The Thrill Is Gone

If there was ever a moment in which she thought she was going to die, it was then. She wasn’t exaggerating, not like when she’d toyed with the idea of fainting in order to get out of meeting Harry’s aunt and uncle. She was completely serious in her thinking that that was to be the end of her, that she’d soon cease to be. Her chest felt tight, as if every muscle present had suddenly decided to constrict at the same time, and she was having trouble breathing, it seemed to be that every breath took a great deal of effort, and she was burning up, beads of sweat formed along her hairline, and down her neck. She’d never been more terrified in all her life, not when a plane she’d been on went through a particularly rough patch of turbulence, not when that horse had charged her when she was four year old.

It was without a doubt, the single most terrifying moment of her entire life. And the strange thing was that there was no present danger, at least none that would lead to bodily harm. There was no risk of her dying tragically in an airplane crash, no chance of her being stomped to death by a startled horse, there was no risk of her sustaining physical injuries. She was in a safe environment, in the company of seven philosophy professors whom were seated directly across from her, tucked behind a grand mahogany table, but despite that safety, she was terrified.

Those professors weren’t as harmless as one might have thought. They held her future in their hands, it was them who would decide what degree classification she would graduate with, and despite having been confident in the days leading up to the presentation, she couldn’t help but begin to think that she had done such a shit job with her thesis, that they were going to refuse to graduate at all.

That might have sounded like a dramatic statement to make, utterly improbable, but the truth was that the professors had been silent for the last four minutes. They hadn’t said a word, not to her at least, they hadn’t glanced her way since she finished presenting her thesis to them, and with each passing second, she felt herself inching closer towards fainting and then an untimely death, because the uncertainty was killing her. Why were they being so cold towards her? What had been so wrong with her thesis that they’d decided to shun her and whisper amongst one another?

Paulina had believed that she’d done a remarkable job with her thesis. That the professors would be genuinely impressed and award her the first class honours that she’d been striving for ever since she’d arrived at Oxford. But they were silent. They had been for close to four minutes, and she’d been standing there, sweating profusely and feeling herself grow faint. She wanted them to just hurry up and ask her questions regarding the material. That was what they were meant to be doing. They were meant to engage her in her thesis, dissect it ruthlessly in order to see how she held up under the pressure and how much of the material she’d written about, she’d retained, but they didn’t do that. They just talked in low voices, and ignored her. And she was afraid that she’d fucked up so badly that they couldn’t even bring themselves to waste their time by asking questions about her thesis.

Feeling herself unable to simply stand there any longer, she readied herself to engage them, to ask what it was that kept the examining professors from asking questions regarding her work, but just as she resolved to do so, something strange happened.

They began to clap.

It was slow at first, only one person clapped, a professor by the name of Lady Vermeule, but then, sure enough, the others joined in. And they didn’t just clap, they stood. They abandoned their seats, which were fine Italian leather chairs, and applauded.

Paulina didn’t know what they meant by their standing and clapping. Were they being sarcastic? It seemed like there was a fair enough chance that they were. They were British, after all, And maybe when something’s so awful, they don’t just straight out say that it’s shit, maybe they mock the person by clapping for them, and then tell them that their work was horrendous, and that they ought to give up whatever it was they were thinking of pursuing. Her mind seemed to think that was likely, and so, after about twenty or so seconds of their applause, she called them out on it.

“Are you mocking me?” asked Paulina, her eyes slightly narrowing. “Look, I understand that my thesis might not have lived up to your standards, but there is no need to mock me,” she told them, and as she spoke, her voice cracked. She was stressed out. She hadn’t slept well in over two and a half weeks, having found herself forced to sneak in one and a half or two hour naps throughout the day, in order to get everything done to her personal standards. “I don’t even understand what it was that the committee found so horrible about my thesis, I thought I did well, remarkably so.”

“You did.” Sir Brendan Conaghan was the one to speak, he was her thesis advisor. “Miss Balcázar, we do not mock you. This –” he motioned to his colleagues “– is a congratulatory first-class honour, an honour among honours that has been bestowed upon you as a result of the consistently high marks attained by your seven essays, and the exceptional thesis which you have only just presented.”

“A congratulatory first?” she repeated in disbelief. “I . . . I didn’t think that was real. I’d heard of it, but believed that it was nothing more than a myth to get us to work harder.”

