Color of Home (Colors of Us #2)

1

CHARLIE

I’ve made only a few truly terrible choices in my life.

Mostly before the age of ten. Like deciding to give myself a fabulous new haircut the night before third grade picture day.

(Turns out I am not the gifted stylist I’d believed myself to be.) Oh, and the time I thought it would be okay not to tell my parents I was starting to feel super nauseous when they dropped me off at the coolest kid in school’s birthday party? It was in fact, very much not okay.

In the last decade and a half though? Smooth sailing. Post-ten-year-old Charles Lancaster has impeccable judgement, thank you very much.

Until precisely six and a half weeks ago.

Since then?

Well, let’s see, shall we?

First, there was the terrible choice I made to come home from dinner out with friends early, only to find our next-door neighbor’s (admittedly gorgeous) brother balls deep in my (at the time) live-in boyfriend.

Yes, the fact that the first thing that went through my mind was, Ben never wants me to top him, was probably an indication of how overdue the two of us were for the breakup that inevitably followed.

Still, that doesn’t mean I didn’t spend way too many evenings over the following two weeks sniffling through the sappy parts of movies and eating far too much cherry ice cream on my cousin’s couch.

Not to mention suddenly questioning my previously unquestioned judgment.

Which leads me to my next (probably) terrible choice: declining the offer of a full-time subbing position at the well-funded, prestigious (if not rather pretentious) private school where I completed my student teaching in December.

Instead? (Potentially) terrible choice number three: I am now (or will be, in one week) the leave-replacement sub for the one and only middle school math and science teacher in the town of Riverside.

Riverside, which Gemma (my couch and ice cream sharing cousin, who happens to also be the best friend anyone could ever ask for) is fond of pointing out, has a population of three hundred ninety-two and is one hundred one miles, one ferry ride, and one bridge away from Seattle.

The (definitely) worst part? I know exactly what made me check for a job in Riverside in the first place.

“You’re sure this is actually what you want?

” Gemma scrunches up her nose beneath her oversized glasses, standing on her tiptoes to get just the right angle to peer out my front window, down the street to the just visible Riverside School building.

Elementary, middle, and high school, all rolled into one.

It’s far from the first time she’s asked me this question, and I’d be willing to bet the contents of every one of the yet-to-be unpacked boxes filling my newly acquired living room that it won’t be the last.

“I get that it’s beautiful here,” she gestures out the window, this time at the dense evergreen forest backed up by rolling foothills and not-so-distant mountains that make up most of my view.

“And I know you loved it when you were a kid…” Her voice trails off as she glances at me out of the corner of her eye.

It’s a glance that says all too clearly that she’s convinced there’s something about all of this that I’m not telling her.

There isn’t. Not…really.

“Isn’t that enough?”

She shrugs. “If you liked hiking, or fishing, or whatever else people do around here—”

“I like hiking.”

“Charlie, darling, you like walking. Same as me. You like nice, respectable trails just outside the city, with picnic tables for lunch along the way. There’s a massive difference between that and the kind of hiking people do here.

You don’t like crashing through the wilderness, up mountains with bugs and bears. Bears, Charlie.”

“What about the fact that I have a leave replacement position here—same kids, same classes, my own curriculum every day—instead of just jumping around subbing?”

“At the cost of probably not getting your dream job next September?” She arches her eyebrows, crossing her arms over her chest. “You know they were planning to hire you to replace that seventh grade math teacher that’s retiring at the end of the year.”

“Is this your way of telling me you’re going to miss me?

” I give her a bump with my hip as I pass, in search of an outlet near a cozy corner where I can plug in Cyril’s heated cat bed.

“It’s only for six months, you know. And I’ll still totally be able to find a job in the city when I get back. Even if it’s not at U-Prep.”

“Not if you get eaten by a bear. Then who’ll I get to go to Broadway shows with me when they come to town? Did you ever even think about that?”

“What if I promise not to get eaten by anything?” I straighten up from arranging Cyril’s bed, batting my eyelashes at her.

Yes, I’m well aware that I thoroughly deserve the exasperated sigh she gives me.

