Chapter Twenty-Five
HOW DID the concert go?”
The slam of Blair’s car door perfectly punctuated Joy’s question as the two prepared to walk into school together the next morning.
Blair answered with an indecipherable noise.
Joy chuckled. “That good, huh?”
“Well, it wasn’t a total disaster.” Blair clicked the button on her remote to lock her car. “But I wouldn’t call it a success. I screwed up the introduction of the first piece—seriously, I have never missed that before, ever. The whole thing went downhill from there.”
Joy patted Blair’s shoulder. “So you screwed up a measure or two. So what? The rest of the mistakes aren’t your fault.”
“Oh, I’m not blaming myself. Not entirely.”
Joy gave Blair a sidelong glance. “It’s not Callum’s fault either.”
The very mention of the name jolted Blair. It had bounced around her skull most of the night, accompanied by memories of that catastrophe of a concert and that catastrophe of an entirely different sort on the same stage moments later.
She’d kissed him. She’d actually kissed him.
What on earth had she been thinking?
“Everything was under-rehearsed and underprepared because, bottom line, Callum’s repertoire selections were too hard for the kids—which I told him on the first day. And he chose to ignore my advice. So, yes, it is his fault.”
“Maybe he’s stretching them,” Joy said mildly, lifting her tumbler to her lips.
“You’re on his side now?”
Joy gave a flick of her pierced eyebrow. “I’m your best friend, but that doesn’t mean I always have to be on your side. Especially when you’re being closed-minded, stubborn, and unreasonable.”
“I am not being unreasonable,” Blair shot back. “Those kids were terrified onstage. That’s not how concerts are supposed to be.”
“Only if you’ve been singing boring Disney medleys and bad pop mash-ups for the last five years. Which is basically what they’ve been doing.”
Blair whirled to face her friend. “Did Callum get to you before I did this morning?”
“Seriously, Blair, what is up with you? I know you don’t like the guy, but . . .” Joy stopped, then her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Except you totally do.”
Yes. She did. Thanks to her uncharacteristic display of throwing caution to the wind last night, Callum knew it too. And now Joy knew. Which meant pretty soon all of Peterson would know, and—
Joy squealed and clapped her hands. “Yay! You finally figured it out!”
“Do not make that noise. And do not smile that smile. Yes, I figured it out, but nothing’s going to happen.”
“Oh, really? Then why are you blushing?”
“Because it’s cold out.”
“It’s not that cold.” Joy’s eyes narrowed, and Blair’s stomach plunged to the sidewalk. “Blair Marie Emerson. Did something already happen with him?”
Blair sighed. “We got in a fight after the concert. And then we wound up kissing.”
“Kissing!” Joy’s cheeks dimpled and turned pink. “So how was it?” “Awful.”
“Nope. Not buying it. There is no way a man who looks like that is a bad kisser.”
“I never said he was a bad kisser.” Bad kisser was the furthest thing from it.
He was a great kisser. An amazing kisser.
His kissing talent rivaled his talent in everything else, and in a split second she was right back there onstage, with his hands in her hair and his mouth on hers and her body pinned between him and the piano, and that one kiss wasn’t enough, and she wanted more, except she couldn’t allow that, because he was leaving at the end of the year and she’d be right back where she was after Derek.
Joy’s laughter burst into Blair’s thoughts, and she arched a brow. “What?”
“Oh, wow. You are gone. I just asked you a question.”
“Sorry. What did you ask?” She raised an index finger. “I do reserve the right not to answer.”
Joy made a face. “It’s not that kind of question. Ew.” She shuddered. “There are things I don’t need to know. I just asked what happens now?”
Blair pressed her badge to the sensor, and the door beeped and clicked open. “That is an excellent question.” She held the door open for Joy. “And I have no idea.”
Joy glanced around the empty hallway, then leaned in. “Are you open to further kissing with him?”
Yet again she replayed the kiss from last night. The fire in his eyes. The pressure of his hands on her back. The way she felt pulled under in the best possible way.
“Okay, you don’t need to answer that question.” Keys jangled as Joy pulled them from her bag and sorted through them. “It’s written all over your face.”
Blair’s cheeks flamed. “Crap.” Thank goodness there weren’t many students here yet.
“So you’re open to more kissing,” Joy said as she unlocked the door to her classroom. “And it seems he is too. So I’m not sure why there’s a problem. Unless there’s some kind of rule against interpersonal relationships among staff.”
