Prologue

        I should have known better. 

Not just known better: done better, acted better. Been better. There was only ever one way it was going to end. 

I've had friends in the past who have told me I shouldn't be so defensive; that I should let people in more. That I'll never be happy until I do. And not just friends. Guys have told me that, repeatedly. The more irritable ones have told me not to be such a bitch, and at the very worst end of the scale, I've been called frigid.

Ha. Frigid. As if there's nothing but ice inside here instead of blazing anger, and loneliness, and years and years of hurt. 

Well, I'll take frigid if it means they'll leave me alone. If Joseph Moritz had called me frigid, I wouldn't have lost a piece of myself. I wouldn't be lying here feeling like my insides had been dragged out through my chest. 

The unfairest thing is that I can't even hate him for it. 

It's so late into the night that it's almost morning. I wasn't sure there would be a sunrise this morning, but it's already getting dark-blue out there, and I guess the sun will have to come up after that. It always does.

I want to sleep. I really badly want to sleep and not have to wake up, not have to face the world. But I'm so busy missing him that I feel like I'm starving to death. 

How's that for pathetic? It's more pathetic when you understand how much I told myself I'd never be this person. 

But then, maybe the problem is being any person. Because there aren't a lot of people who manage to get through their life without falling in love; no matter how much they may want to.

And I wanted to. So, so much. 

                                        Chapter One

                                        Danger Day

I hated my alarm that morning. I hadn't slept well, and I'd love to claim it was because I could sense something about to happen. But actually, I'd been up late doing a paper I should have done earlier in the evening. In fact, it should have been done at any time in the previous twenty-four hours when I'd been busy trying not to think about job interviews and my closest friend being on the verge of abandoning me. 

The alarm was tuned into Bluesinki, which is generally a good thing. They have a good attitude about starting the morning with upbeat but not-too-loud jazz-funk, and working up to full on hip-hop through the day. Anything wistful or romantic is kept to a bare minimum. That works for me. 

But the first thing I heard this morning was host Marty saying "...it may be cold out there, but it's going to be a really fantastic day with the guests we've got lined up in the studio."

"You want to swap days?" I asked him, rolling onto my back and trying to blink my eyes into focus. Somewhere under the sound of the radio, I could hear my housemate, Maria, laughing. Probably because Luke had said something funny. Or maybe just because she was in a good mood. She's been in a permanent good mood ever since the two of them hooked up back in October. 

Over the radio, Marty was reeling off a lot of semi-famous names with way too much enthusiasm. I wasn't in the mood for chatter.

"Where's the music, Marty?" I asked, before bashing the off-button with a badly-aimed hand. 

I was already worrying about Fiona again by the time I was vertical. I knew I was about to lose her. All the signs were there. And it shouldn't have bothered me that much. We weren't even all that alike. 

You know those people who you meet sometimes and most of what you do is listen to their descriptions of almost-romantic interactions with people? The kind who never ask a question about you, and probably don't know when your birthday is but might just manage a card if Facebook reminds them? The kind of people who are more interested in how hot the logic lecturer is than in any actual logic? Fiona was one of Those. 

But she was smart, underneath all of that. I admired the way she could turn in papers she'd spent half an our on and still make decent grades. And she was company. A friendly ear, when she listened. And I actually found myself rooting for her in her overblown imaginings of romantic entanglements with guys who probably weren't quite sure what her name was. I found myself wanting her to be happy.

That is always, always a mistake. 

I went from vertical to walking, unsteadily, and made it all the way to the bathroom door before realising that I could hear the shower running. 

"Maria?" 

I could hear her laughing again, and then Luke saying something. They were clearly in the shower together. 

"Blargh." 

I walked away, and then walked back and hammered on the door.

"You guys have fifteen minutes! I'm not being late!"

"What? I can't hear you!"

Maria was as usual trying to hear me over the shower instead of just turning it off for two seconds. 

"Fif-teen min-utes!" I yelled, and then stomped down the stairs.

They made me late. That's the trouble with blissfully happy couples. They don't seem able to remember the ordinary, every-day needs of the other, irritated people on the planet. 

Maria's vaguely apologetic comment that I usually showered on campus totally ignored the fact that I needed to do other important things like brush my teeth and pick up my wash-bag before I could get on my run-around bike and pound it across town. 

I average eighteen minutes to get to campus. It was one of my favourite parts of the day, leaving our run-down apartment on Martha Road and heading south until I could strike out across the river. Even when it was cold, like today, and I was tired and grouchy, the expanse of the Charles stretching out around me as I crossed the bridge was enough to make me smile. 

I didn't hang around to enjoy it too much today. I made it in sixteen and a half minutes, including a dangerous race through a just-turning-red light. But by the time I'd chained my bike up outside the Wang center, run to the showers and had the world's quickest rinse, I was still cutting it fine for my first lecture. And of course, I couldn't find my daytime underwear when I dragged my clothes out of my backpack. 

