Page 125 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

31

“Ithink it’s absolutely perfect,” Lucy said, turning in a circle in the bookshop, taking in the months’ worth of work they had put into the place.

Admittedly, even after the talk with her parents and knowing she was going to receive the inheritance, she had stayed in her bed, wallowing in her misery, not able to see a way out of the fog of heartbreak.

It had been Lucy who’d eventually showed up. She’d been fresh off of a full moon, so she’d been full of energy and determination when she’d come in the room, whipping off the covers and all but dragging Pandora into the bathroom while telling her she was greasy and stinking.

Reluctantly, Pandora had showered and changed. She’d drunk the blood bottles Lucy had kept passing her.

“Now,” Lucy had said, exhaling hard. “You are goingto stop wallowing in your self-pity and actually do something about it.”

Pandora wasn’t sure that was possible.

Until they got to talking.

Lucy was quick to put an end to the idea of approaching Victor to give him his share of money, insisting that he would never take it.

Pandora knew in her heart that he wouldn’t.

But she refused to allow him to lose his chance to finish his PhD when she had the means to fix the situation.

“Why don’t you just … invest in his department?” Lucy suggested. “You could fund the whole department. That way, Victor gets to finish his degree without needing to take money directly from you.”

After some thought and research, Pandora concluded it was the only way she could make it up in some way to Victor.

So while Victor was likely home for his winter break, maybe trying to figure out what he was going to do with his life since he thought his uni career was over, Pandora was having meetings with UCL, working it out so the whole cohort in his department would be able to have the rest of their schooling for free.

With that squared away, she turned her attention to the bookshop.

True, it felt different.

Her lifelong dream was no longer the same.

She saw him everywhere. In their choice of paint colours, in the wood stains, the art. She smelled him in the coffee brewing in the café as she and Lucy worked overtime to get everything just right. She felt him in the spines and the pages of the books as she slid them into their spots on the shelves.

It was impossible not to think of him in each private nook with its comfy chair. Or sitting at one of the tables at the café, his caramel macchiato set at the corner as his hand scrubbed across the pages of his notebook and his hair fell charmingly over his forehead.

When she was tired enough to allow herself the misery that came along with fantasies, she would picture herself walking over to him, reaching out to brush his hair off his forehead. And maybe he would look up, eyes unfocused for a second as they adjusted to not looking at tiny words. Then he would give her a sweet, soft smile.

If she really wanted to torment herself, she would im­agine leaning down to press her lips to his.

She never let it go beyond that, though.

That alone made it feel like someone was stepping on her heart and crushing it to dust, when she came back to reality.

“I guess,” Pandora said as she looked around the shop.

“You guess?” Lucy asked, sighing. “We have put our blood, sweat, and tears into this. Literally, I painted over my blood right there.” She jabbed her finger toward one of the built-in bookcases. “And you cried into that cushion,” she continued, pointing toward the window seat. “And, well, I think I sweated over the entire floor. That’s what gives it that nice shine.”

“I know you worked hard. You know how much I appr—”

“Oh, God. Don’t give me that ‘you appreciate me’ thing. We both busted our butts because we knew how good this place could be. I know this is a little bittersweet for you because you were planning to work on this place withVictor. But I want to remind you that this was your dream well before that.”

She was right.

But Pandora was still struggling to find her enthusiasm for it.

“And that we nearly died with the amount of blood we had to give to that witch to spell this place.”