Be Who God Meant You To Be

The apartment looks so much bigger with nothing in it.

Meg has never thought of herself as especially sentimental about things, outside of a small handful of objects she's given significant meaning to. If asked, she would have guessed that she would feel the same way about places.

But then, she's never done this before. In her whole life, Meg has never moved out of a place. Not really. Her room at her parents' house still looks largely as she left it when she went off to university, which wasn't significantly different than it looked when she was in high school. And the res hall room she'd spent her first year in hardly counts – it was a res hall room, after all, and she can count her stay there in months.

She's lived in this apartment for almost three years.

She got engaged in this apartment.

In another hour or so, she'll probably never set foot in it again.

And that's . . . strange.

Carrie and Olivia have already gone, Carrie taking most of the living room furniture with her. The few odds and ends of furniture that were Meg's are gone now as well, the desk and the dresser to what she probably needs to stop thinking of as "Alain's apartment," the bed to storage in his parents' basement, the bookcase to the third years in the apartment across the hall for $20.

Alain has taken most of her boxes (neatly labeled, inventoried and cataloged in a notebook as she packed them) over to his -- their apartment. There are a couple still stacked by door, next to the vacuum cleaner and the bucket of cleaning supplies. Meg is, in theory, doing the final cleaning of the place.

The truth of the matter is that there's not a lot of cleaning left to be done. She and Carrie and Olivia had done that the evening before (just them -- no parents or siblings or boyfriends or fiancés or petits amis du jour). They'd carried out the trash and packed up the rest of Olivia's scattered things (haphazard, unlabeled, no inventory or system), scrubbed the kitchen and the bathroom. And then they'd sat in the floor of their empty apartment and eaten pizza out of the box, rather as they had the day they'd moved in.

Meg's furniture had left this morning, and she'd offered to vacuum and do the final pass of cleaning after it had gone.

To finish removing any trace that the three of them had lived here for most of their university careers.

So here she is, in a too big, empty, personality-less apartment, that both does and doesn't feel like some place she belongs.

Meg leaves the living room and goes to the small room in the back of the apartment that has -- had been her bedroom for three years. It's already empty, but she walks all the way around it anyway, and opens the closet door. It has been one of those places the end of the universe has liked to turn up.

Today it just opens onto an empty closet.

She stands looking into it with her hand on the doorknob, anyway.

She hears the front door open, and knows it's Alain even before she hears him call, "Meg? C'est moi."

He and she are, after all, the only people who still have keys.

"I'll be right there," Meg answers.

"I'm going to take these boxes to the car. I'll be right back."

"D'accord."

Meg hears the front door close behind him, and then closes the closet door. She doesn't look back over her shoulder as she leaves the room.

She looks into Carrie and Olivia's room, and the bathroom. Everything is neat and clean and in order.

She reaches the living room just as Alain lets himself back into the apartment. There's a single box (Meg: Bedroom: Box 6: Books: Mysteries) still sitting by the door, with cleaning supplies and her purse. Alain gestures to them. "Is that everything?"

Meg nods. "That's it, yes."

"Ready?" he asks, and she nods again.

Alain leans down to kiss her, once, and then picks up the box.

"Come on, ma belle. Let's go home."

It's 5:04 am when Meg is awakened from a less-than-sound sleep by someone knocking on the apartment door.

And knocking.

And knocking.

Carrie steps out into the hallway, softball bat in hand, just as Meg reaches the front door. A bleary-eyed Olivia appears a second later, holding the cordless phone.

Meg stands up on her tiptoes to look though the peephole in the door, and then turns back to her roommates, surprised. "It's Alain."

At five o'clock on Saturday morning. Knocking on the door. Again.

"Better let him in before he wakes up half the building," Olivia says.

"Do you want us to stay?" Carrie adds, though she has lowered the bat. Meg has suspected it has not gone unnoticed by her roommates that Alain hasn't been around in a week.

"No, it's okay. Go back to bed. Thanks, though."

Meg undoes the various locks on the front door. "Alain? What are you--?"

