Chapter Eight #2
Behind Gram, Maggie and Harriet were suddenly very preoccupied shoving mincemeat tarts in their mouths.
Charlie frowned. Gram hadn’t mentioned her hip since before the move to Glendale. When had it started acting up again?
“I’m old,” Gram said, patting Charlie’s arm.
“Things hurt unexpectedly at my age. But again, I’m so sorry, Heather.
I’m sure Charlie would be more than happy to help you make some more popcorn.
I’d do it, but you know…” She winced as she flexed her leg.
“These old bones. Probably best I have a seat. Yes, definitely from the fall. You go be a doll and help Heather out with her popcorn. Perhaps Julian can show you to the kitchen. He seems to know his way around.”
“Oh, that would be a big help,” Heather said, looking between them.
“You’re sure you’re okay, Doris?” Julian asked.
Gram waved him off. “I’ve got Maggie and Harriet. They’ll help me putter into a chair.”
Maggie and Harriet scrambled to Gram’s sides, making a show of helping her limp away.
“We’ve got this,” Maggie called. “You two get popping or whatever it is you have to do.”
Get popping? Charlie grimaced.
“You’re sure I’m not putting you out?” Heather asked, drawing Charlie’s attention.
“Oh no,” Charlie said. “Happy to help.” She smiled despite herself. Gram was getting very good at offering her up for things.
“Okay, great,” Heather said. “I had a few volunteers on it, but they’ve been gone for ages. Julian, you know your way to the kitchen, don’t you?”
“Sure do,” he said, sounding less than enthusiastic. “Just this way.”
Charlie followed him back across the auditorium, wondering what she was supposed to say. “Sorry about her. Gram can be—”
“A handful?” he suggested.
She snorted. “As much as Maggie and Harriet apparently.”
“It’s okay. Glendale’s full of characters. I’m used to it. Though I do think those three together are going to spell trouble.”
He walked beside her, and the awkwardness seeped in along with something else.
Something that threatened to strangle her.
Damn that kiss! Charlie knew she should have pulled away the moment it happened, that she should have ended things right then and there.
But he’d tugged her closer, wrapping his arms around her, holding her to him like a memory.
And she’d tried to understand why it felt so right when everything else about the past now felt so wretched. Why did she want to kiss him again?
They turned down a hall, revealing a bank of offices. “I never realized this place was so big.”
“They won a grant about five years back,” Julian said, “and did a major expansion. Added a gym for sports. The industrial kitchen. Classrooms. Workspaces. It’s really become the hub of the town.”
When they entered the kitchen, they found the two other volunteers bent over in front of the microwave. They looked about five years younger than Gram.
“We’ve been sent to help,” Julian explained.
“Perfect timing!” one of the women said. “This contraption has dials instead of buttons. I don’t know what’s going on. Could you just put these bags through the microwave for Heather?”
“Sure,” Charlie said. The volunteers hurried off, leaving her and Julian alone. She occupied herself taking the plastic off one of the popcorn bags and shoved it in the microwave. She frowned at the dials, cranking one.
The microwave turned on. Charlie eyed it suspiciously.
“I don’t think it’s going to spontaneously come to life,” Julian joked lightly.
“We’ll see.” She leaned back against the metal counter and took him in. He looked…confused. A line appeared between his brows. Maybe he was wondering how he’d gotten roped into Gram’s schemes. “Everything okay?”
“Good, you?”
“Yep.”
“Great,” he said again, leaning over to look into the microwave. “I don’t think this is working.”
Charlie leaned over, too, accidentally brushing his arm, her skin flushing with goose bumps at the contact.
This was getting them nowhere. But where exactly did she want to be?
A couple weeks ago he’d acted as if he didn’t even remember who she was.
Now though, things felt different. No, not different exactly.
Familiar. He was still Julian. Still that sweet guy she’d fallen so hard for.
If she was being honest with herself, she was the one who changed.
She’d become a different person since losing Tom.
Could she really blame him for not recognizing her?
He didn’t know her anymore.
But I want you to, she caught herself thinking before she could stop herself.
She wanted someone to see how hard she was trying to hold herself together and tell her that it was okay if she slipped.
That if she let in a little light, the darkness wouldn’t come flooding back with it.