“And I promise to come see Hamilton with you in April?”

“How selfless of you.” At least she’s smiling now. Even if she is trying to hide it.

“Still makes you feel better, right?”

“A little.” She turns away from the window, casting a scrutinizing look around the small living room.

The cabin I’m renting comes already furnished, so apart from unpacking the boxes the two of us just unloaded from the backs of the SUV Gemma borrowed from her sister and my far-too-small-to-be-useful-for-moving Prius, there isn’t anything left to do.

Everything about the space has a rustic, woodsy vibe, from the plaid sofa in front of the small river rock fireplace to the unfinished wood walls.

It’s the same in the tiny kitchen and my closet of a bedroom, where the bedframe is literally made of logs.

Polished smooth and varnished, true, but still literal logs.

Usually, it would all be so not my style, except for the inescapable fact that the cabin reminds me of a mini version of the lodge-style house my parents rented here in Riverside when I was growing up.

My dad was an environmental scientist for the Department of Forestry Services, and when he’d been offered the opportunity to supervise a four-year conservation project, he’d jumped at the excuse to return to the sort of in-the-field work he’d done before a series of promotions had put him behind a desk in a city office.

I have to admit that, at eleven years old, I’d been highly skeptical of leaving behind my comfy suburban life for four years in a tiny, middle of nowhere town in the wilderness.

What I certainly had not expected was for those four years to turn out to be the best four years of my life.

Even if what happened at the end of them left a crack in my heart I’ve long since given up on ever fully healing.

Ask pretty much anyone, and they can tell you who their first real crush was. First love leaves an impression, after all.

Is it normal that I never remotely got over mine? Probably not, and I’m totally willing to admit it. I’ve tried. Believe me. Somehow though, nothing I do seems to be enough to get Myles Marlow out of my head.

Maybe the reason is that Myles wasn’t just my first crush. From the day I met him until the day my family left Riverside, he was my best friend and the absolute center of my world.

Even at twelve, the second year of our stay in Riverside and the year I realized that there was something more than friendship in the way my stomach leapt and my palms sweated and I couldn’t for the life of me keep a smile off my face whenever Myles was around, I was already well aware that my newly realized feelings could only ever be unrequited.

Myles liked girls. A lot.

We didn’t talk about it, but I could tell all the same.

He’d get this shell-shocked, nervously wound-up expression whenever Kyra Welsey or Rachel Beck were around, and the way he looked at them, like they were a puzzle his life depended on solving…

Well, let’s just say he never looked at me like that. I would most certainly have noticed.

If I were honest with myself, I’d never have actually wanted him to be like that around me anyway. I’d never have wanted him to be any different than he was. It was the feelings I knew lived just behind those un-Myles like looks that I pined over.

Still, even though I knew and accepted that he could never be anything more than my friend, I’d absolutely never imagined a world where he would be anything less. Least of all had I imagined a world completely without him.

When Gemma’s gaze circles back around to me, her eyes have a steely glint to them, sharp enough to jar me out of my thoughts.

Compliments of our shared grandmother, Gemma and I both have total baby faces, complete with overly full cheeks, a dusting of freckles across our noses, and mouths that refuse to do anything but smile. The two of us are mistaken for siblings regularly. Twins even, sometimes.

Unlike me though, Gemma has mastered the art of glaring.

True, her short-cropped, teal-streaked hair and piercings probably give her an edge my buttoned-up, preppy look lacks, but that’s not the whole story.

Even before she embraced her now signature style, Gemma could give a death stare like nobody’s business.

I’m well aware that, when I try, I only end up looking like I’ve forgotten to put in my contacts.

Not that I really try all that often anyway.

“I know how pissed you were at me when I asked you before,” she holds up a warning hand, staving off the interruption she knows is on the tip of my tongue, “but I’ve just got to ask you one more time. Exactly how much of this has to do with him?”

There’s no point in pretending like I think she’s talking about my breakup with Ben. As if she really was my twin she’s so often assumed to be, Gemma always has an uncanny ability to keep pace with precisely what I’m thinking about.

Incredibly useful at times. Incredibly inconvenient at others. Right now, for example.