It's as far as she gets before he kisses her, his hands on either side of her face, her back against the door frame.

Which, she supposes, means that he's probably not here to break up with her.

"I had to see you," he says.

"At five in the morning? Wait, do your parents know where you are?" Because it's not exactly a normal time to be out visiting.

He waves a hand, dismissively. "They think I'm staying over with Luc."

"And does Luc know where you are?"

"He's asleep," Alain says. And when Meg opens her mouth to protest further, he lays one finger across her lips. "And I left him a note."

"All right," Meg says. "I just . . . didn't want anyone to worry. Do you want to come in?"

The good news, she supposes, is that she's been dating him long enough (and woken up with him often enough) that she's not too terribly self-conscious about the fact that she's in pajamas, with her hair escaping from its tangle-preventing braids, and unbrushed teeth.

The bad news is that there's a lot of self-conscious before you hit too terribly. And that things have gotten awkward enough for her to feel self-conscious around Alain at all.

Meg sits down on the couch, but Alain is just-short-of-pacing.

"So," he says, and then there's a long pause.

"Yes?" she says, finally.

"I've been thinking. About everything you told me. And . . ."

"And?"

"I had all this planned," he says. "What I was going to say. How. I've been up all night planning this. I couldn't even wait until it was really morning. And now I can't remember, or it doesn't sound right anymore. The thing is . . ." Alain stops walking. "It's kind of hard to believe those stories."

"Oh. I see."

Maybe he is here to break up with her, after all.

"I'm not done. It's hard to believe the stories, Meg. But it's easy to believe you."

Meg blinks. It's five in the morning and she hasn't exactly slept well in something like a month. "I . . . I'm not sure that makes sense."

Alain looks at her, and then starts to laugh. "Ma belle, there's a magical bar that follows you around Montreal, and I'm the one not making sense?"

"Sorry, I . . ."

He sits down next to her on the couch. "It makes sense," he says. "Anyone else -- almost anyone else -- and I wouldn't have been able to believe it, but I believe you. I've been thinking, a lot, about what you said, and when you said things had happened, and what you were like when they did. Days you'd been upset and I didn't know why, why your friends were only in Montreal for the day last spring, the reason you were so sure that Robert was not going to bother you again, even why you came when you did last summer while your sister was visiting . . . it all makes more sense when I add this bar of yours in.

"So, either you've been delusional the whole time I've known you, or it really happens. And maybe I don't know enough about crazy people to know, but I think I would have noticed. And you don't lie, Meg. You keep secrets, sometimes, but I can see why you do, with something like this."

He smiles, a little. "And then I thought, well, if I was some all powerful thing picking people from across time and space, I'd start with Meg. So, if there is something out there doing just that, it makes a certain sense to me that it would pick you.

"Anyway, whatever is happening . . . it's part of who you are, right? And I really like who you are. I love who you are. And I want to know about things that make you happy or sad or scared . . . where ever they happen.

"So . . . I love you. And I trust you. And if you say there's a magical bar that follows you around Montreal and where you go to talk to angels and vampires and whatever . . . then I believe you."

"You believe me?"

"Yes."

"You believe me."

"Yes," Alain says again. And then looks at her. "Meg . . . are you crying?"

Meg brings her hand up to her face to check, and then nods. "I seem to be, yes."

"Was it . . . I've never seen you crying before. Did I say something wrong?"

She shakes her head. "No. You said everything right."

"Then why are you crying?"

"I don't know," Meg says. It just seemed the thing to do, somehow.

"But it's good, right?"

"It's very good, yes."

"And we -- you and me -- we're all right, yes?"

"We're better than all right."

"Good," Alain says. And then, "Good," again, before pulling her over so that she's curled up against him instead of the corner of the couch.

"I really have no idea what I did to deserve you, Alain."

"That one is easy."

"Is it?"

"Yes. First, you made yourself into an intelligent, kind, funny, beautiful, wonderful girl. And then you gave me a ticket to a play."

"And that's all it took?"

"Yes."

