Lovestruck in London Read online

  Lovestruck in London

  Rachel Schurig

  Copyright 2013 Rachel Schurig

  All rights reserved.

  Kindle Edition

  ISBN-10: 0989202186

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9892021-8-3

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  For Kristin,

  in honor of many years of friendship,

  most of which were spent mooning over British movie stars.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks, as ever, to my wonderful parents, siblings, family, and friends for all of your help and encouragement. A special thank you to my parents, for watching Lucy so I could gallivant around England and write this book!

  Thank you to my editor, Shelley Holloway, for all your help, support, and advice.

  www.hollowayhouse.me

  Book cover design by Scarlett Rugers Design 2013

  www.scarlettrugers.com

  Like Lizzie, I have always been fascinated by London and the UK. When I went to visit to research this book, I fell even more in love with the beautiful country and lovely people. I apologize for any unintentional errors relating to places or language. I’ll be back as soon as I can—please save me a mint Aero!

  Chapter One

  For as long as I could remember, I’ve wanted to live in London.

  I’m not exactly sure what the draw was, specifically. I had always felt drawn to the city, to England in general. One of my older sisters, Laura, used to tease me mercilessly for watching Coronation Street, a British soap opera carried on a nearby Canadian station that I could pick up on the TV after school when I adjusted the antenna just right. “It’s not even a decent soap, Lizzie,” Laura would argue, wrestling with me for the remote so she could switch over to General Hospital. “I can’t understand half the things they say with that accent.”

  I loved the accent. It was so romantic and refined. Nothing like the harsh bellows and sudden outbursts of Spanish from my brothers and sisters. I had been thrilled when Laura joined the school dance team, which practiced after school. For the first time in my life, I had the house to myself, if only for a brief hour. In a family of six children, solitude was practically unheard of, and that hour was priceless, allowing me a daily dose of the melodrama of my favorite British soap.

  But my love for all things British had begun long before I discovered Coronation Street. My preoccupation probably had something to do with my taste in literature; nearly all of my favorite authors were British. From Jane Austen to Helen Fielding to J.K. Rowling, I spent an inordinate amount of time living vicariously in the cities and countryside of Great Britain. For a self-described bibliophile like myself, the literature connection was a strong one.

  And now, at the age of twenty-three, my dream of living in London was about to come true.

  “I can’t believe we’re actually going,” I said, bouncing in my seat a little. “Finally!” My friend Callie didn’t bother looking up from her magazine; I had been saying pretty much the same thing ever since we had arrived at the airport.

  “Mmmhmm,” Callie murmured, idly flicking the page.

  I sighed. I knew Callie was excited as well, though she might not be quite so effusive as I would like. But I simply couldn’t contain my excitement. Callie and I had both been accepted into a graduate program at Kingsbury University’s London Campus. We would be spending the next nine months studying literature and poetry, respectively. I had heard of the program right after starting my student teaching internship the previous fall and was immediately intrigued. Nine months in my dream city? Nine months of studying the subject I loved, before settling down into a teaching career I was feeling less and less excited about? I had jumped at the chance and convinced my classmate Callie to go for it as well. And now, after imagining it for so long, I could hardly believe it was real.

  Feeling too keyed up to sit still any longer, I grabbed my purse. “I’m gonna walk around a little,” I told Callie. “Watch my stuff?”

  Callie finally looked up from her magazine. “Will you get me a water?”

  “Sure.”

  She smiled her thanks. “Don’t be long,” she said, looking down at her watch. “You don’t want to miss the flight.”

  Fat chance, I thought as I walked in the direction of the airport shops. I wouldn’t miss this flight for the world.

  The airport in Detroit was much bigger and more crowded than I had remembered. The last time I had flown from Detroit Metro—the last and only time I’d been on a plane, period—had been a good fifteen years ago, when my entire family flew down to Orlando for a Disneyworld vacation. I smiled, thinking of how stressed out my father had been shepherding his six kids through the airport. It hadn’t been the calmest start to a vacation, all of the kids seeming to have some kind of meltdown at some point before wheels-down in Florida. My oldest sister Maria, sixteen at the time, had been angry she had to leave her boyfriend behind, at Spring Break no less, for such a baby vacation. My brother Carlos, fourteen, thought it was hilarious to tease and torment Laura, who was completely terrified of flying and kept breaking down into noisy tears, probably secretly enjoying the drama and attention for all it was worth. And the twins, Matias and Samuel, had been, well, the twins. Rambunctious and loud, chasing each other through the lines of passengers, and generally driving my parents crazy. It was a wonder that I had even been born; the twins would have retired most parents.

  A display of books caught my attention, and I changed course to head into the small book and magazine shop. I made it a habit never to pass up a display of books. I had plenty to read for the flight, probably too much, in fact (did anyone really need four books for a ten-hour flight?), but you never knew when you might find your next can’t-put-it-down read.