“There isn’t.”
“You’ve already researched that?” Joy’s eyes gleamed. “Interesting.”
“It’s the opposite of interesting.” The classroom door swung shut with its typical loud bang. “He’s leaving after this year. He’s made that clear from day one.”
Joy shouldered open the door to her office. “That’s still seven months away. A lot can happen in seven months.”
“That’s not that long.” Blair followed Joy into her office. “And long distance didn’t exactly work out so great last time.”
“So you get seven months of incredible kissing, and then you go your separate ways.”
“And how is that not like last time?”
Joy set her coffee down on her desk. “Well, I’d assume Callum hasn’t proposed to you. And moving back to Boston is not the same as cheating on you with some opera singer.”
“No, this time I know it’s doomed going in. That’s supposed to make it better how?”
Joy gave a slight, exasperated sigh. “Like I said, seven months is a long time. Maybe he’ll decide he wants to stay. Maybe you’ll decide you want to move to Boston with him. Maybe a pair of jobs will pop open for you both someplace random.”
“Oh, but I can’t leave here.”
“Can’t?” Joy peered into Blair’s eyes. “Or won’t?”
“Both.” Blair flung her arms wide. “My life is here, my job is here, you’re here.”
“And as much as we all adore you, we could survive without you if we needed to. If you discover Callum is someone you can’t survive without, then you’re going to have to be willing to bend a little.
Because it is entirely possible that God has a bigger, better, more amazing life for you than anything you could come up with on your own.
And maybe that’s here . . . but it might be somewhere else too. ”
Blair folded her arms across her chest. “I thought Derek was his plan for me. We saw how well that turned out.” Her current maturity level was on par with the students’, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“So you feel like God screwed up and you got hurt, and now you don’t trust him to drive the car anymore, so you’re yanking the steering wheel away and relegating him to the backseat?” Joy stared for a second, then pulled a couple of things out of her bag. “Yeah, let me know how that works out.”
Blair opened her mouth to argue but couldn’t. Joy was absolutely correct.
Her friend flashed a grin. “I always know I’ve won an argument with you when you can’t think of anything to say.”
Blair harrumphed and headed toward the door. “I suppose I can’t avoid Callum forever.”
“No, you cannot,” Joy replied cheerfully. “Have a wonderful day, dahling. Be open to possibilities. Lean not on your own understanding. All that jazz.”
“Mmph,” Blair said again.
“I expect a full report at the end of the day” came Joy’s cheerful farewell.
Good thing Joy could be cheerful. Blair’s stomach knotted. Did she want Callum to bring it up? Did she want him to ignore things like he had after homecoming? Was he still angry? Was she?
She sighed and slipped through the door into the hallway that led to the choir room.
Some days there just wasn’t enough coffee in the whole entire world.
The chair creaked beneath Callum’s weight as he polished off the last of his emails and leaned back.
Three hours. That was how long it had taken to get through everything he’d been ignoring.
At least he’d found a silver lining to not having been able to sleep, finally giving up, and coming into the office at four in the morning.
It was his own fault, of course. He shouldn’t have kissed Blair. He shouldn’t have done a lot of things he did last night.
But their fight wasn’t entirely his fault.
She had been . . . unreasonable. Yes, that was it.
Unreasonable. The perfect way to describe her.
And she’d been that way since the moment he’d met her, when she’d looked him up and down and decided, in a single glance, that he didn’t measure up.
Doubtless all his predecessors since Vic had received the same look.
Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that nobody lasted long at Peterson.
No, that was unfair. Their reasons for departure—childbirth, a job in their hometown, a messy divorce, et cetera—had been legitimate.
Blair likely had nothing to do with them.
All the same, he had never met someone so stuck in their ways, so resistant to change.
Since August she’d ranted and raved about how they needed someone who cared about the kids.
And he did. Far more than he’d ever planned on or wanted to admit.
He thought she’d have been happy about that. But no, she wasn’t, because he was pushing them, and God forbid anyone get pushed out of their comfort zone ever. He’d reached his wit’s end with her.
Or so he’d thought.
But then he’d asked what she wanted, and she turned those big brown eyes and those full pink lips toward him, and that single moment of helplessness, of vulnerability, made it clear she had locked far more inside her than he knew.
Had he wondered what lay beneath that icy exterior? Well, now he knew. Pure fire. A volcano had erupted between them, and in a split second there were hands and lips and he was melting . . .