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Chapter One
I’ve got an hour to kill before he arrives and I dump his ass again.
The breakup was a priority, and Lucie needed time to practice how she’d dump him. She’d tried ending their relationship the night before, but her anxiety had overwhelmed her. He wasn’t paying attention to her anyway, too busy playing on his phone to hear. She shrugged. The end of her so-called relationship wasn’t her main thought anymore.
Crowds blocked the path to the station exit. Strangers fumbled for tickets hidden in pockets or scrolled through the screens of apps on their phones to get through the barriers. An announcer reminded the jostling groups that the trains’ doors would close thirty seconds before departure as swathes of birds flapped noisily through the open-roofed structure.
Her phone buzzed with a call.
“How did it go?” Emma, her younger sister, ignored the niceties as usual. “Did you get it?”
“I messed up, especially when they asked why I wanted to work for them.” The hiss of trains leaving the station made it hard to hear, but the memories of the interview question was louder than any locomotive.
“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you think. You worked on your answers for days. Even I know your answer was, ‘Because you’re market leaders in branding. Your customers and employees rate you highly, blah, blah, blah.’” Emma’s southwest England accent was developing a slight Aussie twang, but it didn’t make Lucie smile today.
“I didn’t say any of that. I fluffed the interview for the role of my lifetime. I’ve dreamt of that opportunity for years. Every second was agony, and then I stumbled over the few words I spluttered.”
Another train departed the frantic station as Emma’s baby cried in the background. “I’ve gotta go, but it can’t be as bad as you think. Nothing is. Before you go, what do you have to say?”
Lucie huffed into the phone. “I’m awesome. I can change the world.”
“And you’re going to tell Bradley that it’s over before you waste any more of your twenties with him. I’ll call later, okay?”
“Okay,” Lucie replied.
“And remember,” Emma said. Lucie could already hear the smile in her voice. “I love you like Dec loves Ant.”
“And Ant loves Dec,” Lucie replied, her heart calming. Emma hung up quickly.
Their shared declaration was a weird thing they’d done ever since they’d watched Ant and Dec as kids. It was also a way of saying that everything was okay between them and always would be.
Lucie recalled the moment they’d said it in the pouring rain on the family holiday after the worst argument they’d ever had. It was the same weekend her life changed forever—the weekend she met Chris, her first love with beautiful green eyes and dimples when he smiled.
Suddenly a grey-haired guy on his mobile barged into her. She wobbled on her heels.
“Hey,” she shouted, giving him a swift elbow before regaining her footing and striding to the toilets.
After a crappy interview and an imminent breakup, it wasn’t the day to piss her off. She faltered as the adrenaline from the morning dropped. She turned. Should she apologise to the guy for elbowing him? Maybe he was on his way to his firstborn’s birth, or what if he interviewed her one day and remembered her as rude? What if she’d, unbeknownst to her, upset her interviewers in the past too?
She shook herself. The guy had ploughed into her, and he hadn’t apologised, and her interviewers didn’t know her. It was her inability to answer a simple question that had cost her the job. The “we don’t want you” phone call was coming. Her heart sped as her thoughts escalated.
Screeching strangers surrounded her, and the roar of departing trains made it hard to breathe. Lucie gulped stale air as she threw herself at the toilet door.
Was an anxiety attack coming? She didn’t sense the intensity of a panic attack; anxiety attacks were different. Was it the idea of confronting Bradley rather than letting the relationship peter out like she usually did? Her past relationships, if she could call them that, replayed in her head as she flipped on the tap to run cold water over her wrists. How many emotionally unavailable liars had it taken to push her to pick someone different? No, today her dream job had slipped through her fingers.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her long blonde bob, which was a lot lighter since she’d had six inches whipped off, bounced against her shoulders. The new look was unnecessary for a job that she no longer had a chance of getting. She hissed a sigh, forcing strands up in the air.
She squinted at her reflection in the long mirror. Her long cobalt blue pleated skirt reminded her of the warm seas of Phuket that she’d swam in on her travels. What was the guy she’d had a fling with before he tried it on with her friend called? She blinked his image away, focusing instead on how well the colour of her skirt matched her eyes. Would she wear it again after today? Her white top showcased her tan from her recent trip to California for the annual family holiday. They’d come a long way since their early September weekends in a forest holiday resort.
What was the point of looking the part if she couldn’t answer the big question? Her pulse was rising, and sweat beaded the back of her neck, dampening the bottom of the bob. Tears were threatening to spill. The cold water wasn’t working.
She couldn’t do it here.
“Keep it together, Lucie, and don’t let the anxiety win,” she whispered.
Taking slow, deep breaths, she ran her thumb in circles across the inside of her wrist instead. She didn’t need to see her tattoo. The words were imprinted on her mind as well as her skin. Chris had been the one who’d given her the quote.
Be the exception.
