Sasha laughed. "Samesies. I left my entire suitcase in your mother’s guest bedroom."
"Christ, we’re hardly well-organized, are we?"
The fact bothered Sasha a whole lot less than she might have imagined. She closed her eyes, the train swaying gently. "What are we going to do?" The question felt enormous, weighted with all the logistics they'd been avoiding. "I mean, practically speaking. You're in London, I'm starting college in Manchester…"
"I have no idea," Victoria interrupted. "Genuinely none. For the first time in my life, I don't have a plan, a backup plan, or a contingency strategy. And weirdly, I don't care."
"You don't care?" Sasha couldn't keep the disbelief from her voice. "Miss Five-Year-Career-Trajectory doesn't care?"
"Terrifying, isn't it? I'm as shocked as you are." There was a smile in Victoria's words now, something light and reckless that Sasha had never heard before. "But I spent thirty-one years planning everything down to the last detail, and it got me redundant and miserable. So maybe it's time to try something different."
"Like train-based romantic chaos?"
"Exactly like that."
"I’m not sure making declarations of love over the phone was exactly what I had in mind when I got on this train," Sasha said.
"You were the one that called me," pointed out Victoria.
"And it’s just as well I did, otherwise you’d be halfway to Manchester and I’d be stranded in London."
"We’ll have a million more moments to say the right thing in person," Victoria said, her voice soft in Sasha’s ear. And a blanket of warmth spread over Sasha.
They stayed on the phone until Sasha's train pulled into Paddington, until she was navigating through crowds of commuters and tourists and people who weren't experiencingearth-shifting revelations on a Thursday afternoon. Victoria's voice was a constant in her ear, grounding and impossibly real.
"I can see the departure boards," Sasha said, standing in the middle of the station concourse. "Where should I wait?"
"Don't move. I'm in a cab now, we're five minutes away. Maybe ten with traffic. Possibly fifteen. London traffic is genuinely awful."
"I'll be here." Sasha leaned against a pillar, watching people rush past with their neat lives and sensible destinations. "I'm not going anywhere."
Because she wasn’t. Not ever. Not anymore, and definitely not without Victoria.
???
The taxi dropped Victoria at the wrong entrance because of course it did, and she had to sprint through Paddington like she was competing in some sort of demented urban Olympics. Her wallet bounced against her hip, her phone was dying, and she'd lost sight of where she was going approximately thirty seconds after entering the station.
Until she saw her just standing there.
Saw Sasha standing in the golden evening light near platform seven, looking rumpled and beautiful and so perfectly imperfect that Victoria's heart actually lurched.
The platform was disgusting. There was a crushed coffee cup near Sasha's feet, the board overhead was flickering erratically, and somewhere behind them someone was shouting about delayed services. It was crowded and dirty and smelled faintly of industrial cleaning products and fast food.
It was the worst possible setting for a romantic declaration.
But Victoria didn't care even slightly.
She closed the distance between them at something between a walk and a run. Then Sasha was already moving toward her, and then they were colliding in a tangle of arms and breathless laughter.
"Hi," Victoria said, which seemed inadequate given the circumstances.
"Hi yourself." Sasha's hands found her face, fingers tangling in her hair. "You're actually here."
"So are you. We're both terrible at directions, apparently."
"We're both terrible at a lot of things." Sasha was crying and smiling simultaneously. "Communication, timing, basic geography—"
"Relationships," Victoria added. "I'm spectacularly bad at relationships."
