When Lucy got on the bus the following morning, with the dog-eared copy of Skellig tucked safely in her bag, the girl was sat where she usually sat, her nose buried deep in another book, and her headphones blocking out any noise from the outside world. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she took the book out of her bag and tentatively tapped the girl lightly on the shoulder, causing her head to snap up.
Her eyes were more beautiful up close. When the early morning sun caught them as the bus ambled through the streets, tiny flecks of gold were visible in her deep brown eyes. She pulled an earbud out and raised an eyebrow at Lucy.
"What do you want?" she said icily, her lips drawn in a thin line. Lucy gulped and took another shaky breath. She thrust the book out in front of her.
"Is this yours? It was left on the seat after you got off yesterday- I assumed it was yours- it might not be actually- I'm so sorry if it isn't... I-" Lucy's rambling was cut off by the girl holding her hand up.
"Yeah, it's mine, thanks." She held out her hand expectantly, waiting for Lucy to give her the book. She quickly handed it over.
"I'm Lucy, by the way. We go to the same university, I think. And we get the same bus." The girl raised her eyebrows again at this.
"I can tell that we get the same bus, as believe it or not, we are currently on the same bus. I'm Grace. Thanks for giving me my book back and not keeping it, I guess." she tossed the book into her bag and replaced her headphones, continuing to read the book open in her lap. Lucy sat back down in her usual seat, with her heart racing and her ears pounding. She had finally done it. She had finally spoken to her.
Grace.
Her name was Grace.
It was perfect. Better than anything she imagined. The actual conversation hadn't exactly gone to plan, but then again, the ideal situation for Lucy was for Grace to thank her with kisses and then they would run off together into the sunset, but hey, this would have to do.
Lucy couldn't stop thinking about her interaction with Grace for the rest of the day and it consumed her thoughts. The more Lucy thought about her meeting with Grace, the sadder it made her feel. It was obvious that Grace had little to no interest in ever talking to her again; that much was clear from her bluntness. Lucy was distracted for the rest of the day, barely taking notice of what her professors were saying about quantum physics. It was only when Sabrina nudged her that she realised she was moping.
"Lucy, you need to pay attention if you want to pass this class. Daydreaming about your dream girlfriend isn't going to get you a degree in quantum physics, I'm afraid, pal." Sabrina readjusted her headscarf and smiled at Lucy. "How are things going with her, by the way? Have you actually managed to talk to her yet, or are you still too scared to?" Lucy scrunched her nose in indignation and stuck her tongue out at her.
"For your information, I actually spoke to her this morning. I gave her back her book that she left behind on the bus yesterday." Lucy replied proudly, keeping her voice down to avoid drawing attention to them in the small lecture theatre. Sabrina raised her eyebrow.
"Really? I don't believe you Lucy."
"Hey! I did, I even asked her for her name."
"...Well then? What is it?"
"Grace. Her name is Grace." Lucy said and began to drift off back into her daydream about Grace when the other students seated in the theatre began to get pack up their supplies and slowly file out of the room.
"Come on lover-girl, the lecture is over now. Let's go grab some lunch and you can bore me to death with all the details of your lovey dovey bus crush." Sabrina said and ran up the steps before Lucy could whack her arm.
Grace had had another shitty day. In her sleep exhausted state, she had forgotten to set the alarm the night before again, so she was running late again, and had to run for the bus, which she had not done since secondary school. To make matters worse, she had run through a massive puddle in doing so, splashing huge mud splatters all up her bare legs, which felt absolutely disgusting. Grace hated the weather in England. It was never warm enough. And it rained too often at such short notice.
The only thing that had made it slightly better was that a girl returned the book she thought she had lost the day before. And she had managed to made that bad by being rude to her, when she was only trying to help, which only made Grace feel even worse than she was already feeling.
It didn't help that the girl was really cute. She was tiny, with thousands of freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheekbones, and strawberry blonde hair tied loosely in two space buns.
And her rambling made her even cuter.
There was no way she would like her though. Girls like her didn't like girls like Grace.
Grace tried to remember the name of the girl. Lily? Lottie? It was something beginning with L, but that was the best she could remember. Grace promised herself that she would apologise to the girl if she ever saw her again, which was possible, as she had said something about them both going to the same university.
