Next Stop Love, #1 Page 9

  And no wonder. Feeling responsible for one bratty sister was headache enough for Julian. Beatrice sounded like she was trying to take care of her entire family.

  “Okay, look,” he said, holding up his hands. “Just put all the stressed-out rambling aside for a minute—”

  “I’m not stressed out,” Beatrice said, carving a furious little scribble into a corner of the book. “You’re stressed out.”

  Julian decided to ignore that brilliant comeback. “I know it’s not any of my business, but is marketing really going to be any better than serving coffee if you always wish you were doing something else?”

  “I know I can get my little house if I go into marketing,” she said, meeting his gaze for the first time since taking his book from him. “I just don’t see that happening if I change my major now. Maybe if I’d figured it out sooner . . . But it’s too late. So it doesn’t matter.”

  Her knuckles were white around the pen, and there was something in her eyes that made it seem like she was drowning. Julian wanted to take her hands and drag her out of the water, but he didn’t know how.

  “What happened to that whole speech you gave me this morning about just needing a plan and some hard work?” he tried. “What happened to being the master of plans?”

  “Master of ideas,” she corrected, jabbing the end of her red pen in his direction.

  “‘Which are very closely related to plans.’”

  She shook her head again, turning back to the practice test. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to be a teacher. I’m going to be a marketer. Now hush while I grade this.”

  Julian shrugged and opened his sketchbook. “Whatever you say, teach.”

  She shot him a glare, but the corner of her mouth twitched and she wrinkled her nose like she was trying not to laugh.

  Julian checked a goofy grin and glued his eyes on his sketchbook. While she was busy, he figured he’d work out the bird-witch design, and maybe try a second thumbnail. Beatrice was so hyper-focused on her own homework, he didn’t think she’d try to snoop. And even if she did, she didn’t seem the type to judge his every pencil stroke. But the thumbnail never got very far. He kept checking her marks out of the corner of his eye . . . and getting distracted by the way she chewed absently on her lip while she worked. More than once, he found himself fighting the impulse to poke her arm just to get her to look at him.

  Christ almighty. This commute buddy thing was going to kill him.

  When she finished, she pushed her hair behind one ear—where it stayed for only a second before springing free again—and passed the book back. She pointed out what he had a good grasp on, and what he ‘seemed a little shaky on’—mostly the more advanced math questions, which had never been his forte anyway. Then she flipped to the table of contents and circled the chapters she thought he should work through first.

  “I can work up some kind of study schedule for you if you want, but I don’t know if I’ll have the time to do it properly until next week,” she said.

  “You don’t have to work up a study schedule,” Julian said.

  “I don’t mind,” Beatrice said, opening her laptop again. “I just need to catch up with my homework first. Meantime, just start with those sections and see how it goes.”

  He knew he should tell her that this commute buddy thing—or whatever it was—wasn’t going to be a permanent arrangement. There was no guarantee he would meet up with her tomorrow morning. Or next week. Or next month. He should tell her that they couldn’t be friends. That it wasn’t just a tight schedule and a GED exam standing between him and this job he wanted so badly. That one day he might have to drop off the face of the earth with no warning.

  He should tell her he didn’t want to get hurt when that happened. And if they kept this up, he was definitely going to get hurt.

  But . . . Julian didn’t want to believe he was going to have to take off this time. He didn’t want to tell her to leave him alone. He liked her, dammit. She was ridiculous and tiny and she made him feel like he really could do anything if he broke it into small enough pieces and didn’t give up.

  So he said nothing. And when they parted ways later that evening, he told her he’d see her the next morning before he could think better of it. The smug little grin on her face almost made the slip worth it.

  He forgot about the plan she’d written out for his portfolio until he got home. She’d updated the math and made a note reminding him to ask if he could either borrow some art supplies or use some of the center’s studio space to work on his portfolio on the weekends. And then, the very last bullet point read:

  * Let Beatrice help you study ^w^

  She’d written her phone number underneath, along with a small note at the very bottom of the page:

  See you tomorrow, commute cohort!

  He couldn’t help the warm, cozy feeling spreading through him. He smiled. He was doing a terrible job not being friends with her.

  And just for that moment, looking down at the neat handwriting at the bottom of the page, he didn’t care.

  Ten

  A tote bag weighing at least twelve pounds slammed into Julian’s chest the following Monday morning before he boarded the train. The greeting he’d intended to give Beatrice whooshed out of his lungs as he staggered back a step, catching it instinctively.

  “I’m glad I found you before we boarded,” Beatrice said, brushing off her hands. “That thing is heavy.”

  “Then don’t carry it around,” Julian said, recovering his balance and holding the bag out for her to take. “And don’t throw it at unsuspecting bystanders.” He wasn’t about to start carrying her stuff for her without so much as a please. The more reasonable part of his brain was still telling him to run.

  A less reasonable part—the part that kept him from breaking off this commuting arrangement—wanted to hold onto her and not let go.