  A shrill ring came from my purse, startling me. It took a moment for my brain to kick in and realize it was my new cellphone, the ringtone unfamiliar. I’d needed something I could use in the UK and had thus retired my trusty old flip phone for an upgrade only the day before.

  “Hello?” I said, finally figuring out how to answer the touch screen.

  “Mom is crying. I hope you’re happy.”

  I rolled my eyes. “She is not.”

  “Okay, she’s not,” Sam admitted. “But she is sniffing a lot. And Dad’s been out in the garage ever since they got home from dropping you off.”

  I felt a pang. To say that my parents hadn’t been thrilled about my study-abroad choice was an understatement. People in our family just did not move away from home, even for nine months. It was unheard of.

  “What are you doing over there, anyhow?” I asked, trying to get my mind off the idea of my parents being sad or worried.

  “It’s Sunday,” my brother said, as if that should be self-explanatory.

  “So you’re there for the food,” I said, smiling. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Hey, if she’s gonna make Sunday dinner every week, the least I can do is come over and eat it.”

  I’m going to miss him, I realized suddenly, my heart constricting slightly. Out of all of my siblings, it was Samuel, the younger of the twins and three years my senior, t
hat I felt closest to now that were all grown. Unlike the others, he didn’t tease me for wanting to spend all of my time with my nose in a book. He was overprotective, just like all the rest, but he also encouraged me to do the things that made me happy.

  “What’s she making?”

  “The usual. Enchiladas, rice, veggies. She got those corn tortillas you like, the ones from the bakery downriver.”

  I groaned. If I missed anything while I was gone, it would be the delicious authentic cooking I could get right in my very own kitchen.

  “Are you the only one mooching off her cooking tonight?” I teased, trying not to dwell on my sudden rush of sadness.

  “What do you think? Everyone is coming tonight. They have to be here to complain about your ridiculous, money-wasting decision, don’t they? How else will they lament the fact that you’re throwing away a perfectly good teaching certificate to gallivant with foreigners—”

  “I’ll be the foreigner in this situation.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not the point, is it? The point is you have an opportunity to get a nice, stable, union job with good benefits. And instead you choose to go overseas to read books all day. Major scandal, little sis. I heard a rumor our tias will even be here. All the cousins.”

  I heard Sam laugh on the other end of the phone and smiled in spite of his words. Of course my family, including my aunts and cousins, would be together tonight to discuss my leaving. They were always in each other’s business, everyone had an opinion. It drove me crazy.

  “I was starting to get a little homesick there, Sammy,” I said. “Thanks for snapping me back to reality.”

  “Don’t be too hard on them,” he said, serious now. “They all just care about you.”

  “They’re all just nosey,” I corrected.

  “Seriously, Lizzie. They all want what’s best for you.”

  “I know,” I said softly. “But their ideas of what’s best are sometimes different from mine.”

  Samuel was quiet on the other end of the phone for a moment. “Hey,” he finally said, his voice lighter. “Don’t sweat it, right? Why do you care if they’ll be gossiping? Won’t you be well on your way across the ocean by dinner time?”

  “Not really. We have a layover in New York first.”

  Sam snorted. “New York City? That’s as good as being half a world away from this place.”

  I laughed.

  “I’ll let you go,” Sam said. “Just wanted to wish you luck.”

  “Thanks, Sammy.”

  “You call Mom when you get there tomorrow, okay?” His voice was suddenly gruff, and I felt a lump in my throat.

  “It will still be night in Detroit,” I said. “There’s a five-hour difference.”

  “Then call when you know she’ll be up. Don’t forget, Lizzie.”

  “I won’t.” I paused. “Love you, big brother.”

  “Love you, too,” he said. “Be safe, okay? You don’t take any crap from those limey boys.”

  “Got it…Bye, Sammy.”

  “Bye.”

  I hung up, pushing my phone back down in my purse, determined not to cry. My family had been giving me so much crap about leaving that I hadn’t really had an emotional goodbye with any of them. Now the thought of nine months without them seemed endless. What if I was making a mistake? I’d never been away from my siblings before. I’d gone to a local college, living at home while I took my classes, and my brothers and sisters had all lived within ten minutes of the house, along with numerous cousins and aunts and uncles. They were a constant presence in my life, a loud, overwhelming, overbearing presence, but one I had never been without.

  They’ll be there when you get back, I reminded myself. Your family will always be there. This is the only time in your life you’ll be able to do something like this.

  It was true. It was only a matter of time before I was back home for good, settling into that teaching career my family had so encouraged, probably getting a house within walking distance of my folks. Just like my sisters before me.

  Just like that, the fear vanished, replaced by an almost panicked urge to get on the plane, to put as many miles between Detroit and me as was humanly possible. I pulled out two waters from a cooler and made my way to the counter to pay. As I waited in line, I glanced at a clock on the wall. We should start boarding the flight to New York in about twenty minutes. Not long at all now. The flight to New York was short, our layover shorter, and then it’d be on to London.

