Lucy and Grace // on hold

one

Grace Sato was born in the heart of Tokyo, but moved to England at a young age, when her recently widowed father decided that living in Japan after his wife's death was too painful for him to bear. So when they were very young, Grace, her father and her little sister Arisa moved to England where they grew up. Both Grace and Arisa were too young to remember their mother, but their father more than made up for her absence with his love and support. Grace always tried to do her best for her father.

Unfortunately, he was not best pleased when she told him that she wanted to study art and art history at university, rather than take over his business when he retired. It took many weeks of arguments and months of tense silence before he agreed to let her go, after realising it was what made her happy. Surprisingly, he had been a lot more relaxed about Grace announcing that she was gay and had simply replied with "I guessed that a few years ago. I'm surprised that it's taken you this long to realise it yourself."

So, after tearful goodbyes (on both accounts), Grace moved away from the small town she had been living for almost all of her life to Cambridge to study the history of art. Grace had found it surprisingly easy to settle into this new life at university and had made friends with her flatmates pretty quickly. It was exhilarating being away from home and her dad for the first time, and it was exciting discovering new things and messing up and studying what she loved.

What Grace did not like about going to university was that she had to get the bus. She had been getting the number 42 bus since the beginning of her course, and she hated it. It was almost always empty and silent, with the occasional quiet chatter here and there, but otherwise everyone sat in complete silence and Grace hated it. She was used to continual noise, sounds that blended with and overlapped each other, with her dad's radio always on in the kitchen, her little sister watching television in her room, the neighbours' children and dog shouting in their back garden at every opportunity, or the hissing and spitting of whatever was cooking on the stove back at home. Even the constant noise of the flat she shared was comforting and familiar. The silence was jarring and made Grace hyper aware of everything on the bus, and made the journey drag for what felt like hours. So, she started bringing books to read to pass the time. It became tradition, to sit in the seat second from the back row and read whatever book she had with her.

It was because she was always so engrossed in reading that she never noticed the girl who would always sit in the row across the aisle and spend the whole bus journey sneaking glances and staring at her beautiful face without being noticed.

To Lucy, Grace was the most beautiful person she had ever seen.

Lucy came from a strictly religious family. Most of her family believed that if you didn't do what the Lord had said roughly 2000 years, that if you sinned, then you were condemned to hell for eternity. One of the problems with that for Lucy was that she liked girls. A lot. She had always tried to deny that the feelings were not real, and that she was just being ridiculous. That she was just infatuated, jealous, not attracted. She had told herself again and again that she was into boys, and that she fancied them, wanted to love them. Deep down, Lucy knew that this was not true, but she tried her hardest to love boys. By the time she was in her first year of studying quantum physics at Cambridge, she had dated exactly twelve different boys, kissed nine of those, and slept with three of those.

It had taken her twelve different boys to realise that she didn't love any of them, not even slightly. It had taken her twelve different boys for her to realise that she was gay and that there was nothing she could do about it. And that terrified Lucy. Something that terrified Lucy even more was just how much she was crushing on this girl that always sat at the back of the bus reading, oblivious so the rest of the world. Lucy couldn't bring herself to talk to the girl, find a way to start a conversation with her, she simply didn't have the confidence. And it frustrated her to no end.

"Why can't I just start talking to her Sabrina? Why is it so hard?" Lucy lamented to Sabrina as they sat opposite each other in the library, any hopes of actually getting any work done long gone. Sabrina didn't look up from her phone, and simply raised an eyebrow.

"I don't know why you're asking me Luce, I'm straight." Lucy groaned and put her head on the desk in defeat.

"That doesn't matter! You're so good at flirting how do you do it?" This was enough to make Sabrina look up from her phone and scoff at Lucy.

"You think I'm good at flirting? Jeez, no wonder you've never spoken to this girl, if you think I'm good at flirting then there's no hope for you." Lucy groaned again, making Sabrina chuckle. "Just do the same as you would with guys, you've dated plenty of dudes, it can't be that different."

Lucy sat up and shook her head. "No, girls are different. Whenever I try to talk to girls that I have a crush on, I just can't function. I can never think of anything to say and just end up embarrassing myself."

"Man, you're a lost cause Lucy. Instead of moping about this girl you're crushing on, let's forget trying to do this research and go get some takeaway. I've been craving some greasy pizza all day and I've got a coupon so we can get half off." Sabrina said as she packed up her belongings, and Lucy perked up a bit at the thought of pizza. The closest pizza place to the university was small but did the best pizza Lucy had ever had, and the thought of it made her stomach rumble loudly. "Sounds like you want that as well." Sabrina laughed. Lucy scrambled to pack her things up and they walked to the pizza place and Lucy did her best to not think too much about the girl on the bus.

//

welcome to this new project of mine! if you're coming to this from sealed with a kiss, thank you! i hope you like this one as much as you like that one!

i have a twitter for this account now! its @atheniian (link is included on this chapter) follow for some sneak peaks as well as updates on things that im writing! comment your username and ill follow you back :)

updates will be once weekly on mondays. (but pls be aware that im writing this one as it goes, rather than waiting until i was finished like for swak, so updates might not be as consistent!)

h.