Alicia Martinez is determined to keep a low profile. After a tough year, she deletes all of her social media and retreats to the small coastal town of St Andrews in the hopes of starting over - and avoiding her tumultuous past.
Oliver Hogarth is a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Alicia never wanted to leave.
She spent the next few hours pointing out the different constellations. Ursa Minor. Draco. Perseus. You could even see Jupiter, glowing brighter than any other star, fuzzy like a projector screen that hadn't been focused yet.
To his credit, Oliver was a patient student. He asked the occasional question, usually pertaining to the legend behind each constellation, but he was otherwise silent. It was only when Alicia stepped away from the telescope that he finally spoke.
"Percy Pig?"
Alicia blinked. Oliver was holding out a watermelon-coloured package with a small, cartoon pig on the front. She could see their soft pink bodies through the clear plastic window, and she shuddered.
"Oh, no," she said. "I hate those things."
His smile dropped. "You what?"
"Well, they're not very good, are they?" She scrunched up her nose. "It's like eating rubbery worms."
Oliver looked at her as if she'd suggested that kittens were ugly and unlovable, and that all of them should be drowned. He shook his head. "You know what? That's the first red flag."
"Over sweets?"
"Not just sweets." His voice was solemn. "The greatest sweets to ever exist on this planet. Hell, in the entire galaxy."
"You're kind of weird, aren't you?"
"Coming from the girl that hates Percy Pigs."
Alicia rolled her eyes, lying down on the floor. Oliver joined her. Overhead, the night sky existed in a fat, glimmering drop, like a single tear hanging on the end of an eyelash. She had the sudden feeling that if she stretched her hands up, her fingers would come away wet with black paint.
"Go on, then." Oliver popped a sweet in his mouth. "Are there any other red flags that I should know about?"
She stiffened. Oliver was teasing, obviously, but it didn't stop the images from coming. Greg. He was suddenly in the room with them, his suffocating Axe cologne snaking into the bookshelves, into the very cracks of the floorboards. Oliver must have noticed her tense, because his expression changed.
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean..." He set down the sweets. "You don't have to tell me, obviously."
"No, it's okay."
"Seriously, Alicia, I shouldn't have pried."
She stared up at the stars. "His name is Greg. That's the red flag you should know about." She knotted her hands on her stomach. "He's an ex-boyfriend."
"Ah."
"We met in our last year of school in London. Well, I was in my last year; Greg was studying at King's College. I think I liked that at first, you know? That he was older than me. It made me feel protected."