“They are real, I assure you.” Sir Conaghan smiled, showing no teeth. “Difficult to attain, but still quite real, and this is your congratulatory first, Miss Balcázar.” He resumed his applause, and as he did so, he stepped out from behind the desk, and walked towards her. “Well done.”

Sir Conaghan held out his hand to her, as if she was his academic equal, and after a moment’s hesitation, she took it, her grasp every bit as firm as his. She’d never shaken hands with him before, it was always a small tilt of the head to him, like to the other professors and they’d return the tilt, but she’d never shaken his hand, not until that moment at least. And as she shook his hand, an excited smile swept across her face, and her eyes began to flood with tears of joy. She’d gotten a congratulatory first. The sleepless nights, the stress, the emotional turmoil inflicted by ancient philosophers had been worth it. She’d done better than she’d ever dreamt she could. And every single philosophy professor shook her hand that day.

“Well done,” they said. “Well done.”

Their congratulations only lasted a few minutes, there were other students that needed to present their theses to the committee and be evaluated. So after having shaken hands with the professors and exchanged a few words, she exited the examination room, and walked out into the main hall where Alfred anxiously awaited her arrival. He had gone before her, well, not right before here, there had been a student before her, and then he’d gone before them, but he sat there waiting for her, eager to know what she’d gotten.

“Paulina?” he called to her when he saw her walk out. “How was it? What did –” he grew silent when he saw the tear stains on her cheeks. “You alright?” he asked, concerned. “What happened in there? Did you . . . did you fail?”

With the back of her hand, she wiped away her tears, smudging her eyeliner in the process.

“No, Alfie.” She smiled, laughing softly as she did. “I . . . ah, man, I just got a congratulatory first.”

“What?” he nearly shouted.

“That’s what I said.” She took off her academic cap. “I thought they were fucking mocking me in there. I got really defensive about it and called them out, but, uh, yeah, Conaghan told me that I got a congratulatory first, and well, now I'm here. And we’re both graduating with first-class honors.

“Yeah, we are.” He’d walked out earlier with a massive grin, saying that he’d gotten a first-class honor. “But I can’t believe you got a congratulatory first. I didn’t think those were real. I thought they were made up.”

“Same here,” she said. “But they’re real, and I’ve got one.” She began to laugh from sheer happiness. “Fuck. I’ve got one. And it doesn’t seem real, not yet, but I'm sure some beers will help out. What do you say? Wanna go celebrate at the pub? I feel like we deserve it.”

“We do. Bloody hell, we do. After the weeks we’ve been putting in, we deserve a pub to ourselves.” He let out a weary sigh. “I just can’t believe we’re done. You know? We are officially done. Wait. What are you doing? Don’t cry! Don’t you – fuck, alright, have yourself a cry.”

“Why would you say that?” she said, reproachfully. “I don’t . . . don’t want to think about this being the last fucking exam. I was just looking at it as us getting our grade, but now you’ve brought in the fact that we’re not gonna be students here anymore. And damn it, Alfie! Why would you do that? I’ve told you I don’t want to think about graduation and all that until I can’t help but think about it.” She rambled on, crying as she did so. “I can’t, fucking believe this is it . . .”

“It’s not as definite as all that.” He told her. “It’s only the end of our exams, that’s all. Just hear me out. Yeah? This isn’t the end. Not the end, end. Not really. There’s still more to do. And we’ve two weeks until graduation! Don’t you dare cry over that!” he ordered hastily, upon noticing that she was about to cry harder. “What I'm trying to say is we’ve not finished yet. Not truly. There’s, still loads to do. And the best part is we’ve no longer classes to attend or exams to worry about, so it’ll be brilliant, I promise. It’ll be all of us having a laugh.” He hoped that would work. “We’ve two weeks, Paulin. Cry at the end of those.”

“That really your speech?” she asked, wiping away her tears as she tried to compose herself.

“Yes.”

“That’s the most insensitive speech you’ve ever given me.”

“Well I reckon I could go on about your feelings and how you’re alright to cry, like I normally do, but if I were to do that then that would take time away from our drinking and celebrating. Do ya really want to take time away from that?”

She shook her head. “No, of course not,” she sniffled.

