1 - When Harry Met Sally…
No man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive.
—Harry Burns, When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
It’s the Zoom meeting that does it.
I’m used to Wi-Fi that’s bollocks, actually. Our entire building had so many problems with it last year that I got used to the way my teachers’ faces would freeze on screen or waiting an hour to upload a single assignment. But Dad doesn’t know how to fix the router. Neither do I, for that matter. So bollocks Wi-Fi it is.
Except I’m not at home in my flat, I’m in my residence hall at University College London. And this is the meeting with my academic counselor. Without it, I won’t be registering for lecture tomorrow morning.
“No no no,” I hiss at my laptop, as the screen goes black but nothing happens except a spinning beach ball. The beach ball of death I’d heard it called the other day during move-in. More appropriately, it’ll be the beach ball of my death if this doesn’t work. “Today? Seriously?”
“All right?” My flatmate Missy, moving into the room next to mine, pokes her head in through my open doorway.
“I’ve got a meeting,” I say. “On the Zoom. But my laptop’s being bollocks again.”
Missy grins. She’s been moving boxes of things all morning, and yet it doesn’t show. Her blonde hair’s still in a neatly tied high ponytail, her winged eyeliner is zero-percent smudged, and her tanned skin is still smooth and free of sweat. She could’ve been sunbathing on a beach in the Caribbean just now.
“First off, Zoe, it’s called Zoom. Not the Zoom. And second, if you want good internet, you gotta go down to the lounge. Right by the vending machine. Super-fast there. You’ll hop on in no time.” She winks one of her large green eyes at me. She could be a model. I hate it.
“Right, thanks.” I scoop up my laptop, a notebook, and a couple pencils at random from my school supplies and dash out.
The lounge, thank all the various gods various people pray to every day, is empty. I plant myself in a plastic chair in front of the vending machine and wait again. Sure enough, and to my relief, the meeting finally loads. A blue button asks if I want to join with audio, and once I click it, I’m in.
“Zoe?” says a bored-looking man wearing thick black glasses and balding mostly everywhere except the crown of his head. “Zoe Martin?”
“Yes, that’s me,” I say breathlessly. “And you’re…Dr Glass?”
“I am,” says Dr Glass, like he wishes he wasn’t. “Pleasure to finally put a face to your name.”
I’m sure it is, I think. Even though he’s making it sound like the exact opposite. “Good to meet you too, I—”
Right then, my mobile rings. I turn it face-up, noticing it says Dad.
“Do you need to answer that?” Dr Glass asks. He doesn’t speak the rest of the sentence, but I hear it anyway. I’d rather you didn’t.
“I’m sure it’s not urgent,” I say, clicking the power button to silence it. “He can leave a message.”
“Right, well…I understand your intended degree is a BA in Media?” He consults his notes. “Are you an aspiring filmmaker?”
“I’d always hoped I would be, one day,” I say, shrugging one shoulder. “I mean…I won’t be any Christopher Nolan or anything, but…”
“Already selling yourself short, I see,” says Dr Glass, looking down again and writing something. I can see the end of his pen moving in the corner of his screen. “First lesson in film, Zoe. You need confidence to be successful. A lot of it.”
“Right, yeah, sorry, I just—”
“And don’t apologise. It makes you look like a shrinking violet.”
I just nod. It’s hard when I want to apologise for apologising.
It takes planning almost all my terms for Dad to ring again. This time, although I try to blindly stab the red “Decline” button, I accidentally hit “Accept” instead.
“Zoe?” His tinny voice comes through the phone.
I can’t exactly hang up on him, so I give Dr Glass an apologetic glance and hit speaker. “Dad? What’s up?”
“You have a minute?” Dad asks, sounding anxious. He’s always anxious these days. Ever since we lost Mum and my twin siblings Win and Arlo in a car crash last year, he’s barely conceded to letting me out of his sight, let alone learn how to drive or get a licence.
I have to be honest with him, or else he’ll keep me on the phone for an hour. “I’ve got a meeting, Dad, I can’t talk too long…”
“It’s an emergency,” he says. “I’m going out with someone tonight, someone called Vanessa…she keeps saying she wants to eat me out. I thought the expression was out to eat, but if it’s some new thing I haven’t heard of—”
“Oh my God, Dad…” I can’t believe this is why he rung. And that this is the call I chose to put on speaker. I’m so mortified I can’t even look at Dr Glass. “No, it’s not new, it’s…I’d have to explain when I’m not in a meeting.”
“What about when she says she wants to use me as her scratching post? What does that mean?”
“Dad,” I hiss. “I’m busy. I’ll ring you back when I’m done.”
“I think I may have dialled the wrong number, Zozo, I think it’s—”
“I’ll ring you back in a few minutes, Dad,” I say. And then without waiting for his reply, I hang up. “I’m sorry, Dr Glass.”
“It’s not the first time that’s happened,” says Dr Glass. His placating tone is a bit too thin, and I see right through it.
We make it through the rest of it without another interruption. I’m clear to register for my lectures, and then he ends the meeting. I snap my laptop shut, gather up my things, and then ring Dad back as I head back upstairs.
