Present Day

I woke to the sight of her, curled into a tiny ball, blankets completely mussed around her. It was the kind of view I hadn’t had in so long, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Waking her seemed unnecessary. But I also didn’t want to be caught staring.

The desire to take in the view won out. Charlotte’s hair was a tangle, almost a halo around her head. For someone so sweet and peaceful in the day, at night she apparently struggled as if for her life. I was vaguely aware of her having kicked me somewhere around 3:00 a.m., muffled whimpers coming from her mouth.

Still, it was the best night’s sleep I’d had in years. No nightmares pierced my slumber, no hours of insomnia ticked by. We’d fallen into bed, holding each other, and had fallen asleep without touching any more than that. It was exactly what I’d needed.

By the clear morning light, I could sense myself growing closer to her with each minute. I felt a swelling tenderness inside me, aided by the idyllic Thanksgiving dinner we’d had the day prior, and I was afraid of it.

Afraid of what it meant to feel something like this. Again.

Terrified I wasn’t worthy, would damage Charlotte more deeply than any of the happiness we’d found together could heal.

Worried that somewhere, somehow, Sarah was roiling in jealous agony and cursing me for what I was doing.

Suddenly, the beautiful sunshine of the morning was too bright. It uncovered ugly pockmarks in my skin, harsh truths of the way I’d worn my body down, aging and grieving far too much in my life thus far. I blinked, squinting to filter out some of the way my head was now pounding.

It didn’t help as much as I wanted it to.

And yet, Thanksgiving was the first time I’d gone more than an hour without thinking about her. Even when Charlotte and I had fucked, at first all I could do was compare. Her nipple was smaller than Sarah’s. The taste of her mouth was different. I used to enjoy this, Sarah used to want me to do that.

My whole life had been lived in a shadow these past few years. And Thanksgiving had shone brightly enough to cast it away momentarily, to show me what a new life might be like.

That wasn’t to say I wanted to forget.

I never wanted to lose all those memories of Sarah.

But I did long to be freed from the way they dragged me down. The cage I’d made for myself was far too small for happiness. It was designed for self-punishment, pure and simple, but Ava was proof that the cage also hurt those around me.

Freedom was scarier, but it was necessary. If I couldn’t bring myself to leave it on my own, for myself, I could at least motivate myself to do the right thing for Ava.

While I was contemplating these thoughts, Charlotte stirred, yawning broadly. She sat up, brushing her hair out of her face and stretching her arms.

“Good morning,” I said to her. It was an honest moment, bare in the way mornings often were. Unpretentious. We were both sleep mussed and groggy, close together without the electricity of sexual contact. I felt profoundly content.

“Morning.”

Charlotte smiled at me and I felt like soaring.

“Thanks for staying over.”

She paused, flushing at the cheeks a little. “Anytime.”

“What are you getting up to today?” I asked. Before Charlotte could respond, Ava came through the door, causing Charlotte to gasp and pull the covers up over her thin tank top. It looked like she considered hiding under the blanket completely, but it was too late. Ava had seen her there.

“Oh. Charlotte,” said Ava. Her eyes were still puffy from sleep but her expression brightened seeing Charlotte with me. Without a moment’s hesitation, Ava launched herself onto the bed and clambered between the two of us. “Did everyone have a good sleep?”

I laughed at the bizarre maturity Ava was posturing with, as if she were parenting Charlotte and me. I ruffled her hair, and then kissed her forehead.

“Great sleep, sweetie.”

“I’m glad you two like each other,” she said in response, her smile coy, eyes focussed on Charlotte. “Maybe I could have a new Mommy?”

“Uh, maybe.” Charlotte avoided my attempts to make eye contact, and she was blushing fiercely. “I don’t know.”

“Ava, be nice to Charlotte.”

“I am! I love her!”

And then Ava flung herself into Charlotte’s arms, hugging with the grin on her face threatening to split her in two. “See?” she said.

“It’s ok, Jack,” said Charlotte. But I wasn’t sure that it was. She was normally unflappable, a steady, warm presence. Today she retreated into herself and I was left with the job of being the more outgoing one. It was a strange role reversal, though not entirely unwelcome. “I love you, too, Ava.”

Ava settled in to cuddle with Charlotte, the two of them sitting side by side in my bed. It was a pretty picture.

“Can we do that again?” said Ava. “I love pumpkin pie.”

“Luckily, there’s more left over, Ava,” I said.

But she shook her head. “No I mean the whole thing. All the food, together.”

“Thanksgiving comes every year,” offered Charlotte. “We can make it a tradition if you want.”

That was already putting her out on a limb. Who knew where our lives would be in a year.

There was an undeniable throb in my gut as I thought that.

I wanted next year to be the same thing. Turkey, pie, Ava, and Charlotte.

Charlotte caught me staring at her. “Do you have plans for Christmas?” she asked.