“Then I reckon your crying about and feelings can be held off until later. Ideally until graduation, since I suppose I could stand to do a bit of crying myself when that day comes.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and pulled her in close. “I know you’re worried. I am too. But there’s no point in sulking over something that can’t be changed. So let’s forget about it, and go out and get smashed.”

“I was thinking just a few drinks.”

“The effort we’ve put in calls for us getting proper smashed. What do ya say?”

Getting drunk so early in the day wouldn’t reflect well on her. It wasn’t even noon and she was in full academic dress, but she did want to drink, she did want to celebrate. She’d been living the life of a hermit for two and a half weeks, only leaving her apartment when it was absolutely necessary, and she was ready to start celebrating, to really just start living. She had two weeks left at Oxford. Well, more like two and a half weeks left at Oxford. And one of them would be spent with her parents there. So she wouldn’t be able to drink and party with her friends. Not to mention that she was going to stay at Chatsworth House from July 9-11th. So she really only had one week left at Oxford to do whatever the hell she wanted.

And Alfred was right. There was no point in sulking over something that couldn’t be changed. She had made her decision to attend law school in America, and she had to deal with it. So despite it being noon on a Thursday, she was determined to get drunk with Alfred, and just have a good time. They deserved it after all the effort they’d put into it.

“I say we need to get this shit going.” She grinned at him. “Let’s call some people up, make a thing out of it.”

“Perhaps . . . perhaps we should hold off on calling others.”

“Why?” she found herself asking. He’d been the one to say that it should be a celebration. So why did he want to hold off on calling some people to celebrate. “Alfie?” she spoke his name softly. “Why do you want to hold off on calling people? I thought you wanted to celebrate.”

“I do, truly. The thing is, I know we mean for it to be a celebration, that’s what I just went on about, but I reckon it’d be brilliant to just have it be us. At least for the afternoon,” he added. “We’ve not gone drinking on our own in ages.”

There was something in his gaze that made her doubt his words. He was hiding something, that much was clear, but knowing Alfred well enough to trust that in time he’d fill her in, on whatever it was he had to, she agreed to it just being them.

“Alright then,” she said with a smile. “It’ll just be us.”

Alfred grinned. “Fantastic! It’s been ages since we’ve been drunk in the middle of the day.”

“It has.” She nodded in agreement, looking up at him. “But I intend to be drunk every single day this week. And you’re gonna be drunk with me.”

“Sounds like a plan, my dear friend.” Alfred gave her shoulder a squeeze and then removed his arm. “Let’s get going then. Did you bring your bike? Or did ya walk?”

“I brought my bike. You?” she asked as they began to walk towards the nearest exit.

“Brought my bike as well,” he said. “Should we drop them off at your flat and then get a cab back to the pub? Cuz I know I won’t be fit to be riding. We nearly got tickets the last time we rode about drunk.”

“Shit. That’s right. I seriously forgot that happened.”

“How’d you forget? You were there, laughing about! Couldn’t get you shut up while the officers were asking their damn questions. And if it hadn’t been for that officer – the one with the lisp – recognizing who you were, we would’ve been fined!”

“I wasn’t the reason he didn’t give us tickets. He was just being nice.”

“Nice because he didn’t want to upset a certain Royal Highness,” stated Alfred, very matter-of-factly. “Let’s get going then. We’ve the press to get through.”

Sure enough, when they stepped outside, the familiar photographers were sitting near the bike rack where Paulina had secured her means of transportation. Sometimes, she wished she lived closer to campus so she could just walk there, and sneak out some door without being spotted, but she lived far enough and carried around enough books for walking such a distance to be a hassle. So she endured the press asking her questions as she removed the restraints from her bike, she kept quiet as they asked her how the exam had gone, if she felt confident about her work. She kept quiet all the while, and biked back to her apartment, where she dropped off her bike and changed out of the mandatory academic attire she had to wear for examinations. Alfred had ended up going back to his flat so that he could also change out of the clothes, but it wasn’t long before the pair of them were at their favorite local pub, sitting in a booth with their pints.

They toasted to their first-class honours, and then lapsed into a comfortable silence as they proceeded to down half of their pints. It felt good to not have to worry about finishing an essay or perfecting a thesis. The last two years of their lives had been academically exhausting. They had been intellectually pushed past their limits, and now, after all that, they were done.

