Charlie
I stared at Cameron’s right hand on the drive over to Mom and Dad’s.
It was resting on the gear shift in his Audi, which was silly, because it was an automatic car and he didn’t need to shift. His left hand was on top of the steering wheel, keeping the car steady on the road, turning us easily whenever needed. That hand, his left one, was doing all the work, like it had ever since I first met Cameron at Garrick University — because his right hand belonged to me.
The first night he took me on a date — a real date — he drove me in his beat up clunker of a car. It was an old Pontiac, one that he spent nearly every weekend trying to keep running. I’d been so nervous, the book worm going on a date with one of the most popular guys on campus; captain of the hockey team, our star player, and he was aloof to all the other girls. Cameron Pierce was a mystery, and I didn’t know a single girl who had been granted more than one night in his bed to try to figure him out.
Until me, that is.
My hands shook that night in his car as he drove us to a small Italian diner off campus. I’d tucked them between my thighs, trying to keep them both warm and still. Cameron had asked me if I was nervous, and I’d only blushed and nodded. Then, he’d reached over and placed his right hand on my knee.
That one touch had set me on fire and calmed me all at once.
And ever since then, whenever he drove us anywhere, his hand always found me — my knee, my thigh, my hand. It was always there, it was always mine.
I couldn’t remember when that stopped.
My brows drew together as I stared at his hand, trying to remember the last time that hand had touched me, the last time it’d comforted me.
“Are you okay?”
Cameron was watching me, and I cleared my throat, peeling my gaze away and pinning it on the road. “Fine. Just a little cold.”
He stared at me a moment longer before shifting in his seat. My heart skipped with hope that he’d read my mind and was reaching for my hand.
But he leaned forward to adjust the heat instead.
I glanced outside the passenger side window just as my old house rolled into view. Maxwell and Gloria Reid lived in a mansion, but it just looked like home to me. I didn’t bat an eyelash at the tall, intricate metal gate that we had to wait for Mom to buzz us inside of. The long drive with beautiful flowers and trees lining each side didn’t leave me in awe. I barely looked at them before we were parked in front of the grand entrance to the west wing.
It was where Mom and Dad hosted their guests, where the nice china and newest furniture was housed. It was where I’d helped them host parties my entire young adult life, where I’d celebrated my graduation from Westchester and Garrick, both.
It was where Cameron had asked me to marry him, with little fuss, in front of the people who mattered most to me.
Cameron parked the car and cut the ignition before jumping out and jogging over to open my door for me. He helped me out of the car, his left hand reaching for mine. I still stared at his right one.
“There they are!” Dad called from the front door, his voice booming. He stood with the front door open waiting for us, the same door that was usually answered by the butler or the maid. But on family dinner nights, my parents would give the help the night off. Mom always insisted. She wanted to be the one to wait on and cook for her family.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, leaning up to kiss his cheek as he took my coat.
“Hey, sweetheart. How’s my girl?”
“Just fine.” I forced a smile, crossing my arms over my middle as we both turned to Cameron. He was already reaching forward for my dad’s hand, and Dad pulled him in for a bear hug before Cameron could protest.
My dad was a bear of a man, standing a few inches taller than Cameron and weighing about a hundred pounds more, too. His belly had grown in size over the years, which I didn’t mind. If anything, he seemed even more jolly now that his belly shook a bit when he laughed. His brown hair had grown gray over the years, his mustache matching it, but he always dressed to the nines. My dad’s philosophy: Be ready to impress, because you never knew who you’d run into, even if it was at home.
Dad and Cameron were already talking about the Pittsburgh Penguins match against the Tampa Bay Lightning that night. I didn’t know much about hockey, other than what I’d picked up over the years watching Cameron play at Garrick, so I took my coat from Dad and hung it on the rack by the door.
Cameron had always loved hockey, even before his grandparents had helped him get started playing in high school. He was well behind the curve of the other players by that point, but the coaches couldn’t teach the other kids to do what Cameron could do from natural talent alone.
