She wore the black dress from before, and she also wore a smile. When she saw that it was Sydney at the door, her smile wavered—only for a heartbeat. It revealed surprise, not dislike or worry, so Sydney held up the belt.
“Thank you. For helping me the other day with Max. I just wanted to give this back to you.”
Caroline angled her head to the side, and her smile deepened as she took the belt from Sydney. “My goodness, I’d forgotten all about this thing. It's nice of you to remember, Sydney, and bring it back, too.” Then she took a step backward, into her apartment, gesturing behind her with an open hand. “Do you want to come in? I have a voice lesson at two, but I was just making some coffee, if you’d like some.”
Sydney was stricken so nervous in the presence of this lovely woman that she had no idea what to say or do. It seemed that her entire body went into autopilot, and she nodded, stepping into the apartment, hardly believing that she had been invited into Caroline’s space.
And what a space it was.
The walls were brightly colored, oranges and peacock blues and greens, different shades on each wall. Potted plants hung from the ceiling in macrame nets, and there were books everywhere: on shelves, on the floor in untidy stacks, and the thick rag rugs beneath Sydney’s feet were strewn with books, too. Jewel-toned blankets had been thrown onto shabby, overstuffed furniture that was threadbare at the corners.
The threadbare effect might have been the handiwork of the small black cat who lounged on the back of the couch, rolling indolently onto her side and yawning to show off tiny, prickly white teeth as her toes stretched.
With the sunlight filtering through the living room window, the apartment looked like a lived-in, comfortable, happy place. And it felt like it, too.
“Sorry for the mess.” Caroline screwed up her features as she sighed. “I’ve been trying to organize for the past few years, and it just never sticks.” She trotted past Sydney toward the kitchen, its walls painted a welcoming sky blue. “Do you take cream or sugar in your coffee?”
“I don’t want to be a bother,” said Sydney automatically, but Caroline turned around and gazed at her in surprise.
“No bother. What is it?”
“Do you have soy milk?”
Caroline’s mouth curved up at the corners. “As it so happens, I do. My newest student is lactose intolerant, and I like to get my students to drink tea with milk before lessons. It helps coat the throat so your voice sounds better.” She bent over at the waist and peered into the depths of a full fridge, rummaging around on the shelves. Sydney turned pointedly away so that she wouldn’t stare at Caroline’s pretty hips, the curve of them, the flare of the skirt...so lovely. Instead, Sydney padded forward and held her hand out to the little black cat.
At first, Sydney had thought the cat must be a kitten. She was so small and dainty. But she was, in fact, full-grown, Sydney decided. There was something knowing about her little face, the way she kneaded her paws into the afghan as she arched her back and began to purr at the mere idea that Sydney might stroke her. Sydney traced her fingers between the cat’s ears and down her spine, and the purr intensified so much that Sydney actually chuckled in surprise.
Caroline found the soy milk and set it on the counter as she smiled at girl and cat. “That's Sassafras. Sassy to her friends.” She chuckled, and the sound was warm, melodic, like the first strains of a song you’re excited to hear. Your favorite song.
Sydney’s stomach tightened as she pet Sassy gently beneath the chin, scratching with her nail. “She’s very nice.”
“She’s perfect. Pun intended,” said Caroline, chuckling again, as she took up the coffee pot and began to pour the coffee into two mugs. “How much soy milk would you like?”
“Enough to make it the color of caramel.”
Caroline nodded, and Sydney crouched down until she was eye level with Sassy. The cat blinked her eyes slowly with pleasure, purr growing louder as she flopped over onto her side, exposing her belly for petting. Sydney obliged, running her fingers over the feather-soft fur.
“Wow… She seems to have taken a liking to you. She only ever shows her belly to me.” Caroline came over, her heels clicking smartly against the old wood floors, and proffered a chipped mug of coffee to Sydney. “Is this right?” she asked, a smile warming her features. The mug said “I’d rather be singing!” in a rather eighties-looking font (and color choice, a soft mauve), surrounded by half notes.
Inside the mug was the perfect color of coffee.
