Sophie
weeks, the café becomes the most comforting part of my day. At first, it’s stressful learning the pricing of things, how to make coffee, working the till. But Jess is so relaxed, and Freddy, who’s technically speaking our supervisor, is so sweet my nerves soon fade away.
The more time I spend on the job, the better I get at it. On my sixth shift, Jess even leaves to go to the library to work on some assignments, and I work most of the shift alone.
Freddy is never gone, though. He tends to be in the office managing the place or baking the treats we sell in the shiny window displays. Still, I’m never lonely, and Freddy even encourages me to bring a book with me so I don’t get bored.
Compared to the slowly mounting pressure at school, the café is a much-needed sanctuary.
As for Evan, since entering into this alliance, he’s been a lot more bearable. Of course, it helps that I never have to see him at school and that he’s clearly trying to stay on my nice side for the sake of his assignments.
He keeps asking me where I’m going every Tuesday and Thursday, but since there isn’t much he can do to force me to answer, I just ignore his questions. I can tell he still says things to try and get a rise out of me, but it’s getting easier and easier to brush him away.
Maybe part of it is due to spending time with Freddy and getting to know him more.
Freddy’s parents own the café , and Freddy handles it while they are busy running another café they own in London. His actual dream is to be an artist, so in his spare time he paints and sketches. A few of his paintings—moody landscapes and soulful animal portraits—hang in the café. His brushstrokes are exactly like him: gentle and expressive.
The more I get to know Freddy, the more I despise the boys at Spearcrest. Even though they have every opportunity at their fingertips, they do nothing with them. Apart from finding newer and more obnoxious ways of displaying their wealth, they don’t spend so much as waste their time.
But Freddy… Freddy is into things. He has hopes and dreams. A personality instead of an expensive watch.
And he’s actually interested in me. We discuss movies we like and books we’ve read. Instead of constantly being on edge like I am around Evan, I can relax around Freddy, be a softer version of myself.
Things go smoothly until the British autumn sets in for good.
Clouds stack on top of clouds throughout the week. Daylight becomes as dark as dusk. By Wednesday, rain is inevitable. And on Thursday, while I sit in the taxi on the way out of Spearcrest, a booming crack startles both the driver and me.
By the time I reach Evan’s house, the clouds are gutting themselves.
Rain falls so thick and fast I don’t even know how the driver sees anything through the windshield. I thank him, get out of the car, and run over to Evan’s doorway just for the shelter of his porch.
The best I can hope for is that the rain stops eventually. I have a little umbrella, but in this wind it’s useless. Freddy is expecting me, so if the rain doesn’t stop I’m just going to brave the deluge and hope for the best.
I wait a whole fifteen minutes, but the rain shows no sign of relenting. My coat doesn’t have a hood but I have a woolly hat on, and my trusty old boots. Although both will only be able to protect me for so long, what choice do I have?
Time to brave the flood.
Evan
out of the shower when I heard the taxi pull up outside fifteen minutes earlier. Since I had to cut my run short due to the pelting rain, I expected to hear a knock on the door any minute.
Obviously, I should have known better.
Taking a seat in my mom’s reading nook, I peer through the curtains. This vantage point gives me a perfect view of the porch. There, Sophie Sutton sits like the prideful, stubborn little thing she is.
She’s wearing a big grey coat, a hat and her big old boots, her legs tucked against her. Of course, she’s too proud to ask me to come in. Or afraid. It’s hard to tell with Sophie.
I’m not wearing my watch, but I glance around the corner at my dad’s ugly vintage Patek Philippe clock, which dominates the wall above the mantelpiece. Fifteen minutes. For fifteen minutes, she’s been sitting on the cold steps, hugging herself and waiting.
When she finally stands up, a sharp blade of triumph cuts right through me. Watching her pride shatter as she knocks on my door is going to be so sweet, and I’m already anticipating the taste of it.
Except that, of course, Sophie pulls her woolly hat deep over her head and ears, and sets off down the porch steps straight in the direction of the pouring rain.
“For fuck’s sake,” I grit out, jumping to my feet.
I’m at the door before she’s reached the end of the steps. She starts when I call out, “Sutton!”
She turns, startled. Her eyes dart down my body, then back up, almost too quickly to notice. But it reminds me that I’m only wearing boxers, a towel wrapped around my shoulders.
