Sweet Filthy Boy - Lauren Christina (читать книги без TXT) 📗

Inside is all the information I need for school, the emails about schedules and orientation that have arrived in the last few weeks, ignored but tucked safely away where I promised myself I’d deal with them later.

Apparently, later is today.

With the energy provided by a pot of coffee and the growing buzz over finally making the right decision, I log in to the Boston University MBA student portal.

I decline my financial aid.

I decline my spot in the program.

I finally make the decision I should have made ages ago.

And then I call my former academic advisor, and prepare to grovel.

I STARE AT the FOR RENT section in the local newspaper. Part of the deal in my agreeing to attend graduate school was that my dad would pay for my apartment. But after what I’ve just done, I don’t think he’ll support me, even if from where I stand it feels like the best compromise. I know he’ll be more likely to break something with his bare hands than give me a penny. I can’t bring myself to live under his thumb anymore anyway. Living in Paris has pretty much shot my budget to hell, but after a quick glance at the paper, there are a few places I can afford . . . especially if I can find a job relatively soon.

I’m still not ready to turn on my phone and face what I’m sure is a mountain of missed calls and texts from Ansel—or even worse, nothing at all—and so I use a payphone in front of a 7-Eleven just down the street from the coffee shop.

My first call is to Harlow.

“Hello?” she says, clearly distrustful of the unknown number. I’ve missed her so much that I feel tears sting at the corners of my eyes.

“Hey,” I say, that single word thick and coated in homesickness.

“Oh my God, Mia! Where the fuck are you?” There’s a moment of pause where I imagine she pulls the phone from her ear and glances at the number again. “Holy shit, are you here?”

I swallow back a sob. “I landed a couple of hours ago.”

“You’re home?” she shouts.

“I’m in San Diego, yeah.”

“Why aren’t you at my house right now?”

“I have to get a few things organized.” Like my life. In France, I found my spot in the distance. Now I just need to keep my eyes pinned to it.

“Organized? Mia, what happened to Boston?”

“Listen, I’ll explain later but I’m wondering if you can talk to your dad for me?” I take a shaky breath. “About my annulment.” And there it is, the word that has been tickling in the back of my thoughts. Saying it out loud sucks.

“Oh. So it went downhill.”

“It’s complicated. Just, talk to your dad for me, okay? I need to take care of some stuff but I’ll call you.”

“Please come over.”

Pressing the heel of my hand to my temple, I manage, “I’ll come over tomorrow. Today I just need to get my head on straight.”

After a long beat, she says, “I’ll have Dad call his lawyer tonight, and let you know what he says.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you need anything else?”

Swallowing, I manage, “I don’t think so. Going to look at apartments. After I check into a motel and catch a nap.”

“Apartments? Motel? Mia, just come stay here with me. I have an enormous place and can definitely work on my sex-volume issue if it means I get you as a roomie.”

Her apartment would be ideal, in La Jolla and perfectly situated between the beach and campus, but now that my plan has formed, it’s unbreakable. “I know I sound like a psychopath, Harlow, but I promise, I’ll explain why I want to do it this way.”

After a long beat I can sense her acquiescence, and for Harlow, that was remarkably easy. I must sound as determined as I feel. “Okay. Love you, Sugarcube.”

“Love you back.”

Harlow emails me a short list of places to check out, with her thoughts and comments on each one. I’m sure she called her parents’ Realtor and had her find things that were fit to exact specifications of safety, space, and price, but even though she doesn’t know where I want to live, I’m so grateful for Harlow’s busybody tendencies that I nearly want to weep.

The first apartment I see is nice and definitely in my price range, but way too far from UCSD. The second is close enough that I could walk but it’s directly over a Chinese restaurant. I debate with myself for an entire hour before deciding there’s no way I could stand smelling like kung pao twenty-four hours a day.

The third is listed as “cozy,” furnished, above a garage, in a quiet residential neighborhood, and two blocks from a bus stop that’s a direct line to the college. And thank God, because after paying the long-term airport parking bill I had upon returning, there’s no way I’ll be able to afford a campus parking permit. I’m relieved the apartment was listed only this morning, because I’m sure it will be snatched up quickly. Harlow is a goddess.

The street is lined with trees and I stop in front of the wide yellow house. A wide lawn spreads out on both sides of the stone walkway, and the front door is painted a deep green. Whoever lives here has a way with plants, because the yard is impeccable, the flower beds thriving.

It reminds me of the Jardin des Plantes, and the day I spent there with Ansel, learning—and promptly forgetting—the name for everything in French, walking for hours with my hand in his, and the promise of a future where I could do that with him whenever I wanted.

The woman who owns the house, Julianne, leads me inside, and it’s as close to perfect as I can imagine. It’s tiny, but warm and nice with tan walls and clean white trim. A cream-colored sofa sits in the center of the single main room. One corner opens to a small kitchen with a window that looks down into the shared backyard. The open floor plan reminds me so much of Ansel’s flat that for a painful heartbeat, I have to close my eyes and take a deep breath.

“One bedroom,” she says, and crosses the room to flip on a light.

I follow and peek in. A queen bed fills almost the entire space, a set of white bookcases suspended above.

“Bathroom in there. I’m usually gone before the sun is up so you can park back here.”

“Thanks,” I tell her.

“The closets are small, there’s horrible water pressure, and I guarantee the teenage boys who take care of the lawn will be absolute piglets when they see you, but it’s cute and quiet and there’s a washer and dryer in the garage you can use whenever,” she says.

“It’s perfect,” I say, looking around. “A washer and dryer sound like absolute heaven and I can definitely handle piglet teenage boys.”

“Yay!” she says, smiling wide, and for a tiny, desperate heartbeat I can imagine living here, taking the bus to school, starting to figure out my life in the sweet studio above her garage. I want to tell her, Please, let me move in right now.

But of course she’s rational, and with a tiny apology in her eyes asks me to fill out the background check form. “I’m sure it will be fine,” she says with a wink.

I’VE ONLY BEEN gone a few weeks, but checking into a motel in my hometown makes me feel like I’m returning to a city that has long since evolved without me. As I drive to the motel, I find a hidden pocket of San Diego I’ve never explored before, and although the corner of my dark city feels oddly foreign, the idea that there’s a different future for me here from any I had imagined before is powerfully reassuring.

My mother would kill me for not staying at home. Harlow wants to kill me for not staying with her. But even in the dim light and the cacophony of the I-5 freeway just outside my window, it’s exactly what I need. I check my bank balance for about the fiftieth time since landing. If I’m careful, I could make it to the start of school, and by then—thanks to my former advisor and the man who has gained me entrance to the MBA program that once heavily courted me at UCSD—I’ll have a small, rare stipend to help make ends meet. But even though the rent is reasonable in the studio, it would still be tight and my stomach flips imagining having to ask my father for money. I haven’t talked to him in over a month.