Page 42 of Spearcrest Knight

“How about you, then? How’s your love life coming along?”

Immediately, my mind is flooded with images of Evan. Evan with his towel around his neck and his bare chest and his hard muscles. Evan slowly sliding off my scarf and coat. Evan standing too close, the cedarwood scent of his cologne curling around me. The sharp line of his lips and the way they crook into that wicked grin of his. His eyes, bluer than winter skies.

His hand around my neck, fingers digging into my skin.

My cheeks burn and I quickly shake my head. Thinking about him like this is a mistake. I should know better.

“What love life? I don’t have a love life.”

“No progress with Freddy, then?” Audrey asks with a little pout of disappointment.

Oh. She was talking about Freddy. I’m immediately red-hot with embarrassment and infinitely thankful Audrey can’t read my thoughts.

“He’s technically speaking my boss,” I explain, “so I don’t think there’s ever going to be anyprogress, as you put it.”

“That only makes it more scandalous,” Audrey says, waggling her eyebrows. “An illicit workplace romance. This is what rom-coms and erotic novels are made of.”

“Oh, sort yourself out!” I reached over the tablet and grab the book in front of her. “Your brain should be filled with key dates of the Russian Revolution, not this nonsense.”

“There’s always room for both,” Audrey laughs. Still, she reluctantly picks up her perfectly crafted flashcards. “Agricultural developments in communist Russia and Stalin’s use of propaganda to create a cult of personality isn’t quite as sexy as your little adventures with your coffee shop boss, but if we must.”

We resume taking turns quizzing each other and spend the rest of our Saturday night drinking tea and revising. As the evening goes on, the rain doesn't relent but grows more frosty and aggressive.

By the time we make our way back to the sixth form dormitories, the ground is a mess of sludgy puddles. We run with our backpacks over our heads all the way from the library.

Later, I fall asleep thinking about Freddy, but somehow end up dreaming about Evan.

I spend Sunday in the study hall working through piles of practice exams for Monday’s Maths exam. Although I had every intention of going to the dining hall to buy something for lunch, I end up skipping it altogether.

My chest is crushed by an invisible pressure, a sense that I’m running out of time and that doom is impending and inevitable. I usually get this every time I have exams coming up, but it’s been getting worse.

The study hall slowly empties itself as the afternoon passes, until there’s a handful of us left. We are all sitting apart, and the room is as silent as a tomb. When my phone buzzes from under a pile of books, it startles me so much I jump.

I check it with a frown. The only texts I get tend to be from one of the girls arranging to meet somewhere, or from my parents checking in. I unlock my phone, hoping it’s not the latter.

It’s neither. It’s actually from Freddy.

“Hi Sophie, we’ve been missing you at the café but we both hope your exams are going well. Just wondering if you fancy picking up some shifts over Christmas, it gets pretty busy around that time of year so could do with the help if you’re around. Let me know x F”

The little innocentxat the end of the message somehow feels more intimate than a kiss, and I can’t believe it, but I feel a little flustered. I text back quickly.

“Hi Freddy. I hope I can pick up some shifts but I'm not sure yet. I’ll let you know as soon as possible. Say hi to Jess.”

I hesitate. Should I respond with anxtoo? His is so casual, so… Freddy. Just soft and kind like him.

But ifIadd anx… I don’t know if I can pull it off. I’m not soft and kind like Freddy.

“Say hi to Jess. S.”

TheShopefully is casual enough, and it’s not like I have any reason to send Freddy a kiss. Even if Audrey seems to imagine some cutesy workplace romance, I live in the real world. And in the real world, Freddy is just the guy I work for, and I have bigger problems to think about than the way I end my texts.

Like the impending Christmas break, and how I’m going to work out a way to pick up shifts. I usually spend the first week of the holidays at Spearcrest because my parents work that week, so I might be able to manage at first. There won’t be many people at school, and technically we are allowed into town during school holidays.

But the second week, I usually spend with my parents in our small house away from the school. I’ll still be close to the café, but I’ll also be right under my parents’ watchful eyes.

If they found out I was working, I can’t even imagine how disappointed and hurt they’d be. They’ve spent all my life at Spearcrest telling me how hard I have to try, how amazing an opportunity this is, how perfect I need to be to ever compete with the kind of kids I go to school with. If they knew I’d been knowingly breaking the rules, they would be both furious and devastated.

And if they found out I was doing it to earn money, that would be a whole different level.

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