Ethan just shrugged. “I don’t mind the distraction. Just need to get better at time management.”
Oliver gave him a squeeze. And I knew, then, that Ethan wasn’t just upset about the grade. He was upset about why he’d gotten the grade. In a few weeks we’d be hearing back from colleges, and once that happened, the happy little dream of the three of us living in this Eden together would shatter. I knew Ethan was trying to make the most of the time he had with Oliver. And I knew it killed him that he couldn’t have the boyfriend and the best friend and still keep his grades up.
Priorities, man. For some reason, art school fucked with them.
We parted ways at the steps leading to the cafeteria. Oliver gave Ethan another quick kiss and pecked me on the forehead. Then, with a backward glance and wave and “Make sure you get her at least one number!” he bounced up the stairs and into the bustling dining room. From the smell that wafted out, it was Chinese night. Definitely a good reason to eat off campus. Islington couldn’t do fried rice to save its life, and the smell of soy sauce and General Tso’s stuck to you for days.
“Sorry about that,” Ethan muttered as we walked down the drive to the parking lot.
“What?” I asked, looking away from the crow perched above the cafeteria door.
“Being grumpy. Oliver being . . . Oliver.”
“It’s why I love him,” I said. Chris’s face flashed through my mind. Someone to melt my heart? No way in hell; my heart was perfectly fine on its own, thanks. I stuffed the thought down into the shadows. “And it’s why I love you. Tea will make everything better.”
“You’re so British it hurts,” he said, and opened the passenger door of his old Lincoln town car for me. “But thankfully not with the teeth.”
He was the only person I knew under sixty who had those beaded seat covers. The rest of the interior was, like him, a study in presented chaos: Papers and art supplies were strewn over the backseat, though there wasn’t any rubbish in the footwells or wrappers on the cushions. I’d spent so much time in this car that it felt like a second home, to the point where I kept a chunk of my art materials in here, just for occasions such as this. He sank into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition on, cranking up the frozen heat. Some whiny indie band came on, a “local favorite” as he liked to say, which just meant they played banjo and hadn’t had a tour outside of the state.
“Shall we?” he asked.
I nodded, and we pulled out of the lot and onto the narrow road leading into town. The birds in the branches watched us the entire way, and I couldn’t fight down the shadowy mantra in my mind, no matter how loud he blared his music.
A murder of crows. A murder of crows. And the dream, like a stain in the night air—the face of my ex watching me through the bleeding boughs.
Never ignore an omen.
The teahouse was at the edge of the nearby town, down a small side street between a secondhand store and the organic supermarket. Fairy lights swayed back and forth above the alley like mutinous stars ready to fall. It was a good twenty-minute drive, seeing as Islington was settled far outside of civilization. I don’t know how Ethan had found out about this place, but I was glad he did; T’Chai Nanni was a second sanctuary, a more urban Islington. The café itself was a small house stuck in the side of a shopping center. A wooden porch stretched out front, covered by more fairy lights and a tin roof laden with snow. Empty chairs and cushions were arranged in circles on the patio, braziers and wine barrels in between. On warmer nights, they had live acoustic bands out here, or poetry readings, and the chairs would be swamped with hipsters smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and hippies smelling like patchouli and weed. Like I said, a more urban Islington, hipsters and pot smoke and all.
By the time we pulled up, the first of the flurries had begun drifting down from the sky. I smiled as I stepped out of the car, tilting back my head and sticking out my tongue. I didn’t catch any flakes. Ethan trudged over to my side and held my hand and did the same. Silently. We stood there for a good minute or so, waiting for snow to drop and dissolve. The air was sharp and metallic and smelled of cumin and cold, a strange balance of ice and warmth from T’Chai Nanni. No matter what, the first moments of snowfall always made me feel like a little kid, like anything was possible and everything was beautiful.
Lately, it seemed, I needed that reminder more and more often.