Next Stop Love, #1

by Rachel Stockbridge

  He shook his head, eyes on the ceiling. “What a shitfest.”

  Fabiana huffed a laugh and held her bottle aloft. “To another Moon holiday clusterfuck.”

  Julian’s lip curled in a rueful smile as he tapped his drink to hers. “Condolences.”

  Sixteen

  That’s your boyfriend?” Nath asked, the second he shut the apartment door.

  Greyson had insisted on driving Beatrice and Nath home, despite Sasha’s protestations that she was happy to do so. It had been a nightmare. Nath was frustrated at having to ride home in Greyson’s cramped sports car, and only opened his mouth to make the occasional snide remark. Beatrice spent the whole ride trying to play down Nath’s caustic attitude, worried that, given the chance, the ride home would turn into a nasty argument. She had a hard enough time keeping her impulse to cry under control without having to go full referee on the two of them.

  Now she and Nath were home, her nerves were still on red alert, even though they’d left Greyson in his car downstairs. Nath’s accusatory glare wasn’t helping. She’d sensed him ramping up to some kind of rant as they climbed the stairs, but she didn’t have an ounce of patience left in her. If he pushed her any more, she was going to snap.

  She grabbed the bag of leftovers from Nath and swept into the kitchen, hoping if she didn’t respond to the question, he’d let it go.

  No such luck.

  “Is he usually that much of a dick?”

  “Drop it, Nath,” Beatrice said, shoving the food Kinsey had sent home with them into the fridge.

  “You realize you didn’t make a single joke from the time he walked in the door,” Nath said, shrugging off his coat. “Not one.”

  “So?”

  “So it was weird.” He hung up his coat and sat at the table to pull off his shoes. “You weren’t acting like you.”

  Beatrice yanked a carton of orange juice out of the way so she could crowd the last of the casserole dishes inside. “I apologize if the lack of constant entertainment put a damper on your evening.”

  “Shit, Bee, no one would miss your jokes less than I would,” Nath said, tossing one shoe at the pile near the wall. “They’re all terrible. I’m just saying—”

  “Well, don’t,” Beatrice snapped, slamming the fridge shut and rounding on him. “I’m sick and tired of arguing with everyone tonight. So drop it.”

  “Fine! Jeez.”

  “Fine,” Beatrice shot back. She crossed the living room, ignoring a welcoming mew from Sunny, and slammed her bedroom door shut behind her.

  She collapsed on her bed, still in her coat and shoes, and squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the dam to burst.

  She had been pushing so much of this mess to the side for so long. Pretending she and Greyson were fine. Keeping her friendship with Julian to herself. Feigning confidence in her ability to keep up with all her coursework. Like if she could just keep all the pieces in her life in separate corners—if she acted like everything was under control—they’d never have a chance to crush her.

  She touched her arm where Greyson had grabbed her. It only hurt when she put pressure on it, but she was sure she’d have purple marks tomorrow. And still she found herself trying to explain it away. Greyson hadn’t meant it. She was overreacting.

  But there was no getting around that hateful look on his face when he stopped her from following Julian. That moment, before he got control of himself, when he almost hurt Nath.

  Beatrice pushed the images away and dug out her phone. Sasha and Kinsey both asked her to text them when she and Nath got home. Kinsey had asked her three different times, in fact, and had given her a tight hug as she left that hadn’t eased Beatrice’s nerves. If everyone else was scared for her, it meant she was right to be afraid herself.

  She opened the group chat between her, Kinsey, and Sasha, and tapped out a short text saying she and Nath were home safe. Seconds later, Sasha texted back with about twenty purple heart emojis.

  Everything okay? Kinsey texted under that. Wanna talk?

  No and no.

  Everything’s fine, Beatrice wrote. I’m going to bed. Early shift tomorrow.

  Okay. I’m here if you need me. ♥♥♥

  Ditto, Sasha added.

  Beatrice sent a heart emoji to indicate her appreciation, and then locked her phone and let it fall to the bed.