He’d stopped playing after college, assuring me his only interest was in me and our future family, but I’d still purchased a Penguins season ticket for him and renewed it every year since. I’d offered several times to get him a second ticket so he could take someone with him — my dad or another friend — but he’d insisted he’d rather go alone.
That was Cameron. He was a loner, and he preferred it that way.
“I see it didn’t take them long to start talking about sports,” Mom teased as she rounded the corner into the foyer. She’d been in the kitchen, no doubt, the pastel pink apron still tied at her waist as she leaned in to hug me.
“Never does,” I said as she hugged me. “How are you, Mom?”
“Just wonderful,” she said with a sigh, squeezing me once more before pulling back. “I’m so happy to have you here for dinner.”
“We come for dinner at least three times a month,” I reminded her.
“Well, it’s never enough. And with Graham living in Arizona now, you’re going to get twice the dinner invites.”
My brother, Graham, had moved to Arizona shortly after his wedding the previous summer. His wife had her own dental practice there that had been handed down through the family, and he’d moved to support her. I missed when he was around for family dinners, too.
Mom held me there, hands on my arms as she looked me over, questions hidden behind her eyes. If my dad was a bear of a man, my mom was a bird of a woman — just like me. Her bones were petite, waist tiny enough for dad to wrap his hands around with thumbs and fingertips touching. Her hair was the same color as mine, a chocolate brown, though she wore hers down in a classic bob while mine always stayed tied in a bun on top of my head.
I tried to smile as she searched my eyes with a concerned gaze. She’d looked at me that way for five years now, like she was trying to find her little girl beneath the woman who stood before her. But before she had the chance to ask if I was okay, the way she always did, Reese appeared behind her, holding a dark cocktail in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.
His eyes found me first.
Something happened in that moment, in that instant where I saw him standing in such a familiar place. He was back in my home, in a setting I’d seen him so many times before, only back then he was younger.
Back then, he wore basketball shorts and old t-shirts with the sleeves cut off. Tonight, he wore black dress slacks and a charcoal gray sweater with a light blue button-up shirt peeking out from underneath it. The collar of it poked out above the neck of his sweater and the wrist cuffs were the only other part of it visible.
He looked grown, sophisticated, and my eyes drank him in along with the memories he caused to resurface just by being in the place he once used to be.
“Your wine, Mrs. Reid.”
“Oh! Thank you, Reese,” she said, taking the glass from his hand with a shake of her head. “And stop it with that formal stuff. You used to call me Mom, what happened to that?”
Reese chuckled, lifting his glass to take a sip. His eyes were still on me.
“Sorry. Gloria. That better?”
“It’ll do,” she conceded.
“Hello, Charlie,” Reese said next, reaching for my hand with the one not wrapped around his glass. “You look beautiful.”
He lifted my hand to his lips, pressing a soft kiss onto the back of it. He used to greet me with high fives and a ruffle of my braids that I’d have to fix when he was done.
“Thank you. I see you found the cocktails.”
“At your mother’s request, of course.”
“Surely,” I teased, and he grinned before finally letting go of my hand.
“Reese, my boy,” Dad said, joining us in the middle of the foyer. “This is Cameron Pierce, my daughter’s husband. Cameron was the captain of the hockey team at Garrick where Charlie went to college. Hell of an athlete,” he said proudly. “And hell of a man, too. One of the top associates at Reid’s Energy Solutions.”
Dad was the Chairman of the Board and former CEO of an energy company he’d started with his brother. They’d built it from the ground up, riding the solar energy revolution, and Cameron joined the company right after graduation. He’d quickly moved up to be one of the top project managers. It was another part of his life I didn’t understand, but one I was proud of nonetheless.
“Treats our little girl pretty great, too,” Mom added with a sweet smile, leaning over to kiss Cameron’s cheek.
Then it was just him and Reese left to greet.
Cameron was quiet, his smile a little forced, as it always was when Mom and Dad doted on him. He hated attention, but was always too polite to say so. His eyes were hard as he reached for Reese’s hand.
