He shook his head with a secret smile. Talk about awkward. His roommate, Trevor, had dragged him out to open mic night at the local coffee shop. Almost the moment they arrived, Trevor started a conversation with a leggy brunette who sat at the table beside theirs. Declan tried to turn his attention to the open mic performers, but his attention kept drifting to Angie, a blond undergrad who had been at the coffee shop with the woman Trevor was so fascinated with.
When he had finally gathered up the courage to talk to Angie, he had gotten so nervous that he had tripped and landed on his backside at her feet, his disposable coffee cup flying through the air and splashing all over Angie’s brilliant white button-up shirt.
The entire coffee shop had gone silent, including the performer at the front of the cozy, wood-paneled room.
As dread pooled in his stomach at stammering out the many apologies he owed everyone around, he glimpsed Angie looking down at her shirt and then back at him. Without missing a beat, she shrugged. “You know, if you didn’t like my shirt, you could have just said so.”
They’d had a hearty laugh on their first date the next night.
Back in the present moment, he could almost picture her grin, both pleased with herself that she’d gotten him out of his funk and fond of the memories his clumsy attempts at romance brought up. That was her modus operandi whenever he came to her on the verge of some emotional meltdown like the one he’d nearly had tonight.
She’s right, you know. I do want you to be happy.
He approached the sign where just a few minutes ago, Marissa had assured him he was doing better than he probably thought he was. Though they’d only just reconnected less than an hour earlier, she seemed confident in being able to make judgments like that. What was wrong with him for letting her? Did he hope she was right?
He touched the stone, his wedding ring reflecting what little moon and street lamp lighting was nearby. “I’m just trying to figure out what life without you looks like. I’m about a million miles away from being happy again.”
Even as he said the words, he remembered how right it had felt to laugh with Marissa in the diner, to smile at the story behind the diner patrons they would never cross paths with again.
There was a light breeze, and he could almost imagine Angie feathering her fingers through his hair with affection. We’ll see.
Chapter Five
Marissa
Marissa’s hands shook as she struggled to unlock the van door. She was supposed to be reconnecting with an old friend. She was only ever supposed to be consoling an old friend in the wake of loss, an old friend who had once done the same for her.
If only her lips didn’t still tingle with excitement after they’d unexpectedly met Declan’s for the first time in almost twenty years. If only her knees would solidify back into the strong foundational pillars she expected them to be.
What's the matter, Marissa? Afraid of a little kiss?
Yes.
No.
Maybe?
She tugged open the door and sat in the front seat, grateful for the reprieve from the way her knees knocked together just a moment ago.
That kiss had threatened twenty years of walls and carefully constructed protections, revealing for the first time in nearly two decades the girl who had died when her parents’ car crashed. The girl who still dreamed those fantastic visions of the future. The girl who believed she was capable of something other than mere existence, maybe even capable of joy. The girl who needed Declan like she needed to breathe.
Her head spun. Maybe that punch had been spiked. It was the only reason she could imagine that she would even think...
She shook her head and started the car. Better to get home before Declan, good man that he was, combed the parking lot looking for her.
Her cheeks pinked. What made her think the widower was any less confused by the kiss than she was? Teenage Declan would have searched high and low for her, but that Declan was untouched by loss. Sure, grown-up Declan would want to make sure she was okay, but he probably didn't have the emotional capacity in his grief for much more than his own pain.
Still, she didn't want to take any chances. After all, she was the woman who'd thought it wouldn't do any harm to kiss the man's cheek, and look what happened then?
She tapped her steering wheel, glancing down at the clock on the dashboard. What had happened back there? Was it her or had it been him?
The absurdity of that idea almost made her laugh. A knee-jerk kiss after recreating one of their favorite dates? No, it had been her idea to walk down memory lane. Her idea to follow him after he asked to be alone. The fault for that kiss rested solely on her shoulders.
Besides, it was just a kiss. They weren’t walking down the aisle or anything. If kisses were any kind of cosmic signal meant to clue two people into how right they were for each other, she would be married already.
She chuckled as she pulled out of the parking spot.
If any kiss had the potential to be such a sign, it would have been that one. Electric and familiar, like the static stillness before a good thunderstorm.
She pulled out of the parking lot and merged onto the road that went past Nancy’s Diner. Her stomach clenched as she drove past the neon sign and watched it fade away in her rearview mirror.
Maybe it was better to pretend nothing happened here tonight.
“YOU’RE HOME LATER THAN I expected.”
Marissa kicked her heels off as she walked in the door, not bothering to pick them up and put them in the shoe basket by the door. She’d worry about them tomorrow. “You told me not to be home any earlier than nine.”
Her sister ran a wet dishcloth over the kitchen island. “Yeah, but I didn’t think that would stop you.”
Marissa sniffed the air, realizing for the first time that her kitchen smelled like chocolate chip cookies. Had all of her cooking implements been unpacked before she left? Somehow, she doubted that would have made a difference to her sister. She would have searched through the boxes to find what she was looking for if she was determined to bake. “Did you make those for me in case this went badly?”
