Next Stop Love, #1

by Rachel Stockbridge

  He’d started working on a character design in the remaining space—his first instinct was to do a wizened old crow and wanted to get it out of his system because it seemed a little on the nose—when Beatrice walked onto the platform.

  He shouldn’t have been able to tell. His head was down, and he was only aware of people coming and going on the edges of his vision. She didn’t even look at him. But the second she stepped through the archway, he knew.

  His head snapped up, a jolt of awareness shooting through him.

  Her shoulders were drooping, like her bag had grown too heavy—the product of a long day at school, no doubt. Coupled with the long train ride she was facing to get home. Where more stress awaited her, if what she’d told him this morning was any indication.

  He wondered if the subway ride down had been as terrible for her as it had been for him. Too many people, pushing through all the other people, packing into cars elbow-to-elbow.

  He might have tried to play it cool if he had any sense. Pretend he hadn’t seen her the instant she arrived. That he was too absorbed in his art—or awkward stick-figure scribbles, as the case may be—to notice. But the thought didn’t even cross his mind until it was too late. He tucked his pencil behind his ear and crossed over to her, coming up beside her before he spoke. “Hey, Bee.”

  She turned her face up to him and smiled. It was like turning a light on in a dark room, that smile. The jolt of awareness sang through his veins, more primal than before. He clamped it down quickly, before it evolved again. She has a boyfriend, asshole. Back off.

  “Hey,” she said. She sounded as tired as she looked. “It’s my commute buddy.”

  “Coincidental commute acquaintance,” Julian corrected, needing to remind himself of the distance between them. He shouldn’t have made those tentative plans to meet up with her on the way home. But he was on a roll with the bad decisions, apparently. And she was just nice to be around.

  “Is that what the committee settled on?” Beatrice asked. “That’s unfortunate. ‘Coincidental commute acquaintance’ doesn’t really roll off the tongue, does it?”

  “They were fond of the alliteration,” Julian said, shrugging.

  “And yet ‘commute comrade’ was shot down immediately,” she said, shaking her head ruefully.

  “I think there was a fear of encouraging communism. ‘Commute companion’ was in there for a while, but that just sounds like you’re talking about your dog.”

  Beatrice laughed, her eyes lighting up. “And then, of course, ‘commute co-conspirator’ brought to mind con artists and spies.”

  “That one did make it pretty far,” Julian said, wanting to make her laugh again. “But it got knocked out in the next-to-last round by ‘commute cohorts.’”

  She snorted. Which totally counted as a laugh, in Julian’s book. “I don’t know if I trust this committee. They seem suspiciously fond of fellow-criminal words.”

  “Yeah, I’d keep an eye on them,” Julian said. “They’re a shady bunch.”

  She grinned up at him, and he realized he was smiling too. And he was staring, trying to figure out if her eyes were gray or a desaturated blue. Her irises were rimmed in darker blue, but there were threads of silver spidering out from the pupil. And there was a touch of green if they caught the light just the right way . . .

  Yeah. He was doing a great job keeping his distance.

  Julian cleared his throat and looked away, pretending he wanted to check the time on his phone. He glanced at the screen, and read the number, but forgot it again the second he slipped it back in his pocket.

  “Were you drawing?” Beatrice asked.

  He looked at her, confused, and she pointed at his sketchbook. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Kind of. I was thumbnailing.”

  Her blank stare mirrored his own. “I’m not an art person. I don’t know what that means.”

  “It’s just—It’s sort of drawing the thing you want to draw, but really rough and in miniature.” He hesitated for a second, then flipped open the sketchbook and pointed at the boxed-in rectangle. He wasn’t even sure it translated to anything coherent if you didn’t know what was supposed to be there. It was really rough, and he was out of practice. “That way you can map out where you want everything to go before you jump in on a big piece.”

  “Oh. Like the art version of outlining a term paper.”

