, when I do, it’ll all be in the past tense.
The idea of it makes fresh tears burn at my eyes, but I try my hardest not to let any fall.
I’m not normally a public crier. I’m much too sunshine and roses.
But that’s when I haven’t had my heart obliterated. All bets are off now.
The train lurches as it slows for the next station, a small movement which, for some reason, makes my phone slide off the leg I was resting it on and sends it skittering across the floor of the carriage.
I track it with my eyes, willing my weary body to get up and grab it, when all of a sudden I see a hand reach for it.
It’s a nice hand, by anyone’s standards: solid and masculine with neatly trimmed nails and a natural-looking tan. It’s a very human hand – the kind of hand that might belong to the kind of man I’m supposed to be seeking.
‘Here,’ a voice says, and I look up to see that it’s the handsome stranger from the opposite seat. He’s holding out my phone, a faint smile on his face. ‘Your phone. It was closer to me than you, so I just…’
He trails off, motioning between me and the phone with his free hand.
He’s a little awkward, a little flustered.
I wonder if it might be because I look like I’m on the precipice of a nervous breakdown, but then I see a faint flush in his cheeks and the beginning of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
Is he flirting with me? I don’t know how I feel about that.
Our fingers brush lightly as I take the phone from him, and I’m struck by how warm they are.
It shouldn’t surprise me – warm is the default human temperature, of course – but it does.
I’ve become so used to cool hands against mine that it feels a little wrong.
That doesn’t bode well for my normal, human future.
‘Thank you,’ I reply as I take it from him, forcing as bright a smile as I can, and then I don’t know what to say after that. I settle for, ‘Thanks a lot.’
His smile grows a little more before he mumbles a response I don’t hear and settles back into his seat. He picks up his book from the seat next to him and, with a final quick dart of his eyes in my direction, begins to read.
A reader. A handsome, polite, slightly shy reader who isn’t wearing a wedding ring and seems to be interested in me.
I have to laugh. It’s like the universe is testing me, showing me what post-Bram life could look like for me.
And a small, petulant part of me thinks: this is what he wanted.
He told me to move on, to find a human, and here is a perfectly nice human, right in front of me.
And it’s that small, petulant part of me that takes the wheel when I look back up at the stranger, take a deep breath, and start to speak.
‘Hi. My name’s Lucy.’