Page 5 of Here in My Heart (Here Together #2)

CHAPTER FIVE

The confusing smell filled Sylvie’s nostrils.

Salt? She touched the ends of her hair, already frizzing out of control.

By the time she was done here, she’d look like a scarecrow.

Sylvie squinted up at the strange building.

The marine center squatted in the sunshine, short and functional, unlike her usual base in the stylish arts complex.

The receptionist seemed to study Sylvie’s block heels and jeans while others filed past in cargo pants and tennis shoes.

Sylvie shrugged. Of course she looked out of place.

She had no place being there, and she had no desire to blend in with the science crowd.

She was a proud professor of the arts. Her average day was filled wondering whether history could be rewritten with all the missing stories of brilliant women, not cleaning out cloudy fish tanks.

With directions in hand, Sylvie made it to the classroom and hovered at the threshold. With her head bent in submission, Ade had already lost her students.

“Folks, could I just get your attention for one more thing on my list?” Ade clutched her phone just as she had at the candlelight concert that weekend.

Sylvie tsked under her breath at her technology habit. She was meant to be a role model to the students.

“So, number one.” Ade fumbled. “Check your schedules for the semester.”

“Mine is out of whack,” one of the girls piped up from the side.

Ade continued to scroll through her phone, ignoring the interruption.

Another student leaned forward. “Hey, what do I do if my schedule doesn’t make sense?”

Ade took a long breath. “I’ll get back to you.”

“I don’t have enough lab time. Do you have six hours a week?” The stocky boy turned to his bench partner.

“I have eight hours, Greg. Do you want to trade? More beach time for me.”

The conversation crossed over with another table and voices blended into one another. Ade put her head in her hands.

Sensing her imminent panic and a faint, if inconvenient, sense of duty, Sylvie stepped into the room.

“Okay, let’s leave it there, this morning.

Your schedule finessing can be done at the office back at the main campus.

You can send them a message in your student portal.

” She dropped her bag on Ade’s desk. “Thank you all. Until next time.”

The kids filed out, murmuring their hellos and goodbyes to Sylvie on the way. “Are you okay?” Sylvie asked, once the last one had drawn the door closed.

“Sure.” Ade rubbed her eyebrows and gathered her things, then headed for the door.

“You know, I came all the way out here for an induction session with you. It’d be a huge waste of my time to turn around and go back without at least a conversation.”

Ade turned and stared blankly. “You want to see the animals?”

Sylvie smiled. There was something about Ade which baffled her.

Maybe it was her androgynous, science-geek fashion sense, or the way she navigated a room like she was the only person there.

She followed Ade to a cooler part of the building, regretting the click of her heels, which announced her presence.

Maybe she’d do best to blend in with the lab coats after all.

They emerged into a cool blue light, with walls of tanks on two sides.

“I came early to feed and check on them.”

Ade moved through the room with a confidence and purpose that Sylvie hadn’t witnessed in their previous interactions .

“This is George. He’s a seventy-six-year-old turtle that we rescued off the coast of Africa. He’s my new buddy, aren’t you?”

Ade had revealed more in the past three minutes than she had in the past week. Her voice was crisp and clear, and Sylvie inched closer to hear Ade’s intonation. Gone was the shaky staccato of her scripted instructions to the students. She was clearly in her element here in the marine lab.

“Are turtles your favorites?” Sylvie asked, wanting to hear more of Ade’s voice.

“I love them. I was raising penguin chicks mostly in Monterey.” Ade neatened the work surface. “I named my last chick Gerry. She’s a feisty little thing. She had a tricky hatching, and I had to get her a couple of foster parents to take care of her.”

“Why?” Sylvie stood still, not wanting to break Ade’s rhythm and force her back into a stilted silence.

“Her birth parents hadn’t raised a chick, especially one who needed extra care and attention. I wanted Gerry to have the best possible chance, so I gave her to our most experienced couple.”

“You just gave her away? Weren’t her parents bereft?”

Ade frowned. “I guess it sounds strange to pluck a chick from their parents. But that’s kind of a thing.

In the wild, she would probably have died because she needed more warmth, food, attention, and understanding than they were able to give her.

It’s not their fault; they just wouldn’t know how to. ”

Sylvie shook her head, unable to equate this lesson from the animal world to her understanding of human civilization.

“Animals and humans are different in some ways,” Ade said.

Sylvie contemplated the simplicity of the sentence.

She admired Ade’s reading of the world, and her anticipation of the needs of her animals.

It was such a basic attention to detail that was so often overlooked in the busyness of life.

Ade continued to work beside the tanks, taking notes of feeding stations and temperatures, leaving Sylvie captivated by her movement.

Its natural flow was so different from the stiffness of her body in the classroom .

“Do you bring the students in here?” Sylvie asked.

“Of course,” Ade said, lifting her gaze again to meet Sylvie’s.

“They must like it,” Sylvie said, enjoying the eye contact a little too much.

Ade frowned. “Sorry, did you want me to confirm that they do like it?”

