Page 44 of A Smart Girl's Guide to Second Chances
I loved Alex. Of course I did. I’d loved him for weeks, practically since I’d met him. We’d spent nearly every minute of the summer together and it still hadn’t felt like enough. We’d been to a million lectures on random subjects. We’d debated everything. We’d talked endlessly about his mum, the lack of a dad in his life and my family. We had a favourite table at a pub (the one in front of the Bob Hawke sign at the Turf Tavern). We’d spent countless afternoons lying in the sun reading. We’d spent even more time in both of our single beds. I knew every part of his brain and body – the way he methodically could work through any problem, the small burn from a campfire on his inner left wrist, the promise he’d made to his mum before she died, the rough of the golden stubble on his jaw.
But the agreement we’d made – that we wouldn’t lose our heads – had felt like a protective case between my heart and reality. If we never acknowledged our feelings, then we’d be able to walk away from each other and resume our real lives unscathed.
I stood up.
‘Stay,’ he said, and reached towards me.
‘I’m getting cold up here,’ I said, rubbing my bare arms as if to prove my point.
‘No, I don’t mean up here. I mean stay in England. Move to London with me.’
The next day I sat with Lily on a punt. She wore a white shirt with a wilted red carnation in her lapel, a rumpled black skirtand her hair was covered in confetti. She’d just finished her final exam.
‘It’s the end of Oxford. The end of the road that’s not going to be taken,’ she said as she lay on her back, staring up at the bright blue sky. Neither of us really knew how to steer a punt, so we’d stopped trying.
‘Your parents will get their heads around what you’re doing. They’ll just need time,’ I said.
‘They can’t believe I’m turning down a stable career when it’s almost impossible to even get a bar job at the moment,’ she said.
‘Recessions don’t last forever,’ I said, reaching for the confidence of someone who almost had an economics degree. But I knew what she meant – the bubble wrap of our student days was about to be ripped off, and we both knew that the world wasn’t in great shape to be starting a career.
‘I’m going to prove them wrong!’ she said, somehow managing to look fierce while covered in confetti. ‘I’m going to pull it off, Becs. I’m going to do what I love and I’m going to make it work.’
‘Maybe avoid the being fuelled by a need for vindication?’ I suggested. I went to take another sip of my Pimm’s and realised that I’d already finished it.
‘Alex asked me to stay,’ I blurted out.
‘Here?’ Lily asked, confused.
‘In London, to live with him while he’s at UCL,’ I said. ‘America was always going to be impossible with visas. But I can get a working one and stay here. He asked if I’d try to transfer my grad job.’
‘Can you do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Do you want to live in London?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I barely knew the city. I didn’t know anyone there.
‘Can you leave him?’
I don’t know. I didn’t say this out loud, but it hung between us.
‘It just feels nonsensical to be even thinking about changing everything in my life because... I met a guy seven weeks ago.’
Lily nodded but I could tell she didn’t agree with me, that she thought that the 180-degree pivots were the stuff that life was made of.
‘What do you normally do when you need to make a decision?’ Lily asked. It was rhetorical question – she’d known me long enough.
It took me three days before I worked up the courage to make an international call to the HR department of my soon-to-be employer and ask if there was any chance that they could transfer my grad position to their London office. I was so nervous that I’d written a script for my side of the conversation.
The response I got was professional but frosty. Underlying the conversation was the sentiment:Don’t you know what’s happening in the world? Don’t you know how lucky you are to be allowed onto our consulting rocket ship?
I took the Oxford Tube bus to London alone. I’d visited the city a few times over the last year but through the lens of a tourist, not as a potential Londoner. The city was huge and bustling and ancient. Could I thrive here or would I be swallowed up and spat out?
I sat in a Caffè Nero and wrote a list of pros and cons.
Cons:
