Page 1 of Touch of Fondness

Chapter One

If there wasone thing Brielle wasn’t going to miss about college, it was the soggy, tepid tater tots the cafeteria in Bryant Hall offered students on Breakfast-for-Lunch-and-Dinner Saturdays.

Oh, who am I kidding? I’m going to miss everything, even these undercooked globs of potato.

“Are you crying? Bri, are you actuallycrying?” Lilac laughed like she was the only one in on the joke. Pembroke hastily scooped her compact out of her clutch and dabbed some more foundation on her cheeks to cover her own trail of tears and Gavin blew his nose on his scratchy cafeteria napkin.

Brielle smiled despite the miniature Niagara Falls taking up residence on her face and chomped on another tater, savoring its terribleness for good measure. “Just because some of us are made of stone doesn’t mean the rest of us aren’t going to miss this place.”

Lilac lightly touched the tips of her fingers to her collarbone with one hand and held the other hand above her like a Shakespearean actor. “A college is but four walls and a roof, my dear.” She grinned. “Albeit fourvery expensivewalls and a roof, but walls and a roof nonetheless. No graduation is going to take away what this place meant to you.” She tapped her left breast. “You’ll always find it here.”

Gavin cocked his head and flashed his best come-hither grin. “In your ginormous boob?”

“Har har.” Lilac slapped him on the shoulder and picked up her fork again, pushing her tater tots to the side of her tray. They crumbled into an unappealing mess in the corner of one of the squares. “I don’t know,” she said, staring at her food instead of eating it. “I think it’s about time we move on. Crappy French toast and tater tots served on a divided tray? What are we, middle schoolers or soon-to-be-independent adults?”

Brielle took a sip of her orange juice. “Says the soon-to-be elementary school teacher.” She tapped her tray. “Get used to these.”

Lilac shrugged. “Maybe someday. Maybe not. I don’t have to anytime soon.”

“What do you mean?” asked Pembroke. She’d been especially quiet today, not that being quiet was especially odd for Pembroke. “Aren’t you going to be teaching at Jacobson Primary this fall?”

“Nope.” Lilac popped a mouthful of egg into her mouth.

“Shut up,” said Gavin. He nudged her. “Are you serious?”

“Would I joke about something like that?” Lilac smiled sweetly, then laughed. “Don’t answer that.”

“When were you going to tell us?” Brielle was somehow both surprised and not surprised at all at this piece of information. Lilac always did things in the most dramatic way possible. Why not make the last meal they shared before their parents arrived all about her?

She took a deep breath. This was not how she wanted to remember today. Sometimes she wondered if Lilac was her enemy or one of her best friends. But that was just part of the territory that came with being friends with Lilac. And besides, it wasn’t like they were going to be able to see each other much after graduation anyway. Or so Brielle had thought. Last she knew, Lilac was moving to a suburb outside of Minneapolis and putting her early education degree to good use. Honestly, what on earth was the point of all of that hard work Lilac had put into getting licensed in another state if she wasn’t going to go through with it? She even had her apartment picked out, was interviewing prospective roommates, had made the deposit… No, no. Brielle cradled her forehead. She wasn’t going to do this. Not today.

“Don’t have a conniption over it.” Lilac obviously saw something in Brielle’s countenance that made her train of thought more apparent than she’d intended. Lilac shrugged. “Something better came along.”

“Better than a firm job offer?” Gavin asked. “Apayingfirm job offer, I might add?” Poor Gavin got to work at the place of his dreams… as an unpaid intern. After graduation. With only a tiny chance of getting offered a paid position by the end of the summer. Brielle had no idea how Gavin could summon the courage to move to Chicago on the hope that he’d be working for this marketing firm as a paid employee by summer’s end, even if he was just crashing on a couple of friends’ couch until then.

Not that he had much to take with him other than the clothes in his closet and that winning smile of his. His parents were assholes who’d disowned him and thrown out all his stuff last summer after he’d come out to them. His grandma was the only one in his entire family who even spoke to him anymore—other than his little sister, who tried to text him in secret. But, to quote the man himself, there was “no way I’m moving into my grandmother’s basement in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and trying for a job at the local hardware-slash-convenience-slash-crafting store that’s the only place for miles. Assuming they don’t drive me out of town before I step foot into it. Do they even want gay people selling their cakes they don’t want sold to gay people?”

Lilac cleared her throat and drummed her fingers on the table. “I repeat: Something better.”

Pembroke gasped. “Did you… get a job offer abroad?”

It was no secret how much Lilac had loved spending a semester in Spain her junior year. Just as it was no secret that Pembroke had so badly wanted to spend the year in Japan but had chickened out at the last minute. And how fixated on Lilac’s changed-her-life experience Pembroke seemed to be as a result.

Lilac snorted. “Iwish. About the only thing that would guarantee me that is a job teaching English, and I don’t think a change in venue would make enough of a difference when I really wanted a… change in job.”

Brielle couldn’t keep biting her tongue. “You’re not going to be an elementary school teacher? After all the hard work you put into becoming one?”

Lilac raised her eyebrows. “Maybe I wished I’d taken a cue from you,” she said, and although her tone seemed cheerful, there was something a little darker under her words, “and had studied something more useless so I didn’t have to spend so much time in training and studying for my license.”

“Lilac.” Gavin shook his head.

Brielle didn’t really have a comeback. She knew her philosophy and history dual majors were utterly pointless—she had no ambitions to be a professor or teacher, and that narrowed her already-narrow list of possible ways to put her degree to use—even if she really, really loved studying the subjects. But even her own mom didn’t seem happy with her plan of moving back home to work for her mom’s cleaning service, just like she had every summer as a teenager and every summer since. No matter how much Brielle tried to convince everyone it wasn’t her “forever, ever” plan, that she’d continue to look for something resembling a post-college career between scrubbing mildew out of grout and vacuuming up Mrs. Tanaka’s odious cats’ scattered kitty litter, no one seemed to believe her that come this time next year, her life would be so much different.

Brielle wasn’t sure she believed that, either.

“I’m serious,” countered Lilac. “All that wasted time just showed me… I’m not cut out to be a teacher.”

“That’s not true!” Pembroke frowned. Itwassometimes hard for Brielle as well to associate unpredictable, party hardy Lilac with reliable daytime guardian of rambunctious seven-year-olds, but she was a different person around kids. She wasreally goodwith kids.

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