“I guess so.” Sylvie laughed at her own embarrassment.

“Some do. Some are more about the theory.” Ade traced the movement of an octopus with her finger, not quite touching the glaze separating them.

Its tentacles reached out then shrank away, in a strange, slow-motion greeting.

Ade took a long breath, as if embracing the welcome.

“Some are just here for the European credits and to brush up on their French. It looks good on their resumé back home.”

Sylvie nodded. She had students of her own who were going through the motions and would graduate with just as much insight into social issues as they started with.

“I need to go through a few things with you about the job,” Sylvie said, strangely reluctant to draw the conversation back to practical matters. “Can we sit and talk?”

Ade gestured toward a desk, and they took their places. Ade resumed her awkward pose in the chair, and Sylvie wished they’d kept moving around the tanks where she seemed so much more at home.

Eager to keep it brief, she stuck to the essentials and made it back to her car by lunchtime.

She checked the weather forecast and her timetable.

Two study periods gave her a perfect window to head to the beach for the afternoon and settle down with her latest edits.

Her publisher’s schedule was taped to the fridge and scorched onto the back of her eyes.

From the marine center, the beach was a short drive, and after a prix fixe lunch, Sylvie slipped on a pair of sliders, wrapped a sarong around her waist, and removed her tailored chinos.

She gathered her beach gear, which had been a permanent feature in the trunk this summer, and headed for her favorite quiet spot beneath an umbrella.

She must’ve drifted, because she awoke to a breeze across her face and the tall, boyish frame of Ade casting a four o’clock shadow onto her towel.

“You almost lost your papers,” she said, holding a binder.

Sylvie stirred, gathering the folds of sheer fabric around her thighs. She didn’t miss Ade’s attention on her bare legs and folded them beneath her as she sat up. “I fell asleep.”

“You did look asleep, yes.” Ade pulled a can of Pepsi from her pocket. “I bought you one, in case you needed to cool off. Figured you might need the caffeine too.”

Sylvie smiled. She liked the rhythm of Ade’s explanations. So obvious, yet so charming. “Thank you. Would you like to sit with me for a while?”

“How long is a while, do you think?” Ade asked.

“Well, maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Or however long you’d like to.”

“I’m going swimming. That’s why I’m here.” Ade dropped her bag onto the sand next to Sylvie’s towel and sat cross-legged in the full glare of the afternoon sun. “Lectures are over, and the students are all heading home, so I wanted to come to the beach again.”

“I love it down here.” Sylvie leaned back onto her elbows. “It’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed.”

“Stayed?”

“I’m from Paris, originally. I arrived in Montpellier last year.”

“Do you like it?” Ade asked.

“I do like it, yes. It took me a while to get used to its pace and personality though. It’s very southern, and I am very Parisian.”

“What do you mean?” Ade tilted her head.

“Have you ever been to Paris?”

“We flew into Paris for a few days before coming here.” Ade ran her hand through the sand. “I hadn’t been overseas until that.”

“Pity you couldn’t have stayed longer in the capital. Paris has everything: style, culture, cuisine. I miss its passion and conversation. But it’s not always that kind to its people. It can be fast and abrupt.”

“Yeah, I didn’t much enjoy the pace. It sure seemed like everyone had their shit together and not much patience to spare for…”

“For?”

“People like me,” Ade said.

“True.” Sylvie nodded. “The people are kinder here. The pace is slightly slower. The vowels are softer and rounder.” When Ade frowned, Sylvie recognized her confusion. “There’s an accent which you might not hear, because you’re American. But it’s similar in the States, no?”

“Sure. We have accents.” Ade gulped her can and stood. “I’m going in now.” She stripped to her tank top and shorts and strode toward the break of the waves.

Shielding the falling sun from her eyes, Sylvie admired the length of Ade’s body and how her broad shoulders flexed as she moved across the sand, warming up.

Her firm thighs led to endless calves. Sylvie shook the vision from her mind and picked up the dog-eared pages she’d been leaning on to save them from the warm breeze.

This book isn’t going to get itself back to the editor.

But Ade’s silhouette carved a shape in the distance as she leapt into the water with the grace of a dolphin.

It was a contrast from her awkwardness on the sand.

Sylvie wondered at the puzzle that Ade presented.

She stumbled over her words and missed every social cue in the book, and yet she regained her confidence in the presence of her animals and was a force to be reckoned with in the deep blue of the Mediterranean.

It would be an interesting year trying to fathom which Ade would show up when, and which would win out. As her default coach and supervisor, could Sylvie bring out the best in her? Or should she leave Ade to find her way? There were plenty more things to do on her list.

Staring over the crumpled pages of her book, she watched as her protégée swam across the horizon.

Ade dipped beneath the waves and rose again with a consistency that took her further and further out.

Sylvie squinted at Ade’s shrinking silhouette, worried that she’d swum too far from the shore.

She refocused on the pages in front of her, but Ade’s progress drew her attention before she reached the end of the next paragraph.

She had a nagging feeling that Ade might be a distraction this year.