In Fair Verona

Chapter 1

When Kenna first saw this dress in a stall in Camden Market, it had been a ray of sunshine on that dull day.

She had hoped it would turn her as bright as those flowers bold enough to come before the swallow dares, as Shakespeare once said. Instead, she looked like a banana, battered after a long day of typing away at her laptop.

Articles didn't write themselves, and Kenna's deadline had hung over her head like a guillotine blade while she worked. At least she had submitted it on time.

Take a breath, Kenna. Nobody said that being in your twenties was easy. One thing at a time.

She and Tim had been planning this dinner for months. The thought of it had made her hands fly over her keyboard even though her mind strung words together as clumsy fingers would.

It had been too long since they had been out on a proper date. Kenna wanted to make it special, but a banana dress wasn't what she had in mind.

She lifted her long red hair off her shoulders with her pale, ink-splotched hands. The yellow figure-hugging dress looked wrong on her slender frame. Simply put, Kenna had very little figure to hug.

Sitting midway up her thighs, the dress was too short for her liking. Even worse, it was set on its length, bouncing back up whenever she pulled it down. Gloria had said it was "hot" that day in the market, but it just wasn't Kenna. Still, the dress deserved a fair chance, if only on her best friend's word.

Straightening up, Kenna smoothed over the yellow fabric. The unsightly creases over her chest disappeared. It was an improvement, but not quite enough to make the leap to daffodil, to beautiful and romantic, the substance of daydreams and love stories. With Kenna's pallor of skin, she'd need nothing less than magic to pull that off in this colour.

Who was she fooling? There was no way Tim would let her get into his car wearing this.

His life was a perfect puzzle of pressed suits, sleek cars and posh accents. Sometimes Kenna felt like the only piece that didn't fit into it. Maybe she was. She had never walked into his office and seen anyone else with her messy bun or notebook of hasty plot outlines.

Tim had gazed at Kenna with starry eyes on their first date almost two years ago, but he didn't look at her like that anymore. He had grinned and shaken his head at her messiness in the beginning, but lately, it only made him snap.

It had been weeks since they last spent the night together. Tim came over for supper and a movie on those rare evenings when he wasn't working late hours, but he always had an early morning ahead whenever Kenna asked him to stay over.

What if it's not an early morning that keeps him from me? What if it's something else?

Kenna's mouth went dry at the thought.

Surely Tim would've said so if something was wrong.

Sometimes Kenna looked up at him when he sat beside her, only to see that his eyes were distant as if his mind was somewhere else. He didn't give her those lingering kisses he used to at first, those ones that made her feel like he was tasting her soul so that he'd remember her forever. Now it was just a perfunctory peck on her lips before he was out the door and heading back to his flat.

Kenna shook her head. She was probably overthinking again.

This wasn't any different from the lull all couples experienced once they had been together a while. The spark they had felt at first had settled into steady, comforting flames—different, but not wrong. Right?

Kenna wasn't sure. She had never been with any other man long enough to know. Only one thing was for certain, and that was that the banana dress had to go.