St. Elsewhere

A week had elapsed since Mia had gone to the concert with Lauren, and at present, Mia was packing her weekend bag, angrily throwing t-shirts and jeans in, muttering furiously under her breath.

She rammed her calf length light brown UGG boots on, pulled on a Lostprophets hoodie that Sean had lent her – he'd also thrust a massive stack of CDs at her and insisted that she listen to them all. He took it as his mission to educate Mia music wise. The CDs were now all in the car ready to keep Mia company.

Shoving her phone into her jeans pocket and swinging her bag over her shoulder Mia picked up her keys, walked out her apartment and locked it.

Outside she threw her bag in the small Volvo, slammed the boot door shut and then proceeded to slide into the passenger seat.

"Sulking doesn't suit you." Said a cocky voice to her right.

"Shut up Sean."

Mia was 'sulking', or in a mood as she preferred to call it, for two reasons.

First of all she had to go home for the weekend.

Secondly Sean insisted on driving her up.

Of course he won. Sean always won the fights. Mia took mental note to take classes on how to win a verbal fight, she wasn't going to get anywhere like this.

"I really don't think that this is necessary Sean, I can…" Mia started but Sean cut her off.

"I know you can drive, and I know that you've done this trip more times than you've gone through the routine for The Nutcracker, but I'm gonna take you home. End of discussion." He said with a grin, knowing he'd won.

Sean was adamant about driving her, he said that if she was bailing out on him this weekend – missing out on a gig they had that weekend, then the least she could let him do was drive her up and so spend at least a fraction of the weekend with her.

"Ergh, you're just so…"

"Full of it?" Sean offered. "Sweetie tell me something I haven't heard before."

And with that Sean turned the key in the ignition and drove out of the parking lot.

- - -

The drive up to Oxford was relatively uneventful. Mia gradually slipped out of her foul mood to the coaxing of Sean through jokes, funny stories and atrocious singing along to the songs on the radio on purpose once Mia had taken out the Glassjaw CD, that had been blasting through the car on repeat.

Mia was apprehensive of letting Sean drive her home, what if some of the family crisis became apparent to him? Mia didn't want to take the risk. But Sean had won this battle. Again.

"Aren't you happy about going home?" Sean asked randomly after having sung along with great feeling to Kyile's 'I just can't get you outta my head'. "I know I'd be, home cooking and finally someone that does your laundry."

Mia laughed.

"Well you would wouldn't you?"

"You still haven't answered the question." Sean reminded her.

"It's complicated." Mia admitted and glanced at Sean, who was focusing on the road intently but at the same time listening to her.

Mia decided to carry on.

"There's a lot of bad vibes at home because of me going to the Royal Ballet. Neither of my parents really liked the idea, they still don't to be honest. They can't accept that I don't want to go to Oxford University and spend my day lecturing other people. Going home is just… stressful really." Mia said honestly.

This admittance of the situation was something entirely new for Mia. She had those thoughts running around her head for months but had never voiced them for fear of nobody understanding her, or for being ungrateful once people looked at her home situation.

But with Sean somehow things were different. With him she was allowed, and able, to be honest. She'd been more honest with him than she had been with her parents since the age of 15.

"That must be pretty tough for you then." Sean said sympathetically and took his eyes of the road for a minute to smile supportively at her. "But in the end, it's what you want. Not what you're parents want."

Mia smiled back at Sean. She was lucky to have met him.