When Grace sat down in her usual seat in the library, she scanned the room, to see if she could spot Laura (no that wasn't it), but with no luck. There were hundreds of students at this university, and countless different subjects and courses, she could be anywhere. It was unlikely that they would ever meet again. Grace sighed. Yet another thing to add to the growing list of things Grace had done wrong this morning.
Sabrina and Lucy stood in the queue at a small coffee shop a short ten minutes' walk away from the university. The shop was small but cosy, with exposed brick walls and tiny potted plants on each table. Chatter and clinking cutlery and cups filled the air, with the instrumental music playing softly underneath the layer of noise. The cafe was popular with the university students, as it was so close, and the food and coffee were good (good coffee was what powered the whole university). After buying their lunch, they sat down at a table by the window, and set out all their books and laptops. Once everything was set out, Sabrina clapped her hands together.
"Now, tell me everything that happened; I want all of the juicy details." Lucy blushed slightly and shook her head.
"Not much happened to be honest, you're making a big deal out of a little thing." Sabrina raised an eyebrow.
"If it wasn't such a big deal, then you wouldn't have been completely unfocused on the lecture today. You absolutely love quantum physics, even more than me, and you weren't even paying attention. You're even doing it now, Lucy." Sabrina snapped her fingers in front of Lucy's face, and she blinked out of her stupor.
"Sabrina, is it obvious I'm gay? Hell, she might not even be gay. She acted like she never wanted to talk to me, even after I returned her to the book. Oh no, maybe I came off as really annoying! I might as well give up, she obviously doesn't like me."
"Woah there, you literally spoke to her once, you have to give these things time, Lucy, they don't just happen overnight."
Lucy sighed and looked forlornly down at her sandwiches. "Yeah, I guess you are right. Anyway, how is your essay going? I'm stuck on how to start, but I have written literally everything else." This caused Sabrina to launch into what Lucy normally referred to as "nerd mode", where she would dig into the deep (and organized) vault of her mind and regurgitate any information she had previously learnt.
Later that day, in the early evening, Grace got the bus home, feeling a lot better than she had in the morning. The rest of the day had gone well, with her receiving an almost perfect mark for her analysis of a piece of artwork from the renaissance period, and the small supermarket near to the university had started stocking cartons of chocolate milkshake for very cheap prices, something that had lifted her mood massively, if not the most. With a half empty carton of chocolate milkshake and a new, heavy textbook about all the details that you could possibly know about the art nouveau period, she stood at the bus stop along with all the other students that got buses to various places from the surrounding areas. When the bus finally trundled up to the stop, Grace got on, for once without her headphones in blaring her music as loud as it could go, instead her headphones were shoved somewhere to the bottom of her satchel. She kept an eye out for the girl that had returned her book this morning, (Lauren?) but she wasn't seated anywhere that Grace could see. Feeling slightly deflated, Grace sat in her usual seat and placed her headphones back in, but with the volume slightly lower than normal, just in case.
At the stop around the corner, the bus stopped again to let more students from the other side of the campus board, along with some old ladies and a mother and her two shrieking children. Amongst the crowd, Grace finally saw her, and had the chance to catch a better look at her.
She was dressed like a toddler, with a pale denim pinafore over the top of a floral shirt and loosely tied pink converse and knee-high socks. Her short height also added to the overall childish look, and the slightly too big backpack made her seem smaller and not old enough to be at university. It was very cute.
She stood near the front, holding a pole with one hand to keep herself upright along the narrow and twisting roads, and was completely engrossed in her phone. A taller girl wearing a headscarf was stood close to her and would nudge her occasionally to show her something on her phone and make her laugh, a sound that was almost completely drowned out by the general hubbub of the bus. Grace found herself staring at her for the majority of the journey, somehow unable to tear her eyes away.
At that moment, purely by chance, she looked up, and made eye contact with Grace who was almost the entire bus length away from her. Her eyes widened and she quickly turned away. Grace cursed herself. She probably hated Grace for being so mean to her this morning. The girl didn't look at Grace for the rest of the journey, when she got off a few stops before Grace did.
Lucy looked up from her phone and made eye contact with Grace who was sat at the back of the bus, glaring at her. She quickly looked away. Grace probably hated her for being so rude that morning. Lucy made sure not to look in her direction again for the remainder of the journey. Sabrina noticed this and looked in the direction Lucy was pointedly not looking in. When they got off the bus, Sabrina decided it was safe to broach the topic.