"You, love, are an easy sell. And the best boyfriend anyone, anywhere has ever had."

"Alain asked me to tell you that you might want to dress up," Carrie says, coming into Meg's room while Meg is looking through her closet, trying to decide what to wear for whatever it is that Alain has planned for her birthday. "So, not that sweater."

"What do you mean, 'Alain asked you to'?" Meg asks, hanging the sweater back in the closet.

"Oh, and I'm supposed to give you this," Carrue says, handing her an envelope.

The note inside says, "Meg, You said I was allowed to conspire with your friends. Joyeux anniversaire. À bientôt. Alain"

Meg rolls her eyes. "Green dress, then?" she asks Carrie.

"Wear the tiara," Carrie suggests, with a wave towards the plastic crown on Meg's dresser, and leaves Meg to change.

Alain arrives, as ever, exactly at six.

Carrying grocery bags.

And Olivia and Carrie, laughing, take their bags and their coats, and promise they won't be back before ten.

"So, we're staying in?" Meg asks, when her roommates are gone, with a nod towards the bags.

"Yes. Happy birthday."

"So, exactly what we're doing tomorrow?"

"No, tomorrow we are cooking. Tonight, I am cooking."

"I stand corrected," Meg says. "So almost exactly what we're doing tomorrow?"

Alain laughs and then kisses her. "It's a good plan, ma belle. We both thought of it."

It is a good plan. Because given that she has two roommates and he lives with his parents, four hours of privacy is just about the best birthday present she can have.

But . . .

"You could have told me that we were planning the same thing--almost the same thing, for two nights in a row."

"But that would have ruined the surprise."

"And why did you have Carrie tell me to dress up?"

"Well, partly to, ah, what's the word?"

"Mislead?"

"Yes, mislead you. And partly because . . . you look very beautiful in that dress, ma belle."

Alain is not, truth be told, much of a cook, but he can make crepes; his uncle taught him. And while no one would mistake Alain's for the ones that Sylvain makes and that are written up in guide books, they are still very good.

"I almost forgot," Alain says, after dinner, as they're settling in on the couch. He pulls a small box, wrapped in green paper, from his pocket and hands it to her.

"Liar," Meg says. "I doubt you even came close to forgetting."

"You are, of course, right. I was in no danger of forgetting about it."

"You already gave me a car," Meg points out.

"But this is your real present. Open it."

There's another box inside the first, a deep burgundy velvet box. And inside it is a ring, a gold filigreed band set with an amethyst.

"Alain . . ."

"Don't say I shouldn't have. And don't say it's too much. Because I wanted to. And it's not enough."

Meg had been about to say at least one and possibly both of those things. Which leaves her kind of at a loss for words.

"It's . . . it's beautiful. Thank you."

"You're welcome." He takes it out of the box she's still holding, and takes her right hand. "Let's see if it fits."

It fits the third finger on her right hand perfectly. "It's beautiful," she says again. "But you have to stop giving me jewelry, Alain. I'm running out of places to wear it."

"Now I think you're the one who is lying," he says. "There are still plenty of places. Like right here," he says, mouth against her ear for a moment before he moves to kiss her neck, and her collar bone, and the hollow of her throat. "And here."

"Alain . . ."

"And here," he says, touching the base of the ring finger on her left hand. "I have plans for this place, someday, Meghan Margaret Ford. If that is all right with you."

And that leaves her utterly at a loss for words. For a second or two, it's like she's forgotten even how to breathe. And then she nods. "Someday, yes."

"Someday," he says, lifting her hand so he can kiss it, too. "I love you."

"Je t'aime, aussi."

They're silent for a moment then, fingers entwined, until Alain says, "What are you thinking about?"

"I am thinking," Meg says, "that this has been the nicest birthday of my life. And I am thinking that you are going to have a very hard time topping it, next year."

Alain laughs. "Then I better start planning now."

Her trip home from campus Tuesday night is almost surprisingly uneventful.

(When you're half-braced for something to happen, even when it's a relief that nothing does, there's an odd feeling of incompletion, energy that will spend itself in cleaning the kitchen, in restoring order, not because the kitchen needs it but because Meg does.)

