Chapter 4
SIX YEARS AGO || LATE AUGUST
The only bench with room to sit is the one right beneath the lamppost.
There’s a guy occupying half of it, but I think he’s asleep, and I don’t blame him. Summer is fading away, leaving campus with perfect breezes and rustling trees and leaves that are considering changing color. It’s an evening I could curl up in, too.
The guy on the bench seems to have assumed the classic resting position, slouched low, worn baseball cap pulled down over most of his face, arms folded, head tilted back. I can imagine him snoring softly even from here. That’s the standard for guys trying to sit up and sleep at the same time.
Although growing up we attended the little white church in town, a postcard-perfect chapel with a soaring steeple, and every Sunday I saw more than one elderly man bent forward, elbows on his knees, face tilted to the floor and balanced precariously on his hands.
The benches inside were made of wood and therefore uncomfortable to sprawl on—not that the guy in front of me would have had any problems, given his current pose.
I could never sleep in church. Dresses are too uncomfortable. Heels, too, which is why when I approach the half-occupied bench now, I’m walking with a bit of a limp.
I glance down at my shoes and grimace. They’re cute, as far as heels go—simple black pumps. Nothing too crazy. But the back of my feet and my ankles are being rubbed raw, and for a moment I consider pulling them off all together and spending the rest of the evening barefoot on this bench.
Unfortunately, even if I can ditch my shoes, I’m stuck with the rest of my outfit: a knee-length black dress with long sleeves and a neck that scoops lower than I prefer.
I keep worrying it will catch the evening breeze and fly up, and instead of a Marilyn Monroe situation with her famous white dress over the air vent, I will give everyone here a blue-underweared show.
It’s just that I have newish roommates this year, girls from the dorms I lived in freshman year.
I don’t know them very well, and they don’t know me, but they needed someone to take the last spot in their apartment, and I needed a place to live.
I moved in, and when they invited me to come with them to the back-to-school mixer this evening, I said yes.
I thought it would be a good bonding experience.
Classes start next week, and it would be nice to be able to call the girls friends before that.
But I think we will need to bond over something other than school dances. The campus courtyard is relatively empty, but the press of people inside was stifling, made worse by the impossibly loud music that I can hear thumping even from here.
When I reach the metal bench, I settle myself as quietly and gracefully as possible.
I scoot all the way to the end so that I don’t disturb the sleeping stranger, and then I pull my feet from my heels.
I flex them a bit, which feels infinitely better than having them confined, before letting them rest on the stone that paves most of campus.
I’ve only been sitting for thirty seconds or so when I get a whiff of the man next to me, some sort of sharp cologne that barely masks the scent of something more familiar.
What is that? It’s nothing gross, like BO or cigarette smoke. It’s pleasant. I just can’t place it.
I look him over for any clues, but I find nothing. He’s dressed normally in faded jeans and a dark henley, well-worn work boots on his feet.
After a moment of creepily staring at the guy, I decide he’s definitely asleep. The rise and fall of his broad chest is steady and slow, and other than that he’s totally still. So I lean surreptitiously sideways, sniffing a bit more.
Not burying my face in his shoulder or anything. Just…you know. A casual twitch of the nose.
But that casual twitch does it, and I smile. Beneath the smell of cologne is the smell of a dusty woodworking shop—of carpentry. Before I think better of it, I inhale deeply as my eyes flutter closed, my smile widening at the memories that scent evokes.
Helping my dad in the shop after school. Popping my head into the work shed out back to bring him food when he’d been there for hours, working on one thing or another for someone in town.
When I open my eyes again, I half expect this guy to have wood shavings in his hair and on his shoulders.
He doesn’t, of course. What he does have is one eye looking sideways at me from beneath the hat propped on his face. One eye making direct contact with my own.
I startle when our gazes meet, jolting back to my side of the bench like I’ve touched an electric fence. Mortification washes over me, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
This good-smelling stranger just caught me sniffing him.
Why did I do that? Who sniffs a total stranger, anyway?
If I leave my shoes here, I could make a run for it. My dress might fly up a bit, but that would be a small price to pay, wouldn’t it? If it meant I could get out of here right now?
The ideas only flit halfway through my head before the guy reaches for his hat and pulls it off of his face, dropping it into his lap and turning to face me more fully.
Green eyes. Long lashes. Light brown hair, mussed from the hat.
