I can’t tell if I’m going back to her because I feel protective over her or possessive of her. Either way, I don’t like the idea of her reaching out to someone else. It makes me wonder who this Brian guy is, and why he thinks it’s okay to send her flirty texts when Charlie and I are obviously together.
My left hand is still clutching my phone when it rings again. There’s no number on the screen. Just the word “Bro.” I slide my finger across it and answer the phone.
“Hello?”
“Where the hell are you?”
It’s a guy’s voice. A voice that sounds a lot like mine. I look left and right, but nothing is familiar about the intersection I’m passing through. “I’m in my car.”
He groans. “No shit. You keep missing practice, you’ll be benched.”
Yesterday’s Silas probably would have been pissed off about this. Today’s Silas is relieved. “What day is today?”
“Wednesday. Day before tomorrow, day after yesterday. Come get me, practice is over.”
Why does he not have his own car? I don’t even know this kid and he already feels like an inconvenience. He’s definitely my brother.
“I have to pick up Charlie first,” I tell him.
There’s a pause. “At her house?”
“Yeah.”
Another pause. “Do you have a death wish?”
I really hate not knowing what everyone else seems to know. Why would I not be allowed at Charlie’s house?
“Whatever, just hurry up,” he says, right before hanging up.
She’s standing in the street when I turn the corner. She’s staring at her house. Her hands are resting gently at her sides, and she’s holding two sodas. One in each hand. She’s holding them like weapons, like she wants to throw them at the house in front of her in hopes that they’re actually grenades. I slow the car down and stop several feet from her.
She’s not wearing the same clothes she had on earlier. She’s wearing a long, black skirt that covers her feet. A black scarf is wrapped around her neck, falling over her shoulder. Her shirt is tan and long-sleeved, but she still looks cold. A gust of wind blows and the skirt and scarf move with it, but she remains unaffected. She doesn’t even blink. She’s lost in thought.
I’m lost in her.
When I put the car in park, she turns her head, looks at me and then immediately casts her eyes at the ground. She walks toward the passenger door and climbs inside. Her silence seems to be begging for my silence, so I don’t say anything as we head toward the school. After a couple of miles, she relaxes against the seat and props one of her booted feet against the dash. “Where are we going?”
“My brother called. He needs a ride.”
She nods.
“Apparently I’m in trouble for not showing up to football practice today.” I’m sure she can tell by the lackadaisical tone of my voice that I’m not too concerned about missing practice. Football isn’t really on my list of priorities right now, so being benched is probably the best outcome for everyone.
“You play football,” she says, matter of fact. “I don’t do anything. I’m boring, Silas. My room is boring. I don’t keep a journal. I don’t collect anything. The only thing I have is a picture of a gate, and I didn’t even take the picture. You did. All I have with any personality in my whole room is something you gave me.”
“How do you know the picture is from me?”
She shrugs and tugs her skirt taut across her knees. “You have a unique style. Kind of like a thumbprint. I could tell it was yours because you only take pictures of things that people are too scared to stare at in real life.”
She doesn’t like my photographs, I guess.
“So…” I ask, staring straight ahead. “Who’s this Brian guy?”
She picks up her phone and opens her texts. I’m trying to look over at them, knowing I’m too far away to read them, but I make the effort, anyway. I notice she tilts her phone slightly to the right, shielding it from my view. “I’m not sure,” she says. “I tried to scroll back and see if I could figure out anything from texts, but our messages are confusing. I can’t tell if I was dating him or you.”
My mouth is dry again. I take one of the drinks she brought with her and pop the top of it. I take a long sip and set it back in the cup holder. “Maybe you were messing around with both of us.” There’s an edge to my voice. I try to soften it. “What do his texts from today say?”
She locks the phone and turns it face down in her lap, almost as if she’s ashamed to look at it. She doesn’t answer me. I can feel my neck flush, and I recognize the warmth of the jealousy creeping through me like a virus. I don’t like it.
“Text him back,” I say to her. “Tell him you don’t want him to text you anymore and that you want to work it out with me.”
She cuts her eyes in my direction. “We don’t know our situation,” she says. “What if I didn’t like you? What if we were both ready to break up?”
I look back at the road and grind my teeth together. “I just think it’s better if we stick together until we figure out what happened. You don’t even know who this Brian guy is.”
“I don’t know you, either,” she bites back.
I pull into the parking lot of the school. She’s watching me closely, waiting on my response. I feel like I’m being baited.
I park the car and turn it off. I grip the steering wheel with my right hand and my jaw with my left hand. I squeeze both. “How do we do this?”
“Can you be a little more specific?” she says.
