Chapter Fifteen #2
Then the tenors and basses echoed the second line. My beloved is mine.
Then maybe they—
A snap. A splintering.
That wasn’t in the music. It took a moment to process. To absorb the reality of the small tip of graphite that shot across my staff paper. A slight grayish smear in the upper left-hand corner.
But it wasn’t my pencil. My lead was intact.
Victor’s wasn’t, though. The pencil was broken in two. Snapped in half. In anger? Frustration?
“Victor?” I sought his gaze. “Are you okay?”
He looked up, his eyes like twin flames. Despite their heat, a chill shot through me.
“Victor?”
“I’m fine.” And as quickly as it had appeared, the anger vanished. His eyes became placid again, like the lake behind my grandparents’ farmhouse.
“Theory going okay?”
“Yes, until I got distracted.”
His gaze was pointed, and I blinked. “Distracted?”
“You were humming,” he replied. “And I don’t think it was from our theory assignment.”
“It wasn’t.” A smile pushed at my cheeks. “I got a new idea. One I think might actually be something. I’m setting a text from Song of Songs. I am my beloved’s, and—”
“But you distracted me.” His voice cut like a knife, and my joy tumbled back down into my heart.
“I’m sorry, Victor.” I reached for his hand, balled up in a white-knuckled fist. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I had no idea I was even humming anything.”
He placed his other hand on top of mine. “It’s all right . . . beloved.” Color bloomed in his cheeks, and his smile carved a deep parenthesis in the left side of his mouth.
Beloved. He called me beloved.
Was that an accident?
No. It was on purpose. I could tell by the look in his eyes.
I’d never seen that expression before, not from anyone, but it left no mystery.
He’d used the word on purpose. He’d received my message.
And from the way he leaned across the table toward me, it seemed like he intended to send one of his own.
Time slowed to a near crawl. A good thing, because I needed to remember this moment. In a couple of seconds, Victor’s lips would be on mine, and I would know what it was like to be kissed. And kissed by him.
I was thrilled. Scared. Self-conscious.
And most of all, deeply aware that this moment would define the rest of my life. This moment would tear the curtain between before and after.
Because this, right now, was the last moment before my first kiss with Victor.
His lips brushed mine. Soft at first. Tentative, as though asking permission.
But when I granted it, he pressed his mouth more firmly against mine.
His hands slipped behind my neck and into my hair.
I tilted my head to the right. Was that what I was supposed to do?
It must have been. And moving my lips against his .
. . that must’ve been the right thing to do too.
A full choir burst into song in the center of my chest.
I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
And . . . I needed to write it down. Now. In the magic of this moment, before I forgot this wonderful sparkly, soaring feeling.
I pulled back.
Victor frowned. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. Quite the opposite.” I beamed at him and picked up my pencil. “You inspired me.”
“I did?”
“Yes.” The pencil raced across my paper. Sopranos here . . . altos here . . . yes. This was exactly it. Exactly right. Exactly what I heard. What I felt. What my heart wanted to say.
I’d never felt more alive.
Before long the whole page was filled with notes. With the outpourings of my heart. With the feeling of belonging. Of being wanted. Of being loved. Of loving.
When I looked up, he was watching me. A smile played on his lips. I returned it briefly, filling my tank of inspiration, then dove back into my work.
I am my beloved’s.
And my beloved is mine.
Half a chocolate-frosted doughnut lingered in the box in Peggy Sue’s foyer.
Callum peeled off his work gloves and glanced around, but the students were nowhere to be found.
Blair had probably eaten the first half.
It had certainly been cut neatly enough, and exactly down the middle.
And she definitely seemed the sort of person who’d only allow half a doughnut’s worth of indulgence rather than just eating the whole thing.
His growling stomach prevented any further consideration of the matter, and he popped the half doughnut into his mouth all in one bite. He’d woken up late this morning and had skipped breakfast, but three hours of repairing fences and raking leaves had made him regret that decision.
“So she was working on music that day” came a voice from the living room. “You’re sure.”
“Sure as shootin’,” came the reply.
Callum rounded the corner to find Blair rolling green paint onto the far wall. Peggy Sue sat on a folding chair in the center of the tarp-covered floor.
