ME & THE MONSTER

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The lecture on cardiovascular surgery had just started when Eden Hawthorne's phone rang.

She shouldn't answer it. She knew she shouldn't.

She saw the Professor pause in mid-sentence, a frown on his face. His eyes racked the dozens of students surrounding him, and Eden willed herself to remain seated. After all, she was privileged to be here, at the UCL Medical School, and it had cost her a fortune, too. She shouldn't waste this opportunity.

But the tinny tune was still blaring out of her phone, horribly loud in the middle of the whispering silence. She risked a hasty glance at it. She probably wouldn't have answered it, if, well –

If the name that lit up the screen had been anyone's but his.

Hunched up in her seat, Eden held her phone up to an ear. She hissed: "Yes?", while the girls on either side of her rose their eyebrows at each other.

"My one and only," a deep voice said on the other end of the line. "You busy later?"

She felt her whole face transforming. She scrambled to her feet, feeling eyes on her.

"I'm in class, you idiot," she whispered, but she couldn't help grinning.

She walked out of the lecture hall, and into a corridor.

"Keep your voice down. I need to get back. Going to hang up on you in three seconds," Eden warned, but she didn't. She wouldn't, and both the caller and her knew, had known all the time. "So shut up. Get back to you later."

"Listen. Want to grab something to eat? I'll pick you up at one, all right?"

"All right. Now I really need to –"

"And afterwards," said the man. "Afterwards we'll do a spot of good old hunting."

* * *

Kal was waiting for Eden outside. In theory, she knew you couldn't park there if you weren't a student or a member of the staff, but then again, Kal was Kal. She supposed he'd somehow managed to sweet-talk his way inside.

Again.

"Hey," Eden said, clambering into the passenger seat of the car, a smooth, glossy-black thing that reminded her of its owner.

He turned to smile at her. Though it shamed her to admit it, her pulse quickened at the sight of him.

"Beautiful Eds," Kal Mellketh said. "How was class?"

"Great. I love it," Eden said. "So satisfying, learning how to cut people up."

Kal laughed. "Don't want to get on the wrong side of you, then."

Surreptitiously, Eden patted her hair into place. Her long blonde mane swept down her back, gleaming from the hasty attack with her brush she'd subjected it to, before leaving, though she wouldn't confess even at gunpoint.

She'd considered herself in the mirror.

She'd always been tall for a girl – five feet ten. Back when she'd been at school, she'd always been the one placed at the very back row in year photos. She'd hated it. It had made her feel self-conscious. Sometimes it still did, even if she was twenty-two now and very mature and whatever. Why couldn't she be small, delicate, elfin?

And don't let her get started on guys. The shorter ones were bound to be weird about her height; some idiot she'd dated for a while tended to sulk whenever she wore high heels.

"What have you been up to these last weeks?" Eden asked Kal.

"Oh, you know, this and that. Working in that awful office. Then college gigs, pubs. Little by little; the rise to immortal stardom isn't easy, my girl. By the way, where do you fancy going for lunch?"

"The Bee, obvs."

The Bee, a tacky little restaurant in Bloomsbury, had been their haven for many years. They'd spent countless hours on its plastic chairs, gossiping between mouthfuls of greasy chips, revising for exams, or just chilling out and enjoying each other's company.

"Perfect." Kal touched the panel to his left. "Let's have a little music meanwhile, shall we?"

The sound of a reedy pop song filled the car, and, mouth quirking, he said: "Don't mean to boast, but I run rings around them. Objectively speaking, of course."

Eden groaned. "Dude, you're so full of shit. Remind me again how come I'm your best mate."

She remembered when they'd met. She'd been outside the principal's office, a willowy twelve-year-old with bad acne and a sharp tongue. She'd been given detention once again, for wearing her school skirt too short, or for nicking Fred the skeleton from the lab, maybe ... she'd always loved Anatomy. She didn't remember.

Eden was glaring at anyone who dared look at her when this boy walked past. She recognised him vaguely as someone from her after-school piano lessons. She was a bit jealous of him, because Mrs McMillan always singled him out to play and sing solos. 

She wished she had a voice like his, even if hers was okay. But his made her cry. And then made her furious for crying. She'd spend the rest of the lesson with a dripping nose, her mascara all over the place, claiming she had hay fever.

So she glared at him, of course. To her surprise, instead of averting his eyes like the rest did, this boy winked at her.

Winked at her.

She'd stared at him in shock. Then, after a moment, she'd winked back. He'd smiled. She'd smiled back.

And the rest is history.

Kal grinned now. "You know you love me really, Hawthorne."

Yes. That was the problem, precisely, no matter how hard she tried to squash the feeling down. It sat on her chest between her ribs like a heavy stone.

Eden Hawthorne was deeply, secretly in love with her closest friend, and she'd loved him for the last eight years.