A flush colours her cheeks, sending a tendril of dark pleasure unfurling through my chest. I want to tell her that she can look all she likes. I’ve been playing sports my whole life, I work out on a strict schedule and I was a part of Spearcrest’s rugby team up until last year, when I had to stop due to injuries.
I know what my body looks like. I’ve worked hard to make it look that way.
So if Sophie wants to look at it, she can look her fill. I want her to look.
But her eyes are firmly pinned to mine when she belligerently snaps, “What?”
I jab my head up towards the sky. “You’re not going to walk to town in this?”
She raises an eyebrow. “No? What am I going to do, fly?”
I roll my eyes. For someone so smart and well-read, she can be so stupid when she wants to be. I hold the door open. “Don’t be so fucking stubborn. Come in already.”
“While you’re prancing around naked? No thanks.”
“What are you afraid of, Sutton?” I ask with a smirk. “Never seen a naked guy before?”
She looks totally unimpressed. “Not one I didn’t want to see.”
I narrow my eyes at her. She’s not implying she’s seen a guy naked? Uptight, stuck-up Sophie? No chance.
“But as charmed as I am by all this,” she continues witheringly, “I have somewhere to be.”
“Fine, don’t come in. Just wait here, okay?”
She narrows her eyes and hesitates.
“Sutton, I mean it. Wait.”
Sophie gives me a long look and doesn’t say anything, but she’s not going anywhere either. So I close the door and sprint up the stairs and to my room. I throw on the first clean clothes I can get my hands on: black sweatpants and a white t-shirt, socks and my old white sneakers I mostly wear when I’m driving somewhere.
I keep the towel around my shoulders, because my hair is still wet, and grab the first set of keys I find in my dad’s office desk. By the time I pull around in the Porsche Boxster, I half expect Sophie to be gone.
But she’s still there, and she actually gets in the car. Her posture screams her discomfort and mistrust. She sits with her back straight and her legs crossed, hugging her backpack to her chest.
Low music plays in the car, the bass pounding like a pulse. I can smell the metallic heat of the car, my shampoo, the warm vanilla of Sophie. My heartbeat quickens, even though there’s no reason for it to.
Her proximity is tantalising. I desperately want her to say something, to give me anything to hold on to and pull on. Every interaction between Sophie and me is always a confrontation, a battle, but this far away from Spearcrest, in the small cabin of the sports car, it’s like the rules have changed.
How do I approach her when she’s this close? Without the Young Kings around us to make sure I never close the distance between us? Without Spearcrest to remind us we belong in different worlds?
The silence stretches on. Sophie says nothing—doesn’t even look my way. In the end, I’m the first one to speak.
“Well? Are you going to tell me where to drop you off?”
“The high street.”
I wait, but she says nothing else.
“Anywhere in particular on the high street?”
“No.”
Since it’s clear she’s not going to give me anything more to go on, I drive on. It’s been a while since I’ve driven stick, but it comes back to me quickly. There’s something grounding about the gear stick, the responsive pedals under my feet. Something comforting about the control I have over the car—the kind of control I could only ever wish to have over Sophie.
She stares out of her window and says nothing.
For weeks, I’ve been wondering where she’s been going—for weeks she’s given me absolutely nothing.
But there can only be one thing Sophie is doing away from school.
Sophie has never dated anyone at Spearcrest. Even if she had done so in secret, I would have known. I would have destroyed anyone who dared go near her. But I’ve never had to, because I worked very hard to ensure everyone would know about the special attention I pay Sophie.
Special attention which keeps her alienated and untouchable at all times.
Not that I’ve needed to work that hard—Sophie keeps herself isolated quite well on her own. Her open disdain for the kids of Spearcrest and her arrogant self-reliance have done well to keep others at bay.
It’s a miracle she has any friends.
But I’m not naive. Just because Sophie hasn’t been dating Spearcrest boys doesn’t mean she’s not dating at all. She might not have the polished sheen and picture-perfect good looks of the prettiest girls in the school, but she’s not bad-looking by any stretch of the imagination.
Her looks are particular: with her thick, dark eyebrows, her heavy-lidded eyes, that austere centre parting and her thick, shiny brown hair. With her long limbs and broad shoulders, she looks almost athletic, but she has the rigid posture of an old-timey schoolmistress. Her strides are long and authoritative. She stands out even when she’s trying to blend in with that sort of awkward arrogance she exudes.