Cassie shrugged. “My rotation in triage taught me to be ready for any possibility.”
Marissa hesitated. She really didn’t want to rehash the evening with her sister, which she’d have to do if she told Cassie that she’d been right to make the cookies. It hadn’t been a terrible night. Just awkward and confusing at the beginning and end.
Cassie eyed her, angling for some indication of how things had gone. “If you’re just getting in, I guess these are just going in the cookie jar.”
Marissa didn’t react, just let her eyes glance over at her sister. “You make it sound like I was out all night on some secret tryst. It’s only ten-fifteen.”
A timer went off, and Cassie armed herself with an oven mitt before she ducked into the oven and pulled the batch of cookies out, immediately reaching for a pancake turner which she used to set the gooey, lumpy cookies on a cooling rack. “No offense, Marissa, but if you’re alone after seven on a Friday or Saturday night, you might as well be on a secret tryst. I don’t think you’ve been on a date in years.”
Marissa gaped at her sister as she swiped one of the warm cookies. “I date.”
Cassie snorted. “Since when?”
“Okay, so it’s been six months or so, but that’s just because it was tax season, then we were selling the house, and packing to move. This is a perfectly normal slump.”
Cassie held the warm cookie sheet in one gloved hand and fisted the pancake turner against her hip with the other. “If it was perfectly normal, you wouldn’t have just called it a slump.”
Marissa broke off a piece of the cookie and let it cool for a moment before she placed it in her mouth. She couldn’t tell if it was the situation or her sister’s actual skill, but it soothed her soul the moment the chocolate and the cookie melted on her tongue. “Is that why you didn’t pressure me to bring a date tonight? Because you thought
I’d go off to this reunion and find Prince Charming?”
Cassie’s ears perked up at her words. “And did you?”
Marissa blinked at her sister, too stunned by her sister’s Machiavellian instinct to give away how nearly the evening had turned out the way her sister had planned. “Oh, you’re kidding, right? I was just joking. You actually thought I’d go to my high school reunion and find someone I was interested in dating?”
That blissful, chocolate feeling was vanishing faster and faster as the feeling of Declan’s lips on hers made her skin run hot and her pulse race.
“Well, it wasn’t part of the plan, but it would have been a nice consolation prize. Was Declan there?”
Marissa froze, a gooey piece of chocolate chip cookie on its way to her lips. Was it that obvious that Marissa had kissed him? Had her good humor about Cassie’s invasive questions about her dating life tipped the woman off that something had happened? “Sure. Why do you ask?”
Cassie’s eyes narrowed as she put the now empty cookie sheet in the sink. “I ask because he was one reason you were a little nervous to go. Did you meet his wife?”
Guilt surged through Marissa at the mention of Declan’s deceased wife. “Uh, no. She wasn’t able to attend.”
“Because the kids were sick or because they’re going through a separation?”
Marissa turned a severe look in her sister’s direction. Was that why she’d been asking if Declan was the reason she didn’t want to go to the reunion last night? Because she had some idea that they would get back together after all these years? “Really, Cassie?”
Given what had happened at the diner, was it entirely out of the realm of possibility?
Her sister shrugged, her hands in the air in surrender. “What? I’m just checking into his future availability. Weren’t you the one who admitted that the two of you had rotten timing just last night?”
Marissa set the last of her cookie on a paper towel, not hungry anymore. “If you must know, Declan’s wife wasn’t there because she died last year.”
And I kissed her grieving husband.
The shame of it pooled in her belly, and even when the playful look in Cassie’s eyes turned to one of apology, Marissa only got a minor sense of satisfaction. “Oh.”
Marissa dusted the last crumbs off her fingers, remembering the look in Declan’s eye when he admitted how hard it was to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She shifted, all too familiar with the feeling. It was the reason they’d broken up twenty years ago. “He’s still grieving, Cass. So, please don’t make more of this than it is.”
She descended from the barstool and grabbed her purse. “I think I’ll take a bath before bed.”
“Marissa?”
With her hand on the railing and one foot perched on the first step, Marissa turned back to her sister. “Yes?”
Cassie looked almost seventeen again with that haunted look in her eye, the one that came from suddenly having enough of the facts to see a situation more clearly, crossing her bare ankles as she leaned against the kitchen sink. “Are you okay?”
Marissa shrugged, that unexpected kiss still playing in the back of her mind. Was it a gift from the past or a curse reminding her of a future that would never be? She wasn’t sure. “I’m not sure, but I will be.”
She hesitated a moment. If Cassie was anything like her older sister, she was berating herself for getting involved in Marissa’s decision to attend the reunion. “You were right.”
Cassie lifted her head, hope playing in her blue eyes. “About what?”
“It was good that I went to the reunion. Declan needed someone he could talk to about losing his wife, and I was able to be that person for him.”
The slight smile faded from Cassie’s lips. “But who was there for you?”
Marissa mustered a tired wink. “I thought you were.”
