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Mark smiled and cocked his right eyebrow. “I’ve just lost one waiting job, Freds. I don’t plan on losing another.”
Alex rested her clutch on the table and slowly unbuttoned her damp trench, leaving it to pool on the chair behind her.
“Pretty dress, Lex,” said Lucy. “Shame it was wasted on them.”
Mark nodded, his expression softening. “Before you walked in, Lucy had started to tell me about last night. Something about Olivia and a fundraiser?”
Alex frowned. “Yeah, she stole my play idea. Pitched it to Isabella Archer, right in front of me. This morning when I confronted her, she said she didn’t steal anything—’you can’t copyright an idea, Alex’. And to keep me in my place, she threatened my friendship with Harry and said she’d ruin me in the theatre community if I blabbed to anyone.”
“Told you so!” said Freddie.
Mark shook his head. “Jesus, what a bitch.” He leaned in. “Why are you hanging around with these people?”
Alex rubbed her furrowed brow. “They’re the first people I met here. I didn’t know anyone else until I ran into Lucy.” A small sip of JD and Coke passed her lips.
“I’ve seen them before at Winston’s. They’re a rich bunch—fair dues, I have no problem with that—but they’re elitist and full of themselves. Always looking down their noses, you know? To be honest, it really threw me seeing you there. It made me second guess what I knew about you.”
His comment stung. Alex’s eyes widened. “I’m hardly rich. Definitely not elitist. I work in a greasy spoon, I shop at H&M… hell, give me a few more weeks, I’ll probably be addicted to that Primark chain, too.”
Lucy rested her head on Mark’s left shoulder. “Bet you wondered where we picked up this wealthy snob, eh, Keegs?”
He stole a few of Lucy’s crisps and unleashed his devastating smile. “I did wonder…”
His grin melted away any lingering iciness. Alex caught his eye and held her breath, waiting for what he’d say next.
“But in all seriousness, Alex—be careful. I don’t think you can’t trust any of them, even Harry.”
She swallowed a gulp of her drink, sending a burning torrent down her throat, but once the warmth dissipated, the heaviness in her heart hijacked her attention. Everything that Lucy had warned her about had come to pass. She’d seen how spiteful Olivia could be and how blind Harry was to his girlfriend’s faults. Had she been wrong about Harry all along?
Eighteen
June evaporated into July—a blur of café shifts and marathon writing sessions at various coffee shops. Evenings and weekends, Alex reserved for Lucy and Freddie. The more time spent away from her flatmates, the better, but it didn’t calm the rootless feeling that bore into Alex’s restless heart. If anything, all this shuffling about made her turbulence worse.
At some point, Olivia must have submitted the stolen suffragette play to Isabella’s mentorship program. Alex didn’t know for sure. Only a few terse words had been exchanged between the two since the night Olivia had Mark fired. Bespoke owned Harry, so Alex never saw him. Occasionally her ears were tormented by Tom’s hook-ups or she’d catch his conquests tiptoeing from his room, but apart from that, she felt like a ghost rattling around the Martello Street flat on her own.
The theft of her play and the toxic flat environment extinguished her spark. London hadn’t been kind so far.
It didn’t help that homesickness soured her stomach. She didn’t pine for her mom or Tallahassee, but she longed for familiar comforts: her spacious room, her go-to diner with its mouthwatering hush puppy recipe, and cheesy American daytime TV. She missed the family cat. She missed constant sunshine. She missed Twizzlers.
Adrift between her old life and her new one.
Freddie and Lucy tried to distract Alex by showing off her new hometown on the cheap. City-wide rides atop double-decker buses, strolls along the Thames, and excursions to Tower Bridge, the Changing of the Guard, and Camden Market put a slight dent in her wallowing, but nostalgia still threatened to yank her backwards. Despite protestations to the contrary, Alex was crap at letting go. Detaching from her old life was proving more difficult than she ever expected.
The arrival of July 6—her birthday—required extra care. Lucy and Freddie chose the Pizza Express across from the Royal Festival Hall for dinner celebrations. Thank goodness Alex wore a floaty blue and white striped slip dress. A waistband would have meant bellyache central. Garlic butter-drenched dough balls, thin pizzas, and gooey chocolate cake slices left all three diners begging for gastronomical mercy.
The birthday girl beamed. “You’re too good to me. It’s been a great twenty-second birthday. Thank you.” They stepped outside, embraced immediately by the unseasonably humid July air.
“I’ve missed that smiley face,” said Freddie. “Keep those cheeks warmed up; the surprises aren’t over yet.”
“I hate surprises,” said Alex.
“Ah, shut up. C’mon!” Freddie motioned for her and Lucy to cross Belvedere Road.
Lucy hopped over each crack in the pavement, her canary yellow shirtdress billowing with each leap. Alex smiled at her friend’s quirkiness, but pulled her attention away to check out the bridge stretching over their heads. Waterloo Bridge—the very bridge in her new play.
If this overpass was Waterloo Bridge, then right next door stood…
She halted in her tracks, her eyes wild in the dwindling light. “It’s not?!” Her voice echoed against its cement arch. She sprinted past the rack of ‘Boris bikes’ lining the bridge’s underbelly.
