Summer Romance Boxset - Weightless, Revelry, On the Way to You

by Steiner, Kandi

  Internally, I cringed, but on the outside, I only offered a placid smile and nod. The word no wasn’t in my vocabulary, and it hadn’t been ever since I could remember. Mom had raised me to always be the hostess, the one always willing to accommodate others, and since it brought me more joy seeing others happy than it did to say no for my own discomfort, I always obliged.

  Always.

  Even if it meant giving up my time after school to take someone’s detention duty, or enduring paper cuts helping Mom seal envelopes for fundraiser invitations, or, like now, agreeing to be someone’s lunch buddy when even the thought of mindless small talk affected me in the way nails on a chalkboard would anyone else.

  “Of course. I’d be happy to,” I finally agreed aloud.

  “Wonderful!” Mr. Henderson clapped his hands together. “He’s getting set up in his classroom now, but I’ll introduce the two of you at lunch today. You’re a life saver, Charlie.” He waved as he turned to exit. “Happy first day back!”

  I waved in return, but when he rounded the corner and disappeared, my hand fell, my smile fading.

  It truly did bring me joy to be able to help him, to see that bit of relief in his eyes when I’d told him I could handle the task at hand. Still, my hands were already clammy at the thought of spending my lunch entertaining a stranger instead of reuniting with my favorite fictional characters between the pages of a very worn book.

  But I didn’t have a choice in the matter, and I knew I’d offer to help as many times as he asked me to. That was just who I was. It was who I’d always been. So, I let it all go with one long exhale as I ran through my lesson plan for the day.

  Charlie Pierce, the girl who always said yes.

  Reese

  “She should be here any moment, Mr. Walker,” Mr. Henderson assured me, his cheeks high and pink. He rambled on about Westchester as I listened attentively, trying to take it all in. My head already hurt from the overflow of information.

  Most new teachers would have already been here for two weeks, minimum, setting up their classroom and learning the ins and outs of the school. But this was my first day — first day at Westchester, first day back in my old hometown, first day teaching.

  It was the last thing I ever thought I would do — teach. And yet, when the opportunity had presented itself, I knew it was exactly what I needed to do. The music instructor who came before me had thirty years of experience on me, but I had a stint as a pianist on Broadway and a piece of paper that said I survived Juilliard. It was enough to get me the job, and enough to get me back to the place I had left fourteen years ago.

  The place I used to call home.

  Home was the only thing I wanted to find, and now that I was back, I realized how futile that hope was.

  “You’re going to adore Mrs. Pierce,” Mr. Henderson said, pulling me back to the small teachers’ café where we waited for the teacher who would be my assigned lunch date for the week. “She’s one of the best teachers we have, been here almost a decade now. And, she’s an alum. I had the pleasure of watching her grow over the years.” He chuckled. “She was a bright student. Always quiet, very studious and shy, but she shines even more as a teacher.”

  I nodded with a polite smile, tucking my hands in the pockets of my slacks. I’d assured Mr. Henderson I didn’t need anyone to tour me around the campus or sit with me each day at lunch. If anything, assimilating with the other teachers was the least of my worries. I was more concerned with being trusted teaching children who would grow into adults one day. If you told anyone who knew me as a teenager in this town that I’d one day be teaching at Westchester, or even at all, they’d laugh at the outrageousness of it.

  Though I didn’t attend Westchester as a kid, I had plenty of friends who did, and I’d been reckless enough with those friends to know that private school students didn’t mess around when it came to partying. My dad had put both my sister and me in public school, mostly because he wanted us to go to his alma mater, but also because I was a trouble maker from the time I was born.

  I guess he didn’t want to pay upwards of thirty-thousand dollars a year for me to be a hooligan at a school when I could do the same amount of damage for free at the school closer to our house.

  Still, it was prestigious — Westchester. I’d always wondered what it would be like to attend, and after only one morning within the halls, I could feel the history.

  Maybe this really would be my chance to start over, to find a little piece of the man who had existed before I’d lost everything that had meant the most to me.

  Mr. Henderson clapped his hands, and my eyes snapped to the woman who’d just walked through the door.

  “Ah! There she is!” he said cheerily.

  The woman looked up at us from the book clasped in her hands, and that was the first thing I recognized — a familiar, tattered copy of Jane Eyre, one I’d seen too many times to count in a life that felt like I’d never even lived it at all.

  “Escaping with Charlotte Bronte again, are we?” Mr. Henderson chuckled, but I couldn’t find it in me to laugh.

  All I could do was stare.

  Charlie Reid stood before me like a ghost, one that had haunted me for more than a decade, one I longed for just as long but never truly imagined I’d ever see again.

  I realized distantly that perhaps I did imagine I’d see her, if I was being honest with myself. Perhaps I hoped for it.

  Perhaps she was part of the reason I was back.

  Her brows bent together in confusion over her wide, honey eyes before she carefully slipped a silk ribbon bookmark between the pages and tucked the book away in her messenger bag.

