Page 11 of Play With Me

The whole world seemed to spin as he slid his hand behind my neck, tipping my face back as my heart surged in my chest. If I weren’t standing on my toes, they might have curled with the heat rushing through me.

Pull away!my head screamed. But I didn’t want to—I wanted to stay right here, to melt into his arms.

That’s when he broke the kiss, his hands suddenly dropping to his side. The expression on my best friend’s face was something I’d never seen before. It was hard. Almost spiteful. It would have taken my breath away if it wasn’t already gone.

“Goodbye, Nora,” Jude said.

Then he turned and trudged across the snow, away from me.

CHAPTER4

Nora

PRESENT DAY

Awad of paper hits me on the shoulder, causing the woman next to me to huff out loud.

I look over to the other side of the giant mahogany table, where Sasha, my young American friend, has her hands clasped under her pointed chin.

“Sasha! I’m trying to study!” I whisper.

Sasha sighs dramatically but looks back at her book without wadding up another piece of paper.

We’re at the Central Library of Waldorf College, a two-hundred-year-old building made up of all dark wood and brass railings and smells deliciously of musty old books. Overhead, cathedral ceilings are topped with a dome glass roof, cold December London rain running down its length and blurring the night sky. Everyone coming into the library is dripping with it. Including the child and their parent who come in wearing matching yellow rain jackets and now stand with their backs to us on the other side of the giant open space, looking lost.

I miss my cozy library at home. Especially the children’s section.

The librarian, a quintessentially English man with his tweed vest and twitching gray mustache, shuffles over in their direction, likely to rudely inform them that this is not a children’s library. I’m half tempted to get up and tell them therearechildren’s books here, though they’re close to two hundred years old and half of them can only be read on the digital collection. Not even Sasha knows this, but sometimes I go and read them just to feel like I’m back home doing story time.

The librarian’s absence, of course, is the only reason he doesn’t admonish Sasha for the second time tonight when she sends another paper ball in my direction.

This one sails over my shoulder, skittering across the floor behind me.

“Sorry,” I whisper to the man in the armchair as I reach over him to pick it up. He harrumphs, but otherwise ignores me.

“You’re going to get us kicked out,” I whisper to Sasha when I get back to my seat.

“You weren’t even reading your book,” Sasha says. “So you should answer my question!”

Sasha Macklin’s like a glittery star next to me. Besides her coiffed blonde curls and glossy red lips, tonight she’s wearing high heeled boots and a black rain jacket so glossy I can practically see my reflection in it. She always dresses like the paparazzi might be around the corner at any moment, which honestly, they could be. One of her older brothers is a flashy Wall Street guy back in New York, and all her family members get calls when he says something controversial or steps out with an actress. They surprised us once on the high street last spring. I ducked behind a fruit stand while she yelled at them to get lost.

“Well?” Sasha asks, taking one mitten off—the only thing not flashy, because I gave them to her—and tapping her manicured nails on the tabletop with a little smile.

“Nope.” I tug my wool hat down on my head. This library is housed in an ancient building with a serious lack of heat. The old boiler constantly craps out, which means everyone tends to keep all their winter clothes on in here.

Sasha sighs and pulls her mitten back on, looking back down at her book as if it’s pure torture. It isn’t like she needs to study. She’s in a different program than me, and her exams are over. She’s already on holiday time, just keeping me company because she said she needs a break from planning the big Christmas party she’s hosting this weekend. Of course, a break for her means redirecting all her energy into trying to convince me to come. I’ve already turned her down several times, even though it’s only a few doors down from me. I’m going to spend a quiet month on my own after exams, finally getting a chance to make some progress on the videography series I’m doing at the local retirement home for my thesis.

It pains me not to be in the States over Christmas. I usually spend it with Christian, though last year I spent it with Jude and his family. But Christian, a pilot now, will be working Christmas Day, and my closest friend, Reese will be with her partner—Jude’s brother Eli—and her family in New York. The only reason to be home now would be Jude and Cap. And as much as I miss them with my entire heart, the whole purpose of leaving was to put space between us. I know it won’t be forever—just until he finds himself a girlfriend or wife. Or at least until that thought doesn’t make my heart feel like it’s caught in a vice.

When I look up, the tourists are gone, and the librarian is bustling back toward his station.

I turn a page in my book. It’s about the preservation of various paper types through the 19th century, which normally I’d geek out over. But I can’t seem to stay focused.

Sasha’s returned her attention to her book for the time being, so I discreetly pull out the flyer I’ve been fretting over for weeks. It’s for an amateur documentary contest run by the film school. The theme is “love and loss.”

SHOW US YOUR BEST!the flyer cries.

It was Sasha who first saw the stack of them at the coffee shop near our apartment building. “You should enter something!” She’d said. It’d been off the cuff. She knew as well as I did I’d never do it. The contest involves an awards ceremony, and the winner gets their documentary shown at theaters all over London, along with several public events to talk about it.

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