Reese’s smile had fallen, too, but it reappeared as they finally clasped hands and shook firmly. “Pleasure to finally meet you, Cameron. Charlie has told me amazing things about you.”
I looked at Reese then. I hadn’t told him anything.
“All fabricated, I’m sure,” Cameron said with a smile of his own. “Nice to meet you, Reese. Charlie told me you’re teaching at Westchester now, and I hear you’re an old friend of the family, too.”
“Grew up in the house one block over,” Dad said, beaming. “Well, one yard over, really. He and Graham were best friends, and Charlie here was the same with Reese’s younger sister, Mallory. Four peas in a very tight pod, they were.”
Dad laughed a little at that, but I didn’t miss the shadow of grief that fell over Reese’s face at the mention of his sister. I cleared my throat, threading my arm through Reese’s.
“Make me a Wild Walker, for old time’s sake?” I asked, referencing the mystery concoction he’d branded with his last name when he was a teenager. It was the drink responsible for many of our friends’ first hangovers — mine included.
Reese’s eyes fell to where my hands rested on his bicep before they lifted to mine, and he smiled, seeming grateful for the change in subject. “You have a death wish before dinner?”
“I can handle it,” I assured him, and he barked out a laugh.
“I’m sure.”
“Cam, you’ll join us for a cocktail before you head out?” Mom asked.
We all turned to face Cameron then, and he was watching Reese curiously, in a way I’d never seen him watch anyone before. “Afraid not,” he answered, but he only looked at Reese. “Game starts at seven-thirty, and you know how traffic is.”
Dad clapped Cameron on the shoulder to walk him out. “Shame, but you’re right. Don’t let us keep you. I’ll text you once dinner is finished and I’m parked in front of the television in the study.”
Before they left, Cameron turned to me with dark eyes and said, “I’ll pick you up right after the game.”
He held my gaze a moment, as if he was trying to tell me something. I used to be so in tune with those looks, those little stares. I knew when he wanted to leave a party early, when he wasn’t feeling well, when he was making fun of someone with an inside joke between the two of us.
I used to know with one little look when he couldn’t wait to take my clothes off.
“I’ll be ready,” I assured him. “Have fun.”
He held my gaze a moment more before his eyes flicked to Reese. “You too.” Then he turned, Dad talking business with him the entire way out the door as Mom, Reese and I made our way to the kitchen.
“So, do I even want to know what a Wild Walker is?” Mom asked when it was the three of us. She immediately went back to prepping the salads she’d been working on when I arrived, and Reese threw me a devilish grin over his shoulder as he reached into the cabinet for a glass.
“Just Reese’s famous cocktail from his party days,” I answered, taking a seat at one of the bar stools at the island. I’d always thought my kitchen was expansive, but Mom’s was straight out of a magazine. It was built for a professional, or rather, a team of professionals. I barely noticed it anymore, but I still remembered when Dad had the entire thing gutted and remodeled to be Mom’s dream kitchen. She’d practically lived in it my entire senior year of high school.
“And the culprit in your daughter’s first experience being drunk.”
I balked, unsure how my mother would react to that information, but she just laughed. “What? You mean to say my daughter had a drink before she was the legal age of twenty-one? Impossible!”
“Not our sweet little Charlie!” Dad chimed in as he entered from behind us. He winked at me, taking the seat to my left.
“You’re right,” Reese agreed, his back to us as he secretly mixed his famous concoction at the liquor buffet. “I must be mistaking her for someone else.”
A warmth filtered in slowly in that moment, being in the kitchen with my parents and Reese. And for the first time in years, a small smile found my lips.
A real one.
“Very funny, everyone. I’ll have you know, I got so hammered that night that I threw up in Mom’s hydrangeas.”
She paused, hands stilling where she’d been cutting the onion for our salads. “That’s why they died?! Poor Salina and I racked our brains for weeks trying to figure that out before we had to just pull them and replant.”
