Naughty Brits: An Anthology

by Sarah MacLean

  But when I open the door, it doesn’t reveal my flawed deity, but an utterly empty room. There’re no books on the shelves, there’s no antique desk with a drawer for the little depravities we couldn’t help but indulge on campus. There’s no sofa for a scared, exhausted girl to crash on after keeping watch over her brother, and there’s no basket next to it for a soft blanket to cover her with.

  There’s nothing and no one.

  Church is gone.

  But when? How? Why?

  This should be the one constant—the one thing that holds the universe together.

  Church teaches. Church teaches so Church can chase God through muddy fields and underneath crumbling tells. This is his life, his only passion. His calling.

  And he’s fucking brilliant at it.

  “Looking for someone?” a voice asks from behind me.

  I’m frozen in the doorway, almost unwilling to turn around and leave this moment of shock behind because I know what comes after it will be worse. But I do turn around, and when I do, I see the director. Officious and reedy and pinch-lipped.

  It’s the same director who told Church he couldn’t go through with our wedding.

  I have no idea if he recognizes me or not, and in this moment, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. “Where is he?” I demand. “Where are his things?”

  “He left,” the director says. His words hold just the faintest whiff of smugness, but there is a tightness to his face that suggests he’s unhappy too. Which makes sense. Whatever his personal feelings towards Church, he just lost the brightest star in his institute, not to mention the best teacher. Church’s students went on to do great things—good-for-alumni-brochure things—and most importantly, people left his classes changed for the better. Smarter and more perceptive and more imaginative than they were before.

  He’s an amazing teacher.

  And he’s not here.

  “He left?” I repeat, as if the director must be mistaken. “He wouldn’t leave. This is—this is everything to him. It’s everything he ever wanted.”

  The director shrugs gracelessly. “Apparently not.”

  “But . . .” I turn and look back into the office. Outside the windows, Gordon Square is wet and bright with autumn colors. Behind me are the faint noises of doors closing, people murmuring, someone rolling a cart down the hall. This was his world. His entire world was this place.

  “He left,” the director repeats, “in the middle of term and with no notice. I told him he’d never find a position again quitting like this, but he said he didn’t care.” The director scoffs. “Probably with as much money as he’s got, he doesn’t have to care.”

  I’d really like to tell this guy to eat a bag of dicks, because this job was the only thing Church cared about—even more than he cared about me. He was frequently impatient with the bureaucracy, with the labyrinthine politics, with how difficult it was to secure permission and funding to do the things he really loved, but never, ever in the time we were together did he raise the possibility of quitting. Never. So what could have changed?

  Me?

  No. Surely not. Church isn’t stupid; I told him he couldn’t atone. And he’s not a liar—he told me he wasn’t trying to.

  So then why would he do this idiotic, self-destructive, selfish, cowardly thing? How could he do this to the students who needed him? How could he do this to himself? How could he rob himself of his future and his passion and the only part of him that resembled a soul?

  I turn back to the director, and whatever is in my face has him taking a step back.

  “Listen, madam,” he says, “there’s no need to be angry with me, it was entirely his decision—”

  “Where is he now?” I snap, not interested in playing nice.

  “I presume at home? He cleaned out the office yesterday—”

  I’m already pushing past him to get to the stairs, and within a few minutes, I’m hopping down the stairs to Russell Square Station and catching a Piccadilly line train. I’m not sure what my plan is—I’m not sure I really had a plan in the first place, even before I knew he’d quit teaching—but I’m certain some yelling is going to be involved. Maybe some light murder is back on the table.

  I mean, really. What the hell? After leaving me at the literal altar for this job, he’s not going to keep it? After making me the burnt offering for his career, he’s just going to walk away?

  Screw. That.

  He is going to get that job back and he is going to fulfill his promise as a professor and as an archaeologist. It makes no sense for him to waste his mind and his gifts like this. It makes about as much sense as me dropping out of school, except in my case, I literally had no other choice. Yet he’s awash in choices, he’s buried up to his neck in them.

  So why this choice?

  Yes, murder is back on the table now. And this time it’s not for hurting me, it’s for hurting himself.

  When I get to his Belgravia townhouse—a graceful rise of white Georgian architecture set against the frowning sky—the door is hanging open as a young man lugs photography equipment inside. A crisp-looking woman in perfectly hemmed wide-leg trousers is talking to someone else on the front steps.

  “We should wait for a sunny day for the rooftop photos,” the person says back to her. They seem to be looking through the weather app on their phone, oblivious to the woman’s eye roll.

  “In October?” she asks impatiently. “I think we’ll be waiting a while. And he wants the listing up tomorrow. We’re doing it today.”

  The person on their phone sighs but accepts her decision. “I suppose if he’s listing it under market value anyway . . .”

  The woman nods, like this is all something the person should have already put together.

  Jesus Christ. He’s selling his house.

  The woman—his estate agent, I presume—finally catches me hovering on the sidewalk, assessing in an instant that I am not a potential buyer for a multimillion-pound home and narrowing her eyes at me. “Can I help you?”

  I’m too shocked and angry to put on the dimple-and-freckles act for her. “Yes. I’m looking for James Cason.”