  It worried her that Julian hadn’t let Sasha take him home. It was so cold out, and she was afraid he hadn’t been able to find a cab in the snow. Even if he made it to the White Plains train station okay, it was a long trip home. And with it being Thanksgiving, who knew how long he would have had to wait for a train.

  She wanted to text him, too. Make sure he got home. Make sure he was okay.

  Make sure he wasn’t angry with her.

  That look on his face before he left—the one that shot through her and made her want to cry—she couldn’t get it out of her head. And every time she thought about it, she couldn’t help but feel that it was too late. She’d broken whatever fragile thing they had into deadly shards. And if she reminded him of it now, she would either get her number blocked, or be on the receiving end of a nasty rant she wasn’t emotionally capable of handling tonight.

  But she wasn’t going to see him in person again until Monday.

  Beatrice wiped tears from her eyes with one hand. Whatever had been going on at dinner, she was supposed to be Julian’s friend. If it was Sasha or Kinsey in the same situation, she’d check in on them.

  And God, she didn’t want Julian to walk out of her life. She didn’t want to let him go without a fight.

  She tapped to Julian’s number on her phone.

  I’m sorry about dinner, she said. I hope you got home okay.

  She stared at her phone for a long time after she hit send, waiting for the screen to light up with a reply. She was still waiting when she dragged herself into the bathroom to get ready for bed. Still waiting as she lay curled up under the covers, staring at the wall in the dark, her mind and heart tangled in too many knots. Still waiting, hours later, when she drifted into uneasy sleep, eyes gritty with tears, phone cradled under her hand.

  * * *

  Beatrice spent her entire weekend trying not to drown. She worked full shifts at Java Mama every day, most of them on only four or five hours of sleep. When not at work, she spent most of her time trying to keep Greyson at arm’s length without making him fly off the handle. He had started texting her more than ever, and he got weird when she didn’t respond right away, or with the right level of enthusiasm. She wanted to scream at him to leave her alone, but whenever she thought about the fight that would trigger, her hands would shake, and tears would spring to her eyes, and she couldn’t get enough air in her lungs.

  So she put it off. She would have to break it off with him sometime. But not this weekend. Not when Thanksgiving was still so fresh in her mind.

  She had barely had time to study. The paper she needed to write never got longer than five sentences—not counting a pretty spectacular keyboard-smash at the end when Greyson texted her at the wrong moment and destroyed a brief stroke of focus. No way she was turning that paper in on time. At some point, she’d had to make her peace with the fact that she was unlikely to do well on her last two midterms. She could only look over her study guides during lulls at work. Even then, she couldn’t get the information to stick in her brain.

  And in all that time Julian hadn’t texted her once.

  She’d almost marched over to his apartment building to make him talk to her. She didn’t know his exact address, but she knew which building he lived in. If she could get inside, then she was sure she could find him.

  But something always seemed to stop her. On Friday, it was Greyson showing up at her apartment building after her shift to take her to an ‘apology lunch.’ On Saturday, it was her mom coming home and getting in an argument with Nath about whether he had an acceptable plan for his future. On Sunday, it was simply that Beatrice was exhausted and overwhelmed and
didn’t want to show up at Julian’s door and immediately burst into tears.

  She figured he had to talk to her on Monday morning. It was hard to avoid anyone in the small local station, never mind on the long ride to Grand Central Terminal. She had a whole speech prepared in her head by the time she walked onto the platform.

  But he wasn’t there. Beatrice hung back as the other passengers filed onto the train, hoping he was just running late. That he’d burst onto the platform at the last second and she could catch him before he had a chance to ignore her again.

  He never showed.

  Beatrice sat by the window, a stranger in the seat beside her, a neglected study guide open on her lap. She could only stare at the passing foliage, fighting back tears, wondering what she could have done to keep everything from crashing down.

  On her way to Statistics, she stopped at a small cafe and splurged on a white mocha, hoping the caffeine and sugar would be enough to get her to focus on school, and not just on her own miserable ruminations.