  “Are you surprised?” she asked, her voice timid and small. It wasn’t the voice I remembered, the cheery, bird-like voice that used to make every sentence sound more like a song. Then again, she wasn’t the girl I remembered, either. She wasn’t sixteen anymore. Her hair wasn’t wrapped in two braids, one over each shoulder, and her eyes weren’t bright and full of life.

  No, Charlie wasn’t the same girl I’d left crying on my porch fourteen years ago on the last night before I left her and this town behind me.

  She wasn’t anyone I should have recognized at all, but I’d never forget those eyes.

  “Not in the slightest,” Mr. Henderson mused. He clapped me on the shoulder, squeezing hard as he gestured to Charlie, as if I’d taken my eyes off her for even a second since she’d walked in the room. “Mr. Walker, this is—”

  “Charlie Reid,” I finished for him, and I paused a moment, watching the mixture of shock and wonder fill Charlie’s eyes before I reached forward to shake her hand. “I’ll be damned.”

  She let me take her hand, her cool fingers slipping across my palm before I wrapped mine around hers and shook gently. For a moment, I just held her there, willing her to light up with recognition, to remember the boy who used to live next door.

  But she didn’t light up at all.

  If anything, it seemed any semblance of light she’d ever possessed had been extinguished sometime in the years since I’d seen her. Those eyes of hers felt hollow — not even sad, just empty. Her pale pink lips didn’t curve into the smile I knew and loved, her cheeks didn’t flush with heat at my gaze the way they used to.

  She just blinked, pulling her hand from mine and resting it back on the strap of her bag.

  “It’s Pierce now,” she said, and I searched those words for any kind of emotion, but came up empty-handed. “You’re back.”

  I narrowed my eyes a bit, trying to figure her out. She did recognize me — and all she had to say was you’re back?

  “I am, indeed,” I said, smiling as my eyes took the rest of her in. The long dark hair that I used to watch her braid was pulled up into a high, tight bun, and she wore a long, modest navy skirt and simple white blouse, a gold scarf topping off her school spirit. Westchester’s colors on everything she wore seemed to almost blend her in with the school, as if she wasn’t a woman at all, but just an extension o
f the hallways she walked.

  “You two know each other, I presume?” Mr. Henderson interrupted, jolly as ever.

  “We used to be neighbors,” I answered when she didn’t. “Charlie and my little sister were best friends growing up, and I was friends with her brother. Before we moved, that is.”

  “Splendid! That saves me a lot of silly introductions then,” Mr. Henderson said, checking the gold watch on his wrist before clapping me on the back again.

  His eyes found Charlie next, and I noticed then that she was staring at me, though her expression hadn’t changed. Her gaze found Mr. Henderson with a blink as he spoke her name.

  “Charlie, as we discussed, please give Mr. Walker a tour of the campus when you have a chance. And you’re still okay being his lunch buddy for the next week?”

  Her eyes skated to me briefly. “Of course. I’ll take it from here.”

  “Wonderful. If you’ll excuse me, I have an unfortunate meeting with a high school mom who can’t possibly believe her sweet son vandalized the bathroom before winter break.” He rolled his eyes, but gave us each a wink on his way out the door.

  There were at least a dozen other teachers in that lounge, but I only saw Charlie.

  We might as well have been alone, the way the air picked up a charge in Mr. Henderson’s absence. I wondered if she felt it, too. I only had her expression to go by, which gave away nothing. Either she hid her emotions well now, or she didn’t have any at all.

  I wasn’t sure which would bother me more.

  “Charlie Reid,” I mused, hoping she would lighten up a little now that we were alone. “A tadpole no more. What happened to the braids and oversized t-shirts?”

  “I imagine thirty-year-old’s wearing pigtail braids would be a little silly,” she said. “And t-shirts aren’t exactly dress code appropriate.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was trying to make a joke or if she was as serious as an obituary. I smiled anyway, hoping it was the first option, but the smile fell quickly at her next words.

  “And again, it’s Pierce now.”

  Pierce.

  Of course, she was married. It shouldn’t have been a shock. It shouldn’t have even solicited a single blink from me, let alone the dry swallow that torched my throat next. She was thirty now, and even with the light gone from her eyes, just as beautiful as she’d always been.

  I repeated it to myself, the fact that she was married, over and over again like a curse.

  But I still couldn’t tear my eyes away.

  “Right. Pierce,” I said finally, clearing the rawness from my throat in the next breath. “Sorry about that. Habit, I suppose. Married for long now?”

  “Almost eight years.”

  I whistled. “And here I can barely fix myself a bowl of cereal in the morning. I thought I was supposed to be the more mature one.”

  We both knew that was a joke. She’d always been the more mature of the two of us, even when she was just a pre-teen and I was supposed to be heading off to college.

  Charlie was five years younger than me, and neither of us would ever forget that. It was those five years that had kept us apart, that had been a constant reminder of what we both wanted but could never have.

  Now, at thirty-five and thirty, those years were no longer a road block. They weren’t even a speed bump.

  But the ring on her finger that she played with obliterated the road altogether.

  “Still burning water, huh?” she said after a moment. “At least one of us hasn’t changed.”

