Page 4 of A Recipe Called Home

Parking next to Winnie’s beetle, she headed through the performing arts center entrance to the theater like she’d done thousands of times in another life. Inside the dimly lit space, she paused at the back, eyes adjusting to the shadows. Onstage, a few scrawny kids, smaller than they should’ve been for their age, were struggling to shove a street-shop set piece into position. This was going to be a long morning.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Winnie bounce through a side door, two big boxes balanced in her arms, and Jules rushed to help.

“Thank God you’re here,” Winnie said. “Can you go to the band room and help bring the boxes in there to backstage? We have a lot to assemble.”

Jules saluted, heading towards the band room where she’d spent many hours practicing her flute in high school. Walking down the hall from the theater towards the classroom, a wave of nostalgia hit her. She didn’t know how Winnie could stand to be in this school every day, with all its memories floating around, ready to strike.

Staring down the empty hall, she could almost hear the echoes of her former high school bandmates shouting, “GOOO Bears!” as they lined up in the hallway in their green and blue marching uniforms, ready to rush the football field to play the school’s fight song before the Friday night game.

Jules smiled at the memory. Band had been her happy place in high school. Her cheerleading days didn’t last past middle school, but she didn’t mind. She found her tribe in eighth grade with the band kids and even more so after Miles walked into her life on the first day of freshman year.

Too bad she couldn’t think about high school, even now, without that familiar pang of hurt.

Miles had changed everything for her. The moment he strode into band class, his long brown curly hair flopping over his forehead and saxophone case thrown over his shoulder, she knew she was in trouble. He looked like he’d just walked off the cover ofRolling Stone.

Their band teacher, Mr. Fedema, had introduced him, informing the class he had moved to Riverbend from Chicago that summer. Jules stared at Miles as he took his seat one row over. She’d never seen someone look so effortlessly cool.

He must have felt eyes on him, because he jerked his head over to where she sat, returning her stare. Startled, Jules had looked away, embarrassed at being caught. She wanted to melt into the floor right then and there.

After class, Miles approached her as she packed up her flute.

“What’s your name?”

Jules momentarily lost her ability to speak and croaked out, “Jules,” before bolting to the door, heart racing. The scene played over in her head hundreds of times during the rest of that day, fresh embarrassment blooming each time. She felt like a bumbling idiot and not the confident, worldly high schooler she’d imagined all summer.

But Miles wouldn’t give up. Every day after band, he walked her to her next class in silence. Soon, rumors started they were hooking up, even though that was far from the truth. They hadn’t said more than five words to each other.

It got so bad that one day Winnie walked up to Miles and demanded that he either ask Jules out or stop messing around. She told him she wouldn’t “let her best friend get stalked by a psycho killer.” Miles asked her to the movies that afternoon.

After that, they fell into an easy but sometimes all-consuming relationship. He was her rock and she his. Neither of them had great home lives, which bonded them, in a way. They were even crowned homecoming king and queen one year, not that either of them cared about things like that, although they agreed it might make a funny story one day.

Everything felt like it fit, right until the night of their senior prom, where it had gone painfully wrong. Four years of memories and first love forever tarnished in Jules’ mind. Not that she ever talked about it with anyone. No one knew exactly what happened that night; just that they broke up and Jules moved away early for college and Miles spent a few days behind bars in county lockup. Jules never even learned the full story, because she didn’t care to know the details. She knew enough—he’d ghosted her on prom night and ended up ruining his future.

Opening the door to the band room, she chastised herself for thinking about Miles. She was thirty now and what happened between them was more than a decade ago. She’d almost gotten married since then. She shouldn’t be hung up on this. The next few hours flew by as she helped Winnie and their rag-tag team of teen thespians unpack boxes and get the stage ready for rehearsals.

When they finished, Jules worked on breaking down the cardboard boxes for recycling. Exhaustion and hunger gnawed at her, so she heaved the pile of boxes into her arms, hoping to only make one trip to the dumpster outside. It was a risky bet, but the thought of the leftover goulash she cooked for dinner last night made it worth the gamble. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could go home and dig in.

Balancing the flattened boxes in her arms, Jules turned down the short set of steps leading outside, careful to keep her footing as she descended to the garbage area. Unfortunately, she miscounted how many steps were left and missed the last one, dropping the boxes as she stumbled, twisting her ankle on the concrete.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she cursed, looking down at the boxes. Jules tried to put weight on her throbbing ankle, wincing as she stood.What a mess, she thought.

Just then, she heard the door open behind her.

“Jules?” came a deep voice from the top of the short staircase.

She spun around as quickly as she could on her hurt ankle. A tall man holding a garbage bag stared down at her. For a moment, her brain short-circuited until she realized who it was.

Miles.

Well, an older, and frustratingly more handsome, version of Miles than she remembered.

“Miles,” she said, breathier than intended. They stared for a moment, each examining each other. It had been over twelve years since they were face-to-face.

His dark brown curly hair was now shorter on the sides and long on the top, with wisps of grey peeking through. A slight five o’clock shadow highlighted his strong jaw line and his piercing green eyes still complimented his olive-colored skin. He was no longer the long lanky teen she remembered; his frame had filled out and she could see his wide shoulder and chest muscles through his black t-shirt.He definitely spent time in the gym, she thought.

Blinking her eyes to focus and covering her forehead with her hand to block the mid-day sun, she thought her mind was playing tricks on her. Had her memories conjured him up? He couldn’t really be here. Last she’d heard, he was living in Detroit or Minnesota or somewhere like that.

“Looks like you could use some help,” he said, breaking the trance.

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