  She slipped into her desk with two minutes to spare. Instantly, Sasha twisted around in her seat.

  “Hey,” she said with an uncharacteristic frown. “You okay?”

  Beatrice nodded, turning her attention to her bag. She’d thought she had the impulse to cry under control, but she felt it threatening to break free again with the prospect of interacting with her friends. They both looked so worried. And she didn’t want to burden them with her weird, self-inflicted problems.

  “Are you sure?” Kinsey asked, leaning across the aisle. “I barely heard from you all weekend.”

  “Just busy,” Beatrice said, trying not to let her stress come through in her voice. “I’m fine.”

  “So Greyson hasn’t—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Beatrice snapped. “Not now. Okay? Please?”

  “Okay,” Kinsey said, sitting back in her seat and exchanging a worried glance with Sasha.

  Beatrice dropped her bag at her feet, guilt tearing at her throat, but she didn’t have the chance to apologize. The professor started calling roll, and Beatrice spent the rest of class just trying to copy down whatever he wrote on the board. She didn’t understand a word he said. So much for the sugary latte plan.

  Beatrice threw her stuff back in her bag after class and walked out before Sasha or Kinsey could corner her again. She was afraid, if she was forced to talk, she was going to take out all her pent-up frustration on them. The last thing she needed was to push any more of her friends away this week.

  Kinsey caught her in the hallway before she could escape. “Come on,” she said, grabbing Beatrice’s hand and dragging her into the nearest bathroom. “We have to talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk,” Beatrice said, as Sasha followed them inside. “I don’t have time to talk.”

  “Make time.” Kinsey pulled her to the far end of the bathroom and turned to face her, dropping her hand. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing,” Beatrice lied, clutching the strap of her bag. “Just—It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

  Sasha leaned against one of the sinks, thumbs in her pockets, that serious look on her face again. “You sure? ‘Cause I’ll kick some ass if you want me to.”

  Beatrice swallowed, her eyes sliding to a line of graffiti on the wall beside her. Someone had written SMILE in Sharpie. Someone else had scrawled it out with blue ink and wrote fuck that above it, digging the words into the paint. The letters swam in Beatrice’s vision.

  Whatever control she’d managed to hang onto since Thanksgiving snapped. She went from trying not to cry to great, heaving sobs in less than a second. And then she was spilling everything. The stress of coursework she couldn’t keep up with, compounded by the tension at home, and a job she hated, and a major she hated; the persistent exhaustion; the feeling that she couldn’t wrestle any part of her life under her control.

  “And I think Julian’s—mad at me,” she hiccuped, pushing tears from her eyes with the wad of paper towels Kinsey had passed her. “He won’t talk to me. He wasn’t even—on the train this morning.”

  “Oh, honey,” Kinsey said, squeezing her shoulder.

  “I can’t even blame him,” Beatrice said, unable to look either of her friends in the eye. “It’s my fault everything blew up.”

  “No, it’s not,” Kinsey said, with a sharp shake of her head. “Everything was going just fine until Greyson showed up.”

  “And who invited him?” Beatrice countered, pointing to herself.

  “He told you he wasn’t going to show,” Kinsey said, bristling on Beatrice’s behalf. “No one here holds you responsible for his behavior.”

  “I don’t know if it makes a difference,” Sasha put in, “but I didn’t get the impression Julian blamed you, either. He seemed more worried about you than anything.”

  “Then why won’t he talk to me?” Beatrice asked, unable to keep a lid on her self-pity.

  “I don’t know, Bee,” Sasha said. “I’m sorry.”

  Beatrice wiped her nose. “It’s not just that. I’ve made a huge mess out of everything. If I’d just . . . broken up with Greyson sooner. Instead of running around trying to keep anyone from getting angry. If I’d just had some backbone, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Honey, if Greyson getting angry means he jerks you around like that, no one’s going to blame you for wanting to avoid upsetting him,” Kinsey said, planting her fists on her hips. “That was not okay.”

