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She snorted and I glared at her. “What?” she asked innocently.
“He’s over it,” I grumbled.
“That is just one hundred percent not true,” she told me. “Although, we are back to normal Harlow, apparently.”
I looked down at myself and found I’d put on my blue-grey jeans, and a pale pink, woollen, off the shoulder jumper. In my hands, I was holding my light brown, heeled boots. I sucked my teeth and I looked down at myself.
“Right,” I said slowly. “Yeah. Let’s… Let’s put a pin in that for now, shall we? Especially for Saturday morning breakfast.”
My fingers trailed to my lips as I remembered Valen’s kiss from the night before. I was feeling far less in the mood to seduce anyone after the…finality of it all. I wasn’t going to stop being what felt like a more real version of me, but Iwasgoing to hide behind the mask of Good Girl Harlow until I was back to full strength again.
“No,” Florence said softly. “Fair enough.”
Naturally, she just had to take one look at me realise something was up. I’d told her the night before that boys were stupid but that I didn’t want to talk about it. We’d sat in the middle of her bed, my head in her lap and commiserated boys’ stupidity. She knew I’d give her all the gory details when I was ready, and I wasn’t quite ready.
I plastered on a smile as I pulled on my boots. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“No one asked, but great. Believable. Bring me backun pain au chocolat?”
I huffed a small smile. “Of course.”
Apollo was loitering casually in the hallway when I opened our door. There weren’t many people around at that time of the morning, but they all stopped and noticed him looking mighty dishevelled outside my door. I could only think what the school would be saying about that by the end of the day. He paid them no mind, though. He just took my hand and led me to the café. We were the only ones there for a bit, but slowly it filled around us.
It filled and emptied and filled again, and we moved on from breakfast to lunch.
It seemed that Apollo was in the midst of a very ‘not caring about what anyone else thinks’ day, because he wasn’t keeping one eye on our surroundings for once. He barely answered when someone said hello to him. He didn’t look at his phone once. His whole attention was on me, and I completely forgot myself in the sweet wake of it. We were laughing and joking, not caring if we were too loud or if anyone could hear the utter nonsense coming out of our mouths. We didn’t stop even when one of us got up to order something more to eat or drink, carrying on our conversation over and through whoever was between us.
When I got a message on my phone and saw it was from my mum, I finally broke our little bubble and noticed the time.
“Shit, Apollo, it’s almost three.”
He looked at his watch. “Fuck. It is. What time did we say we’d be at my parents’?”
I breathed out as I thought about it. “Before mine. And mine have just landed at the airport.”
“Fuck,” he laughed. “All right. I desperately need a wash and a change. I’ll text you when I’m ready and we’ll meet you at the car?”
“IthinkI’m going to take longer than you to get ready.”
He grinned. “Yeah, all right. Come and get me when you’re ready, then?”
I nodded. “Better plan.”
He leant over and kissed my cheek. “I’ll see you soon!” he said as he hurried out of the door.
I checked we’d paid everything we’d owed, grabbed Florence’s chocolate croissant, and hurried myself back to our dorm.
“I know!” I yelled as I threw the pastry at her and beelined for the bathroom.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
As I got undressed, I called, “With Apollo.”
“All day?”
I nodded. “Yeah. We were just chatting and… He barely spoke to another person all day. He didn’t look at his phone. He’s…”
“If you say ‘like a changed man’, I’m gonna come in there and hurl on you.”
