After her meeting with the quiet yet oddly charming boy in the museum, Julia found herself to be in the worst predicament for a young lady to be in, which is to say that she was hopelessly in love. Hopelessly head over heels in love with a boy she’d only just met, and whose book she’d taken for her own. She carried that book around with her everywhere she went on the off chance that she might return it to him. Then, after some consideration, she stopped carrying it, giving her the plausible guise to set up another meeting, or perhaps a reason to invite him to her dorms. She hadn’t taken his number, or rather, his number hadn’t been produced, and for whatever reason, whenever she found herself asking for him, or asking around about him, she came up short. No one in any history class seemed to know him, nor had anyone heard of any man named Cory on campus. She returned here and there to the scene of the crime as it were, hoping to return her stolen book and often drawing a blank. Where had he gone? Had he been a student? She checked the library, and found nothing, and checked the lecture halls, and found nothing. She opened the week following by snooping around the museum hall daily, and even extending her snoop to a wider circle, hoping that perhaps he’d just forgotten where the museum was, and wasn’t at all far away. She also spent this following week paying close attention to her hair, her makeup, her socks (ensuring that they were even, and a matching pair) and also that one button further down her blouse was undone more than usual, although the voice of her mother forbade her from going further than that out of spite. Lastly, she paid more attention than she ought to about her that one tooth of hers which cowered slightly behind the rest, she made sure to roll her lips inward and bite them gently, and made efforts to smile with her mouth closed and her lips together. She felt certain that were he to spot that single out of place tooth, which he had clearly missed in the museum light, then he would reject her outright (as he should).

On the first day, she supposed that he had dealt with a nasty hangover. She had no idea what ‘a nightingale’ was in the sense it had been used (as a verb) but she supposed from the look of the boys two drunken compatriots that it was something to do with alcohol. She smiled excitedly to herself, supposing that he was quite a popular boy as well as charming, and she jumped to make excuses for his absence where possible. Simply, he was working off a hangover that day, and didn’t want to make a bad impression. He would be here tomorrow. However, when tomorrow came and he hadn’t arrived, her thoughts soured a little. He would come, he was only very, very drunk on that night and needed a two day recovery. She smiled, and supposed then that it would have been a stag event, or some other special celebration of significance. Through this rationale, she also forgave him a third day of missing her. She waited patiently with his book on her lap, and keeping her lips pressed together, and her back achingly straight, until it was time to close again, and yet no man arrived. On the fourth day, she brought with her a cupcake, stemming from a personal theory that perhaps the universe waited for her to commit to some step, before allowing any commitment to find her. It was more of a ritual than anything, perhaps even a last hope. By the time the fifth day came around, her thoughts had wilted, and what was once a blossoming field of excitement had spoiled into a dry patch where nothing grew but the weeds. Her thoughts shifted from him, and naturally, with nowhere else to go, fell back to her. It was obvious that she’d said something wrong. She shouldn’t have spoken Latin to him, of course. Men don’t like women with brains, but he seemed so interested at the time. She should have let him talk more, she should have lifted her skirt a little or arched her back. She ought to have taken off her glasses and certainly, she ought not to have smiled and exposed that one wonky tooth. It was evident what had happened. He had drunkenly fallen for her on the night, and once out of her presence, had been persuaded by those two brutish praetors that he could in fact do much better than simple old Julia. She looked herself up and down, her long sleeved top and dress down to her ankles, and her not quite elegant waist thing which enlarged her waist. They were right. The praetorian guard kept Roman officials safe for hundreds of years, from Augustus to Maxentius, and now they were back to keep Cory safe from her. She looked down at her knuckles as they clutched the book, how boring and barbarian were her plain and slightly bitten nails! No wonder he never returned.

There was, for a short time a question of Cory himself. Had he lied to her all along? The more she thought, the more plausible it became. His phone, his classes, his friends, even his name appeared to be wrong. Julia couldn’t bring herself to believe such a thing, although despite its far-fetchedness (or perhaps because of it) the thought stuck in her mind that perhaps he was just trying to dupe her. She was the right kind of girl to be duped after all. Lonely, isolated, a little ginger with the opposite sex. She thought of her mother, and wondered if something like this had happened to her as well. Perhaps that explained the way she felt towards men this whole time. She shook her head at that. Cory was good. She knew it. She had seen good in him. Still, where was he now? Even good men get bored. Her mind went on in these circles for the next few weeks, until she finally left his book in the lost property box at the museum, and put the solemn memory of the man she’d met once to bed. She didn’t cry, but she was sad for a while, and no one ever asked about it.

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Pub: 15 Aug 2025 23:00 UTC

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