Definitely, Maybe, Sometimes. | ✔️ COMPLETED

Prologue

A/N - This is a first, completely unedited draft. There WILL be spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

Honestly, I don't want to spend the next three years doing a degree in linguistics. Not because I don't enjoy learning. I do, it's how I landed the scholarship in the first place.

I'm aware that I applied, interviewed and studied as much as I could in order to get into Oxford. I know it's an incredible opportunity. I'm very fortunate to even be offered it. But what I really wanted to do is go travelling with my best friend, Lauren.

In many ways Lauren is extremely lucky. She hates her parents and will do anything to spite them, like, sack off uni and buy a one-way ticket to Bali. Which is what I was supposed to be doing. It's why I've been waitressing everyday for the last two years. Unlike Lauren, however, I adore my mum.

Mum migrated to England, from Ireland, when she was nine months pregnant with me. She had no friends, family or money. We stayed in the outback of a B&B near Yorkshire. Our home was basically a shed and mum worked her way up from a maid. Now, she runs the B&B all on her own.

In all the sacrifices she's made, all the hours she has poured into me, the love she showers me with, she has only ever asked for one thing. That I do well in school, go to  a good university and get a decent job; one that will ensure I won't have to live pay-check-to-pay-check.

Would you want to be the one to tell your mother (the best person you know), that you refuse to fulfil the only thing she ever asked of you? I think not.

I keep telling myself that if I didn't want to go to Uni, why the hell did I spend hours applying to all the best ones? I spent weeks on my personal statement. I put all my charm into my interviews. I think deep down I always knew this was going to be the way.

The only saving grace is Him.

I met Him at my orientation. I never got his name, I know nothing about Him. It was he who made me decide that four more years of education might not be the worst thing that can happen. Not to be that girl or anything, the one who changes her mind because of a boy, but I guess he gave me hope.

I wish I could say we met under a set of extremely cute circumstances. Like our eyes connected across the room in a bar, or a mutual friend thought we'd get on like a house on fire, or I bumped into him and he immediately knew I was the love of his life.

Actually, I met him because I somehow got locked in a bathroom, and then I got stuck trying to clamber out the window. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you looked at it) he was the first person who came along and saw me. The first person who could help me.

He stopped for a brief second, watching me dangling through the window.

I don't know why but I thought the smartest and best plan of action was to go headfirst out the window. Only the window was the width of me and halfway up the wall. I had to climb on the sink to even get to it in the first place.

None of that was even remotely a good idea. Yet I still went ahead with it and of course I got stuck. I had been there for a good five minutes (which felt like five-hundred minutes), trying to force myself through before he rocked up.

When he regained composure at the weird and sorry sight in front of him, he said, "Do you usually prefer to take windows over doors?"

"No!" I half-howled, half-huffed. "I'm stuck!"

"I can see that."

His voice was so nice it made me look at him properly. Tall, broad shouldered, dark haired, dark eyes. An absolute stunner of a man stood before me, whilst I was suspended midair like a horrifying circus act. In that moment death would have been kinder.