She declines Carrie's invitation to run out for a quick dinner, saying she has work to finish. Calls her parents, calls Alain, to talk about nothing of any importance, to find a way back to something like normal.

And then she sits at her desk, and she makes lists and she makes plans and she deals with Roe-bear McCrory, without making it any less, or any more, than it is. And by the time she goes to bed that night, she knows exactly what she's going to do.

On Wednesday morning she gets up, makes coffee and muffins, and summons her roommates to a breakfast meeting. And while they stir milk and sugar into mugs, Meg moves her glass of orange juice two inches from the edge of her plate, and then says, "Roe-bear has been following me."

"What?" Olivia says.

"Roe-bear. Your leaves-a-lot-to-be-desired ex? Has been following me. Since Halloween."

"Oh my God," Carrie says. "Meg, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she says, and this morning, it's true. "But this is a problem, and it needs to be addressed, so I'm addressing it."

"Wait," Olivia says. "My Roe-bear has been stalking you for almost three months? And you're only telling us now?"

"I told you he was bad news," Carrie says.

"Whatever," Olivia says, with a literal wave of her hand. "What are we going to do about it?"

"I'm going to go talk to campus security, and see what they say. And if he calls, don't tell him I'm here, don't tell him I'm not here, just . . . hang up. If you see him hanging around, let me know."

"If I see him hanging around, I'll--" Olivia starts, and Meg shakes her head.

"Just ignore him, Olivia. I suspect any reaction is just going to encourage him."

"Don't give him any satisfaction," Carrie says. "You know, pretend you're still dating him."

Olivia throws a piece of her muffin across the table at Carrie. "Are you sure, Meg?"

"Yeah. I just want to avoid him."

"Does Alain know about all this?" Carrie asks.

"Not yet. I'll see him Thursday, and I'll tell him then. I think it's better in person, and when I can say that I've got things in hand."

"So Roe-bear doesn't wind up in the hospital?" Carrie asks.

"And so Alain doesn't wind up in prison," Meg says.

"Okay," Carrie says. "When are you going to talk to security?"

Meg looks down at her watch. "I don't have a class till one, so maybe in about a couple hours."

"I'm really sorry, Meg," Olivia says.

"It's not your fault."

"Yeah, but, still."

"All right," Carrie says, getting up to get the coffee pot and refill her cup. "Tell us everything that's happened."

It takes about an hour to go over everything, to answer all her roommates' questions, to make sure everything is covered. Olivia, remarkably, is the one with the early class on Wednesdays, and breakfast breaks up when she has to get ready to leave for campus.

Meg spends more time than she wants to admit trying to figure out what one wears to ask for security's help in dealing with a stalker. She's just finished braiding her hair when the doorbell rings. "Can you get that?" Carrie yells from the bathroom.

"Are we expecting anyone?" Meg asks.

"Yes," Carrie calls.

Meg looks through the peephole in the door and then amends, "Are we expecting Ed Marriner?"

"Yes."

Meg opens the door.

"Meg. Hi."

"Hi."

"Carrie called," he said.

"Carrie called?" she repeats.

"Yeah. She said you needed someone to walk with you to campus."

"Did she?" Meg says. "Ed, would you excuse me for a moment?"

"Ah, sure," he says.

"Make yourself comfortable," Meg says, with a wave at the sofa, and heads back to the bathroom. "Carrie, what have you done?"

"Look, Olivia's in class, I have to get to work, and you cannot go traipsing around Montreal by yourself right now."

"Traipsing?"

"You didn't want Alain to know until you could tell him, which I totally respect, but you need someone to go with you, in case Olivia's Biggest Mistake is out there, lurking. So I called Ed, and told him what was going on, and asked him to come over."

"Carrie!"

"Humor me, okay? And let him walk you to campus?"

It's a little awkward, conversation is stilted, but Meg would be lying if she said she wasn't a little relieved to have him there.

"Thanks," she says, when they reach the security office.

"I'll wait," he says.

