The scent of lavender drifted on the breeze, clinging to the stone columns and sun-bleached walkways. Mayfield Hall rose behind her, gleaming white against a cloudless sky.
She smiled to herself as she crossed the quad. She’d missed this place.
St. Ives was reawakening. Designer sneakers thudded against cobblestone as returning students air-kissed, waved, and slipped naturally back into their social rhythms. A drone buzzed overhead, part of the ever-watchful security net.
Ping after ping, their group chat had practically combusted before 9 a.m.
Group Chat: Therapy Club
NAOMI: Welcome back, future empresses.
ISABEL: Post-graduate empresses, thank you.
GEORGINA: Final year at St. Ives, can we get a hallelujah?
BEA: You 3 speak for yourselves. Lils and I are still in the trenches
ISABEL: Senior year, where coffee is no longer a drink, it’s an IV drip
LILLIAN: At this point mine should be tax-deductible.
NAOMI: I need gossip, validation, and then caffeine. In that order.
BEA: Goss: Georgie met Hunter’s sister.
NAOMI: What?! Airplanes have wifi these days Georgie. You could have dished.
ISABEL: How’d it go?
GEORGINA: She side-eyed my Birkin. I side-eyed her Omega. It was a bonding moment.
GEORGINA: Anyway, I think she likes me. Or she’s plotting my downfall. Either way, I respect it.
A couple dozen more messages followed.
Bea rounded the bend near the business faculty, skirt fluttering, and spotted a familiar silhouette by the lecture hall doors.
“Lillian,” she called.
Her friend turned, soft brown braid draped over one shoulder. “I got us good seats,” she said. “Thought you’d want to sit up front.”
Inside, her favorite lecture hall hadn’t changed. Still flooded with fractured morning light through its leaded windows. Still carried that reverent hush like history lived in the walls. She loved this space.
“It’s strange,” Bea murmured, slipping into her seat. “How the start of summer vacation feels like freedom, but the start of the year feels like possibility.”
Lillian nodded, adjusting her notebook. “Even holidays get repetitive after a while.”
Around them, the room buzzed. Bags thudded onto desks, perfume mixed with fresh coffee, voices threaded between greetings and gossip. Students were already eyeing alliances: who to sit near, who to study with, who to impress.
The professor entered, laptop in one hand, outlines in the other.
Senior year had commenced.
At noon, they made their way to lunch. The café sat inside a grand atrium where the space breathed upward above marble floors, and sunlight poured through sky-high panes of glass. Plush seating curved around polished tables, and the delicate scent of white orchids mingled with citrus. It was in one of Bea’s favorite spots since Georgina had introduced her to it last year.
Hard to believe a place like this was free, covered by the thick black dining card in her wallet. St. Ives University didn’t do cafeterias. Or silver trays. Or anything that suggested this was a school.
Lillian, Naomi, and Isabel were already in a booth, skin bronzed from their time away. Bea was suddenly glad she’d spent the latter half of summer in the UR. If she’d stayed in Canada the whole ten weeks, she’d be sitting across from them looking like thebeforephoto in the self-tanner ad.
