///
My heart ached so powerfully I pressed a hand to my chest to soothe it. Cameron was looking at me with absolute agony in his eyes, like he was the disappointing one.
It was me who kissed another man less than a week before.
Guilt was eating way at me like a parasite, killing me from the inside. All I wanted was to be able to focus on Cameron, to give him all of me again, but it was too late.
I'd given a part of myself to Reese, a part I didn't realize still existed. And now I was split into two perfectly even, jagged halves. I wasn't whole, and therefore I couldn't feel whole - couldn't feel complete.
But I had to try.
I'd made a vow to Cameron, one I never intended to break.
"You're an amazing husband," I countered, though my voice was soft. "And I love you."
"I love you, too. More than you know." He tilted my chin up with his knuckles, kissing me almost as if he knew my lips had belonged to someone else that week. "I hope we get a snow day. It would be nice to just waste a Tuesday away under the covers, wouldn't it?"
I smiled. "That would be perfect."
"Well, I'll pray for it, then."
We spent the rest of the evening on the couch, too, ordering pizza to be delivered somewhere around six. Later that night, Cameron carried me up the stairs to our bedroom and made love to me softly and sweetly, kissing every inch of my body like he only had his lips and his hands to tell me how much he loved me.
And how sorry he was.
I faked an orgasm early, and once Cameron was sated and falling asleep, I snuck into our bathroom and sobbed.
Reese hadn't so much as looked at me since the morning after what happened.
He'd been very tactful about avoiding me, staying out of the café around lunch time and steering clear of the kindergarten wing at all costs. He'd even told Mr. Henderson that he didn't require my help on the spring concert project any longer, which meant there was really no reason for us to see each other at all.
So when I walked into our very loud and lively teachers' café Monday morning and saw him laughing with Jennifer Stinson in the corner, I stopped dead in my tracks.
"I'm telling you, there is no way we'll get a snow day tomorrow. Mr. Henderson would rather go on a diet than give us a day off," Sheldon said, and a few of the teachers laughed and nodded their agreement. "Remember last year? We had seven inches over night and half the students didn't show, but we still had to be here."
"Yeah, but they're calling for eight inches at least tonight," another teacher said.
"One inch can make quite the difference," Jennifer chimed in, and the way she looked at Reese when she said it made my fingers curl into fists at my side.
She sipped from the coffee mug in front of her and Reese smiled back, but when his eyes flicked to me, the smile fell.
"I say we take bets," Sierra said from the table where she was eating a large slice of coffee cake without any coffee to accompany it. "Who thinks we're going to be here tomorrow?"
Everyone started debating again while Sheldon pulled out a paper and pen to write down bets, but Reese just held me with his gaze, both of us ignoring the fuss and watching each other, instead. After a moment, he murmured something to Jennifer and stood, walking over to the coffee pot at the counter. I followed.
I stood at his side for longer than I should have without saying a single word. I just watched him unscrew the top from his Thermos and refill it.
"What do you think?" I asked after a while. "Snow day or no snow day?"
Reese scoffed, shoving the coffee pot under the faucet to rinse it before refilling it with water. He'd drained the last of it, so he worked on making a fresh pot while I stood there wishing he'd look at me.
"Does it matter? We'll have to make the day up at the end of the year if they do call it."
"True," I whispered. "But, it might be fun to have a day off."
He shrugged. "I guess. I'd just sit at home, so I'd rather work, to be honest."
Reese was so cold, so shut off from me, and I realized I'd never been in that position before. I'd always been the one to light him up when I walked into the room, and now I couldn't even get a smile.
"What is Jennifer doing here?"
"She's donating some flowers for the concert and asked to meet to talk about it over coffee this morning." He shoved the pot of water back under the filter and flipped the button to brew, then he finally looked at me. "Is this what you wanted to talk to me about? The possibility of a snow day and Jennifer Stinson?"
///
I swallowed. "I don't know, I just wanted to talk to you."
"Why?"
He hated me, and I couldn't blame him.
"Because I miss you … I miss my friend."
Reese stuck his tongue to the inside of his cheek, shaking his head like I'd just said the most offensive word in the English language. "Wow. No."
"No?"
"No. You don't get to say that to me. You don't get to tell me that you miss me, and you definitely do not get to say that it's our friendship that you miss."
"But it is," I tried to argue, but he cut me short.
"You want to talk, Charlie? Fine. Let's talk." He stepped into me, lowering his voice so that only I could hear him. Not that it mattered - everyone else was still arguing about the snow day, anyway. "Why don't you look me in the eyes, right now, right here, and tell me that you feel nothing for me. That's what you wanted to talk about last time we had a conversation, right? So, here. Hammer it home."
He took another step, his chest brushing mine, his eyes hard where they watched me over the bridge of his nose.
"Tell me that kiss only made you feel guilty. Tell me it only made you realize you're completely happy in your marriage and Cameron is who you want and I mean nothing to you. Tell me that night was a mistake. That's your favorite word for it, right? So, go ahead. Tell me."
I couldn't speak.
His eyes flicked between mine, his jaw set, brows furrowed in a deep resolve.
"Oh, that's right," he said after a moment, taking only a small step back. "You can't."
"I love him, Reese," I whispered, the words cutting me like a dull razor blade as they left my lips. I knew they penetrated him just the same.
"Doesn't change the fact that you love me, too."
A loud roar of laughter broke out around us, and Reese held my eyes with his own for a long moment before he turned and rejoined Jennifer at their table. He smiled brightly at her once he'd sat back down, as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn't nailed me to the spot with the truth of his words.
He glanced at me briefly when I didn't move, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat once before he tore his eyes away and focused on Jennifer again. She reached forward to cover his hand with hers, laughing at something he'd said, and it was that laugh that snapped me back to reality.
I blinked, hastily pouring the fresh coffee into my Thermos before I turned and left the room.
That night, it snowed nine inches, and Mr. Henderson called the first snow day of the year.
Charlie
Something strange happens when you spend too much time alone.
The relaxation you feel from those first few hours of solitary morphs somewhere along the way, transforming into awareness of your subconscious, awareness of the thoughts you didn't even know you were hiding from. Time blurs, stretching and sprinting all at once, exposing the loneliness in your soul along the way.
Though Mr. Henderson had called a snow day for Westchester not only on Tuesday, but on Wednesday, too - Cameron still had to go to work. They'd let him work from home for the first couple of hours Tuesday morning, but then he had to go in. And on Wednesday, they didn't even let him start the morning at home.
The roads were bad enough that I didn't want to chance driving on them, not even to go to Mom's, so I just stayed at home with Jane. Alone.
There was a brief moment on Tuesday morning when I was grateful I got to stay under the warm, cozy sheets of our bed when Cameron left for work. I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept in that late, and when Cameron was out the door, I sighed contently and burrowed under the covers more.
I only slept for another thirty minutes, and that half hour was spent dreaming of Reese.
We were back at his house on that last night before he moved to New York, only this time, he kissed me. The dream felt so real, like he was in that room with me still when I woke. When I came all the way to, I realized my hand was under my boy shorts, my fingers wet.
I got out of bed then, and so began my two days of being completely alone with my thoughts.
When I was younger, I used to sit in my dad's office and watch one of the little trinkets on his desk while he worked. It was a row of silver balls hanging from a bar, and Dad would pull the end one back, letting it smack the side of the ball next to it. This would set up a chain reaction in which the ball on the opposite end would swing out and back again, and so it would go, on and on and on all afternoon.