Today, I drank my coffee. She took off her jacket and slung it over an arm; the day was growing warmer. Soon I’d have to catch my train. I told myself I was dreading it because of the flat in London I was returning to—five other English undergraduates, us two to a room, a filthy kitchen and no one ever replacing the toilet roll except for me. I could be living at home, I supposed, but I wanted to give my parents’ romance a little space to breathe.
“I was thinking about a publishing internship for the summer,” I was saying as we picked our way back to Cowley Road. “Finals are next week, so I have to decide soon. And publishing’s writing-adjacent, not writing-writing, but that’s fine, right? I need some kind of job when I finish school. Though maybe I could just do more school.”
“So the solution to school is school?”
I grinned. “I guess I like institutions.”
“You don’t. You have an authority problem and you know it.”
“I do not.”
“You can’t even take a correction from me. How many of your teachers do you actually like?”
“King’s College isn’t Sherringford, H— Charlotte.” It still felt odd in my mouth.
She pretended to ignore my slip. “So they’re not trying to bug your room, then. Not a major improvement.”
We rounded a corner onto a prettyish street not far from her flat. The houses were brick, and they had window boxes, and a few of the doors were painted bright red. “This isn’t our usual way back,” I said.
“We’re looking at a place,” she said, and pointed to a FOR LET sign near the end of the block. “I thought you could give me your opinion. My sublet is up at the end of the month.”
We were the only showing. She’d booked it for two o’clock and, in her usual way, maneuvered us there so subtly and determinedly that we’d arrived exactly on time. The letting agent opened the door and left us to it.
It was quite a bit bigger than her current place, a second-floor flat with low ceilings but lots of light, and a proper kitchen that wasn’t nice, exactly, but not terrible either, with a big old table that came with. The room she’d sleep in was just beyond, with a generous-sized bed, and there a door beside it that led to what I thought would be her study. It was a good size, with a closet and ceiling fan, which I thought would be good to blow away the fumes from her chemistry table. Though she’d have to get rid of the bed in there. Most flats in England came furnished; the only furniture I knew she had to her name was that ridiculous velvet sofa she’d taken from Leander, and so we wandered back to the living room and measured with our arms to see if it would fit. There wasn’t an amazing view from the windows, but then, Holmes didn’t seem to mind those things.
Charlotte. Charlotte didn’t.
“I like it,” I said, and I did. I was also ridiculously jealous of her having her own space. “Though the question is—”
“How can I afford it. I know.”
“Is your brother helping?” She hadn’t been taking money from Milo, though I knew he’d offered. His company had been doing quite well; they’d expanded their operations to South America. He had more power than before, though Milo Holmes was hardly someone to trust with it.
Still, he hadn’t forgotten his sister. That was something. Despite her protests, sometimes he sent her groceries, or paid her water bill, and she huffed for a day or two about him meddling in her business and then texted him to say thank you.
“No,” she said, frowning. “I think I’ll have to get a flatmate.”
“Oh.”
She turned to face me. I was still getting used to the new sorts of clothes she wore—a forest-green sweater over a pair of black jeans, a long necklace with a pendant that looked like a tooth, the fawn-colored jacket slung over her arm. She looked like herself. She looked nothing like herself. The changes had been both gradual and incredibly sudden. In this light, her eyes weren’t gray, but slate-blue.
“Are you going to advertise? For a flatmate?”
“The bookshop you like,” she said. “The secondhand one, not the Waterstone’s. They have a help wanted sign in the window. I went in and the owner asked about you, since we’re always in there, and I—I told him you might be looking for a summer job.”
“Am I?” I asked slowly.
“And then on Fridays, we can work together. It’s not publishing, I know.”
I looked around. There was a fireplace, an armchair; there was a wall of built-in bookcases. There was Charlotte, standing in front of me, biting her lip.
“I don’t have to take it,” she said, as I stood there, saying nothing. “I can find my own—”
“What happens after the summer?” I interrupted. “My classes start up again in September.”
“I thought we’d decide then,” she said.
“And then you might end up without a flatmate.”
“I could move again.”
I was stalling for time, I knew it. “That’s a pain. Three months in, and—”
“You could commute. It’s only an hour.”
“Maybe—”
“I can’t plan my whole future all at once. I’m done with that. I just thought—”
“Watson,” she said, and I nearly bit my tongue. I hadn’t heard that name from her in forever. “Don’t you want to try it? Don’t you want to know?”
“I—I don’t know if I trust it,” I said. “You. I don’t know if I trust you.”
The two of us so long ago in Berlin, talking about getting a place, taking cases together. The two of us hand in hand, running through the night. After all the missteps, all the mutual destruction, we’d been strong together, steady and right and true—and it had been then, and only then, that she had wanted to be alone.
“Not like that,” she said, her eyes searching mine. “Not like before.”
“And not like it is now?”
“Watson—”
“Holmes,” I said, then winced. “Sorry.”
“You can call me that.”
“It isn’t your name anymore.”
“You can call me that. You can,” she said.
“Holmes,” I said. “What is it that you want?”
She reached out and took my hand, her fingers twining with mine.
I stepped toward her. “We’ll be taking cases? You’ll have to double your rates. I don’t come cheap.”
“You’re not that expensive. Anyway, we don’t have to decide today. I know you need to catch your train home.”
There was a reckless light in her eyes I’d thought I’d never see again.
“Is it that late already?” I asked her, smiling. “We should go.”
It was so bright there in the flat that I had to blink against it. We’d have to put in curtains. I didn’t tell her that, though, as we went down to the street. I was too busy counting the steps down to the door. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Outside, she was waiting for me, her hands clasped together in the sun. I hadn’t had to say a word. She’d already known what I was thinking.