“And they were kissing?” Blair asked.
“They sure were.” Peggy Sue’s voice held a laugh. “A second or two longer and I’d have had to break it up.”
Callum froze. “Who was kissing?”
Blair turned at the sound, and he froze for an entirely different reason.
Her normally pale cheeks were flushed, her red hair was tied up in a messy bun, and she’d traded her usual work wear for a Fighting Illini T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans.
Distressed? Was that the term? In any event, they were still in one piece.
Just a few little holes where pale skin could peek through.
“Callum.” Her voice jerked him back to the matter at hand. “Iris and Vic. It was Iris and Vic. Mrs. Weldon was the librarian back then, and she saw the two of them kissing.”
“Kissing.” It was important information. Earth-shattering, perhaps. But Blair had a smudge of green paint just beneath her lower lip, and for some reason it made her even more adorable.
Adorable? Had he just thought of the ice queen as adorable?
Well, her lips were, at any rate. They were pink and plump, devoid of their usual lipstick, and . . .
. . . and he was staring at his coworker’s lips, and the last words either of them had spoken involved kissing.
He really should stop staring at her.
“Yes.” Her lips moved, the word bursting from them. “Why would Vic say he didn’t know her?”
“He said what?” Peggy Sue sounded startled. “Oh, he knew her, all right. I think he—”
Whatever she might have been about to say was cut off by the sound of frantic barking, the kind that nearly always belonged to a small, excitable dog.
Sure enough, a little white purse poodle, barely large enough to even qualify as a dog, careened around the corner, scrabbling on hardwood and nearly falling on the tarp.
Peggy Sue bent down. “Oh, what’s the matter, Gigi?”
Of course its name was Gigi.
“Do you need to go out?” Peggy Sue hoisted herself from the chair and started for the hallway. “Okay, come on. This way. Don’t want to get paint on your paws. Come on, Gigi. Out.” She and the comically tiny dog disappeared around the corner.
Blair’s frown deepened. “Okay, something’s not adding up. Vic told you he barely knew her, but the yearbook photographer caught them together, and Peggy Sue just said they were kissing.”
There was that word again, and there were her lips again.
“But why would he lie?” she asked.
“I . . . I don’t know.” Stop staring at her lips. Stop it.
“Callum? Are you okay?” She stepped closer, the tarp crinkling under bare feet.
“Yeah. Fine. I just . . . it’s been a minute since I fixed a fence. Raked leaves. Cleaned gutters. Didn’t have any of those in Boston.”
Blair smiled. Had he thought of her as the ice queen? Because this smile was warm and soft. Nothing icy about it.
“I had no idea fixing fences was part of your skill set,” she said.
He shrugged. “My granddad used to be a carpenter. In all the years I knew him, I don’t think he ever hired anything out. Did it all himself. He was always grumbling that my father, the physics professor, didn’t have any useful or practical skills, so he made sure I did.”
She had paint on her cheek too. Right at the top of her cheekbone. Just a little drop, but the fact that the normally primped-and-polished Blair had let herself get even a little bit messy was apparently his undoing.
Her brows inched together. “What?”
Busted. “You’ve, uh . . . you’ve got a little paint . . .” He indicated the spot on his own lip where her worst smudge was, and her eyes followed. Now she was staring at his lips.
Just for a split second, though. She tried to wipe off the paint with the back of her hand, but she also had paint there, apparently, because the little splotch turned into a smear.
“Oh no,” she groaned. “It’s worse, isn’t it?”
“It’s okay. It’s a good color on you. Besides, it’s Difference Makers Day. We’re bound to get a little messy.” He gestured toward the paint tray, where an extra roller lay. “Need a hand?”
Blair cast a wary glance outside, where the kids were staining the freshly rebuilt fence.
“I think they’ve got it under control out there,” Callum said. “And our view from this window means if those knuckleheads try anything, they’ll wish they hadn’t.”
“Yeah. Okay. Sure.” Blair handed him her roller, then moved the extra out of the way and poured more green paint into the tray.
Difference Makers Day? Yeah. Today was definitely making a difference.