Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
It was early, and already nearly thirty degrees Celsius outside.
Late summer in the UR made the return to classes feel less like obligation and more like a private, golden extension of vacation.
The scent of lavender drifted on the breeze, clinging to the stone columns and sun-bleached walkways. Mayfield Hall rose behind her, gleaming white against a cloudless sky.
She smiled to herself as she crossed the quad. She’d missed this place.
St. Ives was reawakening. Designer sneakers thudded against cobblestone as returning students air-kissed, waved, and slipped naturally back into their social rhythms. A drone buzzed overhead, part of the ever-watchful security net.
Ping after ping, their group chat had practically combusted before 9 a.m.
Group Chat: Therapy Club
NAOMI: Welcome back, future empresses.
ISABEL: Post-graduate empresses, thank you.
GEORGINA: Final year at St. Ives, can we get a hallelujah?
BEA: You 3 speak for yourselves. Lils and I are still in the trenches
ISABEL: Senior year, where coffee is no longer a drink, it’s an IV drip
LILLIAN: At this point mine should be tax-deductible.
NAOMI: I need gossip, validation, and then caffeine. In that order.
BEA: Goss: Georgie met Hunter’s sister.
NAOMI: What?! Airplanes have wifi these days Georgie. You could have dished.
ISABEL: How’d it go?
GEORGINA: She side-eyed my Birkin. I side-eyed her Omega. It was a bonding moment.
GEORGINA: Anyway, I think she likes me. Or she’s plotting my downfall. Either way, I respect it.
A couple dozen more messages followed.
Bea rounded the bend near the business faculty, skirt fluttering, and spotted a familiar silhouette by the lecture hall doors.
“Lillian,” she called.
Her friend turned, soft brown braid draped over one shoulder. “I got us good seats,” she said. “Thought you’d want to sit up front.”
Inside, her favorite lecture hall hadn’t changed. Still flooded with fractured morning light through its leaded windows. Still carried that reverent hush like history lived in the walls. She loved this space.
“It’s strange,” Bea murmured, slipping into her seat. “How the start of summer vacation feels like freedom, but the start of the year feels like possibility.”
Lillian nodded, adjusting her notebook. “Even holidays get repetitive after a while.”
Around them, the room buzzed. Bags thudded onto desks, perfume mixed with fresh coffee, voices threaded between greetings and gossip. Students were already eyeing alliances: who to sit near, who to study with, who to impress.
The professor entered, laptop in one hand, outlines in the other.
Senior year had commenced.
At noon, they made their way to lunch. The café sat inside a grand atrium where the space breathed upward above marble floors, and sunlight poured through sky-high panes of glass.
Plush seating curved around polished tables, and the delicate scent of white orchids mingled with citrus.
It was in one of Bea’s favorite spots since Georgina had introduced her to it last year.
Hard to believe a place like this was free, covered by the thick black dining card in her wallet. St. Ives University didn’t do cafeterias. Or silver trays. Or anything that suggested this was a school.
Lillian, Naomi, and Isabel were already in a booth, skin bronzed from their time away. Bea was suddenly glad she’d spent the latter half of summer in the UR. If she’d stayed in Canada the whole ten weeks, she’d be sitting across from them looking like the before photo in the self-tanner ad.
Naomi spotted her first and waved her over.
“Tell me you’re ordering carbs,” Naomi said as Bea slid into the booth, dropping her oversized tote onto the seat. “Because I’m about to eat like I wasn’t just on a boat for ten days.”
“My circadian rhythm is fried,” Isabel muttered, peeling off her sunglasses.
Bea grinned. “You two look like you swam here.”
“We basically did,” Naomi said. “Charles rented this yacht—obscene, obviously—and then we island-hopped with his family for the entire last stretch.”
Lillian glanced over her menu. “What about you two? Bali, right?”
“Yeah,” Isabel said, lips twitching. “Mason said we were going off-grid. Which apparently means a villa with six staff and a private driver.”
Bea snorted. “That’s his version of roughing it?”
Naomi snagged a breadstick. “Please. Isabel doesn’t rough anything. Mason was just being smart.”
“How was Canada?” Isabel asked, smirking.
“It was…good,” Bea replied. “For the time I was there.”
Naomi tilted her head. “I don’t know if I ever mentioned this, but Charles told me after the bonfire night, verbatim: ‘There’s no way King lets her go back for ten weeks without him.’”
Isabel sipped her drink. “Mason said the same. But with expletives.”
Bea coughed. “Yeah, he did kind of hate it.”
“Even if you came back, you still went.” Lillian glanced up. “That counts for something.”
“Looks like you took my advice about intermittent reward.” Isabel smirked. “Our Bey might be the cleverest of us all when it comes to men.”
