But. Eric was warm, he was present, he laughed at her jokes, and he didn't make her feel like she was auditioning for a role she hadn't been given the script for. When he asked her opinion, he listened to the answer. When she talked about her students, he asked follow-up questions. When she mentioned — once, briefly, in the faculty lounge — that she'd recently gone through a bad breakup, he hadn't pressed for details. He'd just said, "That sucks. Want half my sandwich?" and handed her turkey on rye.
"You're staring at those tables like they owe you money," Eric said now.
"I'm visualizing the flow. People enter here, hit the food, circulate past the auction items, end up at the donation table by the stage. Maximize exposure to every opportunity to spend money."
"You're terrifying."
"Thank you."
He pushed off the bleachers and came to stand beside her. Close enough that she could smell his cologne. Something clean and simple, not the dark, expensive scent that Dominic wore.
She shut that thought down. Slammed the door on it. Hard.
Eric opened his mouth to say something, but a colleague waved him over. He left her with an apologetic smile. Kate approached, raising her eyebrows.
"Stop,” Charlotte said, rolling her eyes.
"I didn't say anything."
"You said it with your eyebrows.”
"He's cute, Charlie."
"He's a colleague."
"He's a cute colleague who likes you.”
Charlotte picked up a marker and started labeling table assignments on the seating chart. "I'm not ready."
"I know." Kate's voice softened. "But you will be. And when you are, you could do a lot worse than a man who builds volcanoes and shares his sandwich."
Charlotte smiled. It came easier now than it had in the early weeks, when smiling felt like lifting something heavy with a muscle that had atrophied. She was getting stronger. Day by day, week by week, in increments so gradual she could only see the progress when she looked back. The sage walls. The clanking radiator. The classroom. The fundraiser. The Thursday night runs through Sunnyside where she listened to podcasts about history and didn't think about Dominic for entire blocks at a time.
She still thought about him. She hated that she did, but the thoughts came uninvited. In the shower, at red lights, in the moments before sleep when her defenses were down and her mind drifted to the rooftop bar, the caught drink, how his handhad felt on the side of her neck during their first kiss. She'd loved him. She was almost certain she'd loved the real him, not just the version he'd presented, though the distance between those two things grew wider every time she examined it. Some nights she lay in bed and tried to separate what had been genuine from what had been performance, and she couldn't find the seam. That was its own kind of grief, not knowing what to mourn.
She was learning, gradually, to let the thoughts come and go without chasing them. Like clouds. Like the weather. Dominic passed through her mind and she let him pass. The letting go got easier, and the ache got duller, and one day she'd wake up and he'd be a person she used to know instead of a wound she was still tending.
At least that’s what she told herself.
The fundraiser planning consumed most of her time. Sponsorship calls, silent auction donations, parent volunteer coordination. Charlotte threw herself into it with the same focus she brought to lesson planning: meticulous, thorough, slightly obsessive. Kate told her she was overcompensating. Charlotte told Kate to laminate the bid sheets.
It was during a planning meeting that Principal Delaney dropped the news.
"We have a new donor," she said, leaning into the faculty lounge. "A major one. The Gallison Foundation. They're partnering with the Weston Group on an arts education initiative, and they want P.S. 34 as a pilot school."
Charlotte looked up from her seating chart. "The Weston Group?"
"Their corporate giving arm. Apparently the foundation director met with someone from the Weston family who's very passionate about education philanthropy. They want to meet with our fundraiser committee. Personally." Delaney was beaming. "This could be huge for us, Charlie. We're talking artsintegration funding, classroom supplies, teacher development grants?—"
"Who's the contact?" Charlotte asked. Her voice was even. Controlled. Kate, across the table, had gone very still.
Delaney checked her notes. "The meeting request came through the Gallison Foundation. A woman named Amrita Kapoor — she's their program director. But the Weston representative..." She flipped a page. "D. Weston. He asked for the fundraiser committee lead by name. Asked for Charlie.” Delaney looked up, pleased. "He must have done his homework."
The room tilted. Charlotte gripped the edge of the table because her body understood before her brain caught up.
D. Weston. He asked for Charlie.
Not Charlotte.Charlie.