  At some point in the last week, Julian had settled on an uneasy compromise with himself; he could keep meeting Beatrice, but only if he set himself some boundaries. No texting about anything other than commutes or study questions. No hanging out on weekends. No needless lingering when they parted ways. No talking about his life prior to about three months ago. Absolutely no talking about the elusive boyfriend.

  Though Julian’s less reasonable side was already looking for ways to bend the rules without breaking them. He couldn’t truncate a conversation simply because it evolved from a study question into texting terrible dad jokes back and forth. He wasn’t going to be rude. And if he happened to redefine a single conversation to include anything said between two people with a gap shorter than twelve hours so he could justify texting her a joke or eight over the weekend . . . well . . .

  What his reasonable side didn’t know wouldn’t hurt it.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Beatrice said, backing away from the bag swinging from his outstretched hand. “That’s yours. I’m not carrying it another step.”

  Talking to Beatrice sometimes felt like trying to keep pace with a giant who didn’t realize your shorter stature might contribute to your ability to cover ground at the same speed. “What?”

  “I don’t know if it’s anything you could use,” she said, a pale pink blush coloring her cheeks. “It’s mostly cheap stuff. I found a set of colored pencils under my bed that I barely used—I could never get into that coloring book trend—and I think they’re supposed to be a good brand. But everything else is kind of crap stuff. Crayola watercolors from a million years ago, and one pack of cheap, no-one’s-ever-heard-of-them markers that are mostly dried out. The paper is all cheap kid’s stuff. Nath went on an art kick when he was nine that lasted for two weeks, so it’s all really old.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “You brought me art supplies?”

  “Crap ones,” Beatrice clarified. “But . . . yeah. You said you didn’t really have any. Oh, also—” She pulled the bag open and rummaged inside, holding his wrist still with one hand.

  Julian nearly droppe
d the bag, his pulse jumping. They weren’t even skin to skin. She was wearing purple mittens, and she had him by the sleeve. He held his breath and tried not to move. A second later, she produced a folder from the bag and released him.

  She waved the folder in the air, looking pleased with herself. “I wrote up some plans.”

  “Plans?” Julian repeated, still struggling to keep up. Hell, he would’ve been happy if he could mark the small dot that was Beatrice in the cloud of conversational dust she’d left in her wake.

  Beatrice went a deeper shade of pink as her triumphant expression wilted into embarrassment. “Oh. Well—” She pressed the folder against her chest and feigned interest in the post on the platform beside them. “I just thought . . . I thought . . . Never mind. It was dumb.” She pulled open her own bag like she was going to shove the folder out of sight.

  Julian slung the heavy tote over his shoulder and plucked the folder out of her hand before she succeeded.

  She adjusted her bag nervously and muttered something about butting in where she wasn’t wanted. Julian only half heard her as he flicked through the folder, distracted. Beatrice’s clear, chubby handwriting, interspersed with several printouts of bullet-point lists, filled the folder. They seemed to be sorted into sections—General/All, Animation, Comics (Trad.), Comics (Web), Teaching, Illustration (Kids), Illustration (Newspaper/Magazine/Freelance), Video/Entertainment.

  “Bee . . .” Julian said, staring at a chart comparing the benefits and drawbacks of various social media platforms as related to art. If Fabiana had handed him a folder like this—Well, she wouldn’t have. Her version of helping him plan a career would probably look more like a single sheet of paper with GET A FUCKING JOB, JACKASS scrawled across it in red Sharpie. But looking at Beatrice’s handwriting . . . the time this must have taken her . . . He was touched. And confused. No one but art teachers had ever told him it wasn’t both stupid and financially irresponsible to pursue an art career.

  “This is . . .” he began. “This . . . I . . . But . . .”

  “I bet it’s mostly stuff you already know,” Beatrice said, ignoring his stammering. “And I sort of guessed at what you might want to head towards, career-wise. You seemed interested in the pictures-as-stories route, but I didn’t want to assume you wanted to stick to comics just because that’s what you wanted when you were younger. And you seemed really excited about teaching kids, so I thought that should get its own section. A lot of them would work well together, too, if you didn’t want to box yourself in. I was going to do another section on different merchandising options, but a lot of it came down to how much you wanted to do yourself versus throwing a design up on a website, and I wasn’t sure if you even wanted—” She seemed to get embarrassed again, and tried to tug the folder out of his fingers. “I’m sorry, this is really pushy, isn’t it?”

  “Hang on,” Julian said, closing the folder and holding it out of her reach. “At least let me look at it before you start apologizing. When did you even have the time to do all this?”

  “Hardly anyone came into the coffee shop this weekend, and I’d already done most of my homework,” she said, adjusting her bag as the train clattered in. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Julian said. There had to be at least twenty pages, all packed with information. “Thank you, Bee.”

  She shrugged, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “No problem.”

  “You seriously did all this on top of your homework?” Julian asked, frowning. “Do you ever sleep?”

  “Sleeping is for after graduation,” she told him, lifting her chin sagely.

  They pushed onto the train with everyone else and found their seats. Julian slid over to make room for Beatrice. She dropped into her seat with a poorly-stifled yawn.

  “You do realize it’s not healthy to run on nothing but caffeine, right?” Julian asked as they settled in.

