Special thanks to my friends at Croft Manor for beta-reading this for me and another thanks to Max (Reasons Lost) for beta-reading this for me.

All feedback appreciated!

Edited 1/2/23. Edit notes at the end of the chapter.

Hangovers, with their ability to bring someone crashing back down to Earth in a fiery blaze after flying high the entire night, were the bane of every college student's existence. Practically sweating alcohol as she groaned out her regrets from the night before, Sam once again swore she'd never drink again. Slowly, she opened her eyes to find she had passed out in the bathtub.

Waking up in a strange location the morning after was starting to become a familiar occurrence. She'd been staying in the apartments of random students she'd met on campus every night since getting to London. Her entire first week was a blur of marijuana and margaritas, with not a single class being attended all the while. Today, Sam was crashing at the place of a girl named Molly that she had met. She seemed like a cool, earth-loving hippie. Sam enjoyed her energy.

Sam's head began throbbing, and she held her face in her hands with a groan. Mom was right, fuck tequila… she thought to herself. She'd gone partying before during her high school years, without the knowledge of either of her parents, of course. But for all the parties she went to, she had never gotten hangovers as nasty as had perpetually plagued her since she'd gotten to college. When she wondered what had changed, her phone decided to remind her as its text tone went off. Wincing at the way the sharp noise reverberated through her head, Sam pulled her phone out of her pocket and, squinting against the light her home screen emitted, checked to see who had messaged her. Her stomach sank when she saw Jess's name on her screen. "Shit…" she muttered under her breath, unlocking her phone to read her texts.

Is everything alright? I just saw your texts from last night. Had she texted Jess while drunk? With a newfound sense of panic rising in her chest, she scrolled up the screen to see that she had indeed done so:

I think breaking up was a mistake.

We could make long-distance work, couldn't we? I could come back and visit every break.

I could even fly you out her to England. It's so cool out here, you'd love it

Just say yes.

So much for not being the annoying ex… Sam thought to herself, slinging an arm over her eyes and hissing out an assortment of choice profanity. She missed Jess, and she'd be lying if she tried to tell herself otherwise. How could she not? Jess was someone who Sam believed was her soulmate. There was no other way to explain the connection she'd felt with that girl. It was like they were cut from the same soul fiber.

Only now it was over. They had agreed to give each other space for the time being and she had gone and violated that new boundary. She was officially the clingy ex.

Sam removed her arm from her eyes, wincing at how comparably bright the bathroom was to the insides of her eyelids. She lit up her phone's home screen to check the time since she had forgotten to before, and her eyes widened when she saw that it was nine thirty in the morning. "Fuck!" She blurted out, doing no favors for her throbbing headache, and scrambled clumsily out of the bathtub. She had already missed the first two lectures of her literature class that week, and if she didn't get moving she'd miss another one as well. She could just picture her father seeing her attendance record-

Wait, wasn't she an adult now? How could he have access to her attendance record? She was in college now. Sam took a deep breath to calm herself and clambered out of the bathroom and onto her feet. Still though, she was awake early so she might as well try to make it to her classes.

She scrutinized her appearance in the bathroom mirror to see if she was presentable enough to be seen in a public area. After straightening her shirt and brushing some stray hair from the shaved side of her head to the other, she gave an approving nod to the mirror and stumbled out into the living room to search for her belongings. She racked her brain to try to remember where she'd left her bag, which was nowhere to be found. Bumbling around the apartment, over bodies, and around empty bottles, she ducked under the kitchen table to check there, but was greeted by someone's well-hidden vomit heap, instead.

Disgusted, she recoiled away from the disgorgement, ringing her head like a bell on the underside of the table as she went. Blinking tears from her eyes, she spotted her bag on top of the table. She snagged her bag and a pair of sunglasses from the face of one of the passed out bodies, headed for the door, and made her way out of the building.

The moment she exited the complex, the sounds of the busy London streets hit her like a train and sent her into a fit of vertigo-induced nausea. She had definitely overdone it the night before. Swallowing thickly to keep anything from coming up, she made her way down the street to campus as quickly as she could manage without keeling over in sickness.

While she walked, her thoughts sluggishly drifted back to Jess and how she was going to explain her texts from the night before. No matter what angle she approached the situation from, she couldn't come up with a good excuse for her behavior. She considered just letting the matter drop and not responding before promptly discarding the idea.