  Almost there, I told myself, smiling at the clerk as he rang me up. You’re almost there. I glanced at the clock again as I took back the waters, quickly calculating in my head. Less than half a day. In ten hours, I would be touching down at London Heathrow, my UK adventure beginning at last.

  ***

  “I should have known this would happen,” I grumbled eighteen hours later as Callie and I finally stepped off the plane. Bedraggled and exhausted, we stumbled along, blindly following our fellow passengers down to customs. “Everything was way too perfect, there was no way it could continue.”

  Callie yawned loudly. “I’m so tired I can’t feel my eyelids.” She turned to me. “Are my eyes even open right now, or am I hallucinating?”

  “They’re open,” I said. “But just barely.” Someone jostled us from behind, and I reached out for Callie’s arm. “Come on, let’s get a move on. The sooner we get out of the airport, the sooner we can go to sleep.”

  Callie blinked out at the waning early evening sun shining through the glass windows of the terminal. “God, what time is it? This is so disorienting.”

  I looked at my watch, but found I couldn’t remember how many hours to add in order to get local time. I would have to figure that out. But for now, I just wanted my luggage. “Come on,” I said again, pulling Callie along in my wake.

  Our flight from Detroit had been inexplicably delayed, causing us to miss our connecting flight from JFK. Callie had gotten on the phone with her father, some bigwig in the insurance industry who apparently spent half his life on an airplane. He managed to pull some strings, getting us on a flight to Boston. From Boston we could connect to London. All told, the delays and missed flights had added an extra eight hours to our trip. I had never been so tired in all my life, not even the time I stayed up for forty-eight straight hours to finish a term paper for a dreaded political science class.

  But our luck finally seemed to turn now that we had arrived. We got through customs easily, managed to find our luggage, and even got our tickets for the train into town without having to ask anyone. I was relieved—the airport was a mass of people rushing about, much bigger than any of the terminals I had visited over the last twenty-four hours. I felt irrationally afraid of having to stop and ask for help. Surely these sophisticated Londoners would know just by looking at me that I was a clueless American from a small town.

  Once we had lugged all of our bags onto the train, we collapsed into our seats in relief. Callie closed her eyes immediately, laying her head on my shoulder. “Wake me up when we get there.”

  As the train slowly began its ascent from the bowels of the airport, I found my energy reviving. I was looking at the British countryside! Well, not quite—it was more like the outskirts of a British city. In fact, it didn’t look all that much different from home. But still! I was nearly in London!

  Home felt very far away now, but I found that I wasn’t scared anymore. Sure, I had never had cause to take a train or subway in my life, but I’d managed to figure out how to get on the Heathrow Express just fine, hadn’t I? While Callie snored softly beside me, I pulled out my already worn guidebook and reviewed the information I had previously committed to memory

  Heathrow Express to Paddington Station. Get Oyster cards at the underground and take the Circle line to King’s Cross. From there, switch lines to Angel station and take a taxi to Fulton Street. The thought of so many steps, particularly on little sleep, and carrying luggage, made me nervous, but I tried to push the thoughts down. I could do
this. I knew I could.

  Trying to keep my stress at bay, I turned again to the window. As the buildings grew closer and closer together, my excitement grew. This is going to be amazing, I told myself. Everything you want it to be.

  I had very high hopes for my time in London. I didn’t just want an experience—I wanted the experience. The perfect, life-changing opportunity I had always dreamed of. In a city so far from home, where no one knew me, I would finally be able to leave my old image behind. In London, no one would know that I was a nerdy bookworm who spent more time in the library than out with friends. No one would know that I was the baby sister of five loud, bossy siblings. That an exciting night in my family’s life consisted of all the cousins coming over to eat my mom and tia’s cooking in the backyard. No one would know that I’d only traveled outside of my state once, that I’d never been abroad. No one would know that I had so few boyfriends I could count them on one hand—with several fingers left over. In London, I could reinvent myself, find some excitement for once in my life. Work on the novel I had always dreamed of writing. Have fun. Maybe even fall in love.

  I smiled to myself as the train began to slow. It could happen, I thought. Anything could happen.

  Chapter Two

  “This is boring,” Callie whispered. “I am officially bored.”

  Much as I hated to admit it, I agreed with her. We’d been in London for three days now, and so far, it wasn’t much different than my time at Wayne State University back in Detroit.

  Since our arrival at the college, we’d had to sit through endless orientation sessions covering topics ranging from our future classes to life and safety in London. We hadn’t even had the chance to get into our apartment yet, all of the study-abroad participants being required to sleep in University accommodations during orientation. So, after being in London for three days, I had yet to see any of it besides our room and the few blocks between lecture halls. I could barely even remember the ride in from Heathrow, as jet lagged and exhausted as I had been.