  If the agent is surprised a girl in a sweater dress and scuffed boots knows the owner of the house, she doesn’t show it. “He’s not here. We’re preparing the house for market, as you can see, and he told us he’d spend the day at his second home to give us space to work. And no—” she adds, seeing me open my mouth “—I don’t know when he’ll be back. Perhaps you could try calling him.”

  “Perhaps I could,” I say, already walking away. I don’t need to call him, because I already know where he is. He doesn’t have a second home in the city, but he does have one place here that he loves above all others.

  “Thank you,” I tell the agent over my shoulder, and then I retrace my steps all the way back to the Tube and back to Russell Square Station.

  Chapter Seven

  Church

  There was a practice among the ancient Celts.

  They would make swords inlaid with gold and precious stones. They would polish stone axe heads for thousands of hours until the stones gleamed like glass. They would make intricate necklaces and bracelets and rings. Anything could work really, so long as it was very difficult to make and too precious to lose.

  And then they would break these things.

  Swords were curled into circles, axes cracked in half. Jewelry was bent and scored and cut. The objects weren’t just marred, they weren’t just broken—they were ruined. They were killed until there was no question of them ever being useful again.

  Then these beautiful, dead gifts were given to the waters, to the lakes and rivers and bogs where the gods lived. An offering. A sacrifice.

  Sometimes, if I close my eyes and I still my breathing, I can imagine the flashing and glinting of the bent swords as they drop through the water to the depths below. I can see the last glimmer of the necklaces as they slip into the shadows.

  The final gasp of things that were made onl
y to be broken, things made only to be given up to dark and never seen again.

  I wonder if this is Charlotte and me—except if it is, then who is the slayer and who is the offering?

  Who did the making and who did the breaking?

  * * *

  ***

  * * *

  The museum is quiet today, which suits me just fine. I drift through the European rooms and then the British rooms, looking at all the torcs and shields that long-dead priests gave to the waters, and I miss Charlotte. I stare at the Sutton Hoo exhibit and glance at the various belts and knives and cauldrons liberated from hoards and burials, and I miss Charlotte. I sit down on a bench and stare at my pointless hands, my empty hands—hands that should be cradling and petting and spanking—and I miss Charlotte.

  We’re both the offerings, I think tiredly. I broke her, then she broke me.

  No. She’d already broken me. From that very first day. From that very first moment right here in the museum. I saw her and then I was bent for her. Cracked and killed. All for Charlotte Tenpenny.

  Everything else was just flashes and glimmers in the dark.

  I’m not sure how much of the morning I pass in this fashion, haunting the exhibits and missing Charlotte as only a broken thing can, but when I wander over to the Mesopotamia room, I find it empty. The neighboring room is closed for a new case installation, and the exhibit two rooms down is roped off for something that involves a camera crew, and the cumulative effect is that it seems to deter traffic away from Mesopotamia.

  I don’t mind. I rather like being alone with my agony. It feels fitting.

  I’m staring at the relief of Ishtar that started it all when I hear the footsteps. The quick, angry slap of boots on the wood flooring, and before I have a chance to look up, she’s excoriating me with her words.

  “Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she hisses, stomping towards me. Her hair is down, making a halo of soft, curling gold around her face, and all her stomping has sent an appealing pink blooming under her freckles. And that lip—God, that lip. Even now, even broken, my body responds to that sinfully freckled mouth like she’s already promised it back to me.

  She’s still striding towards me and berating me all the while, and all I can think about is how beautiful she is. How perfect. The hem of her sweater dress doesn’t quite reach the over-the-knee socks she’s wearing under her boots, and slivers of pale, freckled thighs tease me with every step. Her dress hugs her body, as if in worship, clinging to her breasts and hips, hanging down to cover her hands to keep them warm. I wish very suddenly that I could keep her hands warm, but I know if I reach out to wrap them in my own, she’ll leave, and I don’t want her to leave.

  I want her to stay here in this dim museum twilight and keep abusing me in that sweet, angry voice of hers. If she wanted to scream at me forever, I would let her happily. With all the relief I could ever feel.

  I’m still staring at her with a smile on my face when she reaches me and takes a big breath. She narrows her eyes. “Are you even listening to me?”

  I shake my head, daring to reach out and tuck a wild curl behind her ear. “But keep talking, please. I deserve all of it.”

  She huffs, very adorably, and crosses her arms over her chest. “Your reverse psychology won’t work on me.”

  I just want to gather her in my arms and prop her on my lap and murmur every beautiful thing about her into her ear. I want to spend days memorizing the freckles on her shoulder. I want to spend the rest of my life with my nose buried in the curve of her neck. “Please,” I say. My voice is soft, but earnest enough that it makes her hesitate. “Keep going. I want to hear you.”

  She glares at me a little like she still thinks it’s some kind of trick, but then she relents, too furious with me to bottle it inside any longer. “Fine, professor,” she seethes, sticking a finger against my chest. Warmth blooms from where she’s touching me to everywhere else in my body, sending something hotter than heat all the way to the whorls of my fingers and the soles of my feet. Happiness, I think. Joy.