She talks to a security officer who is very nice, who takes her seriously, who makes notes about what she tells him. He tells her to keep her eyes open, stay in groups, avoid shortcuts, not engage with Roe-bear if he turns up, and to let them know if anything else happens, no matter how minor or innoculous it seems. It's about what Meg expects, but again, it's helpful just to have someone treat it all like it's not in her head.

Ed Marriner is waiting when she leaves.

"How did it go?" he asks.

"Fine. I really appreciate your coming with me."

"Any time," he says.

"So, can I buy you lunch or something?" Meg asks.

"How about a cup of coffee?"

"Sure."

She quite literally collides with Roe-bear McCrory outside the cafe Ed recommends, and the only reason she doesn't fall is that Ed catches her elbow.

"You okay?" he asks, and she nods, but she can already feel herself tensing.

So she's startled when a slightly wild-eyed Roe-bear says, "This is an accident. You know that, right? I didn't know you were going to be here."

Meg doesn't answer.

"You tell your friends this was an accident."

"My friends?"

"Your friends," Roe-bear says. "The creepy one with the dark hair, and the psychotic blonde. Tell them this was an accident. And just . . . stay away from me," he says, and takes off down the street.

"That was him, wasn't it?" Ed asks. "The drunk guy from the party who's been harassing you?"

"Yeah."

"And . . . is he drunk right now? Because that made very little sense. Who was he talking about?"

Meg shrugs. Because she has a very good idea who he might have been talking about, but not one she can share with Ed Marriner.

If she's right, though, she's pretty sure that was the last she's going to see of M. Roe-bear.

And as final images go . . . she'll take it.

Alain is running late.

He called, about an hour ago, with a hurried explanation that Meg hadn't quite followed -- something about a crisis at Oncle Sylvain's restaurant involving a running late waitress and an omelette and a pigeon, and he'll be there when he can and fill her in on all the details when he sees her.

So Meg, who had planned to be out at noon on Saturday, is sitting on the battered couch in her apartment and talking to her roommate Carrie, who is in their tiny kitchen, making brownies.

And her other roommate, Olivia, who is usually barely out of bed at noon on a Saturday, went out hours ago, with her newest no-doubt-soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, Robert.

"We have to do something about Olivia," Carrie says, when Meg asks her what brought on the baking fit. Because Carrie doesn't cook. And combining Carrie and ovens leads to melodrama, smoke alarms, and tears.

"And you want to feed her?"

"No," says Carrie. "I want to find her a decent guy. Because this guy -- the drummer? Roe-bear? Loser."

"That actually is how the name is pronounced in French," Meg says. "More or less." Carrie's pronunciation had been over-the-top and half-sneered.

"Yes," says Carrie, "and if he weren't from Winnepeg and his last name weren't McCrory, that would be relevant."

"Okay, point."

"So," Carrie continues, putting the brownies into the oven, "we have to find her somebody better."

"And that requires chocolate caramel brownies?" Meg asks.

"It requires opportunity. So I invited my partner for my lit class project to come over here and work today. So they could casually meet. And bond over brownies."

Ah. It all becomes clear.

"And did you tell him he was being set up with your roommate?" Meg asks.

"I might have mentioned that there was someone I wanted him to meet," Carrie says, dropping onto the other end of the couch, wiping brownie batter off her hands with the dishtowel.

"So the brownies are a bribe?"

"Hey, we have to work on the project anyway," Carrie says.

"So what did you tell Olivia?"

"Nothing. She'd never go for it. Thus the casual. How was I supposed to know this would be the first Saturday ever that she was gone by 10AM?"

"Well, you do have to work on the project, anyway," Meg says, and Carrie throws the dishtowel at her.

"It was a good plan. He's a nice guy. If I didn't have Stephen, I'd date him myself. He's smart and nice and funny and charming enough, and even kind of cute, if you like the boy-next-door-type."

Meg is about to point out that she has never seen Olivia demonstrate even a molecule of interest in the boy-next-door type, when there's a knock at the door.

And the smoke alarm goes off.