“Yes,” said Sydney, and took a sip. The rich taste of the coffee merged with the sweetness of the soy milk, and she sighed happily. She gestured with the mug to Sassy and didn’t think before she said, “We had a lot of cats growing up on the farm. I love them.”
The second after she'd uttered the words, Sydney knew she’d let her guard down too much; she’d done the unthinkable. Even Thomas didn’t know she’d grown up on a farm. It was a detail that was too specific, about the past she wanted so badly to forget.
Sydney was already rising stiffly from her crouch, but she ascended too fast, and the coffee cup in her hand was just a little too full. Liquid sloshed over the sides of the chipped mug and dripped down onto the hardwood floors—and down onto the front of Sydney’s jean jacket.
“Oh, crap. I’m sorry,” Sydney mumbled, curling her hand beneath the mug to catch the still-dripping coffee, and then she winced when the hot liquid seared her skin.
Caroline moved away from her and was back in a heartbeat with a handful of paper towels, cupping her own hands around Sydney’s.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got it,” she said, and she took the mug away from Sydney, placing it on the little table nearby. And then the paper towels were dabbing at Sydney’s front, pressing gently against the denim fabric there.
Sydney stood as still as a pillar of salt. She took quick, shallow breaths, her pulse pounding hard through her as Caroline worked to sop up the coffee from her jacket. Sydney was highly aware, much too aware, in fact, that Caroline’s fingers pressed down against her stomach. There was the jean jacket, the paper towels, and Sydney’s t-shirt between the skin of her stomach and Caroline’s hands. It was close, too close, and the nearness of this beautiful woman, the tenderness with which she treated the fabric—it was all too much.
“I…I’ve got it. I’m so sorry.” Sydney wrapped her fingers over Caroline’s hand, “I’m so sorry,” she repeated, “about your floor.” At least, she tried to get out that last part, but it was a little difficult to do when the breath hitched in Sydney’s throat as their hands intertwined. Caroline’s fingers were warm and soft, and the small touch—it lasted for such a short time—branded itself into Sydney’s heart.
They let go of one another, and Caroline relinquished the paper towels to Sydney, then glanced down at the floor with an elegant shrug. “It’s old. I’m sure it’s survived far worse than a few drops of coffee.” Her smile brightened as she drew her gaze back up to Sydney’s face. “What about your jacket? It might stain. Do you want to give it to me for a moment?”
Sydney nodded woodenly and was slipping out of her jacket before she even realized what she was doing. She handed it to the woman, who spirited it away, into the kitchen. Sydney stood there in only her thin white t-shirt and felt the chill of the room. Caroline kept the place fairly cool; her AC unit apparently worked.
Sassy chose that moment to roll so far over on the back of the couch that she thumped onto the ground by Sydney’s feet. Curious, she sniffed Sydney’s sneakers, then rubbed on her legs before gliding into the kitchen after her owner.
“You grew up on a farm?” asked Caroline, making conversation.
Sydney pressed her hands against her stomach, where Caroline’s fingers had been, and then, blood rushing into her cheeks, she shoved those hands into the pockets of her jeans. Somehow, she managed to nod, mind racing.
“For a few years,” she said, which was an answer to the question, albeit a short one.
C
aroline straightened and glanced at Sydney. “Was it nice?”
Maybe something about Sydney’s tone of voice had prompted the question. Sydney rocked back on her heels, trying to act nonchalant—and failing. She reached up, raked her fingers through her hair, and shifted her weight onto her right foot, turning to look toward the view. “Not…really,” she replied softly, and stepped over to the window.
There was a small balcony there, with wrought iron railings that made Sydney think, immediately, of the gate and fencing around the courtyard below. It was hard to see the courtyard from this angle, because of the wide, leafy head of the cherry tree.
Up here? It felt like you were in the forest.
Sydney wrapped her arms around her waist, looking out over the rocking—to and fro, to and fro—of the cherry tree, its limbs borne gently by the wind with such a comforting slowness that, just for a heartbeat, Sydney forgot about her discomfort, forgot about the fact that she’d let a detail of her past slip by her lips.