  Love.

  I want to press my body to hers, my broken heart to her broken heart and just let the jagged edges stab and shred us all over again.

  She’s still going. “You’re going to hear me, because what kind of self-destructive moron leaves the only job they’ve ever wanted, and I know you’re not a liar, and I know you said you weren’t trying to atone, so then what could possibly have motivated such a fucked-up decision—and how could you do that to your students and to yourself, you’re going to be so miserable, and do you want to be miserable? Because I don’t see any other way—”

  I surrender to the need to touch her, and I take the hand currently against my chest and cradle it in my own. I bring it to my lips and simply touch them there. Her skin against mine. It’s heaven.

  Her rant is brought to halt by this, and I can feel her pulse speed in her wrist at my touch. I can hear the hitch in her breath as I kiss her knuckle and then her palm and then her fingertip.

  “You look like shit,” she grumbles, unable to keep scolding me but also unable to completely let it go.

  “I know.” I say the words against her skin. “I know.”

  “Church,” she whispers. “Why?”

  That’s been this whole week between us—the whys—although I know for her it’s been much longer. Four years of why, and I’ll never be able to make that up to her. I need her to know that as much as I need to savor these last few seconds between us. She’ll leave and I’ll let her, and then I’ll let myself sink into the dark. Find some cottage somewhere and live out the rest of my days as the shattered man I am.

  “It wasn’t to prove something to you,” I tell her, looking up to her face. Her eyes shine with angry tears, and my heart rips a little. “I swear, Charlotte, I swear on everything I’ve ever cared about. This wasn’t a grand gesture. I wasn’t trying to—”

  I can’t finish the words. Because while I’m not trying to win her back, while I know I can never make up for what I’ve done, my instinct is still to pin her by the wrists to the nearest wall and kiss her breathless. My instinct is still to take her home, cage her with my body, and tell her mine, mine, mine until we both believe it again.

  So it’s very hard to say I wasn’t trying to get you back, not because it’s not true—it is—but because I’ll always want her back. Always, until I die, and then even in the realms past death. She is my own soul.

  “I wasn’t trying to earn your forgiveness or your pity,” I say instead, straightening up. I don’t let go of her hand, however, and she doesn’t make me. “I need you to know that.”

  “I do know that, asshole,” she fumes, tears spilling over. “I know that, and that makes it worse, because it means your only other motive was hurting yourself, and I hate it. I hate that you’ve cut yourself off from the thing you’ve dedicated your life to.”

  My thumb can’t stop rubbing at the skin of her wrist. If I could stop time, I’d stop it right here—my thumb brushing against her very pulse, her face teary and gorgeous and lit by the carefully muted bulbs of the exhibit cases.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she sniffles, trying to duck her face away from me. It’s habit—and probably a bad one—when I don’t let her. I catch her face with my other hand and make it so our eyes meet.

  “Looking at you like how?” I murmur. Even though I already know.

  “You know how,” she mumbles, because she knows that I know. It’s why I knew she’d survive me when I first saw her—because she’s always seen straight through my games. And then chosen to play along anyway. “All puppy-dog-eyed. And . . .”

  She reaches up and touches the edge of my mouth. I think I might expire in agony. I love her so fucking much.

  “You’re smiling,” she says on an exhale, her voice and fingertips trembling. “This is a smile.”

  “I have been known to smile, little one. Especially around you.”

  She shakes her
head, her eyes tracing the curve of my lips. “No. Not this kind of smile. Not like you’re happy when you have every reason not to be happy.”

  I can feel my lips tilt even more against her touch, and I want to nip at her fingers so badly, I want to take one into my mouth and flick my tongue against the tiny whorls and ridges of the tip until she’s whimpering for me to tongue her clit. I know any moment this will stop and she will walk away and I will never see her again, but maybe she wouldn’t mind one last little bite. One final kiss to last me the rest of my pointless, lonely life.

  “You—I told you to stay away from me,” she goes on. “I told you I wouldn’t forgive you. And then you left your work, which is the only thing you’ve ever loved. You shouldn’t be smiling.”

  “I’m smiling because I’m looking at you, darling girl.”

  “But—”

  It’s my turn to shake my head. “There’re no buts, Charlotte. No qualifiers. You are the very expression of the sacred. You are my holiness. Seeing you is like being transfigured, heartbeat by heartbeat, breath by breath, into light itself.” A tear slides down her cheek at my words, and I frown at it. “I know there’s no act I can lay at your feet to redeem my selfishness, and I almost don’t want there to be, because I don’t deserve even the comfort that it could be possible. But how could I keep living with the wages of my sins after knowing how much they’d cost you? These last four years, I’ve been sustaining myself on the lie that you were better off without me. But you weren’t. And I can’t serve any longer the idol I chose over you. You say my work is the only thing I ever loved, but it was you, Charlotte. How could I still pretend to chase God when I’d already let the divine slip through my fingers?”

  Another big tear slips down her cheek, and I’m going to hell, but it’ll be worth it for this one stolen taste. I lean in and kiss that tear away, letting the salt bloom on my tongue, and she shivers against me.