AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Neither of Tom’s children resembled him (luckily for them if I’m being honest). Tom was a good man. He was proof that beauty was only skin deep, because I don’t think he could ever be described as beautiful. He was short, rounded. Aged by years of stress and overworking. His eyes were so dark they were almost black, small, and beady. They’d been overtaken by the wrinkles that sagged against his skin. He kept his head shaved, because the only hair that grew there was at the nape of his neck; coarse, and curly, and gray. I knew, even as he aged, Carter would never look like that. Not just because he lived so carefree and stress-free. I doubted he’d ever wrinkle. He also had a thing about sunscreen—specifically the reef-friendly kind, of course—always telling everyone that they needed to put it on, even if it was cloudy. But Carter looked like his mom. I’d only met Laila a handful of times, but Carter had always been the spitting image of her. Not just in the coloring of their golden skin or hazel, almond shaped eyes; but in their wide set noses, full lips, and thick brows. They smiled the same, too. Where Carter’s curls were short, tousled on top of his head, his mother’s were long and cascading waves. His mother was the kind of beautiful you didn’t think was real until you saw it up close, just like him.
“What did you two do?” Carter asked our sisters.
Bouts of laughter evaporated between them. “We convinced everyone to keep it a secret. We thought it would be funny if you both just randomly ran into each other,” Charlie squeaked.
“You guys supported this?” I asked all our parents at once. “Meddlesome, insane family,” I muttered under my breath. I was almost convinced nobody heard me, but Carter's eyes met mine through his lashes. They were glistening playfully.
My dad shrugged. “It didn't seem like a big deal. I didn’t realize you two hadn’t seen each other in so long. I thought you saw each other at Thanksgiving.”
“I didn’t come home for Thanksgiving last year,” Carter said.
“Right. I forgot,” Dad said through a mouth full of enchilada.
“Well, we also thought if we told you, Penelope, you might ask why. We didn’t want you to know about the proposal to have you become Seaside’s art teacher yet, because we thought you’d say no,” Tom said as he shrugged.
I snickered, “I probably would have.”
He straightened up. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t. You’re doing a good thing for those kids, for the district. It’ll look great on your resume, too.”
I nodded.
“We got this,” Carter said. His tone was quiet, as if the words were meant just for me. I looked up at him, all my will dissolving. I’d done a good job at avoiding eye contact until that moment, but the tone in his voice made it impossible not to stare directly into his kaleidoscope eyes. He smiled at me. It was some variation ofthatgrin. Instead of saying ‘I got you’ as in, I’ve caught you staring at me, or you’re the brunt of my joke; it said, ‘I’ve got you’ as in, I’ve got your back, as if we’re in all of this together.
I wanted to smile at him, but I forced it down. Deep, deep down and away from us both. If I allowed so much as one smile, it may be enough to demolish the wall I’d so carefully built around my heart.
The wall I built to keep him out.
Chapter Four
Carter
IARRIVEDOVERANHOUR BEFORE the first bell would ring, my nerves not allowing me to sleep a moment longer this morning. I’d never had a job like this. I’d never worked somewhere that required pants, even. My first job was at a surf rental shop in Waikiki. Then, I picked up photography and began getting published. I've been freelancing ever since.
I was mostly nervous about the job. I had no idea what it took to be a teacher. I didn’t know how to work with kids. I used to teach surf lessons to hotel tourists, and even though I knew it would be different, I hoped there were aspects of teaching children how to surf that would translate to teaching adolescents how to take photos. Luckily, for the entirety of the first week the students would be creating photo collages from old magazines to create mood boards for the type of things they’d be interested in photographing throughout the course of the semester. So, for this week I would be doing less teaching and more observing.
I was also nervous about being around Penelope. I hadn’t seen her since dinner Friday night, and to say that went badly would’ve been an understatement. First, she snapped at me for standing inside her house. Then, she wouldn’t so much as look in my direction during dinner. When I smiled at her, she scowled and looked away. When I tried speaking with her, she abruptly changed the subject and spoke to someone else. It was as if she was trying to block out my existence entirely. Her behavior was frigid, so unlike the person I thought I knew. Penelope had always been a little timid and quiet, except for certain moments where she felt entirely comfortable with not only herself, but those around her. I’d only seen her like that a handful of times. Even so, Penelope was never callous.
She never rejected my presence, never made me feel unwanted or unwelcome. I used to always think she’d treated me like somewhat of a comfort blanket. As if she’d always known I would never judge her, never do her wrong. I’d always thought if she didn’t love me the way I wanted her to, she at least trusted me. In some ways, I’d thought that was more important. I should’ve assumed she’d have changed in our years apart, but never to the point of coldness.
I begged to know if it was something I had done. If, after that day in the pantry, I had broken that trust that was so important to us both, even if unspoken. If I had, as I feared, misread things at that moment. If I had confused her wide eyes and her heaving chest for passion when it was really fear. She had kissed me back, sure. But what if she had just gotten caught up in the moment, and when it all came down, she realized that she wasn’t okay with it? What if she had carried those feelings around all these years?
Regardless of how much it may hurt, even after all this time, I needed to know.
If I had hurt her, I needed to make it right.
Except, she was all but refusing to speak to me. One thing that hadn’t changed about her, she was stubborn as hell. She had a hard exterior shell. I’d seen more than a few people try to break through that and fail miserably. I’d always believed I was exempt, though. That I had been around since before the shell had been created so I got to live on the inside, I didn’t have to break through it. Dinner Friday night had made me realize that maybe that wasn’t the case anymore. Maybe it was my turn to break the shell. The question wasn’t just whether or not she’d let me in, but whether or not I even wanted to try.
Somehow, I knew I’d always try for her.
As I inched closer to our classroom, I could hear the shuffling of feet and the low bass of music playing. I should’ve assumed she’d already be there as well. If I was nervous about something, she’d be a full-blown wreck.
“Good morning,” I said quietly as I opened the classroom door.
“Shit!” She jumped around to face me, startled anyway. “Dammit, Carter. You scared me.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“You’re here early.”
