19 Days Until Christmas
I WASstill pissed with Scarlet when I woke up the next day.
Maybe doubly pissed that she hadn’t sent me an apologetic text at some point during the night.
We’d been best friends since middle-school bully Lenny Holtz snapped Scarlet’s training bra and called her Pimple Face. I’d shoved him hard and uttered my very first bad word publicly, telling Lenny to leave herthehell alone. Lenny’s response had been to shove me back and call me a whiny fairy. Scarlet had decked him. We’d shared a bag of Cheez-Its during detention and the rest was one for the history books.
So even though I loved her, no way was I apologizing for the argument. Not after Scarlet was the one who told me to go after Felix to begin with. And since learning that he enjoyed me taking the lead romancewise, fuck if I was letting the guy go without a fight. Felix was the sort of man who I’d been searching for all my life. (Not that I was going to fucking admitthatto Scarlet either.)
I was coughing and gasping for air by the time I reached the front doors of the high school that morning. Despite arriving earlier than most teachers, the instructors’ parking lot was crammed full due to some repair vans using it for quick access to the building. Even though I deserved that parking spot, I figured it wouldn’t kill me to walk from the students’ lot out near the soccer field. But according to the dash of my car before I got out, it was a cozyfourteen degreesoutside. The dry, frozen air made my lungs seize up, and I was struggling to breathe by the time I was hit by the whoosh of hot air inside.
“Good morning, Mr. Mer—are you okay?” Alan asked. He’d been hanging around the front door, seemingly waiting for me.
I shook my head, thrust my violin case at him, and dropped my shoulder bag to the floor. I crouched down, opened it, and started throwing out junk like it was Mary Poppins’s carpetbag until I unearthed my inhaler. Luckily I had found it that morning in a box in the kitchen when I’d originally been looking for my toaster.
I gave it a quick shake and inhaled.
Alan stared down at me. “Run a marathon?” he eventually asked.
I let out the held breath. “The cold,” I said.
Alan’s gaze went briefly to the doors behind me. “Yeah… northern New Hampshire may not have been the smartest place to move, Mr. Merlin.”
I started shoving all of my belongings back into the bag.
“Do you need to see the school nurse?”
“No. I’m fine.” I glanced up at him and smiled. “Thanks, though.”
“All right. Just don’t die on me, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Because I like your class.”
I stood and took back my violin. After a few deep breaths, I asked, “What are you doing here so early?”
Alan shrugged.
I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t say.”
He shook his head. “You sound like my dad sometimes.”
I felt heat hit my face. Hopefully Alan chalked it up to the cold wind and a fair complexion. “Oh.”
“I was waiting for you,” he continued.
“Why’s that?”
“Yesterday you said you’d talk to my advisor if I really wanted to be in music composition class.”
A wave of relief nearly consumed me. Not that I wouldn’t eventually have to talk with Alan about the fact that I was seeing his father romantically and hopefully intimately; I just didn’t want to deal with that before I’d put my stuff down and finished my thermos of coffee.
“You want me to talk to him today?” I confirmed.
Alan nodded. “This morning? Before it gets busy and stuff.”
“All right, fine. Lead the way.”
