[The name of my OC is Lydia Romanoff and is made up by me.]
It really is amazing how one human being can take so much of your energy. Ever since that morning, the scene on the bench kept replaying in my head over and over again. I thought about words that had been said and things that had been done. Some of it felt brilliant, but I regretted most of it.
I had been lucky. Despite having shared both lunch and dinner with the mercenaries, I hadn't caught a glimpse of the man I had spoken with, and I didn't dare to tell anybody about him. Not even my closest friend Dorothy, who later the same day happened to stand outside of my room with a few other people, which was slightly odd since we prefered to be by ourselves.
"What's going on?" I asked when I noticed the odd grins on their faces. They all looked better kept than usual and some of them had even put on some mascara and rouge and let their hair down.
"Lydia. We're going." Dorothy whispered in an excited voice.
I looked at all of them, not believing my ears.
"You're going to the afternoon tea?" I asked in sursprise.
Minnie, a blonde Oxford girl, put a finger against her lips to hush me and gestured to the rest of the corridor. Miss Hepburn, our teacher and main responsible, was probably having her beauty sleep in her room, and knowing that some of the girls are eavesdroppers was also a reason to not make too much noise.
"Yes, and you're coming with us!" Dorothy said, already pulling my arm.
Before I had a moment to realize what we were doing, we all make our way through the corridors of the boarding house like we were little children on our way to the kitchen to steal biscuits from the top shelf in the middle of the night. Only that it wasn't biscuits in our case. In our case, it was about full grown men from a mercenary army.
The entire place felt different so late in the evening when we usually talked gossip in our rooms. When we entered the lounge, it was lit up with candles instead of lamps and the men played billiard and card games, but most of them were smoking and slacking in leather chairs. The air was spiced with different types of tobacco, and it was obvious that the surroundings were not suitable for us. Yet, our little group walked in slowly into the large room.
We all looked at each other in confusion, waiting for someone to take the lead. I don't think any of us knew where to go from there. We didn't have to wait long however, because Dorothy spots a man by the bar. This particular man had caught Dorothy's interest ever since she had laid eyes on him. The man's name was Jerry. She had overheard it when the men were talking around him a few days ago. I still didn't know the name of the soldier I met on the bench in the field.
"Are you really going to talk to him this time?" someone asked her.
Dorothy grinned at us but she had blush on her face, like she had done something really bad.
"I surely will. School hours are over anyway." she said, and I looked at her uniform, biting my lower lip. Dorothy had always been the bravest of us all.
"Lydia, can you come with me?" she asked and looked at me.
"Just to be safe." she filled in.
"Of course." I said, mostly because I had no idea what to do with myself without her by my side.
When she headed towards the bar I wasn't far behind her. I watched her thick brown hair swing behind her back through small talk, clinking of glasses and puffs of smoke, until we appeared beside Jerry. We took our seats by the bar. Dorothy sat down next to Jerry and I sit down next to her.
"Good evening." she said to him in a voice so alluring that it frightened me.
Jerry looked at her with a grin so wide it went to his bare ears. The top of his head was glossy, like someone had been polishing his head for him.
"Would you girls want something to drink?" he asked us, and I shake my head in instant refusal, but Dorothy nodded and looked down at his empty glass.
"I take whatever you had." she said, and I could not believe that was the same Dorothy I knew, she who loathed alcohol and tobacco.
I looked behind the desk at all the different bottles on the shelves and glasses that were hung up in the ceiling and I suddenlt felt dizzy. After a few minutes, Dorothy had forgotten all about me being by her side. Not wanting to disturb their conversation, I excused myself and got off the chair. Since I couldn't spot any of the girls I arrived with, I decide to walk out to the balcony to get some fresh air before heading back to my room.
It was cold and dark outside, but I could see the field of grass from the view and it was lit up with outdoor led lights that hang in the nearest trees and somehow, that me feel much warmer. I hear a sniff, and when I looked at my left I saw a person sitting there smoking by himself.
"Finally someone who have manners enough to do it outdoors" I thought.
When the man tapped his cigarette and a piece of the glow purposely falled down into the glass before him, I realized that it was the same man I had met the same morning on the bench in the field below us. My heart was beating hard, and I got a sudden urge to go back inside, yet I thought about Dorothy and her bravery, and I approached him.
"Why are you sitting out here by yourself?" I asked without stammering.
The man looked up at me in mild surprise.
