Page 31 of Ardently Yours

“Do you guys have a lot of disturbance calls or something? Is there a safety issue? Oh my goodness, Lydia. Tell me what’s going on. Are you okay? Is there something happening at school?”

“The calls he gets to come to our school aren’t for disturbances. When he’s there, he’s not usually in uniform. He’s always on campus with a new girl every couple of months, spending the night in the dorms, going to campus parties, hitting on girls my age. He even hit on me once when I saw him walking around campus in a hoodie. I thought he was a student at first. But then my friends warned me about him. They are the ones who told me about him hanging around the dorms at odd times. He’s kind of a creep. You should stay away from him. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I just remembered why he looked so familiar, and I couldn’t go to bed when I thought about it. I had to tell you. Please don’t be mad at me.”

I think I might be moving in slow motion. Or at least my brain feels like it is.

My brain is trying to compute this information like I’m trying to solve a difficult math equation, and I’m good at math, so it shouldn’t take me this long. But this is not a math problem. This is a much bigger problem than that.

This is another bad judgment call for me when it comes to guys. I picked the one I thought was good for me, the one who seemed interested in me, flirted with me, smiled at me, and made me feel like a teenager again. The one who kissed me like I was the only girl in the world.

Just like I picked Billie. The one man I thought I would spend forever with. And look at how we ended up.

In my mind, I hear the Jonas Brothers song “Backwards.” It’s the one I hear sometimes blaring from Will’s headphones as we pass each other in the kitchen. I think of it now, out of nowhere. And I think I finally understand it. I feel like I’m going backwards too.

How can I keep messing up when it comes to dating and love? How can I keep falling for the same excuses, the same lies, and the same old tricks? And just when I thought he could be the one... here we go again.

Am I mad? No. I wasn’t in love with George like I’d been with Billie all those years ago. But I liked George. I got caught up in the idea of him. I forgot to look both ways before I crossed the street into new territory.

“Please say something.” Lydia touches my arm, shaking me a little and jostling my thoughts.

“Thanks for telling me,” I finally say, unsure of how to respond to this. “Everyone kept saying he was trouble, and I just ignored all the signs.”

“He’s a walking red flag, sis,” Lydia says.

We both burst into laughter. I can’t help it. She’s right. I was being delusional, but in my defense, he was good pretending to be the man I needed.

Then a thought pops into my mind.

I remember George visiting the cafe with Charlotte Lucas. She seemed put off by him talking with me and she left early. I’d forgotten that little detail because when George Wickham looked at you with those eyes, it was easy to get lost in them.

“What’s with all the noise?” Mary yawns, leaning on the doorframe. She gazes at us, her heavy eyelids making her look like she could be sleepwalking. “I have work in the morning at the university library.”

“I have to get up for work too, Mary,” I say with a sigh. “You’re not the only one here with a grown-up job.”

She glares at me. “But I am the one you woke up. You better be glad that Kitty is a sound sleeper or she would so mad. So, what’s going on? What’s so funny?”

“I almost ended up in a relationship with a man who hit on our sister.” I nod toward Lydia for emphasis, a deadpan expression on my face.

Mary’s once heavily lidded eyes are now wide open in shock. She walks into the room and sits on my bed next to Lydia.

“Okay, I’m awake now. I need to hear this story from the very beginning, and don’t leave out a single detail,” she says.

I tell Mary the story with Lydia’s help. Mary admits that she and Kitty also had concerns about Wickham, but they were unsure if the rumors about him were true. We laugh until we cry and decide that maybe becoming old maids who never marry isn’t such a bad thing, though we don’t actually believe that.

After my sisters have gone to bed, I know I have to text Nic and Jane to let them know what’s going on.

Me: You’ll never guess who texted me tonight.

Nic: Who?

Me: Your boy Will.

Jane: What do you mean? That’s your boy.

Me: Well, you both were definitely rooting for him. You thought that he and I would be a good match and have chemistry. So that’s why I’m saying he’s your boy. But after tonight, he may be jobless, so pray for him.

Nic: Wait... why are you firing him? What’s going on?

Jane: Yes, you have some explaining to do. You can’t just text something like that with no context.