Page 8 of The Longshot

“Good.” He shoves me out of the kitchen and pulls his phone out from his back pocket. “‘Cause your time starts now.”

THREE

C H E L S I E

There’s something special about finding a place that makes you feel safe. To some, that feeling is the result of someone, not something. The person who will forever and always be your safe space, no matter where you are or what you do.

I think about that a lot.

The idea of just how relieving that might be to have someone who represents something that many spend their entire lives searching for:

Security.

Love.

Stability.

Peace.

There was a moment in my life where I once thought I had that.

My peace.

My safe space.

But I was wrong.

Sure, I’m no expert at love and the intricacies that surround it and frankly, I don’t want to be. Love is too complex. Love makes you do stupid things. Love can lead you down a dark path without so much as a light to guide your way out. But with love comes something else…

Hope.

Hope that things can change.

Hope that things can get better.

So sure, there might not always be a light in the darkness, but sometimes all you need is a little glimmer of hope.

Not only has Ruby always been that for me, but so has her bakery. Between the two of us, Ruby has always been the spontaneous one. Unlike our parents and the rest of our immediate family who opted to go to university, she did the opposite.

She took a chance.

She followed her dreams and now, almost a decade later, she continues to live them out.

A part of me wishes that I had her ambition, but I’m also very well aware that my dreams require me to sink my butt into a classroom—much to my parent’s liking.

Our mum and dad are both teachers at a prestigious private school up north, and because of that, it was almost as if it was built into my DNA to follow in their footsteps. Despite the clichè and now ironic narrative, I think being a teacher was what I was born to do.

Oxford ended up being the school my parents chose for me to attend. I wasn’t opposed to it. It was far enough away from my hometown of Hull while close enough to London so that I could spend my free time in the city and back at the bakery with Ruby.

When I first started at Oxford, I fell in love—not just with the campus, which is a given considering how beautiful and scenic it is, but with someone—Simon.

The two of us met in a Classics and Modern Languages study group, which I later learned that not only was Simon not enrolled in, but that he’d only signed up for in an attempt to get closer to me.

The truth is that Simon didn’t need my help—or anyone’s help, for that matter. He was a straight “A” student with a photographic memory and a prosperous future. That’s why my parents immediately adored him when I bit the bullet and introduced him as my boyfriend.

Like most relationships, the start was blissful. Truthfully, the first two years went by in a breeze—I was smitten. Head over heels. Here I was, an ordinary girl from Yorkshire, dating not only one of the top academics, but also one of the top athletes at the school. Simon was playing footy for the Oxford team in his spare time and well on his way to being recruited to play professionally, though his parents would have never allowed it.

Similarly to me, Simon had an expectation to uphold. He came from a family full of attorneys where his future held a share in their highly successful firm.

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