They all laughed as Reese handed me the finished product. I took the first sip, cringing a bit at the sting of whiskey before the familiar warmth of spice and cinnamon tickled my tongue. It brought me back to that night, to that feeling of youth, and I shook my head.
“Never thought I’d ever have one of these again.”
Reese watched me take another sip, his eyes falling to my lips briefly before he ripped them away and took a drink of his own. “Yeah, well, surprises always were my thing.”
“They were, indeed.”
I noted the flecks of gold in his emerald eyes, the same way I had the first time I’d tasted a Wild Walker. He was watching me closely, like he wondered if I’d forgotten. He used to bring me books, little “surprises,” ones he stole from the parties he attended. He’d sneak into the libraries or studies at the houses and pick one out for me, even though he knew I’d yell at him for taking someone else’s property.
Half the books in my library were from house parties at Mount Lebanon’s finest.
It was strange having Reese back in my childhood home. It felt different than seeing him at Westchester, a place I’d never seen him before, a new place for us to exist in. That had been more formal, more professional. But now, sitting in my kitchen with my brother’s best friend, with a boy I used to watch play our piano in the next room, it was different — familiar. It was comforting. It was an old friend coming home, bringing all the memories we’d made over the years back with him.
Mom laughed at something Dad had said, something I’d missed, and Reese smiled, lifting his glass into the air.
“To surprises.”
It was suddenly too warm.
My cheeks burned, but I lifted my glass, anyway.
“Surprises.”
Our glasses clinked, and as we took a sip, Mom announced that dinner was ready.
Reese
“You did not,” Charlie accused, holding her coffee cup close to her mouth so the steam hit her nose.
We were standing at the gate that separated her house from my old one. Both of our yards had been so big that we were a block away from front door to front door, but this gate had always been the shortcut. When we’d first moved in, it’d been a solid gate, but our parents had an entryway installed for easy access between our houses.
“I was there that night, remember?” Charlie cocked an eyebrow. “And I know for a fact you did not spray paint anything in your bedroom. Your parents would have killed you.”
I did remember. We were reminiscing on my last night in town, the night before I, along with my entire family, moved away from Mount Lebanon. I was going to Juilliard after dicking around for three years after high school, and Mallory was going to NYU as a freshman. Our parents wanted to be there with us, so we all made the move to New York City together.
But not before I threw one last rager in the empty house.
“Glow in the dark spray paint, Tadpole. You wouldn’t have seen it unless you were in that bedroom when the lights turned out. And I know for a fact you were not.”
She eyed me, blowing on her coffee that was spiked with a little Baileys. “You stayed the night? I thought everyone left after the party.”
I swallowed. “Yeah, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet I guess. Slept in my old sleeping bag on the floor.”
Charlie was quiet for a moment, so I took a sip of the scotch her dad had poured me after dinner. I knew coming to dinner with her parents would leave me with a full stomach and great conversation with people who felt like home, but what I didn’t expect was to see Charlie start to finally open up a little. She seemed to relax the more we talked, and though it was faint, I found a small piece of the old her shining through.
Charlie chuckled. “I’m just picturing whoever it was who bought that house, laying down in that room to go to bed the first night and being scared out of their minds.” She shook her head, looking up at me then, the moon casting a blue glow on her cheeks. “What did you write?”
I smirked. “Don’t look under the bed.”
Charlie’s little mouth popped open in an o before she shook her head again. “You’re bad, Reese Walker,” she said, voice airy and light. And then, she hiccuped.
I liked seeing her like that — light and carefree, smiling and laughing. It reminded me of the goofy, shy bookworm that used to sleep over. She was the polar opposite of my sister Mallory — hell, she was different than any of the girls I’d ever met, honestly. She always had a quiet, mysterious quality about her, like you never could be sure what she was really thinking. And when she did open up to you, when you got to see the part of her that no one else did, it was something you’d never forget.
She stayed with you.
She’d stayed with me for years.
“I miss it sometimes,” she said, her eyes on my old house again. There were only a few lights on, one of them belonging to the room that used to be Mallory’s. “The freedom of being a kid, the innocence. Nothing had touched us yet, you know? Nothing hurt. Every day was full of possibilities. We had our whole lives ahead of us.”