  She shot him one of those sly smiles that tended to knock the breath out of him if he wasn’t prepared. “I was joking, loser,” she said, kicking his shin lightly. “Stop worrying about me. I get at least four solid hours of sleep every night. Also a joke,” she added when he cut her a disapproving look.

  “Sure, weirdo,” Julian said.

  She shook her head, still smiling, and shuffled through her textbook for the right page without removing her mittens.

  Julian suspected there was more truth to the jokes than she let on. She had faint circles under her eyes, which didn’t exactly indicate a weekend of rest and recuperation. And he wasn’t sure why she was claiming she’d finished her weekend assignments before working on that folder if she still had statistics problems to do on the train.

  “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you not working.”

  “What are you talking about? You saw me at the coffee shop that one time.”

  Julian snorted, mostly because of the exaggerated wink and finger guns that punctuated the joke. “That was weak.”

  “So’s our coffee,” she said, breaking out the finger guns again.

  “Stop,” Julian begged. “They’re getting worse.”

  “You’re laughing,” she pointed out.

  True. He tried to assume a straight face. “It’s a pity laugh at best.”

  “You’re going to have to wait for me to finish my coffee before I have the brainpower to break out the good stuff,” Beatrice said, scribbling the date at the top of a fresh page in her notebook. “Actually,” she said, turning to him and poking his arm with the end of her pencil. “I have a question for you.”

  He wished she’d stop doing that. The casual touching. It made him want to do stupid things. Like denude her hand of its glove and press his lips against the base of her thumb.

  Julian cleared his throat and drew a random circle on an empty page of his sketchbook, trying to seem busy, and not like he was imagining any part of Beatrice nude. “What’s that?”

  “What are you doing for Thanksgiving next week?”

  His pen slowed on the page. The art center was going to be closed over the holiday. He was pretty sure Fabiana was planning on going to their step-father’s penthouse for dinner. She hadn’t said as much, but that’s what she did every year. Julian wouldn’t be surprised if she was scheming to use the softness that came over Walter on the holidays to get back in his good graces.

  Julian had cut off all contact with his step-father and his dick of a step-brother after Julian broke his hand and left that place for good. Even if he thought he would be welcome—which he didn’t—the mere idea of talking to his step-brother after everything that happened made Julian’s chest constrict. He didn’t have any inclination to go back. Ever. Even for a holiday.

  Which meant Julian would be spending Thanksgiving eating ramen and working on his portfolio in his shitty apartment, alone. And that scene was depressing enough without admitting it to Beatrice.

  “I’m not really sure yet,” he lied instead.

  “You’re not going to see your family?” Beatrice asked.

  “There’s . . . not really any family to see,” Julian said, scrubbing the back of his neck. “It’s just me and my sister. We lost both our parents, and the only other relatives we have are some second cousins in South Korea who we only met once, when we were three. And a step-dad and step-brother I don’t talk to anymore.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. About your parents. And the step-family situation, too.”

  “Thanks.” Julian shrugged and tried to power through the awkward before he completely shattered his no-talking-about-the-past rule. “Why were you asking about Thanksgiving?”

  “Well, my step-dad is going to be out of town working,” Beatrice said, accepting the subject change without comment, “and my mom is going to visit her sister in Maine, and a couple of my friends are in similar boats—sans parentals—so Kinsey is going to host a dinner at her parent’s house, and she and my other friend and my brother and I are going to try to pull together a kind of Frien
dsgiving thing on Thanksgiving, and if you don’t have plans, you’d be more than welcome to come. You can bring your sister, too.”

  Sure. Perfect way to ensure disaster—bring the brash, confrontational twin sister. “I, uh . . . I think she’s already got plans,” Julian said.

  “Then just bring you. You could come meet me and Nath at our place and we’ll all pile into Sasha’s car.”

  Julian fumbled around halfheartedly for a reason to say no. The rational part of his brain was running out of objections. “Are you sure your friends will be okay with me coming?”

  “Sure, why not?” Beatrice said, beaming at him. “Nath will be happy there’s another guy there, and the more people we cram in, the less chance we’ll have to be cranky about missing relatives.”

  So no boyfriend in attendance? Interesting. “Um. Okay. Yeah.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” He wasn’t technically breaking any of his rules, agreeing to come. Thursday was still a weekday, after all. And it sounded a damn sight better than moping alone in his dingy apartment. “Should I bring something?”

  “That’d be awesome. Let me just check with Kinsey and see what we still need and I’ll let you know this evening?”

  “Okay.”

  “Awesome,” Beatrice said, bouncing a little in her seat as she turned back to her homework.

  * * *

  “Don’t kill me,” Beatrice said, joining Kinsey and Sasha outside their statistics class. They were all a bit early today, and the TA hadn’t shown up yet to unlock the door.

  “No promises,” Kinsey said, rubbing her eyes. Her checkered blouse looked a bit rumpled under her coat, and she was wearing jeans and sheepskin boots—a sure sign she hadn’t gotten enough sleep. “I was fighting with Photoshop all night, and I’ve got a design hangover. You know how violent those make me.”