Beyond the Spring Breeze novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: District Office

Thea signs the acceptance in person while Ellis, the alternate, watches. Outside, Dean has told the whole town about a party.

I rode my bicycle into town without telling anyone where I was going.

The district office of the congressman sat above Hubbard's Hardware, up a flight of narrow stairs.

I took them two at a time, and my legs thanked me for it.

At seventy-one I had needed the rail.

The woman at the front desk wore a cardigan and cat's-eye glasses, and she was sorting mail into wooden slots.

"Good morning," I said. "I'm Thea Kittredge. I'm the appointee for the Naval Academy."

She looked up and her whole face changed.

"Oh, honey. You're the one who declined."

"I haven't declined anything."

"Your young man called yesterday. He said you were set on it and too upset to ring yourself."

"He's not my young man in any way that gives him my signature."

I said it more sharply than I meant to.

The clerk blinked at me.

Then she took her glasses off and looked at me properly.

"Well," she said. "That's what I wondered. A telephone call isn't a signature."

"No, ma'am."

"We need the appointee in person, with a photo identification. A decline has to be signed. So does an acceptance."

"I want to accept."

"Then you'll need the form."

"He burned mine."

Her mouth fell open a little.

Then she opened a drawer and took out a fresh copy and laid it on the counter, and she handed me a pen with a chewed cap.

I read the form top to bottom.

I wrote my name.

It was a strong, fast hand, not the shaky one of an old woman.

I signed on the line that said I understood the oath, and I handed it back.

The clerk stamped it twice.

The stamp thudded on the paper.

"That's done," she said, and she sounded, I think, very pleased.

A voice spoke behind me from the doorway.

"Does that mean I'm out?"

I turned.

A young man stood at the top of the stairs with his cap in his hands.

He was nineteen, lean and dark-haired, in a gray work shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow.

A small pale scar cut across his chin.

I knew that chin.

I had last seen it at seventy years old, on a television screen, under a hat with gold braid on the brim.

My breath stopped.

"Mr. Dorsey," the clerk said brightly. "This is Miss Kittredge. She's changed her mind."

"I never changed it," I said.

His eyes went to the stamped form on the counter, and I watched him understand.

He did not look angry.

He looked as if someone had set down a weight he'd carried for two days and then handed it right back.

"I came because you called me yesterday," he said to the clerk. "You said the principal declined."

"I said a man called to say she did," the clerk said. "Not the same thing."

He turned to me.

"I'd just about decided to take it," he said. "The second slot. I rowed in my head the whole way here."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

He said it simply and quickly, with a kind of dry courtesy.

"If somebody offered me an appointment to the Naval Academy and I could keep it, I'd keep it." He rubbed the scar with his thumb. "Congratulations, Miss Kittredge."

"Thea."

"Ellis."

He put his hand out, and I took it.

His palm was rough and warm, calloused across the heel.

Something went through me, quick and clean.

Not the old grief.

Not anything I remembered.

It was my body, eighteen and entirely alive, noticing a man's hand.

I let go before it showed.

"What happens to you now?" I asked.

"The alternate goes to the prep school, if I'm lucky. A year at NAPS, then I try again." His mouth moved. "Or I go back to the shop and fix outboards."

"You'll get in."

"You sound very sure."

"I am."

He laughed under his breath.

The clerk gave us both a look of enormous interest and bent over her mail.

I went down the stairs with the receipt folded inside my shirt, and the sunlight on Main Street was bright enough to make me squint.

I felt taller than I had in my whole life.

I made it three steps along the sidewalk.

My father's truck was parked at the curb, with Dean beside it.

He held a stack of cream-colored cards, fanned in one hand.

"There you are," he said. "I've been looking everywhere."

"I was at the district office."

"I know. The hardware man saw your bicycle." He smiled and held up the cards. "Look what I picked up at the printer. Eldon wanted the whole town to hear it from us."

He held one out.

Gold lettering, heavy paper.

"Mr. Eldon Kittredge requests the pleasure of your company at an engagement party for his daughter Thea and Dean Mallory, Saturday evening at the Kittredge Boat Yard."

I looked at the cards in his hand.

There were at least two hundred.

"Saturday," Dean said happily. "Everybody's coming."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend