Then it was just him and Reese left to greet.
Cameron was quiet, his smile a little forced, as it always was when Mom and Dad doted on him. He hated attention, but was always too polite to say so. His eyes were hard as he reached for Reese's hand.
Reese's smile had fallen, too, but it reappeared as they finally clasped hands and shook firmly. "Pleasure to finally meet you, Cameron. Charlie has told me amazing things about you."
I looked at Reese then. I hadn't told him anything.
"All fabricated, I'm sure," Cameron said with a smile of his own. "Nice to meet you, Reese. Charlie told me you're teaching at Westchester now, and I hear you're an old friend of the family, too."
"Grew up in the house one block over," Dad said, beaming. "Well, one yard over, really. He and Graham were best friends, and Charlie here was the same with Reese's younger sister, Mallory. Four peas in a very tight pod, they were."
Dad laughed a little at that, but I didn't miss the shadow of grief that fell over Reese's face at the mention of his sister. I cleared my throat, threading my arm through Reese's.
///
"Make me a Wild Walker, for old time's sake?" I asked, referencing the mystery concoction he'd branded with his last name when he was a teenager. It was the drink responsible for many of our friends' first hangovers - mine included.
Reese's eyes fell to where my hands rested on his bicep before they lifted to mine, and he smiled, seeming grateful for the change in subject. "You have a death wish before dinner?"
"I can handle it," I assured him, and he barked out a laugh.
"I'm sure."
"Cam, you'll join us for a cocktail before you head out?" Mom asked.
We all turned to face Cameron then, and he was watching Reese curiously, in a way I'd never seen him watch anyone before. "Afraid not," he answered, but he only looked at Reese. "Game starts at seven-thirty, and you know how traffic is."
Dad clapped Cameron on the shoulder to walk him out. "Shame, but you're right. Don't let us keep you. I'll text you once dinner is finished and I'm parked in front of the television in the study."
Before they left, Cameron turned to me with dark eyes and said, "I'll pick you up right after the game."
He held my gaze a moment, as if he was trying to tell me something. I used to be so in tune with those looks, those little stares. I knew when he wanted to leave a party early, when he wasn't feeling well, when he was making fun of someone with an inside joke between the two of us.
I used to know with one little look when he couldn't wait to take my clothes off.
"I'll be ready," I assured him. "Have fun."
He held my gaze a moment more before his eyes flicked to Reese. "You too." Then he turned, Dad talking business with him the entire way out the door as Mom, Reese and I made our way to the kitchen.
"So, do I even want to know what a Wild Walker is?" Mom asked when it was the three of us. She immediately went back to prepping the salads she'd been working on when I arrived, and Reese threw me a devilish grin over his shoulder as he reached into the cabinet for a glass.
"Just Reese's famous cocktail from his party days," I answered, taking a seat at one of the bar stools at the island. I'd always thought my kitchen was expansive, but Mom's was straight out of a magazine. It was built for a professional, or rather, a team of professionals. I barely noticed it anymore, but I still remembered when Dad had the entire thing gutted and remodeled to be Mom's dream kitchen. She'd practically lived in it my entire senior year of high school.
"And the culprit in your daughter's first experience being drunk."
I balked, unsure how my mother would react to that information, but she just laughed. "What? You mean to say my daughter had a drink before she was the legal age of twenty-one? Impossible!"
"Not our sweet little Charlie!" Dad chimed in as he entered from behind us. He winked at me, taking the seat to my left.
"You're right," Reese agreed, his back to us as he secretly mixed his famous concoction at the liquor buffet. "I must be mistaking her for someone else."
A warmth filtered in slowly in that moment, being in the kitchen with my parents and Reese. And for the first time in years, a small smile found my lips.
A real one.
"Very funny, everyone. I'll have you know, I got so hammered that night that I threw up in Mom's hydrangeas."
She paused, hands stilling where she'd been cutting the onion for our salads. "That's why they died?! Poor Salina and I racked our brains for weeks trying to figure that out before we had to just pull them and replant."
They all laughed as Reese handed me the finished product. I took the first sip, cringing a bit at the sting of whiskey before the familiar warmth of spice and cinnamon tickled my tongue. It brought me back to that night, to that feeling of youth, and I shook my head.
"Never thought I'd ever have one of these again."
Reese watched me take another sip, his eyes falling to my lips briefly before he ripped them away and took a drink of his own. "Yeah, well, surprises always were my thing."
"They were, indeed."
I noted the flecks of gold in his emerald eyes, the same way I had the first time I'd tasted a Wild Walker. He was watching me closely, like he wondered if I'd forgotten. He used to bring me books, little "surprises," ones he stole from the parties he attended. He'd sneak into the libraries or studies at the houses and pick one out for me, even though he knew I'd yell at him for taking someone else's property.
///
Half the books in my library were from house parties at Mount Lebanon's finest.
It was strange having Reese back in my childhood home. It felt different than seeing him at Westchester, a place I'd never seen him before, a new place for us to exist in. That had been more formal, more professional. But now, sitting in my kitchen with my brother's best friend, with a boy I used to watch play our piano in the next room, it was different - familiar. It was comforting. It was an old friend coming home, bringing all the memories we'd made over the years back with him.
Mom laughed at something Dad had said, something I'd missed, and Reese smiled, lifting his glass into the air.
"To surprises."
It was suddenly too warm.
My cheeks burned, but I lifted my glass, anyway.
"Surprises."
Our glasses clinked, and as we took a sip, Mom announced that dinner was ready.
Reese
"You did not," Charlie accused, holding her coffee cup close to her mouth so the steam hit her nose.
We were standing at the gate that separated her house from my old one. Both of our yards had been so big that we were a block away from front door to front door, but this gate had always been the shortcut. When we'd first moved in, it'd been a solid gate, but our parents had an entryway installed for easy access between our houses.
"I was there that night, remember?" Charlie cocked an eyebrow. "And I know for a fact you did not spray paint anything in your bedroom. Your parents would have killed you."
I did remember. We were reminiscing on my last night in town, the night before I, along with my entire family, moved away from Mount Lebanon. I was going to Juilliard after dicking around for three years after high school, and Mallory was going to NYU as a freshman. Our parents wanted to be there with us, so we all made the move to New York City together.
But not before I threw one last rager in the empty house.
"Glow in the dark spray paint, Tadpole. You wouldn't have seen it unless you were in that bedroom when the lights turned out. And I know for a fact you were not."
She eyed me, blowing on her coffee that was spiked with a little Baileys. "You stayed the night? I thought everyone left after the party."
I swallowed. "Yeah, I wasn't ready to say goodbye yet I guess. Slept in my old sleeping bag on the floor."
Charlie was quiet for a moment, so I took a sip of the scotch her dad had poured me after dinner. I knew coming to dinner with her parents would leave me with a full stomach and great conversation with people who felt like home, but what I didn't expect was to see Charlie start to finally open up a little. She seemed to relax the more we talked, and though it was faint, I found a small piece of the old her shining through.
Charlie chuckled. "I'm just picturing whoever it was who bought that house, laying down in that room to go to bed the first night and being scared out of their minds." She shook her head, looking up at me then, the moon casting a blue glow on her cheeks. "What did you write?"