Chapter 70 Chapter 70

Chapter 70 Chapter 70
Paris
“He put black duct tape directly down the middle of the floor, Paris. Literal tape. I feel like I’m living in a maximum-security prison with a very brooding warden.”
I burst out laughing so hard that I nearly dropped my mug of tea onto my lap. I leaned back against the fluffy pillows of my bed, the sound of my own amusement echoing loudly around the small walls of my room. It was the first time I had laughed like this since arriving in York, and it felt incredibly good. The tight, anxious knot that had been sitting in my chest for the last two days finally began to loosen.
“You are lying, Colton,” I wheezed, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye. “There is no way he actually taped the room.”
“I am entirely serious,” Colton said through the line. His voice was dripping with dramatic offense, and I could practically hear him throwing his hands up in the air. “He pulled it right out of his mechanic bag of doom and snapped it across the floor. If my foot so much as grazes the border, he looks at me like a serial killer who is plotting my untimely demise. I can’t even breathe without getting the bad boy glare.”
Hearing Colton joke around like this was the ultimate comfort. After everything we had been through back in London—all the jealousy, the fights, and the stupid mistakes—hearing his voice like this proved that our bond was fully intact. He was still my best friend, and no amount of university distance or high school drama could change that.
“Well, to be fair, Col,” I teased, balancing the mug on my knee. “You did kind of spend months trying to keep him away from me. Maybe he’s just protecting his turf.”
“My turf is currently a twin bed with a squeaky mattress,” Colton grumbled, though I could hear the smirk in his voice. “And his rules are ridiculous. I’m not allowed to touch his food, I’m not allowed to look at his blueprints, and if I want to bring a girl back here, I have to submit a written request twenty-four hours in advance. He’s completely unhinged.”
“He just likes his privacy,” I said, a soft smile spreading across my lips at the thought of Fabian.
Our eleven o’clock call the night before had been sweet, but it had been short. Fabian had been shivering in some freezing concrete stairwell just to talk to me, and I had felt terrible keeping him out in the cold. Now I understood why he hadn’t just stayed in his room.
“Anyway, how is your roommate situation?” Colton asked, shifting the conversation. “Did you get a psycho or a nerd?”
“Neither, actually,” I said, looking over at the empty desk on the other side of my room. “Her name is Eleanor. She’s really nice.”
I had met Eleanor the evening before when she finally arrived with her parents. Unlike Maya from next door, who was an absolute whirlwind of energy and oversized sweatshirts, Eleanor was quiet, sensible, and completely chill. She had neatly unpacked her matching pastel storage bins, hung up a single calendar, and quietly set up her laptop without making a sound. We had chatted for an hour about our course loads and where the nearest grocery store was, and it had been completely comfortable.
But I already knew we wouldn’t be attached at the hip. Eleanor was a law student, and she already seemed incredibly focused on her reading lists. She was the type of roommate you coexisted with perfectly without ever sharing deep secrets at two in the morning. She was a good flatmate, but Maya was definitely going to be the one dragging me into trouble.
“A sensible law student,” Colton deduced on the other end. “Sounds boring. You need someone to spice things up, Paris. Do you want me to send Fabian over? He seems to have an excess of energy.”
“Shut up, Col,” I laughed, taking a sip of my tea.
“Seriously though,” Colton said, his tone softening just a bit into something more genuine. “Are you doing alright? I know the move was hard on you. And with your dad and everything…”
“I’m managing,” I said honestly. “The campus is beautiful, and my classes start tomorrow. I think once I get into a routine, it’ll feel more real. Right now, it just feels like I’m on a very strange holiday.”
“Yeah. I get that,” he murmured. “Manchester is huge and loud, and everything smells like old rain. It’s definitely an adjustment.”
We sat in a comfortable silence for a moment, the distance between York and Manchester fading away just because we were sharing the same familiar quiet. It was nice to know that while everything else in our lives was changing, Colton and I were still the same.
“Hey,” Colton said, breaking the silence. His voice had gone a little guarded, the playful edge completely vanishing. “Have you heard from Ariana at all?”
I blinked, surprised by the sudden question. Ariana was supposed to be preparing for her gap year, traveling and learning about wildlife before deciding on university. “Not since last week. She sent a picture of some hiking boots she bought, but that was it. Why?”
“Nothing really,” Colton said, but he sounded restless. I could hear him tapping a pen against his desk on the other end of the line. “She just sent me this weird, cryptic text last night. Something about how London feels empty now that everyone is gone, and how she’s thinking of changing her travel itinerary.”
“Changing it how?” I asked, sitting up a little straighter.
“She didn’t say,” Colton muttered, and I could tell it was bothering him more than he wanted to admit. After that unspoken movie night back in London, I knew there was a weird spark between them that they were both too stubborn to address. “She just told me to stay out of trouble in Manchester and then she stopped replying. She’s frustrating, Paris.”
“She’s just trying to figure things out, Col,” I said gently. “Just like the rest of us.”
“Yeah, well, she could do it without being so mysterious,” he grumbled, though there was a clear hint of worry hidden underneath his annoyance. He cleared his throat, clearly wanting to drop the subject before I started teasing him. “Anyway, I should probably go. The warden just walked back into the prison cell, and he’s currently staring at the black tape like he wants to measure it.”
I giggled, the image of Fabian and Colton sharing a room still feeling like a scene from a comedy movie. “Tell him I love him.”
“Gross. Tell him yourself,” Colton scoffed. “Bye, Paris.”
“Bye, Col.”
The line went dead, and I lowered the phone to my chest, a smile still lingering on my face.
Tomorrow, my actual university life would begin. I was still scared, and I still missed Fabian so much it felt like a physical ache, but as I looked around my neat little room, I felt a tiny spark of determination.
I was going to make this work. We all were.