“Hey, Dad,” I say when he picks up. “I’m sorry I hung up on you…it was just really inconvenient timing, that’s all.”
“That sounds a lot like an apology,” he says. “Even if it’s a little backhanded, I’ll take it.”
“I was meeting with my counsellor. I’m pretty sure he thinks you’re off your onion now.”
Dad laughs. “He heard everything, did he?”
“Yeah.” I grin. “Especially the part about Vanessa wanting to eat you out.”
“Is she a hooker, Zo? I’ve never had a potential date say that to me.” Dad sounds anxious again. “I should’ve known that girl in the bar gave me a fake number.”
I sigh. Poor Dad. It’s only been a couple months since he made the decision to start dating again, but unfortunately for him, some women still recognise his face from when he was a famous author. Back in his twenties and at uni, Dad had started writing an epic, Lord of the Rings-like fantasy series called The Traitor’s Crown. The first book had been picked up by a small independent publisher, and then, unbeknownst to him, dropped. By the time he found out, a major publishing house had gotten their hands on a copy and offered him a publishing deal if he kept writing the books. It was good money, he’d told me before, enough to buy a semi-d in central London, get married, and raise a family. I’d come along around book seven, my twin brothers halfway through book nine. By then, he was touring, going to book signings across three continents, and thinking about a spinoff series.
“I hope that means you’re agreeing,” he says.
“Yeah, Dad,” I say. “I think whoever that was tricked you. Were you looking untrustworthy that night or something?”
“Me? Never.” I imagine Dad’s look of mock horror. He’s probably the most trustworthy-looking man I’ve ever seen, and I’m not saying that just because he’s related to me. His expression always radiates friendly openness, and his sandy, slightly wavy brown hair always has a tousled, I-woke-up-like-this mess to it that looks accidental but probably isn’t. And his pale blue eyes, like mine, are always twinkling with a smile even if his mouth isn’t doing it.
“Well, you must’ve done something.” I stop outside my bedroom door, digging in my pocket for my room key. “She sent you to a phone sex line for a reason.”
“Phone sex?” Dad sounds appalled. “Is that even a thing?”
“It must be,” I say. “It makes millions a year.”
Right then, I find my key in my pocket. But as I go to switch arms, everything – including my laptop, which had been slipping anyway – falls to the floor with a sickening crack.
“Oh bloody hell,” I curse.
“Zo?” Dad says in my ear. “What’s happened?”
I jam the key into the key slot, then bend down to pick everything up. When I get to my laptop, I know I’ve just made a bollocks of everything. The screen’s cracked, all the way down from one of the top corners, and the lid doesn’t even close.
“Er…can I call you back, Dad?” I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m grinding my teeth. This is probably the worst timing ever.
“Just one more thing,” Dad says. “Should I tell Vanessa I can’t do tonight?”
“Yeah,” I say, managing to smile. “That’d be the right thing to do.”
I’ve never been good with technology. I’ve made it this far in life able to operate a cell phone and a computer, and that’s about it. I never got into social media, and I never could have after the accident. That had derailed our lives for the past fourteen months, and I’d only just gotten to the point of not thinking about it all the time. I didn’t need more reminders of it from people I barely knew.
Except the only thing on my mind that morning, jogging to the library on campus, is getting my laptop fixed. If I have to use Missy’s until that happens, I may lose my mind.
I’m the first one in the library, considering it’s only been open for ten minutes, except for the librarians behind the circulation desk and two guys, probably just a couple years older than me, hunched behind the IT one in the corner. They both look up as I approach. One’s a thin redhead kid, who looks like he hasn’t laid his eyes on any female for years, and the other is. Is. My brain short-circuits as our gazes lock.
David Oyelowo, is that you?
The first word I latch onto is hot. He is hot. His skin’s so smooth and brown it looks like polished wood, his eyes are such a dark brown they’re entirely unreadable, and he looks fit. Not just fit, but fit – he must spend hours at the gym. His shoulders and biceps are hard to look away from, visible even though he’s wearing a grey T-shirt under a plaid flannel button-up.
“Er…” the redhead kid says, bobbing forward first. He’s wearing a badge reading Gordon W. “Can we help you?”
“Yeah. If you can fix this.” I pull my ruined laptop from my backpack and set it down on the desk in front of them.
“Can’t,” says David Oyelowo’s doppelgänger. “Beyond repair.”
“Are you sure?” I poke at it. “I’ve got registration this morning…in a couple hours, actually, and—”
“Work something else out,” says the doppelgänger. His accent’s working-class, the kind Dad always mocks. “Good for nothing but the rubbish heap.”
“Don’t be so fatalistic, Malik,” says the redhead kid, Gordon. He brightens as he turns to me. “There’s a couple laptops you can borrow. Daily, though. You have to return it before the library closes.”
“You mean…I can?” I don’t mean to sound like an eager puppy. “’Til I can get it replaced?”
“Yeah. Wait here.” Gordon waves away Malik the Oyelowo doppelgänger’s protests, then slips through a door directly behind them.