"Whyyyyy," I asked whatever fates were listening, and pulled my big stretchy sports panties back on. There wasn't time to check whether the panties showed in the mirror in the corner. I thought they probably didn't, underneath the fairly stiff black pants I was wearing today, but I wasn't sure. Unfortunately, I'd only brought a short jacket and shirt with me, which meant I was going to spend the whole day worrying about having big visible lines on my backside. 

I'm pretty sure nobody would credit me with caring about that kind of thing, and it's more than stupid. But sometimes I can be just as vain as everyone else. 

I tried not to think about it as I ran flat-out back outside with my helmet banging into my leg where I had it looped over my arm. 

Generally speaking, I like running a little behind. Being late gives you an excuse to rush past people and be terse without them taking too much offence. (Just to clarify, I don't actually like causing offence. It's the unintentional side-effect of being me. Like a more directed form of nuclear fall-out.)

This morning, the I'm-late vibe somehow didn't deter Brad from my coding class seeing me from across the open space of the quad and coming to jog alongside me.

"Hey, Helena. Did you get that VB paper done?"

"Yes." It sounded like a conversation finisher to me, particularly as I made zero eye-contact. But apparently he was either feeling thick-skinned or desperate today. 

"I had a really bad evening," he said, as I turned down Ames Street toward the math department. 

 "What a shame."

He kept talking, even though I was half-running. "So I didn't get the assignment done. I wondered - could I borrow yours, like... over lunch?"

"No, you cannot."

"Ah, come on! She'll kick off at me if I haven't done it."

I gave him a level gaze. "And that's my problem because...?"

"Help me out here. You let Fiona copy your entire Math paper last weekend." He tugged on his ear in a way that I'm sure would have melted the hearts of most females. Well, most females who like slightly geeky guys in thick glasses. I remained unimpressed.

"Fiona was at her Grandpa's eightieth birthday last weekend," I told him, and turned away. "Not cuddled up in front of Buffy re-runs with Marcie."

There are some things I probably shouldn't say. That was definitely one of those.

"Ah, look." Brad jogged past me and turned around to face me so I had to stop. "I know it's... It's difficult when - I thought we were ok. You know I still care a lot about you."

"And I care a lot about you, too," I said, giving him a big smile.

"You do?" 

"No. Now get out of the way."

I barged past him, and into the Ford building. I hoped Brad wouldn't follow me. There were probably two or three lecturers he owed papers to in that building alone.  

"Aww, come on, Helena!" I heard him call after me, coming as far as the door. 

"Byeeeee!" I said back, and kept walking.

Brad - my ex, Brad who I should never have tried to get close to - fell away pretty quickly. They do that.

I ran most of the rest of the way to my Math lecture, past the straggle of other students who were running behind. Today, I didn't want to be late. I wanted to see Fiona for a few minutes before the lecture started, and revel in the last bit of time we'd get to spend together as actual, real best friends. No matter what promises she might make, I knew it was basically over. 

I made it at the same time Professor Rudnicki did, and had to make do with a wave and a whispered, "My housemate sucks," as I slid into the bench next to her. I could feel the heat coming off me from the combined cycle, shower and run. 

Fiona's sympathetic smile was genuine, but I could see she was bursting to tell me something. It made my heart sink a little bit (yeah, I know. It seems unlikely, but I do have one. Four chambers and everything.) I didn't get to hear what it was she wanted to say. The lecture was starting and Rudnicki liked us all to be focused on the board or just listening and taking notes. Private conversations didn't stand a chance.

It was a pretty interesting lecture, as applied math lectures go. But I kept thinking about sitting here on my own next week, or - worse still - next to Fiona while she said nothing to me. 

She was definitely still talking to me after the lecture. She grabbed my arm and dragged me outside and round the corner of the building. We ended up out of sight, but right in a tunnel of wind tearing between walls. I'd cooled off after the rush to get here, and the after-effects of sweating were making me cold enough already without the hurricane.

Fiona rounded on me, took a look over her shoulder to make sure there was nobody listening (like anyone else was stupid enough to hang around out here - everyone was going as quickly as they could to wherever they needed to be) and then she took a deep breath. 

"OK. So there's news." She was slightly breathless in the way she always was when Things Of Significance happened. It was one of the strangely appealing qualities of Fiona that no matter how many times the TOSes turned out to be imaginary or totally unconnected with her, she still went on getting excited about them all over again. 

"News?" I asked, as if I didn't already know.

"Bethan asked me to watch Alex at football practice with her, and there's a new line-backer on a scholarship. He's transferred over from Princeton and he's hot. Like, seriously hot."

"I heard," I said, trying to match her excitement while I huddled in the arctic air.

"And get this," she went on, with a smile she couldn't quite suppress. "He has a big thing for blondes, so Alex told him to watch out for me, and the guy was really interested. Like, really interested. Asking lots of questions and everything."

I gave her as warm a smile as I could manage. "That's great, Fi. So how are you going to get to talk to him?"

"He's meant to be in our coding seminar this afternoon. I actually cannot wait."