Lost in her thoughts as she was, she looked to the left rather than the right when she reached the intersection where she needed to cross. She jumped back onto the sidewalk and nearly lost the contents of her stomach when a car swerved past, honking. Her hand flew up and she put her first two fingers on display for the driver; she had at least mastered British vulgarity, even if she had not adjusted to traffic flowing in the opposite direction she was used to. When her heart had stopped racing, she attempted to brave the intersection once more after ascertaining there were no cars. She crossed the street without further incident to reach the outskirts of campus and spotted the building where her class was held not too far away.

She approached the structure, checking the time on her phone as she did so to see, with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, that she was ten minutes late. She frantically yanked one of the doors open to let herself into the lobby area before stopping dead in her tracks. She had just realized that she didn't know what room her class was in, much less where that room was. Doing her best to not give in to panic, she pulled her class schedule up on her phone to see that she was in room one hundred and thirteen and looked around to see if there were any signs on the walls to direct her to where that was. She soon found one hanging overhead, and went down the hallway to her left to her class's alleged location. Sure enough, there was a class in session when she peeked into the correct room. Bracing herself for the immense amount of embarrassment that was likely about to ensue, she turned the door handle downward to let herself in.

The professor, a middle aged man with black hair specked with silver, mercifully paid her no mind when she entered. Perhaps he didn't see the use in taking time out of class to grill students for being late, or maybe he felt that students who made a habit of missing class or arriving late weren't worth the effort of giving attention to. Most likely, however, the reason he didn't acknowledge her was because he was in the middle of lecturing.

Not wanting to push her luck, she hurried to the back of the room where she could remain inconspicuous and suffer in hungover silence. Not that long after she took a seat, she noticed a few people giving her strange looks and soon realized she still had sunglasses on, and quickly took them off. Despite how much her head pounded with nothing to protect her eyes from the intense lights hanging overhead, she pulled her notebook out and tried to key into what the professor was saying.

"Now then," he said, clearing his throat, "now that we've finished going over skills and techniques for effective essay writing, it's time that we got into actual literature…" his gaze slowly drifted back and forth across the room from beneath his glasses. "But before we do, I feel compelled to ask this since there's always a few international students…" Sam clicked her pen to keep herself distracted from the drum pounding in her head, "anyways, who here has no experience with reading Shakespeare's work?"

Sam looked up from her pen-clicking to see that five students had their hands up before returning her gaze back down to her desk. "Not to worry," the professor said, "I will be available to provide assistance to those who need it. The main thing you need to keep in mind is that learning Early Modern English and how it is structured is the key to understanding Shakespeare's work." He clapped his hands together, causing Sam to jump and wince, and rubbed them against each other before continuing, "Alright! That being said, our first reading will be Macbeth, which you can all get a copy of at the end of the lecture when I set the box out."

Sam had to resist the urge to groan in despair. She had read Shakespeare's plays in high school, sure, but she had read the No Fear Shakespeare versions, and something told her that she wouldn't be able to get away with that in college. The professor approached the whiteboard and picked up a marker. "Speaking of understanding Shakespeare's work...something else that I've found to be helpful with regards to reading comprehension in my experience is examining the context of the text. Who was the author of the text? What was happening when it was written? When were these things happening? Where were they happening? Why are things happening? Who, what, when, where, and why. Sound familiar? These are the questions you need to be asking yourself whenever you go to read a text. So, I'm going to take the time to examine the context of Macbeth with you, and then you're on your own for the rest of the course. My goal here is not to give you answers, but rather give you the tools you need to get those answers…"

All around Sam, students nodded in understanding but all she could understand was how nauseous she felt. If she could just get through the lecture, she swore she would never touch tequila again. The professor pulled the cap off of the marker he was holding and wrote William Shakespeare in large letters on the board, "So...who was William Shakespeare. Anyone? Go ahead, Miss." When Sam looked at the person he pointed to, she did a double-take and felt her jaw drop. Was that…

Jess?

She blinked and quickly realized the girl in question was not, in fact, Jess. Their hair color and height were pretty much the same, certainly, but outside of that there were distinct differences between the two. For one thing, the girl she was looking at was more toned and muscular than Jess, but not in a way that was unattractive. Her eyes were also more sharp and intense, and her body more shapely…

Sam felt herself rapidly going red, and averted her gaze to the professor as he regarded the girl expectantly. When she began to answer in a posh English accent, Sam felt her cheeks grow only redder.

"He was an English poet, playwright, and actor born to a middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. He married Anne Hathaway and had three kids with her before leaving them all behind sometime in the late sixteenth century to travel to London to begin his career in theater. He died in his hometown at the age of fifty-two and is credited by historians as the author of...I believe it was thirty-seven plays?"

Great… Sam thought to herself, cute accent, hot… But a fucking know-it-all. She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned while the professor regarded her with an intrigued expression for a moment or two.