  Beatrice shook her head. “He doesn’t—He’s never like that. I’ve never seen him that angry.” She usually just let him have his way before it got that far. Because she was a big fat chicken who couldn’t handle conflict even on a small scale. She rubbed her forehead, a fresh wave of tears filling her eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Well . . . what do you want?” Sasha asked, fetching a few more paper towels.

  Beatrice accepted them and blew her nose. “What do you mean?”

  Sasha shrugged. “What would make you happy? Never mind how anyone else might feel about it or what you’d have to do to get there. Just stop for a second and ask yourself what you, Beatrice Bauer, want.”

  “I . . .” Beatrice stared down at the paper towels in her hands. What she wanted—what she’d always wanted—was a place where she could breathe. She’d invented a little house in her mind. Where it would just be her, with Sunny to keep her company, her family far enough away that she wouldn’t be constantly entangled in their arguing, Kinsey and Sasha close enough they could see each other often. It had always seemed enough. If she could get that little house to herself, she could breathe. She could be happy.

  Except . . . she had found pockets of oxygen on the train every morning, and every night, for weeks. In silly jokes texted back and forth at random intervals throughout the day. In bursts of laughter and patient commiseration. In a comforting hand on her shoulder at just the right moment.

  Her little imaginary house seemed lonely now, without Julian in it.

  “I have to break up with Greyson,” she said, gripping the paper towels. It still terrified her to think about, but it was something she could control. She couldn’t force him to take it well, but he couldn’t force her to stay in the relationship, either. Not unless she allowed it. And she was done with letting Greyson get everything he wanted.

  “Do you want backup?” Kinsey asked, her arms falling to her sides. Her eyes were wide with worry.

  “I don’t—I don’t know.”

  “It’s not cowardly if you bring backup,” Kinsey said. “Not under the circumstances. I thought I was going to have to call the police when he grabbed you.”

  “Dude’s got issues,” Sasha agreed. “At least make sure you break up with him when there are plenty of people around.”

  Beatrice nodded, but she didn’t want to put either of them at risk. She had gotten herself into this mess by being too much of a pushover. She was going to have to get herself back out.

  She just had to f
igure out the best way to approach the problem.

  Maybe she could work up to it. If she was going to grow a backbone, it made sense to start on smaller conflicts and work her way up.

  “I want to see an adviser,” she said.

  Kinsey exchanged another glance with Sasha, as though they thought Beatrice was losing it. “Wouldn’t a counselor be more helpful?”

  “No, I—I think I want to change majors,” Beatrice explained. “I need to talk to someone about it so I know what I’m getting into before I drop the news on my parents.” She might get yelled at for going into education when she could have had a nice job at her step-dad’s friend’s marketing agency, but it was likely to be less volatile than the blowout after Nath dropped out of his premed program with no alternate plans. And much as she hated the yelling, at least she was used to her family’s fights. It would give her a chance to test her own resolve, and maybe make the idea of facing Greyson seem a little less scary.

  And then there was Julian. She couldn’t make him forgive her, but she could try to explain the situation. And if he refused to answer the phone, well . . . she was just going to have to track him down and make him talk to her face-to-face. Whether he liked it or not.

  Seventeen

  Julian was well aware he was taking the coward’s way out, riding a different train to work. But he couldn’t face Beatrice again after Thanksgiving went to shit. He couldn’t even send her a goddamn text. What was he supposed to say? There was no way she would believe his side of the story, even if he could somehow convince her to listen to him. No one ever believed his side. And why should Beatrice believe her ex-commute buddy over her fucking boyfriend?

  Julian wasn’t entirely sure he could face his job, either. He knew Mr. Fisk was likely to corner him and ask him about his progress on the damn portfolio. Julian wasn’t up for explaining to his sort-of mentor that he’d lost the ability to draw anything. He hadn’t even looked at his sketchbook all weekend. Fabiana had saved it from the garbage, but only by giving him a lecture about how it was rude to throw away gifts and stashing it under a stack of library books ‘until he came to his senses.’