#littlebird006

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Meredith Barzetti tripped up the last stair leading out of the sunken lecture hall, accidentally letting the heavy door slam behind her, stubbing her toe, almost dropping her barely functioning phone, and definitely dropping her student card. The plastic card slid across the polished floor into the hallway. If it’d been any normal day, it would have been lost to the masses, crushed under deformed Uggs and ratty athletic shoes, never to be seen again. It was midterm week though and the only students wandering the halls were sleep-deprived zombies who kept their eyes focused on the ground as they internally berated themselves for the word vomit they’d spewed forth in the essay on their last test. 

Reading (Journeyman by @littlebird006 currently) + Coffee + Harry Potter = a very happy girl right now. This week has been hell with Heart Walk events so I’m taking a little time for myself and sitting on the couch!!

There’s something inherently sad about fall, as flowers shrivel, leaves fall, and plants enter their dormancy in preparation for winter, and yet there’s also something exciting about the transition. Every day looks a little different than the last. Ankle boots crunching through golden amber leaves, wooly knits layered thickly, a nip in the air, I loved it all.

“You look very content, Miss Hartley.”

“I am content.”

Gazing up at a street mural of an old man wasn’t how I had planned to spend my last day in London but as I stood on Bacon Street, just off Brick Lane, hand-in-hand with Harry staring at the surprisingly detailed portrait painted on brick, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Having a boyfriend was a surreal concept to me and one which I was still trying to wrap my head around. It didn’t matter that I’d been sleeping next to him for months now. I had to be dense, surely, because the fact that we kissed and held hands, that we’d had sex, that I told him I loved him, none of it really seemed to have sunk in. I’d met a nanny when I’d picked Lux up from pre-school one day this week and whilst making small talk, she’d asked me if I was single. Confirming that ‘yes, of course I’m single’ was so ingrained in me that by the time I finished really thinking about it and had replied that I actually did have a boyfriend, she had to believe I was lying.

I needed to fulfill my new role of girlfriend better.

“I don’t want to see people!”

I wearily rubbed my temples. “Story of my life.”

It was Sunday and, more importantly, the morning after my wooing of Harry. I wanted nothing more than to be nestled up beside his warm body, a tattooed arm keeping me firmly pressed against him. Instead I was trying to convince a two year old that starting preschool tomorrow was not the end of the world. Neither of us were impressed.

“Don’t get me wrong, love, I’m going to miss you. Who is going to force feed me coffee every morning? Who will laugh at all my jokes? What if I kill our plants? I mean, I think I’m okay with the succulents but we’ve got herbs now. That’s a lot of pressure.”

I snorted. “I think you can keep the mint and parsley alive for a few weeks.”

“I don’t know, Bee. The basil always gets a bit wilty when it sees me coming but it perks right up when you’re around it.”

“Oh, your phone went off a few minutes ago,” Harry added.

“Did it?” I leaned forward to grab my phone off the coffee table, glancing between the television and the device as I unlocked it.

It was just a new email, probably a promotion for a sale at a store I no longer shopped at but was too lazy to unsubscribe from. I opened it anyway and realized just how wrong I was. The sender made me freeze. Immediately I stiffened, my fingers curling tightly around the phone as I gaped at the message.

The message from the Admissions department at King’s College.