Havana Adams - Black Diamond

“Cutting it fine, aren’t you?” Grace’s prayers were not to be answered and she turned to face Nessa Hughes, her supervisor.

“Sorry I’m late, Nessa,” Grace said, curbing her impulse to roll her eyes. She needed this job, needed every penny of her meagre wage to maintain herself at Oxford. The job had seemed a godsend at first, a job at another college working as a server. But Grace had naively failed to consider what it would be like to serve students, peers, whom she might encounter in the lecture halls the very next day.

“Always one excuse after another with you,” Nessa grated, watching as Grace pulled off her coat and quickly donned a crisp blue apron over her skirt. “You watch yourself,” she continued and then strode away disappearing with a click of heels. Grace sighed. Things had not always been bad with Nessa. At first they’d bonded, talking about London and exchanging stories about the city. One day, Grace had mentioned her heavy course load at Hennies and from that moment everything had changed. She hadn’t intentionally misled Nessa about her student status, she had assumed that Nessa, like everyone else, knew she was also a student at Oxford but from that moment Nessa had reserved for her a cutting coldness, always ready to pounce on any misdeed by Grace, real or imagined. It seemed that Nessa was determined to remind her to know her place. In the kitchen, the other servers were already lined up and Grace risked a small wave at Vicky, her only real friend there, who like her was also a student at the university.

“Vicky, Melissa, Jack and Liam on mains. Grace, Janet and Martin – veg and sides.” Grace bit back on a groan. She hated being on veg, everybody did. With main courses at least all you had to do was set down the plate but with veg and sides, discourse with the students was always required. “Potatoes or salad, broccoli or spinach.” Grace nodded at the sympathetic look that Vicky had thrown her way and then, lest she give Nessa any cause to dock her wages or pull her up again, she grabbed the serving tray of sides and made her way towards the dining hall.

Newman’s Dining Hall was exquisite, a long oak-panelled room that dated back to the 14 thcentury with ornate stained-glass windows and walls lined with portraits of dons and alumni of note. Long, heavy, wooden tables illuminated by small orange lamps stretched the length of the room and newcomers were always stopped short by the beauty of it, by the sense of history that one was assailed with on entering this hall.

Grace had learned to ignore the impulse to stare around the Hall and instead get her serving duty over as soon as possible because even as Newman was known to be the grandest of all the colleges, its undergrads were also acknowledged to be some of the most obnoxious in the whole university. Grace was never more aware of being other than when she stepped into this Hall to serve these students. Her uniform always felt too tight, the spills of fat above her waistband always felt even more visible, her myopic eyes and her thick glasses felt even more of a burden. At Newman, Grace was never more aware of being black.

“Potatoes or salad?” she asked.

“Both, please.” Grace was grateful that at least this student was one of the ones who actually noticed her and answered. Often the students would be so engrossed in their conversations, so wrapped up in their laughs that she would stand there seemingly invisible. Grace moved on to the next group, deftly serving up the potatoes or veg as required. Her platter was almost empty, she would have to return to the kitchen soon. As she started towards the exit, Grace’s eyes were drawn to a young blond man at the centre of a group of laughing students. She watched the young man gesticulate, as his blond hair flopped over his forehead, while he regaled the table with a story that had them laughing again. Something about their carefree laughter held Grace and then she looked up and froze as she found a pair of blue-grey eyes staring intently at her. Someone at the table had noticed her scrutiny.

The din of the Hall died down as she found herself staring at the most beautiful man she had ever seen. He sat casually on the periphery of the laughing group and Grace felt her mind go blank and then suddenly the link was broken, the man with the jet-black hair and piercing eyes had turned his attention back to his friends. Grace’s gaze drifted back to the dark-haired man and then her gaze took in the whole table.

“Grace, what are you doing?” Grace spun around to see Vicky staring at her. Grace felt her cheeks grow warm; she’d been standing in the middle of Hall mooning over a hot boy. “Nessa will kill you if she sees you hanging around with an empty platter.” Grace nodded and she quickly headed back to the kitchen to refill.

Later that night, exhausted after three hours on her feet, Grace sat by the dim light of her lamp and completed her essay on the law of theft, yawning all the way through it. Though she was exhausted, as always sleep eluded her and she lay for a long time in the dark, running through the list of essays she had to do and jobs she’d need to apply for in time for the summer break. As she finally fell asleep, the last thing she thought of was the piercing blue eyes and the look that she had shared with the nameless boy in Hall.

CHAPTER 6

“Lola! Smile!”

Lola watched the look of derision that Amber shot at the lone photographer that greeted their arrival at the Chateau Marmont. Lola could practically read her friend’s mind. Paris would have twenty photographers; this lone snapper was an insult. Lola and Amber linked arms and together they walked into the infamous Hollywood landmark. It was a scorching Los Angeles afternoon and Lola pursed her lips, hardly bothering to hide her irritation.

“We should be by a pool,” she muttered. She tensed as she noted Amber’s frown. Too often, in the last few months, she’d seen her best friend frown at her. Lola was starting to worry that having her best friend as her manager was quickly going to become a buzz kill.

“Tyler wanted to meet,” Amber replied as they stepped into the ornate dimly lit lift that would take them down to the Chateau’s garden dining area.

“We could have met at his office, at least that’s by the beach,” Lola replied. Amber sighed and once again Lola felt that she was somehow failing to live up to expectations.

“What good would that have done?” Amber snapped. “The point is to be seen, to raise your profile.”

“I’m seen everywhere, I’m out every night,” Lola snapped back and she felt a dart of anger as she saw Amber roll her eyes. When did Amber start rolling her eyes at me? It used to be the two of them against the world. Silently, they stepped out of the lift and Amber waved across the dining area at Tyler who was seated at a prominent table at the centre of the garden. As they walked towards him, Lola was aware of a few surreptitious glances thrown their way. She recognised a famous Swedish actor that her mother had once worked with and an award-winning screenwriter who was tapping away into a laptop. As they approached Tyler, Lola took a moment to appraise him. In his pressed jeans, button-down shirt and sun-streaked blond hair, Tyler looked like every wannabe surfer dude that had ever walked the Thirty Mile Zone with a dream. By rights, like every one of those dreamers, Tyler should have wound up doing porn or working as a pool boy in Brentwood, while flirting with the co-ed daughter of the house. And yet, somehow, Tyler had shaken off the shackles of low expectations. He’d hustled his way up from runner to reporter at a cable entertainment station. He had tenaciously made the jump from reporter to presenter and, displaying the kind of smarts that no one would ever have suspected, given the artfully highlighted hair, he’d parlayed his way into producing. The Cable Network where he’d once been the go-to guy for coffees, now counted his production company and the revenue from his shows as the sole reason for its continued existence.