Breathe, I remind myself, closing my eyes and taking a moment to let the water run down my back. My panic attacks are fewer and fewer these days, but I know one has been creeping up on me, just waiting for me to break down.
Oh, that inevitable breakdown.
That’s the price you pay for trying to come back to life.
Somehow I manage to shake it out of me and hop out of the shower. I can’t even be bothered with makeup. There’s just no time. I’m Professor Irving’s teaching assistant for Film 100, and even though it pains me to look like a chump in front of a hundred students, I fear my professor’s wrath even more. Last week he kicked a student out just for looking at his phone.
“Want some tea?” Melissa asks from the kitchen as I hurry to my room and start throwing things around, looking for a pair of pants that don’t have some kind of stain on them. I’d like to say I wasn’t this disorganized or messy before the incident, but that would be a total lie. I’m twenty-nine years old and I’ve only slipped backward.
“No time!” I yell, holding up a skirt that might do if I’d started going to the gym regularly like I promised myself I would. The one good thing about recuperating in France was that I’d lost some weight I needed to lose. Even so, I still have hips and ass for days, and now I have a little belly that wasn’t there before. I blame all the meat pies I’ve scarfed down since moving back to London.
I pull the skirt on anyway, throw on my bra, a light knit sweater, and a raincoat. It’s pouring outside and I have to walk a while to get to the tube. Then I run into the kitchen and grab a banana while Melissa sits at the table. She dumps artificial sweetener into her tea, swirling it around and around with her spoon.
“Aren’t you going to class?” I ask her. “What do you even have?”
“Eh,” she says. “Some class about analyzing film comedy or something.”
“Who’s teaching it?”
She shrugs and slurps her tea. “I don’t know. Someone.”
I frown at her. Melissa is a very smart girl, which is probably why it bugs me so much that she’s so lackluster about school. She barely goes and she still gets good grades. She’s not even getting her master’s degree for any other reason than to appease her parents. What she really wants to do—what she does—is acting. I grew up with a mother who was obsessed with it and stardom the same way Melissa is, and I know how it all ends. Even I did my fair share of it when I was growing up in LA, but that lifestyle wasn’t for me.
Melissa and my mother are in love with the idea of fame, the idea of being wanted and adored and validated, but not the reality of being an actor. Maybe that’s why when I first met Melissa six years ago, we hit it off. She reminded me of my mother, the very person I escaped LA from. How is that for irony? Come all the way to England and then meet pretty much the exact same person you were trying to run away from.
When I first met Melissa, I had gone with my undergrad class to a film set she was working on as a stand-in. We’d got to talking, clicked, and the rest was history. I guess I liked Melissa because even though she was as vain and self-obsessed as my mother—always taking selfies, posting about how much more talented she is than other actresses and that she deserved so much more—she was also a lot of fun, and I needed some of that in my life. She also looked up to me for some reason, maybe because I was a bit older or because I grew up in LA. When she found out I was going to school for film, she wanted to do the same thing. Of course she one-upped me, and by the time I was in the first year of my master’s at the Met film school, she was starting her undergrad at King’s College—a much better school.
Still, I found it flattering that she wanted to emulate me, and she ended up being a true friend through thick and thin. She hadn’t really approved of what I was doing with Brigs, even though she met Brigs only once, but she was by my side after the incident and during my breakdown. When I moved to France to be with my father to get my head on straight and piece my heart back together, we’d lost touch, but as soon as I found my strength to step back into London in May, we reconnected. And when her last roommate moved out, I moved in.
Melissa eyes me like she can hear my thoughts. “Don’t worry about me. I’m going. Besides, I haven’t seen what guys are in my classes yet. Maybe I’ll luck out and get someone with a hot arse.”
“Maybe your teacher has a hot arse,” I tell her, grabbing my bag from the back of a chair. “Text me when you’re done with your mystery class and I’ll meet you.”
She waves goodbye and I run out of the building. The rain has let up for a moment, but it doesn’t matter much since my hair is still wet from the shower. Ever since I died it honey blonde, I swear it’s gotten thicker somehow.
As I hurry to the tube station at Wembley (we have a view of Wembley stadium from our balcony, which is great for reminding you about all the concerts you can’t afford to go to), my mind flits back to something it shouldn’t.
Him.
Brigs.
All because I said her teacher might have a hot arse.
Because, fuck, did Brigs ever have a hot arse. It’s like he was born to do lunges.
“Stop thinking about him,” I tell myself. Out loud. Because I’m crazy like that. Luckily there’s no one around to hear me, and honestly that would be the least of my problems if my train of thought continues. Brigs is a trigger. He was once the man I loved more than anything in the world. But he was also the man who would never be mine. There was that beautiful, brief period where I thought we had a chance. We were so close to being together, to putting an end to the guilt. Then it all fell apart.