  “Pretty much, yeah. It’s an easy way to try out different angles and compositions without having to spend hours and hours on it only to realize it’s all crap.”

  “What’s that going to be when it grows up, then?” she asked, pressing into Julian’s arm to get a better view.

  His mind went blank for a moment. Yes, there was probably an inch or so of material separating his skin from hers, what with shirts and coats and various other layers, but he could feel her every curve along the length of his arm. The subtle floral scent of her shampoo mixed with cold wind and the dirt of the city filled his lungs. He wanted to pull her to him and breathe her in. Find her mouth with his and see if she tasted as wonderful as she smelled.

  Good grief.

  He swallowed hard and sidestepped her, closing the sketchbook and tucking it against his chest. She’d asked him a question. What was it?

  “It wants to be an illustration of a witch in a library,” he said. “But its dreams might be a little ambitious.”

  “Hey, you’re already working on the plan,” Beatrice said, blessedly oblivious to his weird freak-out. “All you need is to put the work in. I’m sure it’ll be amazing.”

  “I hope so,” Julian said. “My—my boss said that teaching job is mine if I can get a decent portfolio together by Christmas.”

  Her face lit up. “Hey, that’s great!”

  “Yeah,” Julian said unenthusiastically, mussing his hair. “Except I’m way out of practice. I haven’t used anything but a pencil or a ballpoint pen since I started picking it up again. And I’m going to need at least ten nice, finished pieces ready to go in about two months. As in inked and colored. I’m not even sure I have that many ideas for illustrations in me.”

  “I could help you with that,” Beatrice said. “I’m full of ideas. I’m a master of ideas. They’re very closely related to plans, you see. And I’m very good at plans.”

  He smiled at that. “I have no doubt.”

  “Ten pieces in two months,” she said, frowning off into space. “That’s, what, one and a bit per week? Ish? How fast are you at art-ing?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know anymore. I have to take more breaks than I used to, but I think I’m pretty fast if it’s just a character on their own. A few hours maybe? Anything with backgrounds, though—especially when there’s a lot of little details like this little witch thing,” he said, waving the sketchbook demonstratively, “is going to take longer if I’m going to do it right.”

  “But you could break it up, right?” she said, digging for something in her bag. “Maybe limit the really detailed ones to, I don’t know, five or six? And then keep the rest of them simple so you can just knock them out in between the big ones.” She produced a pencil and a notebook and flipped to the last page or two. Julian’s Portfolio, she scrawled across the top.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m very good at plans,” Beatrice said again, still writing as the train pulled in. “You happen to need a plan. You’re lucky to have me as your coincidental commute acquaintance.”

  Beatrice was so focused on her list that she didn’t even look up when the doors opened and people started filing onto the train. Julian had to herd her up the steps and guide her to their seats. He stood back to let her in by the window, so their elbows wouldn’t bump if he tried to do some more thumbnails. Even then, she didn’t look up.

  He looked over her shoulder at the notebook page when he dropped in beside her. She’d written out the deadline, and the number of illustrations he needed, plus the number of days on average he had to complete each of the pieces—4.9, according to the m
ath she’d scratched into the top left corner of the page. Below all this were a couple of bullet points:

  * Limit complex art to approx. 5 total

  * Intersperse simpler art with larger pieces to conserve time

  “I can’t believe you’re taking notes on this,” Julian said. “Don’t you have homework?”

  “Yes. But you’re going to distract me if you’re panicking over there without a plan,” Beatrice said, turning to look at him again.

  “I’m not panicking.”

  “You seem like you’re panicking.”

  He shook his head. It wasn’t that he was panicking so much as he couldn’t see himself doing anything other than failing miserably. That was just sort of what he did. Fail. And this was one thing he really didn’t want to fail at. And the idea had him restless and anxious.

  So, yeah, okay. Maybe he was panicking. Just a little.

  “It’s a lot of art,” he said. “I don’t think I can do it. Even if I have a plan.”