"What's your name, Miss?" The girl shifted in her seat slightly before responding.

"It's...Lara, sir." The professor raised a brow at her and studied her with a new expression on his face that Sam couldn't decipher.

"And what are you studying, Lara?"

"Archaeology, sir."

"I see, that would explain it. Why haven't I heard from you in class until now?" Lara Croft only answered with a shrug, "Regardless, very well answered. Yes, so that would answer the who, where, and part of the when…" he began writing shorthanded notes on the board while he continued, "So, Macbeth, Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedy, was most likely written in 1606 which gives us the rest of the when. Now this time period would have been early in the reign of King James I…"

Sam couldn't have been happier to leave class. By that point, the only thing she could focus on was how badly she wanted ibuprofen and something greasy to settle her stomach. She pulled her phone up to see if burger joints existed in London when it rang. She took one glance at the caller ID and immediately groaned in despair when she saw the name Jessica Burgess. She tapped the still-vibrating phone on her forehead and deliberated over what she should do. She briefly considered not answering before discarding the idea on the grounds that doing so would only serve to further worsen the situation. Instead, she took a deep breath and tapped the green answer button.

"Hello?" She asked as calmly as she could.

"Sam?" Came Jess's voice from the other end of Jess.

"Hi, Jess."

"Do you know why I'm calling?"

"I do."

"Care to explain? You doing alright?" Jess asked. Sam sighed and held the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger.

"Yeah, no, sorry I'm actually really embarrassed about that…I'm not the brightest human sometimes, as we both know-"

"You know I don't like you talking about yourself like that," Jess cut in quietly. Sam didn't know how to respond, so she didn't. Jess sighed before continuing, "Were you drunk?"

"Yes."

"Was it for a positive reason or for a negative reason?"

"I…" Sam's voice trailed off.

"Sam."

"It was for a 'I wanted to get shitfaced' reason."

"And why did you want to get shitfaced?" Jess pressed. Sam stayed quiet. "Sam."

"You already know the answer," Sam replied at last.

"I was afraid you'd say that." Jess went quiet for a moment or two before finally speaking again, "You know what people say a lot, Sam?"

"What's that?" Sam asked as she began to walk.

"They say that drunk words are sober thoughts. Do you want to get back together with me?" The question caught Sam so off guard that she stopped dead in her tracks.

"Yes," Sam blurted out before she could exercise some restraint.

"Oh, darling…" Jess sighed yet again. "I don't think we can do this." Sam's stomach sank.

"Do what?" She demanded with a hint of panic to her tone.

"This. Being in contact, Sam. I don't think it's going to be good for either of us in the long run."

"How can you say that?!" Sam exclaimed. Her heart began to race for the umpteenth time that day. She knew what she was about to happen, and the prospect of it had sent her body into fight or flight mode. She chose to fight. "How can you say that after everything?! We can make it work, I love you, I-"

"Sam!" Jess barked, stunning Sam into silence just long enough for her to say what she needed to. "You need to let go of me. You aren't going to be able to do that if we stay in contact."

"So what?" Sam spat, "We're just going to forget each other? Pretend the other person doesn't exist?"

"I never said that! Will you please calm down?"

"Then what are you saying?" Sam wanted to scream. Sam wanted to cry. Sam wanted her pain to be known to the heavens in the sky.

"I'm saying that we need to give each other space. To breathe. To live our own lives. To see other people. It takes two to tango, Sam, and I quite frankly can't do long distance. You know this. We talked about it. And you still chose to go to England anyways–which I don't blame you for in the slightest because you deserve to get away from the toxicity of your family! I love you enough to let you go, Sam, and you can't even show me the courtesy of making this easy!"

"Oh, so you're the victim here?"

"We're both the victims, Sam. We're victims of fate and circumstance. It is what it is. I'm not saying that we can't be friends in the future, but you need to stay away for a while. I know you, I know how strongly you feel your emotions, and I know that us continuing to talk right now will destroy you. So on that note, I'm going to hang up because I have an 8am that I have to get ready for."

"Okay," was all Sam managed to say through the tightness in her throat. Jess took a deep breath.

"I just want you to know that I'm sorry though. I'm sorry things have to go this way. Just please know that." There was a click on the other end of the line followed by complete silence.

"Yeah...me too…" Sam said to no one while still holding the phone to her ear, "I'm sorry, too."

Edit notes: rewrote some of the exposition at the beginnings and redrafted Sam's conversation with Jess.

You find me on the following sites:

Tumblr: whattheschmuck

Twitter: whatthe_schmuck

**Love S.S. Endurance? You should join this discord server that I admin using the following invite: dG4PZf4