Unfinished Business

Esther pt 2

Esther giggled away as she spoke to Billy. He was fun, for a guy. They spoke the same language, and even if they didn't always like the same things, they could still talk for hours and hours.

As they walked down campus, they commented on all and any funny thing they could think of, and she spoke of her dumb liverpudlian lads and he spoke of his crazy lyonese ladies and they laughed at such dada shit that anybody else would've seriously wondered when did they switch from english to... Whatever it was they were speaking.

The College of Journalism and Public Relations had been tough the last few semesters, everybody was sick and tired and totally not ready for the world outside.

Esther came from Hamburg, her english was good but her reality was so different from her american and canadian peers, that she just couldn't click with any of them properly.

She was the shyest teddy girl and the toughest prep, wanted cleanliness and flowers and pastel colors but also bar brawls and rock'n'roll music and some beer. The dichotomy sometimes made her feel like two different people, but she wondered if secretly everybody was like that. She knew for sure that Billy was.

William Campbell usually went by Billy Shears, and he was a tall thin lad in drainies and turtlenecks, a teddy and an exi, in her own framing of reality. This side of the pond they called 'em greasers and beatniks.

She was drawn to his aesthetic first, his familiarity. He reminded her of Stuart, and the more she spoke to him the more she realized it was true.

He was a suffering artist, hidden in all black from the rest of the unforgiving world. She sometimes wondered what was he doing at a college full of chatty cats and starlets seeking indirectly the spotlight, but as soon as she remembered herself, she knew.

They were both just really, really lost. Made the bad choice, and now were stuck on this personal hell of sorts.

Not all was bad. She had met Alda at least, but Alda was away from her, in Liverpool ironically, and she was stuck here. But for the while, she had Billy.

This place had given her massive insecurities and headaches, as the Twiggy girls on their space race dresses and boots made her feel thick and outdated, the unforgiving teachers either taught nothing or asked entirely too much, and the distances killed her.

America was fucking huge. At Hamburg the same bus could take her to every hot spot, all the way from her nice district to Astrid's home and Klaus' studio, to the Reeperbahn, and from there the walk to the Bambi Kino and the Kaiserkeller was short.

In here, she needed three buses from her small rental home, to the actual college. It sucked, but living in a dorm sucked more if word was to be believed. Screw that.

Billy said some silly thing about painting that made her snort, and all negative thoughts were buried for the while, only for doubts to resurge.

Gosh, how she hated this part.

She loved Billy, like she had loved George, and Stuart, and Klaus. They were friends, though, close friends, and she was entirely too sure she harbored no feelings of the romantic kind for them.

But then he smiled *like that*, and said things *like those*, and her heart fluttered, but she didn't even thought she liked men at all.

Men were dumb. Too much trouble. Relationships were too much trouble. Her heart was entirely Alda's already, even if she knew she had no chance with her.

But she had tried, so long ago. George had courted her so nicely, had brought her Savoy Truffles from London, and danced with her and touched and kissed her so gently.