“It’s not like we’re dead, Tadpole.”
She breathed a laugh. “I almost forgot about that nickname, you know. Until you said it earlier this week.” Charlie took a sip of her coffee around another set of hiccups, her eyes avoiding mine. “How have you been, Reese?”
I’d talked about myself all night at the dinner table. I’d caught her and her parents up on Juilliard, the rigorous curriculum there, the performances in the city that had been everything I’d always dreamed of. I told them about my time working on Broadway in the orchestra pit, about my solo gig at a small, fancy restaurant in the Upper East Side. I’d even told them how I got started tutoring at Juilliard, where my desire to teach had outgrown my desire to do anything else on the piano.
But that’s not what Charlie was asking.
She was asking if I was okay since the day I lost my entire family, and I didn’t know how to answer her.
“I’ve been getting by,” I answered honestly. “Some days are easier than others.”
“How long has it been now?”
I swallowed. “Little over three years.”
Charlie hiccuped. If she hadn’t already had them before the conversation turned, I’d have thought she was crying.
“It’s not fair,” she whispered after a moment. “The guy who did that… that awful thing, he just got to die. He just got to end his own life and not own up to any of the pain he caused. He was a coward.”
That pressure was back in my chest, making it hard to breathe, let alone answer her. If I closed my eyes, I could still see the piano I played in their house that day. I was waiting for them to come home, showing up unannounced for dinner after a night of partying.
I was there to ask for money.
“He was,” I agreed when I found my voice again, my hand circling the amber liquid in my glass. I threw it back all at once, letting it sting on the way down. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel real, you know? It feels like it happened to someone else, like Mom, Dad, and Mallory are just on some vacation or something.”
I shook my head, staring at my empty glass a little longer before my eyes found the house again.
“The worst part is, the weeks after it happened were such a blur. It was all these interviews and people wanting to know the stories behind the victims. That’s their favorite part, you know? They’ll look for the heroes in the tragedy, or the lives taken too young. I had both. Dad covered Mom and Mallory to try to save them, and Mallory was a week away from graduating with her doctorate degree from NYU. She had a boyfriend, who had a ring he hadn’t given her. The reporters loved that shit. And I had to be the one to tell them the stories, to give them the pictures.”
“That must have been so hard,” Charlie said, and I heard her voice crack at the end.
“In a way. But it also kept my mind off things, at least momentarily. It was easier to think about it as a mass shooting rather than a personal attack. If that makes sense.” I laughed. “It probably doesn’t.”
“No, it does,” she assured me, and then we were both quiet again.
I tried not to think about it often, the day a crazed gunman stole my family from me. They were just standing there in the middle of Central Park, watching a musical performance behind the Met, and the next thing they knew, there were gun shots. I read every survivor’s account of what happened, listened to their interviews on how the gun shots rang out, the screams, people running or hiding or pretending like they were already dead.
But my family had been right there, front row, just enjoying an afternoon in the park. Wrong place, wrong time.
I didn’t know how long Charlie and I stood there before she spoke again, but when she did, the words flew out of her in a fit of anger and pain, and it was the most emotion she’d given me since I’d stepped foot back in town.
“I’m sorry,” she said first, her voice cracking. “I’m so, so sorry, Reese. I didn’t keep in touch with Mallory after you guys left. I was so angry, and sad. I didn’t understand why you guys had to go. I was still in high school, you know? I had to stay behind while everyone I cared about moved on. And when I heard the news, I still didn’t reach out to you. I didn’t want to be more of a burden, to be just another person trying to soothe you when I hadn’t been a part of your life for so long. But I was wrong for that. I should have reached out, I should have been there for you.” She sniffed. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop,” I said quickly, both to comfort her and to fight against the burning in my throat.
I didn’t even have the thought in my head before my hands were reaching for her, pulling her into me for a hug. I should have hesitated, should have remembered that she belonged to another man, but it was instinctive in that moment — the urge to stop her pain.