And then…
Caroline began to hum.
It was so soft that, at first, Sydney wondered if she was imagining the sound, but she turned, glancing toward the kitchen. Caroline stood at the sink, and she had half a lemon in her hand. Sydney’s jean jacket was spread out neatly in front of her, on the counter, and Caroline squeezed the lemon over the coffee stain. She hummed absentmindedly as the lemon juice dripped from her curled fist, onto the jacket, and then she placed the lemon on the counter before scooping up the jacket and gently—oh, so gently—beginning to scrub the fabric together with her elegant fingers, massaging the stain.
The sound of her hum… It was a soft melody but one that Sydney listened to with keenness. The AC unit was running, vibrating in the background, so it was a little hard to hear the woman's voice. Outside, too, there was a lot of traffic, along with the normal hustle and bustle of the city, a cacophony that seemed to underscore the pureness of the pretty melody.
Caroline's blonde head was bent over her task, a stray curl escaping from its knot at the back of her neck, falling against the woman’s pink cheek. Her long lashes were lowered, and she gazed down at the jacket in her hands as she hummed, her mouth turning up subtly at the corners...
Time seemed to slow down.
It was just Sydney and Caroline in the sunlit apartment, and the rest of the world—with all of its cares—faded away into nothingness.
And that was beautiful.
Sydney recognized what Caroline was humming at the same moment that Caroline’s gaze rose to meet Sydney’s: Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender.”
Caroline’s lips turned up at the corners into a wry smile, and she looked back down at the jacket almost immediately. “What do you, uh, do, Sydney?” she asked, clearing her throat. She’d stopped humming when she caught Sydney watching her.
Sydney shrugged. “Nothing much. Just retail. I work at Martin’s.”
“Oh, at the mall?” Caroline turned on the water and ducked the portion of the jacket that had been doused with lemon juice under the faucet.
“Yeah…” Sydney glanced down at Sassy, who’d wandered out of the kitchen now that she was convinced her owner was not preparing to deliver her a tasty snack. The cat leapt up to the back of the couch again and sat down, blinking slowly in Sydney’s direction. Sydney reached out and scratched her shoulder blades. “It’s not really what I want to do, though.”
“Oh?” Caroline looked up again, a softness coming over her features. “What do you want to do, Sydney?” she asked, giving the girl a smile that Sydney felt, felt like Caroline’s fingers against her.
Sydney tried her best not to shiver beneath that gaze, beneath that smile, but it was so hard not to. Still, she managed it, lifting her chin to meet Caroline’s eyes head on.
“I want to—” Sydney began, but she was interrupted by a little dinging sound, as if a doorbell were chiming. Sydney knew the apartment units didn’t have doorbells, though.
“Sorry, it’s just my phone. Five seconds,” said Caroline, turning off the tap water and placing Sydney’s jacket on the counter. She fished around in her purse and scooped out her phone with its powder blue case. When she flicked open the screen, her smile slowly faded away. “Oh, that’s rotten,” she sighed, tossing her phone onto the counter. Caroline placed her hands on her hips and gazed at Sydney blankly before shrugging and heading back to the jacket. She turned on the tap perhaps a little harder than necessary, the water gushing out.
“Bad news?” Sydney hazarded, and Caroline sighed again and nodded, casting her eyes heavenward.
“I offered voice lessons years and years ago. I had a lovely little side business. I love to teach, and I loved my students. But I'm beginning to remember the headache of cancellations. Well, apparently, it’s only gotten worse in recent years. I know it’s improper to talk about your students, but if she’s never been to one of my lessons and has canceled on me eight times, is she really one of my students?”
Caroline chuckled then, and the tension seemed to release from her shoulders. “My goodness, I guess it doesn’t matter. She’s canceled again, and there’s not a thing I can do about it.”
“I’m sorry.”
Caroline cast a glance at Sydney before nodding. “Yes, well, I try not to depend on her.” She rolled her shoulders as if there were tension in them, and she was shaking her head now as a small frown crossed her features. “It’s been a long time since I earned an income, since I had to think about all of this…” She trailed off, and then she pushed the jacket under the water again. She didn’t say anything more.