“Yeah, my brothers are coming to town, whole family reunion kind of thing. We’ll do a meal or two, probably.”

“Really?!” Ava jumped up, still balancing herself with an hand on Charlotte’s shoulder.

“Yup. You’ll get to meet your uncles, see them again.”

She spent the rest of the morning drawing pictures of what she thought Christmas would look like, portraits of each brother based on my descriptions and a few photos I showed her. They were gifts, she said. She could ask Charlotte for help in painting them and framing them.

I was touched, and I knew that Kyle and Winston would be too.

It was a good day.

* * *

Charlotte called me in a panic the next afternoon.

“How famous are you, exactly?” she asked.

“Don’t know, very? Maybe, at the peak, extremely. That’s not very helpful, is it?”

“Guess it was a stupid question,” she said, sighing. “Someone called me earlier asking about you. I talked to them for a while before I realized it was a reporter.”

“Oh, shit,” I said. “And?”

“Check out the link I just sent you.”

On my laptop, I opened the page to see a third-rate gossip column discussing my ‘rebound’ love interest in the ‘girl next door.’ There were reader comments about how I was moving on too soon, some saying that the band’s reunion had been ruined by my choices, and a few stray nice things.

My blood rushed to my head, fury boiling over instantly.

“How fucking dare they?” I yelled.

Charlotte managed to talk me down long enough to have me come over. I fumed as I stepped outside, trying simultaneously to look for paparazzi cameras and to appear as though I wasn’t looking for them. I’d thought I was safe and off the radar here in suburban Minnesota, but I guess I’d thought wrong.

She answered the door in an oversized men’s shirt splattered with blue paint. Underneath, she had on short shorts that revealed her delectably long, toned legs.

“I’m so sorry, Jack,” she said before I could speak. The rage must have been clear on my face. “They pretended to be a cousin I haven’t talked to in a long time, but it got more and more obvious they weren’t him. I feel like such a fool.”

“They’re predatory assholes, don’t beat yourself up about it.”

Though the words were meant to be kind, Charlotte stepped back with an expression as if she’d been slapped.

Watch your tone, Jack. It’s too damn easy for you to push people away.

“I’m trying not to,” she said warily. My heart ached as I watched her rub her arm absentmindedly, her whole posture screaming that she felt her privacy had been violated. I longed to have had the feeling of privacy in the first place, recalling the first time fame had seemed real in all this. It had been difficult to adjust to.

“Let’s get away from the front windows,” I said. We walked back to her bedroom in silence. Charlotte hesitated, and then drew the blinds to the small window near the bed before she sat down, patting the blankets to indicate I should join her.

“Jack, I think you might be overreacting,” she said.

A drone in my ears appeared instantly. My face felt hot. “Excuse me?”

“I expected you’d be upset, but you’re in a total rage. I know I messed up. Can’t you forgive me?”

She was so beautiful sitting there, legs smooth and endless in front of her. I wanted to devour her but the darkness inside me had been disturbed. It lashed out without my stopping it.

“You don’t understand. You need to do better in the future, because it’s not just about you and me. It’s about Ava, too. One minute they’re publishing shit about my love life, but next they might want to post pictures of me dropping her off at school. And then some psycho stalker could find her, know where she spends every Monday through Friday. And that cannot fucking happen.”

Charlotte’s face tightened, anger starting to dawn on her features.

“Don’t you realize I care about Ava? I want to be there for her. I’m trying my goddamn best, Jack, and I’m sorry that I messed it up this time. But I promise I’ll be better in the future.”

“Good,” I said. My mouth was set in a firm line, jaw clenched.

Charlotte must have seen something enticing in my rage, because she drew closer, the two of us orbiting each other like cats waiting for the other to strike first in a fight. “I care about her too. She’s in my life now.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

Words fell away and Charlotte melted into me, her fury channeled into a passionate kiss that pushed her tongue deep in my mouth. Her hands pawed at my chest with a lustful vigor and I was almost immediately rock hard. Seeing someone who was normally so sweet be possessed by lust like that was incredibly arousing.

“Don’t do it again,” I whispered to her.

“I already said I won’t, Jack.”

Her eyes were moody, half closed and heavy-lidded as she gazed at me. Our chests were both heaving with breath that came in crashing waves.

Suddenly, she pounced again and straddled me, her hands working their way through my hair, down to my chest, over the arc of my shoulder. Charlotte was angry with me still, but perhaps more importantly, she knew what she wanted today.

I was more than happy to provide.

She tore off my shirt, exploring the path of my treasure trail with her tongue. My hands were occupied with unzipping my jeans, unleashing myself from the fabric prison to which I’d been relegated.

“You’re lucky you’re so hot,” she said. The fire in her eyes made me want to push her against the wall and fuck her right then. “Because you can be a bit of an asshole.”