"You get the brownies, I'll get the door," Meg says.

She promptly forgets about the sorry about the noise and welcome anyway that she had planned. Because she's met the man in the hallway twice before -- once on a sidewalk, once in a foyer.

"Oh . . . my . . . it's you?"

"Yeah," he says. "It's me. Hi. Please tell me you're the one Carrie wants me to meet. Because I've got a line about fate I want to use if you are."

"Um, actually, I'm . . ." Meg trails off as Carrie begins swearing at the still shrilling smoke detector.

And then, of course, Alain arrives. "Meg?" His eyes go from Meg to Carrie's classmate to the direction of the alarm, and then back to Meg. "Is everything all right?"

"Carrie was baking," Meg says.

"Ah, that explains the alarm." The look he gives the other man makes it clear that it does not explain his presence. "Alain Gagné," he says, holding out his right hand. His left, however, comes to rest on Meg's shoulder in a gesture that just manages to keep to the endearing side of possessive.

"Ed Marriner," the other man responds, shaking Alain's right hand with his eyes on Alain's left.

Meg considers rolling her eyes, but instead says, "Ed is Carrie's partner for a project for her literature class."

In the apartment, the alarm finally stops.

"Well, the brownies are a total loss," Carrie announces. "Oh, hi, Ed. Hi, Alain. Are you coming in, or are we all just going to hang out here in the doorway?"

"Alain and I are going to go ahead and go," Meg says, grabbing her bag and her jacket from the hook by the door. "Good luck with the project, and it was nice to have met you, Ed."

Alain continues to frown slightly at the closed door while he helps Meg with her jacket. She starts to laugh as she pulls her hair out from under the collar.

"What?" Alain asks.

"Nothing," Meg says. "You're just cute when you're jealous."

Alain makes a face at her. "That boy is interested in you, ma belle."

Meg shrugs. "Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't really matter." She reaches up to rest a hand against his cheek. "Either way, I'm not interested in him."

"Oui, je sais," Alain says.

"Bien." They stand for a moment, and then she lowers her hand to take his. "Et maintenant . . ." she says, " . . . un pigeon et une omelette?"

Alain laughs, and laces his fingers through hers. "C'est une longue histoire . . ."

Meg is more or less encamped at a table in the library on Monday evening. Carrie helped her carry her things over in the late afternoon, fetched most of the books she needed, and will be back around 8pm to help her put everything back, and then they can grab a late dinner somewhere.

(If there is one thing being on crutches has taught Meg, it's that sometimes you just have to be gracious and let people help you. It doesn't necessarily come all that naturally, but she's trying. And Carrie's right -- what takes her fifteen minutes would take Meg at least forty, and Meg would do the same for her, and yes, all right, if Meg really insists, she can pay for dinner.)

By 7:00, she's finished everything she needed the library books for, and most of what she wanted to get done that night. She checks back over the notes she's taken and wonders what the likelihood of Carrie's getting back early is.

"Thought I might find you here," Brian says, pulling out the chair next to hers and sitting down. "Can I interrupt?"

"Sure," she says, cheerfully. "Anyway, you kind of already did."

"Guess I did," he says. "Well, I won't keep you long."

"It's really okay; I'm mostly done."

"Yeah, well, I really just needed to talk to you about Saturday," he says.

"What about about Saturday?"

"I know we had plans, but I need to cancel."

"Our plans for Saturday?" Meg says, carefully.

"Yeah."

"Saturday. My birthday. You're canceling our plans."

"Meg, come on. We'll go out Sunday, for Valentine's Day. And for your birthday. I just have some other stuff I need to do this weekend." He glances over at something across the room, and Meg turns to see what he's looking at.

There's a group of his friends over by the door, clearly waiting for him to finish up already. And it occurs to Meg that this is all happening here, in the library, with people waiting for him, so that she'll just say okay and not make a fuss.

Meg looks down at her notes, and counts to five. And then ten. And then twenty.

"Come on, Meg," Brian says, when the silence has gone on too long. "Don't be like this. We'll do something Sunday."