“So…Malik, huh?” I raise an eyebrow. The fact that he didn’t even bother to introduce himself to me says volumes. Especially because he thinks he doesn’t have to wear a badge, either.
“Yeah, huh,” says Malik. He jerks his chin at the ruin of my laptop. “Want us to dispose of that for you?”
I shrug. Luckily Dad had more technological know-how than I did and had everything backed up to the cloud just hours before he’d left me on campus. Little did he know how much I would appreciate that later. “Sure,” I say.
Malik raises an eyebrow. “Nothing important on it?”
“Backed up to the cloud,” I say. “Nothing that I can’t access.”
Gordon’s back then, with a clunky brick of a laptop and an equally clunky charger, which he sets on the desk. He picks up a clipboard and hands it over as well, with the words “Laptop Checkout” across the top. I fill out the first slot and then pick up both laptop and charger.
“Hey, so…thanks,” I say. I feel even more inept than usual. Both these guys could probably out-tech me even on a good day. “This is a real lifesaver. You don’t even know.”
“Glad to help,” says Gordon, winking at me. “Zoe.”
I hug the laptop to my chest and back up a couple steps, then turn and hurry out. I feel my cheeks burning with the realisation that I must’ve embodied the stereotype of a girl who knows literally nothing about computers perfectly. My very first impression, besides my flatmate’s, isn’t looking good.
I get to register for my lectures, though, and it goes off without a hitch. The laptop’s a slightly older PC – which I’m even more inept at than I thought – but it works modestly well. At least it’s not broken, on the bright side. Then I have to hoof it to the uni bookstore, after having scribbled down the list of textbooks that I need. I’m met by another ray of sunshine, an older man with a paunch who introduces himself as Mr Crutcher. I assume the Mr, actually. And the introduction. His badge just says “Crutcher” with his photo on it.
“Film, huh?” One of his grizzled eyebrows go up. “‘Bout time we saw one o’ you in here.”
“I’m sorry?” That statement throws me.
“You aren’t one o’ those kids tryin’ for a degree in a subject they don’t really like. You got a passion. An’ you’re usin’ it.”
“Oh.” I’ve never thought of it that way. “Well…thanks, I guess.”
“Don’t work too hard, kid,” he says once I’ve finished paying and attempt to scoop all the books into my arms at once. He picks up a couple that I’ve dropped and waits until I’ve readjusted to give them to me. “Best years o’ your life, uni. Make ’em count.”
“Thanks, Mr Crutcher,” I say, trying for a smile. “I’ll remember that.”
“You’d better,” he grunts, but I notice he flashes a wink at me in reply.
I make it back to the library just before they’re about to close. Without meaning to I glance back at the IT desk and see Malik still there, sans button-up. It puts all his muscles on display, filling out the T-shirt I can read from here: BYTE ME.
I don’t get the joke, but I wonder if it’s a computer thing.
“Good timing,” says Malik, when I set the clunky laptop down in front of him. “Got ten minutes left of my shift.”
“Have you been here all day?” I ask, although I don’t mean to.
“Yeah.” He gives me a suspicious look. “Got a problem with it?”
“No, no.” Get a grip, Zoe. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Sure you didn’t,” he says, interrupting me for the second time since we’ve met. Where are this boy’s people skills, anyhow? Left behind when they were giving them out? He picks up the laptop and the charger and disappears into the back, and within minutes he’s returning, locking the door behind him.
“So…they left you to lock up, huh?” I ask, when we’re standing face-to-face in the middle of the library.
“Yeah,” he says. “I don’t mind.”
“It’s a lot of responsibility,” I point out. “Some thief could break in. Nick all the books.”
He squints at me. “I’ve never heard of a school library being burgled.”
I shrug. “Could happen.”
We make it outside without speaking, and he locks and arms the doors behind us. Then again, we end up face-to-face. Or rather my face to his perfect leading-man-in-a-romcom face.
“Er…so…I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess?” I can smell him in this proximity, something tangy and minty at the same time.
“Why, you moving in?”
That comment should offend me. I should slap his handsome face and walk away. But instead I grin. “How’d you know?”
He blinks in confusion. He must have wanted to piss me off by trying to be as rude as he can, but I won’t let him have that satisfaction. “You’re not serious.”
“I could’ve been casing the joint,” I say. “For all you know, I’m the book burglar.”
“Wait…are you?”
I could keep going, but I don’t. Instead I give his bicep a bump with my knuckles, more painful for me than him. “I’m just messing you around, Malik. Honestly.”
“Oh.” He shakes his head. “Right. Ha ha.”
“Yeah. Ha ha.” No sense of humour either, I see. “But really…my laptop’s going to be a while, I think. So…you’ll be seeing a lot more of me.”
“Oh. Then I guess…” He puts his hand out, like we’ve finished a business meeting. “See you round.”
I grasp it firmly for a moment. His palm is warm and papery-dry, his grip strong. Has to be, with all that weight-lifting he probably does.
“Yeah. See you.”
