Page 11

“Are you OK?” Charlotte asked. Did she have a cold or something? Maybe an allergy? Toni looked more amused than concerned.

“Fine.” Alessandra cleared her throat. “I think a chai will help clear me out—”

“I swear, the two of you think chai is the answer to everything. I don’t know how you can stand the stuff.”

They looked at her as if she’d said the earth was flat.

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop. I’m just glad you’re all right.”

“So what’s on tap for today?” Toni asked them.

“Coffee. Grading papers. Meeting a friend in the city for a drink,” Charlotte answered.

Toni’s brows lifted.

“Oops, sorry,” she amended, forgetting “the city” usually meant New York City around here. “You’d think I’d learn by now. Just heading into Stroudsburg.”

“Who are you meeting?” Alessandra asked.

“Don’t judge, but my mother insisted I meet this guy, the son of my stepdad’s boss.”

“Insisted?” Alessandra looked at her strangely.

She didn’t blame her. At her age, Charlotte really should be able to say no to a date she had no desire to go on. But trying to explain her mother wasn’t in the cards for today.

After teasing her, they chatted for a few more minutes, until the door of the bank burst open.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Lawrence cut in. “I need your opinion on something,” he said to Toni. The look he gave her reminded Charlotte of the way his brother had looked at her the previous day.

Hungry.

A look she needed to stay far, far away from.

A look that could get her into trouble.

“Go ahead,” Alessandra said. “I’ll get you a chai and swing it by later.”

Waving, Toni moved toward Lawrence, who grabbed her by the waist as she got close to him. A wave of longing surprised her. Not for Lawrence, of course, but for this. For being in love. Still, she was happy for her friends—they both deserved happiness, and they looked to have found it.

Charlotte and Alessandra continued on to the coffee house, chatting about this and that. The Witch’s Brew was crowded when they arrived, swollen with weekend tourists, and they walked past cozy couches on the left and high-top tables on the right to get into the ridiculously long line.

“Have your colleagues defrosted yet?” Charlotte asked.

While Alessandra loved her new job, she’d admitted it was requiring a bit of an adjustment. The other professors weren’t welcoming, nor did they spend time together after work. There were no happy hours. No breakroom pranks. Just research, teaching, and more research. Oh, and competition.

“Not so much,” she said. “But luckily, I’ve been busy with . . . the bar and such.”

She was holding something back. Charlotte wasn’t the only one who’d been MIA this summer—Alessandra had been elusive too, but Charlotte hadn’t wanted to say anything for fear she’d appear jealous of her friend’s new relationship. Which she wasn’t. Kenton might have an overabundance of confidence, but he treated Alessandra like a queen and had been nothing but kind to Charlotte.

So she hadn’t said anything. But maybe it was a mistake to be so reticent. It was something the old Charlotte would do, and she’d worked hard to change.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Is there anything . . . else . . . that’s changed, besides Kenton, in the last few months? You seem, I don’t know. Something is different, maybe.”

She felt like a complete fool, but she wasn’t imagining this.