Alfred would never go back to school. He’d already sorted his academic life out, having attained his undergraduate degree at Harvard, having received his law degree at Oxford, and now he was to receive his BPhil from Oxford. There were no more university courses for him to take. It was finally time for Alfred to venture into the real world, it was time for him to get a job and take on his grown up responsibilities.

The same couldn’t be said of Paulina. There were still three years left of education for her. Three years of exhaustion, and sacrifice. But for the moment, she didn’t think of any of that, for the moment she only focused on the fact that she’d done remarkably well at Oxford, and that she was now celebrating with a dear friend.

“Alfie?” she called to him, putting an end to their mutual silence.

“Yes?” He looked up from his pint, looking incredibly pensive, the bags beneath his eyes suddenly becoming incredibly prominent.

“What’s going on with you? You look . . . well, you look really serious.” She hesitated before asking, “Are you alright? Is everything fine with you?” she paused. “With you and Olivia?” she added, gently.

“Nothing’s the matter with us.” He assured. “We’re well, really. The thing is . . .” he began to fiddle with his pint, tapping his fingers on the cool glass. “. . . The thing is I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about me and Olivia, what I see happening a few years down the line. And I – well, I wanted this afternoon to be just us, because I know that the rest of the week, we won’t really have the chance, what with everyone wanting to see everyone, but we’ve the chance now and I wanted to talk to you, because I can’t be sure when I’ll do it. I know it won’t be soon, what with my barely starting proper work in August. I’ll need time to save up. And she, well, she’ll want to dedicate herself to work for awhile, before anything’s settled, but I’ve toyed with the idea, a few times, and I’ve been thinking that I really like. I really want to make it true. And I wanted to tell you, because well you know, you’re my best mate. And what I’ve been trying to say, what I mean to say, is that I . . . I want to marry her.”

“You what?” she nearly yelled, the mixture of delight and shock, getting the best of her.

“I want to marry her,” he repeated. “Better said, I intend to. Not now, of course. We’re both only getting out of uni. And I don’t think she’d want to become engaged straight out, and I don’t have the money to get her a ring right now – well, I do have the money, but it’s not my money, I’ve not earned it. I want to earn the money I use to pay for her ring. So it’ll be awhile before I'm properly able to. I think a year, maybe a year and a half, to save up enough for a ring suiting of her, and to have money for the wedding, not enough to cover it, of course, but enough to have half of it, possibly paid for.” He paused, suddenly becoming very conscious of her silence. “What do you think?”

“I think . . . I think you two are going to be very happy together.” Paulina smiled brightly, affectionately at her dear friend. “It’s amazing, Alfred. And I know that its years away, but I'm so happy for you, so pleased. This . . . fuck, it’s gonna be great. I know it. And I don’t really know how the hell it is that I’m gonna manage to keep this a secret, but, um, I’ll find a way.” She laughed softly to herself. “You’re gonna get engaged. Damn. I always knew it’d happen, but I thought your ass would take a lot longer to ask. I was thinking mid thirties would be when you finally worked up the courage. Not – wait, one or two years from now, you’d be 27, 28 – not late twenties.”

“Neither did I,” admitted Alfred. “Now with how long it took me to ask her out, but I don’t know, I suppose it just feels right. Marriage has always been something I wanted. Children and a wife, domestic felicity, that’s for me. I’ve always been old fashioned about that, but I could never truly see myself with anyone, and then Olivia came in, and I can’t see my life without her. Even though we’ve not been dating even a year, I know she’s the one I'm meant to share my life with.” He gulped down the remaining beer. “I'm mental. Aren’t I?”

“Far from it,” she reassured.

“Good. Glad to hear that.” He smiled, and then decided to go on and ask a favor of her. “You’ll help me pick the ring. Won’t you?”

At that, she started to choke on her drink. “What?” she croaked out.

“The ring,” he said. “You’ll help me pick it, when the time comes. I know the odds are you’ll be in America by then, so that might’ve complicated things if I’d chosen to buy here, but I haven’t. That is to say, there’s a charming shop in Boston, I stumbled across it during my time at Harvard, and it specializes in fine jewelry and has some very pretty pieces. I bought my nanny a necklace from there, and fancied I could get the engagement ring from there, if you would join me. Because I . . . well, I’ve an idea of what Olivia might like, but you’d have an even better one.”