The popcorn bag jumped, the kernels exploding, and they both startled, glancing over at each other with awkward laughter.
Charlie cleared her throat, straightening up. “I’m sorry.”
Julian rose slowly. “For what?”
“Kissing you the other day.” She couldn’t find any other way around the tension but to cut right through it. “Encouraging it the way I did. Especially at your place of employment. I don’t know what came over me. That was a boundary I shouldn’t have crossed.”
“Do you really not know what came over you?” he asked quietly.
She shrugged, a blush creeping up her neck. “The past maybe. Being back in Elm Springs. Seeing you again. And I guess…it felt like the right thing to do in the moment.”
He laughed as the microwave beeped. They both ignored it. “The right thing to do?”
“Yes.” Because despite how hard she’d worked to keep from feeling anything, he’d made her feel something.
And as terrifying as that still was, as much as she wanted to bolt, she couldn’t deny that the laughter and the flutters in her stomach and the music had felt so, so good.
Julian was making her unearth those things again. But he was also making her unearth Tom.
She usually held Tom close to her chest, but she’d told Julian because she’d felt safe. She was sinking back into him like sinking into the melody of a favorite song, and with everything else around her changing—losing Tom, moving Gram into Glendale—something easy was very tempting.
“Do you regret it?” he asked.
“No,” she said, the truth of the word catching in her throat. “Do you?”
“It was unexpected,” he admitted. “But not…unwanted.”
She sighed. “I don’t understand you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You go out of your way to assure me you don’t remember our summer together, but then you mention something and I know you have more than vague memories of that time.
” She huffed, blowing her blond hair from her eyes.
“So which is it? Did you really not remember me? Or did you not want to remember?”
“I remembered,” Julian admitted. “The moment I saw you in that hall, I remembered.”
“You did?”
He nodded, staring at the wall. “I remember the way your hair had these almost copper strands in the sun. And I remember Tom teasing you the first couple of times I showed up to pick you up. And I remember Doris’s coffee cake.
The way it crumbled if you didn’t eat it quickly enough.
And I remember lying out next to the river with you, hearing nothing but bees and the rush of water. ”
Charlie swallowed the bubble of emotion in her throat. He remembered so many details. So many of the things she’d packed away. “Then why did you lie that first day?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his gaze falling briefly. “I guess I sort of panicked. It had been a long time since we’d seen each other and…”
“What?” Charlie asked. What wasn’t he saying?
“Maybe I was a little surprised, too.”
“At how much we immediately irritated each other?” she said, giving him a coy smile, trying to lighten the mood.
He shook his head; the tension ebbed. “At how good it felt seeing you again.”
Charlie gasped as he pressed closer. “Julian—”
“You’d think something from that long ago wouldn’t linger,” he said, brows drawn together. “You’d think the feelings would…go away.”
“I think it’s a choice,” Charlie said, hugging her arms to her chest even as her body gravitated toward him. “To put the feelings away, to stamp them out.”
“Are you saying you don’t…” He trailed off. “Is this all…” He clutched his forehead. “I mean, dammit, Charlie, you’ve gotta say something!”
“Say what? What are you wanting me to say?”
He gestured awkwardly between them. “You kissed me back, and you don’t regret it, so I’m asking if there’s…anything here?”
Charlie’s breathing grew heavy. Ragged. Anything of what? The spark…the irritation…the desire? There was everything between them still, and it was dangerous. It was going to unravel her.
But maybe she wanted to be unraveled.
Charlie surged forward, wrapping her arms around Julian’s neck, sinking into the softness of him, caving to the pressure of his lips. Everything would be fine, she told herself as he cupped her jaw, nipping at her bottom lip.
This was fine.
The pull between them… It was only because it had been so long since she’d had someone in her bed. It had nothing to do with her heart getting tangled up in something complicated. She’d had enough complicated to last her a lifetime. She didn’t need any more.
They bumped against the metal counter and then the microwave. It beeped in response, demanding to be opened. Neither of them reacted to the noise. Instead, Julian’s hands glided down her arms, and then to the small of her back before dropping to cup her ass.
He squeezed, and she groaned. “Is there somewhere a little more out of the way?”
“Popcorn not doing it for you?” he rasped.
“It’s great,” she teased. “Just hoping for something—”