Chapter One
Two Months after Christmas
I really was making a concerted effort not to be a prick today.
I took the time to work out because that always puts me in a better mood, but honestly, that was my first mistake, letting myself be in public. Home, classes, studying, that’s it—I am not fit for community involvement yet.
So tripping off the treadmill and falling on my ass in the crowded gym when a text came through our group chat from Iris?
My fault. Entirely. I accept that. But I put on my big boy pants and attempted to reclaim said concerted effort by grabbing a ridiculously overindulgent mocha on my way to the library.
Which triggered mistake number two: I didn’t see one of the café doors was locked and rammed right into it, mocha acting like a scalding, syrupy airbag.
So now, I don’t have time to run back to my flat to change—I booked that study room and I’m going toget it today,goddamn it—which means the best I can do is towel off the caramel mocha mess in the washroom, zip my sweater over my ruined shirt, and cut over to the library, smelling faintly of espresso and cocoa.
Do not be a prick.
Do not be a prick.
It’s been almost two months, and it isn’t like I even broke up with her—so why does itfeellike a breakup?
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I push into the Cambridge University Library, shower-damp hair falling in my face as I look at the screen like it’s a bomb that might go off.
PEEP, MINI CANDY CANE, AND THE BEST CLAUS
IRIS
my sister delayed her wedding. AGAIN.
COAL
what was it this time, she couldn’t book that metallica cover band she wanted
IRIS
some bullshit about the centerpieces
oh yeah coal you know my sister, big into 80s heavy metal to go with her Springtime Renewal theme
but my point is you can cancel your travel plans, no wedding next weekend
I exhale, loudly, and stop walking up the south wing staircase to collapse against the wall.
Some of my prick-ness does evaporate now.
I won’t have to see Iris next weekend. I won’t have to plaster on a smile like I didn’t profess my love to her eight weeks ago, right after her engagement to my brother got called off, only to realize halfway through my drunken spewing of feelings that I was not, actually, in love with her. And she was not, in any way, in love with me.
Which should’ve deflated the awkwardness right out of the whole situation, but the singular moment my brain continues reliving, the thing that keeps me pinned to the wall in the staircase as another student sidles past me and down to the exit, is the bone-aching embarrassment of realizing that sheknewI’d been at leasttryingto be in love with herour whole friendship,and she’d been dreading this proclamation all that while.
It made sense for us to be together. It’d made sense since we were twelve years old, and something about her walking into our Christmas Eve Ball like the personification of springtime, Persephone come to life in pastel purple and airy fuchsia, made all those stories I was obsessed with sayShe’s a Princess of Easter, you’re a Prince of Christmas, that’s happy ever after.
But I’d realized at a younger age that being Santa’s son isn’t the storybook dream it should be. Not even my own father thought I should be the one to marry Iris when he wanted to forge an alliance with Easter; he’d foisted the situation on Coal. So why did I keep ahold of theprince and princess, happy ever afterdream, when nothing else in my life was a fantasy?
Because marrying her would’ve made you useful, and you have nothing else to offer.
My eyes at least don’t sting when I think that now. Two months of reeling in the vortex of realizing that I have nothing to contribute to Christmas has helped me progress past grieving to numbness.
Coal and Iris banter in our group chat some more, errant wedding stuff, and my thumb hovers over theSettingsbutton. I could mute the chat. Why they continue to use it, to loop me in on their conversations, I don’t know. Well, I know why Coal does—he’s determined to keep our friend group from falling apart. He and Iris were never even remotely interested in getting married, so their relationship well survived any fallout of their almost-marriage. But is Iris going along with including me in the group chat because it’s what Coal wants? Or doesshewant me in her life, even after I proved what an oblivious ass I am?