TOO AGITATED FOR A soak in the bath (and more than a little nervous that more time to think wasn’t really what she needed), Marissa slipped out of her dress and into a pair of comfortable cotton pajamas. She grabbed the nearest box without looking at its carefully documented list of contents and cut it open. Books.
Good. She could organize books without thinking about Declan. Besides, she’d set up her new bookshelves just this morning. It was about time they were a little less bare.
She brought the box over to the shelves and began placing the books on the shelves, her analytical mind pondering not only the size of the books but also the content for optimal placement. Light romantic comedies separate from murder mysteries which were in turn kept apart from the classics she’d kept from her literature classes in college. Journals and diaries in yet another corner of her modest library.
She stood and stretched, pulling another box toward her.
Her heart stopped as she saw the cover of the first book. Thomas Jefferson High School. Home of the Blue Jays. The yearbook from her senior year.
Her hands shook as she lifted it into her lap. She let her fingers glide over the embossed cover. Of course this would surface tonight.
A faint memory tugged at the back of her mind, and she turned the yearbook over as her heart pounded more and more quickly. It was irrational since it wasn’t like the inscriptions in the book would migrate, but part of her wondered if it was still there. Marissa bit her lip as she opened the yearbook to the last page.
There it was. Declan’s bold scrawl on the final two pages of her high school yearbook.
Memories whizzed through her mind with lightning speed. Holding hands as he walked her home, her books under his arm. The way her teenage heart pounded when he leaned in and she realized he was going to kiss her, and she was afraid he’d realize that she didn’t have any experience and would walk away frustrated or worse, disappointed. The way her thirty-eight-year-old heart had responded when his lips had touched hers for the first time in twenty years.
She touched Declan’s words, scribbled in Sharpie in the back of a book she’d almost forgotten she owned.
I’m so proud of you, Riss. Valedictorian. Violin scholarship to Northwestern. You’re going to take the world by storm, and I can’t wait to watch you do it.
She snapped the book closed, her vision blurring with unshed tears. With trembling fingers she put the book on the bottom shelf. The Declan who had written that could never have imagined that only a few months later, Marissa would push him out of her life for good, could never have imagined that one day they would see each other at a high school reunion for the first time in almost twenty years.
The guilt pierced her heart. She didn’t regret her choices, but she wished she could have made them without hurting Declan in the process.
She shoved the box of books aside. So much for not thinking about Declan.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks and padded down to the living room. Sometime after she’d gone upstairs, Cassie must have gone to bed given how quiet the kitchen was again.
Marissa breathed a sigh of relief. She couldn’t handle any more of a debrief than her sister had already tried to coax out of her.
As Marissa moved to get down another box, she caught sight of that brown case in the corner by the fireplace. Her violin.
At one time, she wouldn’t have hesitated to play out her emotions on the strings. Was that what she’d been aching for? The emotional release music might give her?
She maneuvered around the boxes and retrieved the case, brushing off the dust that had clung to the fabric in the decades of neglect which had followed her parents’ death. Sitting on the couch, she unzipped the case and breathed in the look of the polished mahogany. “Hello, old friend.”
She set the case on the coffee table and ran her fingers expertly across the strings. As expected, they were horribly out of tune, but she lifted the instrument from its velvet case and carefully set it right again, the old poem about the battered violin and the master musician resounding in her head as she did so.
Maybe, like this forgotten instrument, she
wasn’t without worth. Maybe she just hadn’t been playing with the right feeling.
Something stirred in her, completing the job Declan’s kiss had done in waking the girl she’d once been from a long slumber. It was awkward and yet familiar as she anchored the violin between her chin and her shoulder, dragging her bow across the strings.
She didn’t even know what she was going to play until a mournful song she’d polished that last year of high school rang in the air with a new fervor that had come with her age and experience.
The music seemed to soothe and agitate the ache in her soul as she wordlessly mourned all she had lost between then and now.
She closed her eyes as she let the final note sing, drinking in the stillness and letting its peace envelop her.
“Wow, Mom. That was fantastic.”
Marissa wiped at her cheeks before she turned to her son who stood on the stairs, his expression dumbstruck. She must have been too enveloped in the music to hear the creaking floorboards as he made his way from his room down to her. “Thanks, kiddo. Sorry I woke you.”
Cassie stood behind him, a light summer robe over her cotton pajamas. “Yeah, Marissa, that was beautiful.”
Marissa inhaled, setting the instrument back down. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost the callouses she’d gained from years of practice, and her fingers ached. “Aiden?”
“Yeah, Mom?”
She sat on the coffee table and faced him. “If you want to take violin lessons, I’ll find you a teacher, okay?”
His eyes widened with impossible excitement as he raced toward her. “Thanks, Mom!”
She closed her eyes as she inhaled the little boy scent of his hair. These days were passing so fast. Too fast.
She kissed the top of his head. “We’ll talk more in the morning, okay?”
He leaned up and kissed her cheek. “Good night, Mom.”
“Good night, sweetheart.”
Aiden bid good night to his aunt as he climbed back up the stairs. Marissa busied herself by putting the violin away.
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