Naomi made a sound that was half impressed, half conspiratory. “You did make Gage King follow you all the way to Toronto.”
“She made the most of it,” Lillian supplied. “She learned to cook for him.”
“And I missed it. I’m still mad,” Naomi pouted.
“Next girls’ night. I want proof Bea can cook,” Isabel said. “Even if it was for Gage.”
“It wasn’t just for him,” Bea mumbled.
It was. It totally was.
Lillian smiled gently. “It tasted great. Even Georgie said so.”
“Where is our resident diva?”
“With Hunter.” Isabel peeked at her phone. “She’s on her way.”
A waiter appeared, depositing sparkling waters with lime and handwritten menus. The girls quieted just long enough to order before the teasing resumed.
A ripple of perfume and designer energy swept into the atrium.
Naomi raised her glass. “Look who decided to grace us with her presence.”
“I had to,” Georgina said, gliding into her spot. “It’s the first lunch of the year. Also, I need someone to tell me I’m not peeling.”
“You’re not,” Isabel said flatly. “Yet.”
“I’m doing a cleanse,” Georgina announced.
Naomi didn’t miss a beat. “Spiritual or gastrointestinal?”
“Whichever one gets me abs faster,” Georgie said, reading the menu.
“Uh, why?” Lillian asked.
“Because I’ve been invited to Hunter’s sister’s wedding in four weeks and I’ve already chosen a backless dress,” Georgina replied. “My spine deserves its moment.”
The table broke into laughter, the sound echoing through glass and marble and light.
Bea looked around. All of them here. Talking over each other, stealing breadsticks, interrupting with stories, sliding into old rhythms like no time had passed.
This time last year, Bea was still looking for her people. Still on the fringes and wondering if she was temporary. But not this year. They’d saved her a spot.
Today, the table felt like hers, too.
Bea pushed open the door of Havoc Combat Systems.
The sound of bodies crashing onto mats and the jangle of punching-bag chains filled her ears. The familiar tang of clean sweat and leather. That scent that seemed to whisper to her that she was doing something good for her body.
She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed even this. Forty-five minutes of physical torment.
Lillian trailed just behind her, self-conscious in her studio leggings and athletic t-shirt that kept slipping off her shoulder, like she hadn’t quite committed to the one that was the right size for her.
Manny spotted them instantly. “Well, well,” he called from the front desk. “If it isn’t the prodigal daughter.”
Bea laughed. “Still bitter I left, I see.”
“You ghosted us for the whole summer,” he shot back.
“I told you I was going back to Canada.”
“So you did, but do you know what happens to glutes in two and a half months? Tragedy. That’s what happens.”
Bea stepped forward to hug him. “I missed you too, Manny.”
Manny eyed Lillian with theatrical suspicion. “Who’s this? New recruit?”
Lillian, who had been staring wide-eyed in mild horror at the BJJ class in session, looked over. “Uh, hi. I’m Lillian.”
“You promised me once that if I didn’t cry during the plank holds, I could bring a friend to two classes for free,” Bea reminded him.
“I remember.” Manny smirked. He turned to Lillian. “Welcome, kid. You ready for this?”
“I’ve never done Pilates before.”
“You’ll love it,” he said with a grin. His head tilted to Bea. “Bea said her first experience was as good as the Titanic.”
“Titanic?” Lillian asked, confused.
“I’ll explain later.” Bea chuckled. “Come on, Lil. Let’s punish ourselves elegantly.”
The glass-walled studio at the back of the gym had changed—new mats, new faces.
Same Nova, their instructor, body fat percentage lower than the calories in a stick of gum.
Where there used to be five, there were now sixteen.
But the burn was the same. The ache in her core.
The sweat at her hairline. The small, satisfying tremble of control.
The time passed in a blur of slow, exacting pain. By the third round of leg lifts, Lillian was bright-cheeked and bleary-eyed, shooting Bea the occasional flustered look. But she didn’t stop.
Bea focused on her body. Her breathing.
After the cool-down, Manny wandered past and dropped two chilled eucalyptus towels into their hands like party favors.
“You did good,” he said to Lillian. “Didn’t throw up or anything.”
Lillian, pink and breathless, gave him a shy smile. “That’s a low bar.”
Manny grinned. “We all start somewhere.”
Even though the sun had set, the air still held its warmth. Bea’s muscles were sore. Breath steady. Blood moving. Her body felt awake. Alive.
They crossed to the path that led back toward campus.
“That was fun,” Lillian said softly.
“Really?” Bea asked, surprised. “The first time I did Pilates I thought my soul was going to leave my body through my quads.”
Lillian smiled. “Not in a way that makes you want to laugh. In a way that makes you feel strong.”