Everything about her is hard and unyielding, but it’s part of what makes her so intriguing.
She makes me want to test her strength, to see how far she can bend before she snaps. But just because I feel this way doesn’t mean the prettiness of her dark eyes, her pouty lips and her smooth skin have gone unnoticed by other guys.
And Sophie’s used to being either mocked or ignored by the boys at Spearcrest, so I bet some guy could slip right past her defences if he was sweet enough to her.
The thought is both electrifying and infuriating.
I sneak a glance at her. She’s leaning against the window, her chin propped in her palm. I know this pose well—she always sits like this when she’s deep in thought. What is she thinking about? Her secret boyfriend?
If Sophie had a secret boyfriend, what would he look like? Knowing Sophie, he’d probably be older. Smart, polite, well-read. He’d study something pretentious, like Classics or Philosophy. He’d probably fascinate her and make her smile.
I turn my eyes back to the road, the row of glowing red brake lights ahead. Traffic into town is slow because of the almost-blinding rain, and my mind wanders, lured down a slippery path of questions. What must it be like to be this guy, to have Sophie’s attention and affection? To take her on dates and hold her hands and talk to her without every conversation being laced with insults? To spend time with her doing nothing, just listening to music or idly touching her long hair while she reads a book?
When I imagine it, my mind plays the film of a relationship with Sophie with me starring as the boyfriend.
We’re in my bedroom, and it’s my bed she’s lying on while she’s annotating some boring copy of whatever she’s studying. It’s my hand stroking the glossy length of her brown hair. I’d try to play a game on my phone but I’d be too distracted by her slight frown of concentration.
Not because I’d want to be her boyfriend, but because I can’t ever picture someone else being at the centre of her life.
She’d look up at me, and I’d notice how soft and kissable her lips are. My hand would brush her cheek, wrap around her neck, pull her slowly towards me. She’d melt into me, her mouth would open under mine, my tongue would glide against hers. Then I’d pull her to me, slide my hands under her shirt, my finger searching for—
“Stop.”
Sophie’s voice startles me so much I pull a muscle in my neck turning my head.
For a terrifying second, I’m scared I’ve been thinking aloud and that Sophie is trying to stop me from expressing some deep and disturbing desire. But she’s unbuckling her seatbelt—we’ve arrived on the high street.
Besides, if she’d heard what I was thinking, she’d probably have thrown herself out of the moving car. I know I would have.
I pull the car to a stop in a parking bay outside a florist. Sophie shoulders her backpack and pulls on her door handle but hesitates.
“Hey, uh… thanks for the lift.”
Her gratitude is unexpected and throws me off a little. I shrug.
“Anytime, Sutton.”
She doesn’t say anything else. She gets out of the car, slams the door shut and runs off in the rain. Her big boots splash into puddles as she darts across the street and disappears through the doorway of a shop. I look up at the sign, peering through the thick grey blur of the relentless rain.
Gold letters on a green sign read “The Little Garden”. The vintage style painting of a cup of coffee tells me this is a café.
I stay parked for a while, but Sophie doesn’t come back out. Nobody else walks in apart from some old ladies. If Sophie is meeting her secret boyfriend, then he’s already inside. The rain is falling too thickly to be able to see anything through the window apart from the vague glow of golden lights and the outline of plants.
For a truly stupid second, I have the impulse to get out of my car and walk into the café.
I’d know for sure then. I’d be able to see what it looks like to be someone worthy of Sophie’s affections. But if I go in, there’s no chance she won’t see me. And if she knows I followed her she’ll be understandably furious, and I’ll look pathetic. I can’t even think of a good excuse to give her.
So I turn the key in the ignition and set off home.
Even though I’m driving away feeling like I’ve just turned my back on a battle, I know better.
Because I’m not going to cede Sophie to some other guy—some insignificant nobody from some shitty British village. I’ve worked too hard to make Sophie untouchable, to ensure nobody could ever approach her on my watch.
I’m the one that fucked up this time, though.
Because I had the perfect excuse to keep Sophie close to me, and I gave it up like a fucking idiot. I didn’t realise what was at stake when I first made that deal with Sophie. It never occurred to me Sophie would seek the things she’d never get within Spearcrest outside of it.
Clearly, I underestimated her.
Now, all I have to do is find a way of bringing her back to me. She won’t get away as easily this time.