She was so small in my arms, the faint scent of coffee fresh on her breath, a few strands of her silky hair falling loose from her bun. I rested my chin on top of her head, rubbing her back with one hand. “It’s okay. Really, it is. I don’t hold anything against you and neither did Mallory.”
“She must have hated me,” Charlie whispered.
“She didn’t. She loved you, we all did.”
I still do.
“It’s not fair the way life works out sometimes, but it’s okay, and you didn’t do anything wrong. You had your own life to live here, Tadpole, and we had our own things happening in New York. It’s okay,” I repeated, hoping she believed me.
“You don’t hate me?”
She looked up at me then, her dark eyes glossed over with unshed tears, and I just chuckled.
“I could never hate you, Charlie.”
She sniffed, a small smile finding her bright pink mouth.
And I knew I should let her go.
I’d said what needed to be said, I’d eased her worry, but still, I held her. I swallowed, and her eyes fell to my throat before they glanced at my lips, sending a familiar zing of warning through me. It was the same warning I’d felt every time she looked at me that way when she was just a teenager, when the five years between us forbid us from ever being this close.
But it was a new warning, too. One that said she’s married.
My hands at the small of her back tightened, and my eyes watched hers, both of our smiles fading. I wanted to ask her if she was okay, if she was happy, if Cameron was what she wanted. But I had no right to ask any of those things.
Still, I held her.
Charlie watched my lips, like she was willing me to say something. I opened my mouth to grant her unspoken wish just as her dad’s voice called from the house.
“Charlie! Cam’s here!”
She stepped away from me quickly, a bit of her coffee sloshing out of her cup as she hiccuped again. “Sorry.”
“Charlie,” I tried, but she was already making her way through the yard.
“Thank you for coming tonight,” she called behind her. “I know my parents really appreciated it. I did, too.”
I caught up to her easily, reaching for her wrist to stop her. She spun, looking up at me with flushed cheeks.
“I have to go.”
“I know,” I said softly, reaching for the half-empty cup in her hand. “I’ll take this inside for you.”
She looked at my hand on hers, her grip still tight around the mug. Slowly, she loosened it, letting me take the porcelain from her grasp. “Thank you.”
I waited until her gaze found mine again. “See you at school.”
“See you at school,” she echoed quickly, and then her little feet carried her the rest of the way across the yard.
I followed behind her, pausing at the front door as she made her way to the open car door waiting for her. Cameron stood beside it, one hand on the top of the door, his eyes hard on me when I took my place next to Charlie’s parents on the door step.
“Don’t forget to call me about the fundraiser, Charlie!” her mom called, and Charlie just held up a hand in a short wave, not even looking behind her.
Before she could step into the car, Cameron’s hand found the crook of her arm, and she paused, looking up at him. His hand slid up the outside of her coat, up her slender neck to frame her face, and then he bent to kiss her.
When their lips connected, I looked away, down at the half-empty coffee cup in my hands, still stained with her pink lipstick.
“Young love,” Maxwell chuffed, smiling at me before clapping me on the back. “What do you say, Reese? Join an old man for a cigar?”
I chanced one last glance at Charlie, and immediately wished I hadn’t. She was looking up at Cameron like that kiss had brought her back to life, like he was the only man she ever wanted, and I had to remind myself that he was.
Cameron was her husband. I was the boy who used to live next door.
The sooner I got that through my head, the better.
Charlie slipped inside the car, and Cameron closed the door softly behind her, waving goodbye to all of us on the porch one last time. He watched me the longest, his brows low, and I knew that look in his eyes. He was threatened, and he was warning me. I’d have done the same thing if Charlie was mine.
“A cigar sounds great,” I finally answered. My eyes flicked to the window Charlie sat behind, but it was too tinted to see her through it. She was there, she was close, yet she was invisible. She was untouchable.
She was no different behind the barrier of that car door than she was to me in real life, and I needed to remember that.
With that realization, I tore my gaze away and followed her father into his study.