She placed a palm on my back. “What happened?”
I scrolled through my phone until I found the message and passed it over to her.
She took the thing and read out loud, “Women like you make themselves victims by being too polite.”
Even hearing it back made me want to find this dickhead and ask him if my knee in his likely small dick was being too fucking polite.
I shook my head and taped the box shut. “It just makes me so angry how people can think that if a woman was sexually assaulted, she must have done something to deserve it.”
“Don’t even waste your time thinking about it, Cor. If you do, you’ll just go backwards, and you’ve made so much progress to let that all go.”
I shrugged, grabbing the last bakewell tart. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.”
“Are you kidding?” Her gasp echoed off the lavender walls. “Look at where you are right now. Look at where you’ve been today! Cora, back in November, you wouldn’t have so much as let a little bit of light slip between the curtains. Now you’re back at work, back in your classes.” Her hand fell atop mine. “We’re so proud of you for that. Even if we have to remind you every day that everything that happened was never your fault, we’ll happily do that.” I smiled up at her before she added, “And just a reminder, Marcus has to stay around for you to be like this again. You know it. We know it. So don’t fight it. He’s got your best interest at heart.”
Before I could open my mouth and agree with her, the bell above the door chimed, and my heart plummeted. I turned back to look at the clock, which read 8:07 pm.
We closed at 8:00 pm
I flicked my eyes to Rory. “We forgot to lock the door at eight.”
“Shit.”
Before either of us could take a step, we found a man dressed in a grey t-shirt and black jeans, with a woolly hat over his head and fingerless gloves covering his hands, closing the door behind him.
I opened my mouth as he turned to face us. “Hi, sir. We’re actually closed now. I’m so sorry.”
Sunken eyes met mine, swirls of grey and green orbiting his pupils. His eyebrows were bushy and raised, the wrinkles on his forehead that gave away his middle age bunching with embarrassment.
“Oh, shoot. I’m sorry.”
Those words were enough for me to clock his accent.
His hand landed in the middle of his chest. “I saw the lights on and thought I’d chance my luck at those Bakewell tarts I hear so much about.” The shifting vowels and the absence of his H’s were enough for me to pin his twang to London. East London. Tottenham, if the Hotspur tattoo on his arm said anything.
I looked down at the box I was just about to tape up, eyes drawn to the only Bakewell tart left after today. I raised my eyes to his, instantly lingering on the colours that swam in them. “Well, I’ve got one going if it’s of any interest?”
His face lit up. “Honest?”
The tart was in the bag before he finished. “I can let the rules slip for a fellow Brit.”
His eyes narrowed as he neared the counter, his face masked with cockney charm that reminded me of home. “Islington?”
“Camden,” I replied, as I handed him the bag.
He bent down to look at the cabinet before pulling his wallet out. “$5, yeah?”
I shook my hands at him. “Oh no, don’t bother. I already counted the till, and I’m not really one for maths… well, ever.”
His smile gave away his age, and the chesty laugh that left him made it clear he’d been a smoker for a decade or two. “Cheers. You’ve just earned yourself a regular.”
I smiled as I taped up the box that was going to the women’s shelter. “Why thank you.”
As he took a step back, he hesitated. “No, thankyou. Good deeds are tough to come by these days. Especially in this city.”
I shrugged. “I get it. New Yorkers make Londoners look like Northerners.”
His head flew back as a deep laugh sputtered out of him, and I couldn’t help but giggle at the joke too. As they died down, I clocked Rory in my peripheral, her face confused.