“I’d be honored to.” She reached over and placed her hand atop his, giving it a gentle squeeze before pulling away. “When the time comes for that, you’ll stay with me at wherever it is I end up living. And we’ll get the ring together. It’ll be beautiful, and I'm deeply honored that you’d want my help.”

He smiled affectionately. “Of course I want your help. This . . . me and Via, it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t dragged me out to meet her. I remember going on about how much I didn’t want to meet your mates. I was quite an arse about it, kept saying that I wasn’t interested in making any new mates, and how I would’ve much rather preferred to go home, but you kept telling me to stop being such a prat, and you dragged me along. And then I saw her, standing there with her hair a mess because she’d fallen off her bike and into a shrubbery.”

“Poor Olivia scraped her knees and had some dirt in her hair.”

“She was still beautiful though.”

“She was,” agreed Paulina, smiling as she looked upon Alfred’s face. “You loved her then. Didn’t you?”

“I did. Though much good that did. It still took ages for me to do anything about it.”

“What matters is that you made your move, and now, well, now you’re happy, and you know what you want for your future. I think it’s great that you know exactly what you want. And I know when the time comes, Olivia will say yes.”

“I hope so.” Alfred leant back in his chair. “Well, now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s get another round. I'm far too sober.”

“We need to get some champagne to toast your future engagement.” Paulina said as she began to slide out from the booth. “Why you looking at me like that?”

“Because you’re mad,” he said, simply. “We can’t toast something that hasn’t happened.”

“Of course we can. Now let’s go!

They stayed at the pub until half past two, when they suddenly became aware of how hungry they were. Their newfound sense of hunger led to them stumbling out of the pub’s back exit and down several blocks to the local Tesco. The first few minutes of their walk went undisturbed, the photographers had waited for Paulina to exit out the front, since she didn’t really frequent back exits all that much, but that time she did, and she got seven minutes of privacy until word got out that she was a few blocks down.

As soon as the photographers caught wind of her whereabouts they drove over, and then followed the drunken youths on foot. Paulina and Alfred were walking well enough, every so often when they left the sidewalk and walked onto the street in order to get to the other block, they had a little trouble with walking, one of them would stumble a bit, not enough to seem completely smashed, but enough for the press to know they’d been drinking a bit. The press thought that since she’d been drinking they might be able to pry some statements out of her, that the alcohol would’ve loosened her tongue, but they didn’t get an incriminating statement from her, all they got was one simple sentence.

“The day’s far too beautiful to waste it following me around.”

Those were her first words to the press, the first time that most of them had ever heard her voice in person, and for a moment they were taken aback by it, taken aback by the clearness with which the words were delivered, but they soon recovered and tried to get her to talk some more, but she didn’t. She went along with her day, she and Alfred filled up a shopping basket with snacks – some healthy, some far from it – and some proper food to eat, and then, when they left Tesco, they hailed a cab in order to avoid having to walk all the way back to his flat with the press surrounding them.

They spent the rest of the day getting drunk, and at one point, Alfred took out a box that housed some edibles he’d picked up earlier in the week. At first, Paulina hesitated about getting stoned. She hadn’t done drugs since her relationship with Harry went public, and she was worried that word might get out, but then she reminded herself that it wasn’t like they were going to smoke it, people down the hall weren’t going to smell the fumes and no one outside would even know what was going on in the apartment. She deserved it. After all the work she’d put in, she deserved to sit back, eat an edible, and just let herself be. So she ate an edible. The effects hit her much stronger since it normally would have since she was out of practice, but it was gladly welcomed. For the first hour of the session, they joked around and talked and philosophized, for the first hour they were fully functional, but the batch of edibles that Alfred had picked up were way stronger than anything they’d ever tried before, it was a new strain his dealer’s supplier had invented, and in the second hour, they both just sort of collapsed, Alfred lay sprawled across the couch, Paulina lay on the ground, and they remained there for two hours, completely immobilized, listening to the blues, and just being.

When they finally regained their mobility, they stumbled into the kitchen where they tore open bags of chips, devoured cookies, and downed orange and cranberry juice. They spent the rest of the day tucked inside Alfred’s apartment, and the effects of the alcohol coupled with the marijuana in the cookie was so strong, that Paulina ended up spending the night at Alfred’s. She passed out on one of the couches, he passed out on the other, and that was how they spent their first day as Oxford graduates.