Don’t Be in Love

1

Don’t Be Infatuated by a British Accent — Adelaide

I hated remaining sedentary. Sitting in a lecture hall in Boston, staring out a window at falling leaves and then soon enough, dreaded snow, sounded whimsical and did indeed set an academic scene similar to Dead Poets Society (minus the dead part). But it wasn’t England.

Don’t get me wrong, if you wanted to live somewhere where the seasons turned as they did in London, and exist in an area that had that old, vintage feeling of Cambridge, then Cambridge, Massachusetts (a Boston suburb) was the place to go to college. But when you lived in the area your whole life, it started to feel old. And not in the Shakespearean way.

Hence why I practically tripped up the stairs in the business building on my way to my Global Marketing exam in April. A window-sized cork board with a neon pink flyer made me pause. In big bold letters with an image of Big Ben behind it, it read:

STUDY AbrOAD OPPORTUNITY: EXPLORE LONDON AND RECEIVE CREDIT.

I met with my advisor the next day and applied. One month later, they either made a mistake or really enjoyed my essay on London’s fashion, because I was accepted .

Senior Year. In London .

I screamed with excitement until my throat burned. Almost even sent my roommate into cardiac arrest—the poor thing was already a computer science major, she had enough to be on edge about.

June came and I was boarding a cramped flight to London Heathrow to study marketing at one of the most prestigious colleges in the world: Townsen University. My back was as stiff as a board, the airplane chicken was cold, and I regretted not packing my sixth black skirt. But none of it really mattered because I was going to London .

The London from The Holiday and Harry Potter. The home of tea and scones. An epicenter for fashion week twice a year.

Fast-forward to now—the end of August—where I was wishing I could go back to the day I landed in Heathrow in June, taking a black cab to my flat, to do it all over again. It kickstarted a summer with my two new roommates, Sabrina and Mia, exploring the city, staying up late eating British sweets, and divulging every secret.

Mia, a journalism major from Washington who hated to be out of bed before 0 a.m. and gave every emotion away with her eyes, walked beside me with an arm looped around my elbow. She was a woman on a mission, directing us toward a club that may or may not be the site of our future death.

“It’s safe! One of the Townsen students posted about it!” she defended herself but still tightened her grip on her purse. “I’m not turning this opportunity down— invite-only —do you hear me?”

“I’m pretty sure cults are invite-only too.” I narrowed my eyes. If Sabrina was here right now, she would’ve agreed. Fortunately for Sabrina, both her dads had forced her into attending another networking event tonight.

One of her dads was the owner of several luxury hotel chains across the UK and Europe, so he was always at glamorous parties.

Her upbringing was no different than most of the students at Townsen.

About ninety-five percent of the students came from rich families who were either known in Hollywood, a political party, or were just incredibly wealthy for investing in something like tech or zippers.

Which put in me the other five percent: the students who came from households with no money and relied on scholarships.

“We’re here, we’re here, stop mentioning cults,” Mia shushed me, tugging me into a pub. She ran for the bar before the door could close. I watched as she leaned over the barstools, grabbed the bartender’s attention—frightened him a bit—to whisper something to him. She reared back after a moment and came running back to pull me in a new direction with no explanation.

“I’m going to take a guess and assume he granted your wish,” I questioned.

“The invitation worked!” she sang. “He said we just go through this door down the hall and down the stairs—”

“And into the creepy dungeon?”

She opened said door. It was like opening Pandora’s box. If the box was filled with music and clinking glassware.

Mia turned and gave me a I was right and you were wrong look.

I rolled my eyes. “Let’s just get on with this,” I said, giving her a slight push. I was on a mission to get home early to mentally prepare for the first day of classes on Monday.

She ran down the staircase, forcing me to chase after her before— oof . “Mia, my head,” I complained, rubbing my forehead after running straight into the back of her skull.

I looked up to find her staring in awe at what appeared to be a jazz bar.

A band of older gentlemen played music on a short stage for the audience of young dancers twirling in mini dresses. Women wearing stiletto heels held onto men with gelled-back hair and button-downs. While others sat at petite wooden tables decorated by antique lamps made of yellow stained glass, emitting a low light in the dusk room.

A plethora of people spanning a range of ages held glasses of liquor like purses. They wore sapphires on their pinkies, and relaxed smiles on their faces. The bar stretched behind us to the left, covering the entire back wall. Mirrors acted like portraits hanging above the alcohol.

“Maybe we can find Sabrina a new guy here,” Mia commented, eyeing down men.

“Don’t waste your time,” I sighed. “She has no interest in finding someone new.”

“She doesn’t even know him.” She threw her arms up. “That’s like me being in love with the man that reads the weather on the TV back home.”

“But you are in love with the man who reads the weather.”

“But I don’t talk about him as if he put the sun in the sky! She’ll talk about him but then clam up when we ask for a photo or if they’ve ever spoken. We don’t even know his last name. He could be fake for all I know.”

“She has a crush. It’ll wear out.” Hopefully .

Concern for my new friend had become an annoying neighbor, reappearing every time she mentioned this guy. But I wasn’t going to push her away with my whole philosophy on love. Especially not when her entire being was as delicate as a hydrangea. I loved her for it. But I also wanted to wrap her in cellophane as I explained that thinking about men was the equivalent to watching paint dry. Useless and it’d always end up disappointing in the end.

My eye for picking paint wasn’t great.

Mia groaned. “ Dorian. Honestly, how hot could this guy possibly be?”

She worried for Sabrina too, but sometimes that was bypassed by her impatience to listen to people that weren’t doers . Brina wasn’t looking to do anything about her crush on Dorian. She was a hoper . Someone that hoped for the rom-com moment where she dropped her books in the hallway, and he was there to swoop them up. Next thing you knew, they were married, straddled with kids, with a vacation home in Tuscany, and a wiener dog that only ate salmon-based food.

“I don’t know,” I sighed. I scanned the room for an empty table. As I came up empty, I searched faces, wondering if any of these people would be my classmates in two days.

The acceptance rate for Townsen was something like five percent. As someone from a college where students woke up at 7 a.m. to study for an 8 a.m. exam and still passed, I was nervous. None of these students would come from homes whose mother had to quit her medical career to stay home to parent while her husband took every construction job he was offered.

Academics and working would be my number one priority while I lived in London. This scholarship was the only way I could afford being here.

Mia said, “Let’s go sit—”

“Excuse me.” Her proposal was cut short by a really handsome guy. The kind of handsome that made you check the hinges on your jaw.

He stood several inches above me with a sly smile and a dimple on his left cheek. The color of his eyes and hair matched the color of black coffee, sitting neatly above his ears. His skin was a few shades lighter than his hair; a tan that complimented his dark brown eyes.

Then he opened his mouth, and this unfairly beautiful British accent came out.