  “Okay,” Beatrice said, tucking her pencil behind her ear and folding her hands over the notebook. She caught his gaze and held it, her expression somehow both inviting and supportive. “Tell me why you think you can’t do it.”

  If anyone else had asked him, he would have either avoided the question or possibly suggested they piss off. But for some reason, when Beatrice asked him questions, he always seemed to end up spilling his guts. He sighed. “I’ve only got about an hour at the art center on weekdays to work on them, which is going to make everything a lot harder.”

  “No art supplies at home?”

  “Sketchbook and pencils. That’s it. And I’m not going to be able to afford to get anything else until probably next month. And that’s if I can convince my sister to stay on budget. Which, with her, is not that easy.”

  “So no weekend work, aside from whatever you can do in your sketchbook, which means you have about . . . mm . . .”—she frowned, her eyes unfocused as she did some more math under her breath—“three and a half hours to do each piece? Possibly less, if they’re closed for Thanksgiving.”

  “Which they are. I don’t even technically have until Christmas. It’s due on the 14th. And I—I just haven’t been drawing. I feel like I forgot half of what I used to know. I have to relearn all of it, and somehow knock out good illustrations while I do . . . It’s not enough time.”

  “Okay,” Beatrice said, her frown deepening. She drew the pencil from her hair, adjusted the deadline, and did the figures again for the average. He was down to 2.7 hours per piece.

  Yeah, he was definitely starting to panic.

  “You see?” Julian said, gesturing at her math. “There’s no way I can work that fast. This is impossible.”

  “I will grant you it looks a little tight,” Beatrice said, angling the notebook away from him so he couldn’t see the numbers, “but I think we’re still in frantic-but-doable land. You can use your weekends to practice drawing and prep what you’re going to work on during the week, and I bet you can convince your bosses to let you come in on the odd weekend to work on things, too. From what you’ve said, they seem to like you and want you to succeed. It’s a long way to go for a few extra hours, but it might make up for some of those holidays when you can’t go in.” She stopped and frowned at something she saw in his face. “That’s not all, though, is it?”

  Julian exhaled, slumping in his seat. He had been hoping to avoid this one. Though God knew why. It wasn’t like he was trying to impress her. She was just some weird girl who wouldn’t leave him alone.

  And who he sometimes imagined kissing.

  Because he’d been starved of human contact, lately. Not because he was attracted to her. It shouldn’t matter if she thought he was a failure.

  “I also have to pass a GED exam,” he said stiffly, waiting for the moment the statement landed and her face fell in disappointment. “And I honestly don’t even want to look at the study books because I’m positive it’ll be completely over my head.”

  To his surprise, Beatrice perked up at this pronouncement. “You have study books?”

  “What are you, some kind of textbook fanatic?” Julian asked her, frowning.

  “Do you have them with you? Let me see.”

  “I’m pretty sure you already know everything in here, Miss Collegiate Scholar,” Julian said, reluctantly opening his backpack and handing over the study guides he’d acquired this afternoon from a needlessly proud-looking Harold Fisk.

  She ignored him, flipping open the first book. “How much high school did you finish?”

  “Through to about three-quarters of the way into my senior year. And then I broke my hand and everything went to shit.”

  Beatrice winced. “Ouch,” she said, but thankfully didn’t press for details. “They should’ve just found a way to let you graduate if you were that close. Half the seniors in my school didn’t even show up most of the time. They all graduated.” She shook her head and switched to the other book, checking its table of contents while the train pulled out of the station. “Well, good news is, you probably know most of the stuff in here.”

  “Maybe three years ago,” Julian grumbled. “I’ve probably forgotten all of it by now.”

  “You’re smart. I bet you remember more than you think.” Beatrice opened to a page near the back of the book and handed it over. “Where’s your pencil?”

  Julian scowled at the page she’d turned to. “You’re going to make me take a test?”