"Oh, it's you." he said, sounding a bit relieved that it was me and not anybody else who had joined him on the balcony.
"I'm not a big fan of the cognac they sell here. In France, they wouldn't even dare to call that cognac." he complained and tapped his cigarette in the glass another time.
I then realized that it was a cognac glass he dumped his cigarette compost in.
"And the smoke tastes better outdoors." he added.
"Are you from France?" I asked carefully and sat down next to him on the only chair available around the tiny round table.
He only looked at me for a long time before answering:
"What's it to you?"
His reply was unkind, but he was smiling at me. The silence was overwhelming and he just kept staring at me, maintaining his slug expression. The worst part was that he looked to be expecting an answer from me.
They can't scare you, if you scare them first. I once read somewhere.
"May I know your name?" I asked, throwing another question at him.
"Why?" he asked, and I started to get a small bit annoyed with him. "I believe that would barely change the secrecy between us at all." he said and blowed out a breath of smoke in the air, no longer looking at me.
"Or would it, love?"
He talked in such a lighthearted way that it was impossible to get offended by him.
I thought about what he said. He was right. Getting to know him wouldn't remove the boundaries between us or allow us to be social during school hours. It would only tighten the shackles, if anything.
"Perhaps not" I said. "but I could gossip about you to the others before bedtime."
I was joking, but the man looked at me with genuine interest.
"So that's what you girls are doing instead of having tea, huh..." he said with a low chuckle. "What would you say about me?" he asked curiously, tossing what was left of his cigarette in the cognac glass.
It surprised me, because it had so much life left, that cigarette he was smoking. But it was strangely satisfying to behold. It was like he had decided; from then, he would stop with that disgusting habit and just focus on me and nothing else. His action gave me courage to answer his question with my entire heart.
"I would say that - whoever you are - is a gentleman, from not only France, but from all other romanized countries there is, and that I've seen you sitting on the garden bench in the middle of the grass field, and maybe, just maybe, I would tell them that you've called me 'love'... And that I might have given you the power to make me survive on your smile for days." I said to him, simply coming up with those things during that same moment.
I grinned, satisfied with my reply.
The man was staring at me without saying a word and I felt my cheeks heat up like I was leaning over a simmering stew. I found it hard to look at him, but when I did, I noticed that I had managed to make him look slightly surprised. His one eye examined my face with the best of its ability; my smile, my nose and my eyes and even the ribbon-ends that rested on my shoulders.
His gaze moved down to my waistline, and the fabric of my skirt that had been gathered around me where I was sitting. When he looked back up at my face again, he showed me his teeth in a mile-wide smile. He began laughing so much that the chilly air seemed to dance around us in puffs of exhausts.
All I could do was to hope that he wasn't making fun of me. Beginning to wonder if I had said something absolutely bold and embarrassing, I looked elsewhere and cursed my lips. I didn't know where my courage came from.
They can't scare you, if you scare them first.
"Pip." he said after he managed to calm down his laughter.
"It would be cruel of me to not let you know that my name is Pip." he filled in rather seriously.
"Pip?" I asked him, wanting to know if I could pronounce it right.
"Pip Bernadotte." he said delightedly and looked at me with a proud smile that made me believe that he had always been smiling, and suddenly I couldn't imagine him not to smile. I smiled back at him as best as I could.
"My name is Lydia Romanoff." I told him.
"Lydia." he repeated quickly.
"You must be the first Lydia I've ever met." he said.
I didn't know how to feel, knowing that I was the first Lydia he had ever met. But I didn't want to consider it a bad thing. At least I hoped that it wasn't a bad thing.
I felt myself smiling so much. I just smiled at him like an idiot, and when I did that, I noticed that he really was a very handsome man, even though he must've been much older than me.
School, home, everything, felt so far, far away and worthless and a part of me had forgotten who I was, and especially who I was before I met him. It was like that man, who I barely knew anything about, was the beginning of my life.
It didn't feel wrong or forbidden. It felt real, and almost a bit scary. But it was still better than being connected to the school in any way, belonging to it and all its expectations.
Then the door in to the lounge and out to the balcony opened and Dorothy called after me. We've been busted by Miss Hepburn.
I felt it when I stood up from the chair. I was quite certain that he would remember my name, and quite certain that he would forget all the other things that I've said to him... Then he would light another cigarette, and conceal parts of his identity to the rest of the world.
Because his name was that important.
Pip. Pip Bernadotte.