Sydney's body tensed. A long time since Caroline had earned an income?
Had Caroline recently become divorced? Or…
But Sydney knew that these were dangerous roads to travel down. She shouldn’t think about Caroline, and she especially shouldn't think about Caroline’s love life (or lack thereof). She should drink down the rest of her coffee, thank her neighbor for it, and go back down to her apartment.
Sydney knew that she was attracted to Caroline, deeply attracted, and every moment spent in her company was fraught with peril.
She might give herself away. She might, with some slip of the tongue or hint of body language, reveal her feelings.
And Sydney knew that would be the end of everything.
So she picked up the cup of coffee again, staring at the ring of wetness that the mug had left on the table, and she took another sip. The coffee was hot but not unpleasantly so, and it gave her something to focus on.
By the time Caroline turned off the water again and began blotting at Sydney’s jacket with a hand towel, her sunny expression had returned. “There. I think I got it all out,” she proclaimed, turning the fabric this way and that in the light. She pressed the water out of the jacket and gazed at Sydney, her smile deepening. “I’m so sorry, dear. I cut you off earlier. What were you going to say? What is it that you want to do?”
Dear.
It was an innocuous word, a filler word, but Sydney’s body reacted to it, nevertheless. As Caroline stepped away from the counter and crossed the space between them, Sydney was aware, deeply aware, of the sound of Caroline’s skirt swishing against her calves, of the way the fabric moved against Caroline’s skin.
Caroline handed Sydney the jacket, and Sydney took it from her. It was still damp, but she could see that the coffee stain was gone.
It smelled like lemons.
Sydney lifted her chin and held the jacket in front of her, a little like a warrior might have held a shield long ago.
And she said it.
She spoke the words that, she knew, were unsafe to speak.
“I want to sing,” she told Caroline.
Chapter 5
Surprise passed over Caroline’s face—followed by sheer, incandescent delight. “You’re a singer?” she asked, excited. “What do you sing?”
“Oh, I haven’t… I don’t…” Sydney cleared her throat, tried to bolster her courage. “I haven’t sung
in a while. I sang in the choir back home. A lot. I knew I always wanted to be a folk singer, though.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Caroline, looking at Sydney as if she were seeing her for the first time. “Well, have you started to scope out venues in the city? Maybe some open mic nights to get your feet wet?”
“Oh, I’m not ready to sing in public yet. I…I haven’t sung in years.” She gazed down at the jacket in her hands to avoid seeing Caroline’s face fall. “I just moved here, but I want this to be… Well, I want it to be a fresh start. Take some more time for me.”
There, that was a safe statement. And it was true. She’d heard older people say it a lot, talking about how, when the kids left the nest, they’d finally have time for themselves.
But Sydney had just left her nest. Not that it was much of a nest. It hadn't been nest-like at all.
She took a deep breath, looked up at Caroline. “I want to get better,” she found herself explaining. “I want to start singing again. And I want to be good before I try to sing anywhere”—she gestured vaguely toward the window—“out there.”
Caroline nodded. “You’re young. You can make anything you want of yourself, if you set your mind to it. If you try hard enough. I know that sounds trite.” She gave a soft chuckle. “But I did it myself, a long time ago. I was a kid just like you once, who found herself in the city, found herself trying to live out her dream. And...I guess I kind of did.”
Sydney felt her heart fall away inside of her.
Caroline had called her a “kid.”
They stared at one another for a long moment. Sydney wanted to ask Caroline what she’d done, what she’d sung, what her life had been like, but there was so much sadness in the woman’s voice that she knew she shouldn’t. For her part, Caroline looked like she wanted to say more, wanted to elaborate, but then she pressed her full red lips into a thin, hard line.
“But enough about me. I’m being silly. Sorry.” Caroline's smile faltered just a little. “I just got so excited when you told me! My goodness, I’m so excited for you. There’s a whole life ahead of you, so many avenues you can choose to take… I’m happy for you, Sydney,” she murmured, and there was so much heart in those words. She meant them wholly.
The Longing Page 5