  She managed something of a smile then, just the slightest twitch of her lips, and that made mine double in size. Maybe on the outside, I hadn’t changed much to her — sure, my hair was longer now, curling over the edge of my ears, and my chest was broader, my arms, too, thanks to a friend I met in Juilliard who convinced me we’d land more tail if we spent more time in the gym than in the classroom. But I was mostly the same, I supposed.

  I couldn’t say that about her.

  I tried to do anything but stare at her, but I couldn’t stop myself from searching for the girl who’d stood before me fourteen years ago on the night before I left Pennsylvania for New York. I think she’d hated me that night, and I’d never forgotten the way her eyes had filled with tears that pooled and never fell when we said our goodbyes.

  She’d asked me to kiss her, and I’d said no — letting those years between us keep me from her like an electric fence.

  Even now, I kicked myself for that mistake.

  “You hungry?” I asked, gesturing to the café behind us. It was the kind of teachers’ lounge I’d only seen in movies, the kind no public school would ever have. My teachers most certainly brought bagged lunches and microwave dinners, but the Westchester teachers’ café had an entire buffet selection — from salads and hot sandwiches to grilled chicken and vegetable plates.

  Charlie eyed the food behind me, and I swore I could feel her stomach roll like it was my own.

  “I had a snack just before lunch, actually,” she lied. I knew it was a lie because she chewed her thumbnail in the next instant, one of her tells. It came out when she was nervous or hiding something, and the fact that at least one thing was still the same about her made me smile.

  I rummaged through my bag for an apple before abandoning the rest of my belongings on the table behind us. I pulled my coat on, wrapping a scarf around my neck next and taking a bite out of the fruit.

  “Guess it’s a perfect time for that tour, then.”

  Charlie only nodded, not looking back to ensure I followed her as she made her way out of the café.

  Once her back was to me, I let out a long breath, shaking my head. It was the marriage of a blessing and a curse, seeing her again after so many years. The boundaries that used to exist between us had vanished, but the new ones that had taken their place were made of steel, lined with barbed wire, drenched in warning to keep clear.

  The ring on her finger was a symbol of her commitment to another man.

  That alone should have sobered me. That alone should have been at the forefront of my mind, but it wasn’t.

  Charlie Reid was married, she was Charlie Pierce now, and still, it didn’t matter.

  I loved her, anyway.

  Charlie

  Reese Walker was back in town.

  I still didn’t believe it, even as he walked next to me as we toured the Westchester campus, his arm brushing mine as we rounded the courtyard. I kept my eyes on the buildings I pointed out to him as we passed, avoiding his gaze that begged me to look at him.

  I could see it from the first moment he saw me — Reese was looking for Charlie, the girl he left behind, the girl he used to know.

  She didn’t exist anymore.

  “Over there is where the athletics facilities begin,” I said, pointing across the courtyard where some high school students were eating lunch. It was freezing, both Reese and I bundled back up in our scarves and coats, but even in the winter there would be a few kids who would brave the cold for a lunch outside of the noisy cafeteria. “When you get a chance, you really should take a walk through it all. We have an Olympic sized swimming pool, a state-of-the-art fitness center, softball and baseball fields, soccer and football fields, wrestling room — Westchester prides itself on offering something for everyone.”

  Reese nodded, but his eyes only skirted over the facilities briefly before they were locked on me again.

  He’d changed, too.

  The first thing I’d noticed when I recognized him was that his hair was longer. It used to be styled neat and short, and now it grew as unruly as the boy I remembered. He’d filled out, his shoulders and chest broad, arms toned — the skinny boy from my childhood gone, replaced by the man I hadn’t seen in fourteen years.

  He was the last person I expected to see that day, and yet seeing him hadn’t triggered a single feeling from me. It was almost like he’d never left, like he was still next door and I still saw him every day.

  There was something burie
d, a stirring within me when he smiled. It pulled at a cold, barren yet familiar part of me that tried to surface, but failed.

  Maybe it was because I didn’t feel anything at all, anymore.

  “And this,” I said, pulling the door open that lead into our world-class fine arts and sciences facility, “this is where you’ll spend most of your time outside of the classroom, I imagine. The Jenkins Center for the Arts and Sciences.”

  Reese stood close to me as I rambled off all the features of the building, the various rooms and facilities evenly split between two seemingly opposite passions and skill sets. Westchester’s goal had always been to unite the two, science and art, to bring forth new, creative ways to imagine and see the world we live in. There were dance studios, digital music labs, as well as classical band rooms, an orchestra pit in the performing arts wing, various science labs with their own specific focus in each. It was massive, and I only had knowledge of about half of what it actually housed.

  “I can’t believe you went to school here,” Reese said from behind me. I turned toward the sound of his voice, finally allowing myself a moment to take him in as he marveled at the space.

  His emerald eyes were wide, one hand touching the wooden banister that led up a spiral staircase to the second floor where individual practice rooms were housed for students to reserve on their own. Those eyes brought memories of late nights at the piano, watching him play, listening to the music he heard before anyone else, the music he created.

  That laden part of me moved again, a yearning for something, but a simple blink buried it.

  I watched Reese absorbing it, the grand splendor of it all, the history, his gaze spanning the length of the hall before falling to the map in his hand as he pieced it all together.