Chapter Two
Two
Julian
Julian practically tripped down the stairs in his haste to get away from Charlie.
Away from the blood rushing in his ears and his pulse jumping at the base of his throat and his chest tightening as she’d glared at him with those familiar hazel eyes.
Eyes that he swore used to take his breath away when he caught her staring at him from the steps of her grandmother’s porch.
But that wasn’t what was happening now. Nope.
He was out of breath because he was rushing, not because of Charlie. That would be ridiculous.
Julian made his way across the building, sheet music (to an aria, apparently) tucked under his arm.
He hadn’t planned on bringing the aria to his meeting, but now he was running behind, replaying that disastrous interaction on repeat like an unfinished melody.
He wanted nothing more than to scrub it from his mind.
And the look on Charlie’s face.
And…well…the look of Charlie’s everything. Because he’d be lying if he said she wasn’t still gorgeous as hell. But that was not how he was supposed to be looking at family members of residents. Or thinking about them. Or wondering…
God, what had it been? Eight years since he’d last seen her? Since they’d… Well, hooked up wasn’t quite the right term, though there’d been a lot of that.
Julian shook his head, banishing those thoughts.
What did any of it matter? It was only one summer.
And clearly three months of flinging hadn’t meant anything.
Because at the end of it all, Charlie had set off for Juilliard, he’d returned to college, and eventually she’d stopped returning his calls and his texts…
He sighed. None of that should have surprised him because he was a pro at being left behind.
But it had surprised him. And the hurt that came from being left behind by the people you cared about stung somewhere too deep to forget.
He knuckled the space between his ribs as he dragged his thoughts back to the safety of work. To the job he was good at, a job he loved—the longest and most reliable thing in his life. Every day he counted himself lucky that he got to wake up in the morning and truly enjoy what he did.
“Afternoon, ladies,” he said, nodding as he passed a group of elderly residents in matching pastel jumpsuits. The paint splotches told him they’d just come from the art room. “Looking snazzy as always.”
They tittered at him the way they usually did. Being fortyish years younger than most of the residents relegated Julian to the status of endearing and adorable and even, on occasion, cute. Those kinds of comments never ceased to make him feel like a ten-year-old playing at adulthood.
Julian had only grown up with one grandparent.
His grandma Sofia. She’d been the one to take him in while his parents dragged out their messy divorce, but she’d also battled dementia for a lot of his life.
Moments like these reminded him of her: patiently enduring the overzealous compliments about his dimples and the nosy investigations into the status of his nonexistent love life.
Which brought his thoughts back to Charlie. Exactly where he didn’t want them to be.
Seeing her again, his first reaction had been to panic, to pretend he didn’t recognize her.
He thought maybe she’d let it go. Then when she’d pressed, he’d doubled down and pretended like that summer had been a blip hardly worth remembering.
I’m sure I asked out a lot of girls… God, what was wrong with him?
He should have just said, “Hi, good to see you, too.” Her grandmother had moved into Glendale.
It wasn’t like he was going to be able to avoid them.
Plus Charlie had to know he was lying. It must have been obvious in the way he’d looked at her. At the disbelief written into his features and the confusion that wavered in his voice. Because beneath that, somewhere deeper, a flicker of betrayal had ignited.
No! He didn’t need those feelings surging through his blood right now. Even back then, he’d known better than to get close to people, but Charlie had slipped past his defenses, and in the end had ghosted him.
Whatever her reasons then, it didn’t matter now. He’d learned his lesson, and he didn’t need to dwell on thoughts of summer sun against his skin or the way she used to hum against his lips right before she kissed him.
Julian swallowed hard. Charlie had knocked him completely off his game, and he suddenly felt like anyone who looked close enough would be able to see the flush in his cheeks or hear the unsteady beat of his heart.
“Frank!” Julian said, greeting an older man who was working his way toward the dining room in his wheelchair.
Frank lifted his hand for Julian to shake like he did every day. “Short rib today,” Frank said.
Frank was the keeper of all things. The time.
Glendale’s weekly menu. Room assignments.
If you wanted to know what dinner would be three days from now, he could tell you.
If you wanted to know where Mrs. Abernathy’s suite was, he could point you in the right direction.