  “It’s just a placement test. So you can figure out which things you have down and which ones you’re a little rusty on. It’ll help focus your studying energy.”

  “I’m rusty on everything,” Julian said.

  “I don’t want to hear it from you,” she said, reaching across and taking his pencil from behind his ear. Her thumb brushed his temple as she did, and for a split second he had to fight the impulse to catch her wrist and pull her closer. She held the pencil out to him, her eyebrows raised expectantly. “I want to hear it from the test.”

  “You should have gone into education,” he said, plucking his pencil from her fingers, carefully not brushing her skin. This human contact bullshit was getting out of control. “You’re way too obsessed with homework for a normal person.”

  She went a little pink for some reason, but turned away before he could be sure. “Tell me when you’re done and I’ll check it for you.”

  Julian stared at the first question while Beatrice resumed making notes on what he needed for his portfolio. Of course the first question had to be a fucking geometry problem.

  “You’re the worst,” he told her.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of my own homework calling out to me,” she said brightly, ripping out the page and folding it in half. She stuck it in the back of Julian’s other GED book and shoved it into his backpack. “I don’t hear pencil noises,” she added, pulling out her computer.

  “So me speaking at a normal volume you can’t hear, but that you’d be able to pick up,” he said, which only made her laugh. He sighed and started on the test, accompanied by the sounds of the train chugging along, a few people talking on their phones, and Beatrice violently attacking her keyboard.

  The questions weren’t as bad as he expected. It wasn’t SAT prep, after all. It was GED prep. He’d frequented enough libraries in the past few years to think he had a good grip on the English portions. He was pretty sure he’d missed a good third or so of the STEM questions, though. He shut the book when he was sure he wasn’t going to come up with any better answers and waited for a pause in the deafening clatter of keystrokes beside him.

  “Finished?” Beatrice asked, still typing.

  “More or less. Don’t hurry. I don’t want to interrupt the massacre going on over there.”

  “The—What?” she asked, pausing to look over at him, a confused frown pinching her eyebrows together adorably.

  Julian drummed his fingers on the cover of the GED book, miming typing. “Did th
e keyboard offend you personally?”

  Beatrice wrinkled her nose at him, but he could tell she was trying not to smile. “It’s more of a tactical assault.”

  “Well, don’t let me interrupt you.”

  She shrugged, turning back to her computer. “I wanted to take a break anyway.”

  “Only a homework fanatic thinks grading other people’s homework counts as a break from their own homework,” Julian said.

  “Hur hur,” she fake-laughed. “Just let me finish this sentence . . .” She hit the last key with a vengeance and clapped the laptop closed. “Okay. Let’s see it.”

  “Why didn’t you go into education?” Julian asked, handing over the book.

  “I don’t have teaching contacts, I have marketing contacts,” Beatrice said, digging in her bag until she found a red pen. Of course she would carry a red pen around with her. “I want a job when I leave college, remember? I can do that with marketing. My dad has a friend who said he’d hire me on as soon as I graduated. For a really good salary. I don’t know anyone in education except my own professors, and I don’t want to teach at a college level, I want to—I would want to teach middle or high school.”

  “So change your major and do that,” Julian said. “I bet you’d be a great teacher.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t change my major.”

  “Why not? I’m pretty sure people do it all the time.”

  “Not me. I’m supposed to graduate next spring. There’s not a lot of overlap in the marketing and education departments. It’ll put me off course, and I’ll lose all my marketing scholarships, which means I’ll have to either pick up a million more shifts at Java Mama or take out a crap ton of student loans, which—Look, my family—We’re just—We’re not rich. And we’re not thrifty. I had to pay for my little brother’s flight out to California in August because—Well, never mind. But the idea of taking out all those loans in the hope that I’ll actually find a job that might, eventually, sometime in my sixties, allow me to pay those loans off . . .” She huffed, rubbing her forehead like she was staving off a headache.