“A bit?” I said. “I’ll show you how much of a jerk I can be.”

“Bring it.”

This was more than the Charlotte I’d seen, this was the months of her own pain and uncertainty boiling to a fever pitch, unleashing themselves onto someone she knew and trusted. I remembered the feeling of freedom that came from sex with someone when you were this close, a connection built so that you could be the worst version of yourself and still be accepted.

Charlotte’s body took me in eagerly as I pushed her up against the headboard of her bed, doggy-style, and thrust inside. She gasped, her voice deeper than usual, and I felt my skin tingle at the sound.

She surrounded me, laid out beneath me, consumed my thoughts. My hands gripped both her hips and I moved steadily, thrusting with a quick power that soon had us both glistening in sweat.

It was a kind of exorcism, really. All that aggression, our anger towards each other, was being converted to a scorching, satisfying touch.

“I thought you said you were going to be a jerk?” Charlotte said, her head turned back towards me so she could meet my eye.

“Not enough for you?” I said. I accelerated my thrusts, pushing harder and deeper into her so that she was bouncing against me, the both of us writhing in agonizing ecstasy.

“So soft,” whispered Charlotte. “Hardly a jerk.”

That was it. I’d show her. Wipe the smile off her face.

I continued thrusting with brisk, powerful strokes, my left hand firmly grasping Charlotte’s hip. But with my right hand, I let go, pulled back, and smacked her ass so that the sound rang out in the bedroom, a swift, cracking noise.

“Oh,” she gasped. I could see her biting her lip, head tilted to the side. Our eyes connected again.

“That the best you can do?” Charlotte asked. Her eyes were dancing with a fire I’d never seen in her, a smoky wildness that I desperately wanted to consume. No, to dwell in, basking like a cat in a sunbeam.

“I’m just getting started,” I said to her. I felt my own ferocity growing, appetite whetted by the contact we’d had so far. Her ass was perfectly shaped, ripe and exposed for me. So I smacked her again, harder this time.

I wanted to leave a mark, make her feel the delicious sting of my hand while I was inside her, the two of us entwined in a timeless dance towards indescribable pleasure.

Charlotte closed her eyes and groaned, low but powerfully. She looked like she was relishing the experience.

Again, my hand made contact with her skin, a crisp sound ringing out at the same time as Charlotte moaned.

Then I flipped her around so we were face to face, slid inside her so effortlessly it was like our bodies needed to be connected. She wrapped her legs around me quickly, holding me so tightly we were almost one person.

“That’s a start,” she said, smiling up at me with the kind of expression I knew I’d revisit again and again in my fantasies.

With each thrust, Charlotte’s hips rolled up to meet me, our bodies moving in tandem choreography, pushing to her core while our nerves sang out. I don’t know how long we were in that position, because my brain was so completely sodden with lust, with enjoyment and awareness of the present moment.

All I recognized was the details of her body: the sweet fullness of her eyelashes fluttering when she closed her lids and moaned one final time in ecstasy, the droplets of sweat that beaded on her collarbone, the tight sinewy pleasure of being between her legs and beneath them all at once.

Before long, I lost my sense of everything but the undeniable growing need for me to burst inside her. Charlotte had reached several orgasms, aided first by my hands and then by a small vibrator I’d retrieved from her bedside table. It was my turn to let myself loose, and I did so with a vivid gusto that almost blinded me.

I thrust into her, losing rhythm as I came, grasping at her shoulder and breathing with each wave of pleasure.

In the aftermath, she turned to me.

“I’m not mad at you anymore.”

“And I shouldn’t have been in the first place,” I said. “You’re a teacher. You probably worry about the safety of small children more than I have in my entire life.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But I don’t know what it’s like for that child to be your own.”

She stopped for a moment, letting the unspoken ‘and I never will’ land while she regained her confidence.

“It’s different, but it’s not that different, I bet,” I said. I couldn’t stand any silence while we were reconciling. Her eyes were heavy with sadness, lashes impossibly long against her cheeks when she blinked. “To tell you the truth, Charlotte, it wasn’t really just Ava that got to me. Did you read the comments on that article?”

She shook her head, but I could see the realization dawning on her face.

“A whole lot of people are apparently experts in grieving, loss, and moving on. Or so their comments would have you think, telling me whether or not I should be doing the things I’m doing in my life. My life. Fucking vultures.”

“The only person who can tell you if things are going too fast is you, Jack. Too soon is relative. It’s been, what, years? You’re not a monk. You’re not even middle-aged. It’s ok to want things again. It’s part of healing.”

“Then why does it feel like I’ve betrayed Sarah?”

Charlotte didn’t respond, just gazed at me with an ineffable sadness in her eyes. The words she’d spoken were logically right, but my emotional core didn’t listen to logic. It had no master, and I had crafted an identity for myself as a wounded widower.

Who was I without that pain as my compass?