And my humiliation goes from a river to a flood as recognition hits me, because I know this person.
“Have we met?” the guy says, even as his name is already front and center in my mind.
This is Dominic Harper. Dominic Harper from Autumn Ridge, several years older than me, one of the most handsome guys I’ve ever met.
Of course, I use the word “met” very loosely. I’m not sure he knew I existed up until this moment; our relationship was one where he passed my locker and I watched moon-eyed.
He was never the popular guy or the ladies’ man or the rich kid—I think he was too introverted for that kind of attention.
He was the one who looked like he could lift a bale of hay over each shoulder with no problem.
Like he belonged behind the wheel of a tractor, muscles flexing, sweat on his brow, undeniably manly and strong—
Stop it, I tell myself firmly as heat rises in my cheeks. I can feel them burning, and I sort of wish they would catch fire and erase this moment from history.
“Were you smelling me?” Dominic says now. His brows are twisted low in confusion, his lips braced in a frown, but there’s genuine curiosity in his eyes.
I think he recognizes me.
“Sorry,” I say. The word pushes out in a little squeak, so I clear my throat. “Sorry.” Then I straighten up and try to act normal. “I was smelling you, which was weird and inappropriate and it won’t happen again—”
“Oh!” He cuts me off with a snap of his fingers, his brows jumping. “You’re the Berkeley girl. Right?”
“Reese Berkeley,” I say as I die inside. “Yes. That’s me.”
I might change my major and study time travel in hopes that I can go back and fix this situation. Stop myself from sitting next to Dominic Harper on this stupid metal bench that clearly didn’t allow him to sleep deeply enough.
He nods and rights himself, sitting up instead of slouching. I have to look upward to meet his eyes once he does, but thankfully he doesn’t seem annoyed or upset. His expression does fall a bit, though, something shadowed rising in his eyes.
“I was sorry to hear about your dad,” he says. “He was a great guy.”
My dad. I swallow the sudden knot in my throat and hum my thanks, because even though it’s been a couple years, I still can’t talk about it or think about it too much without crying.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever stop missing him.
I delayed my freshman year a few semesters to give myself time to fall apart, but here I am now, about to start my sophomore year, and I still can’t imagine a world in which I don’t feel his absence so keenly it hurts.
“How did you know him?” I ask Dominic instead, like I don’t already know that he came to the shop sometimes.
Good grief, I tell my teenage self. Were you a stalker or what? You should not know this much about someone who didn’t remember your name.
Teenage Reese was a daydreamer. I like to think that while I still daydream, I now also have a healthier sense of boundaries.
Sure enough, when Dominic answers me, he says what I expect.
“I was in and out of your dad’s store a lot,” he says with a shrug.
He plays with his baseball hat, curling and uncurling the lid in a motion that’s clearly been repeated a thousand times.
“I did a bunch of fixing and handyman stuff to earn some extra money in high school, and I still do some when I’m home in the summers. ”
“I think I remember you now,” I say in an absolutely shameless lie.
But it’s not like I can tell him I had a crush on him in school, in that dreamy, it-will-never-happen sort of way that teenage girls experience.
“You were a couple years ahead of me. You guys did the senior prank with the fish in the vents.”
A small smile tugs over Dominic’s lips. “Our legacy lives on, I see.”
“It does…” I say, drawing the words out. “In the girl’s bathroom.”
The smile vanishes. “What?”
“In the girl’s bathroom off the cafeteria,” I say with a nod. “It still smelled like fish when I was there.”
Now his eyes narrow. “It did not.”
“No, it did,” I say placidly. “Very fishy in there.”
“No way,” he says, shaking his head slowly, but I can see a hint of that smile trying to return to his lips. “You know what I think, Berkeley? I think you’re a liar.”
I can’t help the laugh that escapes me, and with it some of the tension I’ve been carrying dissipates. I feel inexplicably at ease here—probably because Dominic is from Autumn Ridge too, a place that will always be home in my heart. Even my teenage self still buried deep inside is relaxing.
“My name is Reese, not Berkeley,” I say. “R-E-E-S-E. Give it a try.” When his lips continue to twitch, I nudge, “Come on. Let me hear it. Reese.”
“My apologies, Reese,” he says. Amusement sparkles in his eyes—and are those freckles I’m noticing?