Meg looks up at him, and if he flinches, it's not really surprising. He's never seen Meg mad before, not really.

"Don't be like what?" she demands, raising her voice just a little.

"Don't be like . . ."

"Don't be a goody two-shoes? I think that was your last complaint about me," she says, and she's no longer even remotely using a voice that's appropriate for a library. People at nearby tables are starting to turn to look at them. And it's pretty clear his friends can hear her. "Well, be careful what you ask for, Brian, because this is my not being a goody two-shoes."

He starts to say something, and she doesn't let him.

"Laura was right about you; you are a jerk. A thoughtless, self-centered jerk with an ego roughly the size of Ontario. And I don't need that, or you. So you know what, do whatever you want on Saturday. And on Sunday. All the weekdays that follow, next weekend . . . because you certainly don't have plans with me. Ever again."

"Meg--"

"Good-bye, Brian. Better luck with the next girl you knock down a flight of steps." Meg picks her notes back up. She can't say that she's actually focused on them, while he spends no more than thirty seconds trying to reason with her, she doesn't look up from them, either.

There's a certain amount of paperwork that accompanies being a university student, and while Meg is the sort of person who hands things in early, one of her professors is Mr. Last Minute. Which is why she's spent the last forty five minutes, waiting to get something signed.

It was bright and sunny when she got there, but night falls pretty early in Montreal in January, and it's already getting dark and colder when she leaves. The sun-melted snow that dripped off roofs today is freezing into treacherous icy patches on walkways.

And stairs.

The young man is in a hurry, going up the steps, when he moves to avoid one icy spot he manages to push her onto another.

Meg is not quite sitting and not quite lying at the bottom of the steps. There's no pain, not yet, but she's pretty sure that once her brain has processed the flood of information coming from her ankle, it's going to hurt a lot. Because she's also pretty sure she heard the bone break.

And, yes, okay, that hurts in a breath-taking, eye-watering, oh-my-holy-good-God sort of way.

"Oh my God," says the young man, hurrying back down the steps. He has the bag she dropped when she fell. "Are you all right?"

She shakes her head, slightly. "I think my ankle's broken."

"Broken?" He drops back on his knees near her feet. "Which one?"

"Left," she says, "but please don't--" she breaks off in a hiss of indrawn breath as he touches it.

"Sorry," he says, and straightens up. "Probably shouldn't move that, then."

Meg shakes her head. "No."

"Right," he says. "I'm going to go find someone and get them to call for help. I'll be right back."

He takes off his coat and drapes it over Meg, over her protests.

"Right back," he says, again, and starts back up the steps. And then stops. "I'm Brian," he says. "Brian Reed."

"Meghan Ford," she says. "Meg."

He smiles. "Meg. Don't go anywhere, okay?"

Meg doesn't see herself as having a lot of choice in that matter. She tries to get comfortable, but given that she's sitting on an ice cold sidewalk with throbbing pain in her ankle, it's kind of a lost cause.

She doesn't wait long, though, before Brian is back with help, and someone who knows what he's doing splints her ankle, and they can get her inside to wait for the ambulance.

She's surprised, a little, when Brian announces he has no intention of leaving her alone at the hospital, and more than a little surprised when he actually sticks around for the whole process of x-rays and explanations and a having a cast put on and getting a refresher in the use of crutches. But he does. And she's glad to have him there, because he's easy to talk to and a good distraction from everything else.

He makes sure she gets back to her residence hall, and hands her off to the care of her roommate, but not before he's gotten her to agree to meet him for lunch in a couple of days, so he can check up on her.

Carrie and Olivia want to hear everything, but pain killers and sheer exhaustion are taking their effect, and so Meg promises to fill them in tomorrow and goes to bed.

She's almost asleep when it occurs to her that this a heck of coincidence. If she were the sort of person who believed that sort of thing, she might even have said she jinxed herself. She's not, of course, but still. It's going to make for an interesting time explaining things, if she winds up in That Place in the next six to eight weeks.

(And what are the odds that she won't?)