Page 2 of Love in Tandem
“Hey, did you know there’s a musician named Kenny G who can breathe in through his nasal passages as he blows air out his mouth at the same time?”
“Circ-circ-circular breathing. You told us about that in music class.”
“I did?” She risked looking down.
Nash nodded.
“And you remembered?”
Nash nodded again, a half-smile breaking through his freckled face.
Well, how about that? Maybe she’d taught these kids a thing or two after all, despite the music department’s abysmal resources and her part-time hours. Just think what she could teach them next year when she had actual instruments. An actual classroom. Actual support.
Part of her still couldn’t believe the school board had relented, agreeing to forego reconstruction on the middle school’s decrepit parking lot to provide a full-time music teaching position that included a band program. The hours she’d poured into applying for grants had paid off. Between the school board’s decision and the promised grant money for all new instruments, Charlotte’s dream of a thriving music program was finally taking root.
Take that, Benjamin Bryant.
Charlotte shook her head. Stop. After two years, she doubted her ex-fiancé gave her more than a passing thought. Besides, her desire for a successful music program had nothing to do with him.
Okay, ninety-four percent nothing to do with him. Six percent might still be a little hung up on proving Ben’s decision to call off their wedding had been a mistake. His decision to give up on her had been a mistake.
Charlotte squeezed Nash’s shoulder as she gently probed her nose and did a little sniff test. The bleeding had stopped. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll learn how to circular breathe someday. Have you thought about which instrument you’ll choose next school year?”
Nash grinned without a trace of tears. “The trumpet. Or maybe the trombone. Something I can blow real hard in. Then maybe I can help you blow away all the bees.”
Charlotte laughed, even though it made her nose throb. “I like how you think, Nash,” she shouted as he ran to catch up with his two older brothers, who were waving at him to hurry up.
Charlotte hustled into the school building before anything else thwarted her first moments of summer freedom. Locker doors slammed and shoes squeaked amongst the chatter of giddiness. Charlotte turned a blind eye to the gaggle of girls running to exit the building. Any other day, she’d have told them to slow down. Today, it was all she could do not to crack a whip and yell “Hee-yah!”
Slipping into the classroom she shared with the school nurse, the volunteer librarian, and, whenever he was bored, the school custodian, she pulled the door shut and leaned against it with a long sigh. Then a smile. A giggle. Oh, what the heck—she started to dance.
Somewhere after the fourth or fifth cha-cha around the folding table that served as her desk, a throat cleared from the doorway.
Charlotte gasped and spun. “Ty. I mean, Mr. Zemeckis. I mean—” Considering at one time he’d been friends with her older brother and used to torment her with wet willies and wedgies, it was weird knowing how to address him as her principal.
She slugged his upper arm. “You sneaky punk, I didn’t hear you come in.” School was out for the summer. She’d call him whatever she wanted.
“Ow.” He rubbed his skinny arm with mock pain. “Well, maybe if you weren’t so busy butchering the lyrics to a Gloria Estefan song. Come chickabonka, baby, something ’bout a conga?”
“I’m fairly certain that’s how it goes.”
The corners of Ty’s eyes crinkled behind his glasses. “I suppose you can sing whatever you want on the last day of school.” His smile dimmed as he took in the blood spatters on her shirt. “What happened there?”
“Nash.”
“Don’t tell me any more. I’m off duty until August.”
Charlotte waited for the humor to return to his eyes. It didn’t. Instead he spent the next several seconds tugging on his ear as he glanced around the box-shaped classroom to where a plastic human skeleton missing two ribs hung next to a narrow bookshelf crammed with tattered books. Then he pulled out one of the student’s chairs so he could fold his lanky frame into the seat and spend another eternity rubbing his forehead.
She heaved a deep sigh. “Look, I know what this is about, and I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Ty’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “How did you hear?”
“Ben’s mom told me. We ran into each other at the farmers market a few weeks ago. I got so flustered trying to prove I wasn’t flustered at the news, I bought fifty-three dollars’ worth of fresh spinach, which made me all the more flustered because I hate spinach and she knows I hate spinach, so somehow in all the flusterment I concocted an imaginary friend who loves spinach, whom I may have suggested wasn’t imaginary but rather special and perhaps male.”
Behind his glasses, Ty’s wide eyes blinked like a befuddled owl’s. “What are you talking about?”
Now it was Charlotte’s turn to blink and ponder. “Ben’s wedding this weekend. What are you talking about?”