She was hopping around, oblivious to the cold, and just as oblivious to the heaviness that was in my chest somewhere. So we had until coding class. And then that was that. She'd be lost to me. 

"He'll love you," I told her, and put an arm round her. It was partly an excuse to drag her towards the coffee bar, but there was a lot of just wanting to be part of a hug for a while.

"Well I'm going to go and do my hair and make-up at lunch," Fiona argued, sweeping her blonde fringe to one side and looking up at it. "I wish I'd had a haircut at the weekend."

"Ahh, don't be silly. You look hot." 

I squeezed her hard before releasing her and going to warm up before my Math tutorial. 

My math tutor that semester was - and remains - one of my favourite people in the world. At forty-something, Eva Lang had to fight for recognition from high school onwards. It fascinated me, that fight she'd had, and how in the end her brilliance had beaten them down and meant she'd had to be given the Fields Medal and the lectureship at MIT. 

I knew that the paper I'd handed in before the weekend had been good, and she confirmed it when I walked in by the way she crinkled up her eyes and said, "Some good work, here, Morgan." 

With a wince, I thought about how she'd react next week, once she'd read last night's terrible offering. 

I'd been looking forward to discussing the last paper with her, but today I was finding my attention wandering. She didn't say anything but after the third time of having to repeat a question, she asked, "Everything ok?"

I couldn't look at her. She'd always been a fan of mine, ever since she'd sat on the interview panel when I applied and fired a lot of questions at me that I'd genuinely enjoyed answering. I'd always been committed to studying, too. It had been a self-defence mechanism through the last few years. When something hurts, work harder. 

And then, this week, it had suddenly become just too darn hard. 

In the end, I asked a question instead of answering. "Did you ever find that other things just... got in the way of your studies, sometimes? However much you wanted them not to?"

She gave me considering look, and then sat back. 

"Many things did. But I suppose I was motivated by all the obstacles that stood in my way. Back when I grew up, girls were not believed to be really fit for the sciences, and Afro-American girls even less so. Every step of the way, they struggled to accept that I had any ability." She gave me a smile that was so confident, I wondered that they had ever been able to doubt her. "Where my male classmates were praised for their brilliance, I was told how good it was that I worked so hard and emulated the other students. They tried to steer me into the arts, telling me I had a good singing voice."

"Did you?" I asked her, curious.

She gave a big laugh. "It was probably the third best voice in my high school. Compared to the math medal I won at seventeen which placed me first in the country. And they wanted me to be a singer." 

She shook her head, and I wondered whether everything was really that different now. I could remember my high school too well, and that belief that somehow I was just working harder than the boys had still been there. They'd called me a "model student" and the most common word on my report cards had been "studious." All except for my beloved discrete math teacher who had written "If Helena ever matches her amount of effort to her vast intellect, she will be defining the course of modern mathematics by the time she is in her twenties." I still had that report card in my bottom desk drawer, for days when I felt like I wasn't smart enough.

"But you will struggle, too, I believe," Eva said, "because you are a woman, and because you are a very beautiful one. Nobody will want to take you seriously."

I squirmed, my face growing hot. "Oh, I'm not - I guess I waste a lot of time grooming."

"Don't feel ashamed of it," she said, firmly. "You have every right to be a woman as well as an academic. Don't give way to what others think. Just keep on fighting your corner, and make them understand that you're here to make a difference."

I nodded, still blushing. It was partly her compliments, and partly a little shame. It wasn't other people getting in my way right now - it was me. 

Contrary to what Fiona had been expecting, everything happened over lunch, before she'd had a chance to groom herself any further. We'd gone to the Sports Centre cafe, which for some reason serves better soup and sandwiches than anywhere else on campus whilst costing less. 

Fiona was playing with her food instead of eating it, halfway through some angst about whether she should have worn pink today instead, when I was suddenly, magnetically drawn to look behind her.

He was standing watching her, with a look I recognised only too well. And when she stopped talking and turned to look too, you could have lit a fire off the heat that suddenly existed between them.

"Hey, Fiona," he said. Which confused me. I thought he was supposed to be new.

"Dan?" Fiona sounded more breathless than ever, if that was even possible. "You want to sit down? You look... different."

I realised my mistake, then. This wasn't the new boy who liked blondes. It was Daniel Fitchett, back from his year working with radio receivers in Nevada and totally transformed. It was staggering. The nerdy, slightly chubby kid was now tanned and lean, his hair a tousled mess that was effortlessly cool. 

He hovered, his eyes still locked on Fi, and I got up.

"Here," I said. "You have my seat."

"Are you sure?" Fiona asked. She didn't even look at me.

"Of course. Looks like you two have a lot to catch up on."

I lifted my tray, grinned at them both (neither of them looked) and disentangled myself from the chair. I was calm and together as I walked away. After all, you don't live my life without getting good at this.

Which was when the real new boy made himself known by knocking me half-unconscious with a football. Ironically, I didn't even see it coming.