He wasn’t the greatest conversationalist, but if you wanted to know the score of game six in the 1987 World Series, he could also tell you that.
Which was pretty remarkable as far as Julian was concerned.
“Want a ride to lunch?”
Frank lifted his hands into his lap, and Julian pushed him the rest of the way to the dining room. Frank pointed at a half-full table of residents, and Julian wheeled him over, nodding and lifting his hand in greeting as people acknowledged him.
“Julian?” Maggie Shiplake, busybody extraordinaire, called. Nothing happened in this place without Maggie knowing about it first. As a former high school secretary, she made it her business to be in everyone’s business. “How’s the outing to the community center looking for tomorrow?”
“It’s a go as far as I’m concerned,” Julian said. Maggie sat with Harriet Childs. He could never be sure what would come out of her mouth. Right now she was stuffing it with a raspberry Danish.
“Won’t you join us for lunch?”
“You know I’d love to, Maggie,” Julian said. “But I am most definitely late for a meeting.” He clapped Frank on the shoulder in goodbye.
“They work you too hard,” Maggie said.
“You tell Diane that the next time you see her,” Julian said. “I also wouldn’t mind a raise if you want to start dropping hints.”
“We always do,” Maggie called after him.
Julian hurried out of the dining room and down the hall, pausing outside an office that belonged to Diane Clark, Glendale’s executive director.
She was the constantly-frazzled-but-excellent-at-her-job type for which she blamed going gray in her midforties.
Besides her actual children, Glendale was Diane’s baby, as was evident by the very old, very worn sweater she donned every day with an image of Glendale on the back and her name embossed on the arm.
Diane was in charge of the facility’s financial health, managing staff and making sure Glendale met local and federal regulations. Today Julian was most interested in the financial part.
He knocked on the partially open door and waited to be invited in before pushing the door open the rest of the way. “Good afternoon, my favorite person ever.”
Diane gave a great sigh, looking for her phone in a landslide of paperwork.
“Is it already afternoon? I swear I just checked, and it was nine.” She found her phone, glanced at it, then dropped it back on her desk.
Looking up at Julian, her nose wrinkled.
“What do you want? I don’t have any money to give you. ”
Originally from Long Island, Diane’s accent jumped out when she was exasperated. Today would probably be one of those days. Julian dropped the stack of sheet music he’d been carrying onto her desk.
Diane rolled her eyes and unwrapped a candy cane from a bowl on her desk. She crunched on the end before offering him one.
Julian declined. “Isn’t it a little early for those?”
“Never.” She motioned with her chin. “What’s all this? More paperwork?”
“It’s an opera.”
“Is this your new strategy? Bury me in sheet music until you get your way?” Diane paused for a second, distracted by something on her computer screen. She started typing furiously. “If you’re trying to butter me up, start bringing me coffee. Black. Like the void I want to shove my desk into.”
Julian sat down on the edge of said desk. “I’m a little concerned about your caffeine intake.”
“I think it’s replaced the blood in my veins.”
“That’s the worrying part.”
“Too late to go back now.” She stopped typing and leaned back in her chair, regarding him over the rim of her glasses. “Now, what can I do for you? And remember you only get three asks a year. I’m like a genie. Use up all your wishes, and I’m going to stop taking your meetings.”
Julian picked absently at the edge of the folder he was sitting on. “I would actually like some money—”
Diane flopped her arms dramatically, pretending to melt into her chair. “Julian, come on!”
“Hang on a second,” Julian said before she could fully combust.
“You’re trying to kill me.”
“Just…look.” He shoved the sheet music in her direction. “People are always donating stuff like this for the music program. Books of music, old CDs, radios. Which is so great.”
“Yes?”
“But I can’t run a music program with stuff. I need people. Or at least a person. One singular person with a little bit of knowledge on how to turn all this stuff into productive and engaging classes.”
Diane clicked her tongue. “If you want a budget for music, you’ll have to pull it from somewhere else. From one of your more popular programs. Art maybe?”
“Music was a popular program before the budget was cut.” Julian had been fighting this battle for years now. There was never quite enough to go around, and like Diane, he did a lot of balancing as the activities director.