“Did you like high school?” Banks asks.
“Does anyone like high school?” I counter.
He taps his chin. “Fair point.”
I show him the outside of the science lab, then the auditorium, small in size but mighty in possibility. “That’s where Haven did her first musical.Beauty and the Beast.”
He turns to me, brown eyes widening with questions. “Tell me. How did the Beast transform at the end?”
I flinch. Rub my ear. “Wait…did you just?—”
“Ask you how the beast became the prince,” he says quickly, making a rolling gesture with his hands, speed-it-up style. “Yes, I’ve been dying to know ever since I saw it.”
“You sawBeauty and the Beast?”
He gives me a look. “Does this surprise you? I listen to classical music. I bake. I have a sister.”
“And she didn’t take you? You took her?” I ask, processing this new Banks detail.
“For your information, the three of us all like musicals andtheater. And yes, I took my mom and my sister. So…how did it happen?”
My heart gallops. This man is so tough and so tender at the same time. I step closer, curl a hand around his ear, and lean close to whisper, “Magic.”
He sighs heavily. “Ripley.”
I pull back. “You really want to know?”
“I do.”
“Spoiler and all?”
“Bring it on.”
I lean in and lower my voice again. “Double cast.”
When I step back, the look in his eyes is magic. Then, he shakes his head in disbelief. “Another actor must play him in the Gaston battle scene.”
I tap his nose. “Exactly.”
“I’m a fool,” he says, then smacks his forehead. “I can’t believe I missed something so obvious.”
“Or maybe the magic worked,” I say.
He flashes me a warm smile, holding my gaze meaningfully. “It did.”
My heart speeds even faster, and I’m not sure we’re talking about stage magic anymore.
Banks swings his gaze around and reaches for my hand, clasping our fingers together as we walk through the quad. As we’re leaving it, we pass a bench in the corner, set away from others. I stop, my chest squeezing with painful memories. Banks has opened up to me, so it’s fair I do the same. But it’s not just about fairness. There’ssomething else, something new—an insistent need to let him in. I haven’t felt like this before with a man, and I don’t know what to make of these new emotions. Still, I forge ahead into the unknown.
“That’s why I don’t like having my picture taken,” I say, pointing toward the seat.
He tilts his head. “The bench? What happened?”
We sit, and I begin the story that I haven’t shared with any other man. “There was one day in our sophomore year, a few weeks after our parents died, when Haven was having a really rough time. It was after school, and she was crying.” I pat the wood of the bench, feeling like it was just yesterday. “We sat here, and I hugged her as she cried. A girl we both knew—Katrina, she’s a friend and she runs The Sweet Spot now—was working for the yearbook and was going around doing slice-of-life pics, and she snapped a bunch of pictures of students doing their thing at the end of the school day. I don’t think she fully realized what was going on till the next day in yearbook class.”
Heavy-hearted, I remember that photo. A portrait of grief. My baby sister sobbing in my arms. Me, holding her tight. Us, clinging to each other as our life capsized.
I push past the hurt and finish the story that the town knows, my friends know, my grandma knows. But I haven’t told anyone else. I’ve never shared this with a soul who wasn’t there at the time. “But the pictures were up on the computer and that one was there. As soon as she realized it, she deleted it. But people had seen it. Even so, she and the teacher and the other students all said,We shouldn’t run that one. They were so lovely. They knew itwas private. They knew Katrina hadn’t meant to take it. And she felt terrible, but in the end, she’d actually protected us.” My eyes well with tears.