She nudged Lucy. "Was that Grace?" She asked. "Dark hair, kind of tall, wearing headphones?" Lucy nodded. Sabrina narrowed her eyes. "Well she didn't stop staring at you for the whole ride home." Lucy groaned.
"I bet she hates me. For literally no reason."
"I'm not sure I would say she hates you, but she sure was intense with that staring."
When Sabrina and Lucy got back to their shared flat, their other flatmates were already home. Alex and Jay were sat in the living room playing something together on the Xbox, and Daniel was frying something that smelled a bit burnt. Daniel waved with the spatula when he heard them come in, and Jay called out a greeting, but didn't tear his eyes away from the screen. Whilst they didn't not get along, Lucy still found it hard to be sociable with her flatmates. They just seemed to be so much more easy-going than Lucy could ever hope to be. She was only friends with Sabrina because she had forced her to be chattier, and as they were on the same course, Lucy had kind of gravitated towards her. Every now and then, Lucy felt guilty for not making more of an effort to make other friends, but she liked hanging out with Sabrina, so that was enough for her.
They spent the rest of the day hanging out in Lucy's room, eating takeaway pizza and watching cheesy romantic comedies from the late nineties. As they sat together watching "10 Things I Hate About You", Lucy looked at Sabrina.
"Sabrina, please could you get the bus with me tomorrow morning. I don't want to be on my own on the bus if Grace is just going to glare at me the whole time again." She said. Sabrina pulled an apologetic face, and Lucy already knew that she was going to say no.
"Sorry Luce, I can't. I've got a meeting for the rowing team in the morning, so I have to be on campus much earlier than you do. Unless you want to get up at 7 am and come with me to the meeting?" She asked, her voice a light teasing tone. Lucy shuddered.
"I can't think of anything worse than getting up that early anymore. I'll be fine going on my own. I just complain about it the whole time so keep your phone on silent." She warned, making Sabrina roll her eyes.
"Oh deep joy. I can't wait to get a hundred texts from you about how uncomfortable you are in social situations." She said, her tone flat, but her eyes were smiling. She yawned and stretched. "Speaking of, I should probably go to sleep now." She left Lucy in her room with a wave and a promise to text her in the morning. Lucy stayed up until well into the early hours of the morning, watching "The Notebook" and trying not to cry too loudly. She had seen it so many times, but it still managed to make her cry every single time.
Grace's evening was a little more chaotic. Her flatmates had decided last minute that they were all going to attend an event organised by the university. Grace had no idea what it was, but she was excited to go. There was the very small chance that the girl from the bus might be there, and for Grace, that was a better chance than no chance.
The event turned out to be bowling. Grace couldn't remember the last time she had gone bowling, but it was great fun. Sure the place was a little run down and looked like it was stuck in the eighties, and there was a very slight smell of stale sweat, but she was surrounded by friends who were all just as bad as bowling as she was.
At some point in the evening, after Grace had had a few too many beers, she sat down with Jasper, who was watching their friend Cole try and fail to bowl a ball without it going into the gutters. Jasper looked at Grace, who was clearly miles away, her eyes ever so slightly glazed over due to the drink. Jasper nudged her gently.
"Hey. Earth to Grace. What're you thinking about?"
Grace sighed. "That girl on the bus. I can't stop thinking about her; she's so cute." Grace's eyes welled up a little. "Jasper I can't even remember her name. She probably hates me." Jasper looked a little confused, having absolutely no idea as to who Grace was talking about, but chuckled at Grace's antics and slung their arm around her shoulder.
"I'm sure she would forgive you for forgetting her name."
"No, she probably hates me because I was mean to her on the bus, when all she was doing was being nice and returning my book to me." Grace said, her lower lip trembling.
"I'm sure she wouldn't mind if you just apologised. She sounds like the sort of person to understand." Jasper assured her and Grace smiled up at them.
"Thank you for that. I'll apologise to her tomorrow." She said, sounding like an incredibly determined two year old.
//
the next update will be next monday. hope yall had a nice easter if you celebrate it, and if not, i hope you had a good weekend :D
also, a cheeky plug for my twitter and tumblr, links in my bio ;)
h.