I give my head the slightest shake. I don’t know if she’s even looking at me to notice. “I can’t be specific, because I’m referring to everything. To us, our families, our lives. How do we figure this out, Charlie? And how do we do it without finding things out about each other that are going to piss us off?”
Before she can answer me, someone exits a gate and begins walking toward us. He looks like me, but younger. Maybe a sophomore. He’s not as big as me yet, but from the looks of him, he’s probably going to pass me in size.
“This should be fun,” she says, watching my little brother approach the car. He walks straight to the back passenger side and swings open the door. He tosses in a backpack, an extra pair of shoes, a gym bag, and finally, himself.
The door slams.
He pulls out his phone and begins scrolling through his texts. He’s breathing heavily. His hair is sweaty and matted to his forehead. We have the same hair. When he looks up at me, I see that we also have the same eyes.
“What’s your problem?” he asks.
I don’t respond to him. I turn back around in my seat and glance at Charlie. She has a smirk on her face and she’s texting someone. I almost want to grab her phone and see if she’s texting Brian, but my phone vibrates from her text as soon as she hits send.
Charlie: Do you even know your little brother’s name?
I have absolutely no idea what my own little brother’s name is.
“Shit,” I say.
She laughs, but her laugh is cut short when she spots something in the parking lot. My gaze follows hers and lands on a guy. He’s stalking toward the car, glaring hard at Charlie.
I recognize him. He’s the guy from the bathroom this morning. The one who tried to provoke me.
“Let me guess,” I say. “Brian?”
He walks straight to the passenger door and opens it. He steps back and crooks his finger at Charlie. He ignores me completely, but he’s about to get to know me really well if he thinks he can summon Charlie this way.
“We need to talk,” he says, his words clipped.
Charlie puts her hand on the door to pull it shut. “Sorry,” she says. “We were just about to leave. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Disbelief registers on his face, but so does a hefty dose of anger. As soon as I see him grab her by the arm and yank her toward him, I’m out of the vehicle and rounding the front of my car. I’m moving so fast, I slip on the gravel and have to grab the hood of the car to prevent myself from falling. Smooth. I rush around the passenger door, prepared to grab the bastard by his throat, but he’s bent over, groaning. His hand is covering his eye. He straightens up and glares at Charlie through his good eye.
“I told you not to touch me,” Charlie says through clenched teeth. She’s standing next to her door, her hand still clenched in a fist.
“You don’t want me to touch you?” he says with a smirk. “That’s a first.”
Just as I begin to lunge toward him, Charlie shoves a hand against my chest. She shoots me a warning look, giving her head the slightest shake. I force a deep, calming breath and step back.
Charlie focuses her attention back on Brian. “That was yesterday, Brian. Today’s a brand new day and I’m leaving with Silas. Got it?” She turns around and climbs back into the passenger seat. I wait until her door is shut and locked before I begin to walk back to the driver’s side.
“She’s cheating on you,” Brian yells after me.
I stop in my tracks.
I slowly turn and face him. He’s standing upright now, and from the looks of his posture, he’s expecting me to hit him. When I don’t, he continues to provoke me.
“With me,” he adds. “More than once. It’s been going on for over two months now.”
I stare at him, trying to remain calm on the outside, but internally, my hands are wrapped around his throat, squeezing the last drop of oxygen from his lungs.
I glance at Charlie. She’s begging me with her eyes not to do anything stupid. I turn back to face him and somehow, I smile. “That’s nice, Brian. You want a trophy?”
I wish I could bottle up the expression on his face and release it any time I need a good laugh.
Once I’m back inside the car, I pull out of the parking lot more dramatically than I probably should. When we’re back on the road, heading toward my house, I finally find it in me to look at Charlie. She’s staring right back at me. We keep our eyes locked for a few seconds, gauging one another’s reaction. Right before I’m forced to look back at the road in front of me, I see her smile.
We both start laughing. She relaxes against her seat and says, “I can’t believe I was cheating on you with that guy. You must have done something that really pissed me off.”
I smile at her. “Nothing short of murder should have made you cheat on me with that guy.”
A throat clears in the backseat, and I immediately glance in the rearview mirror. I forgot all about my brother. He leans forward until he’s positioned between the front and middle seats. He looks at Charlie, and then at me.
“Let me get this straight,” he says. “You two are laughing about this?”
Charlie glances at me out of the corner of her eye. We both stop laughing and Charlie clears her throat. “How long have we been together now, Silas?” she asks.
I pretend to count on my fingers when my brother speaks up. “Four years,” he interjects. “Jesus, what’s gotten into the two of you?”
Charlie leans forward and locks eyes with me. I know exactly what she’s thinking.
“Four years?” I mutter.
“Wow,” Charlie says. “Long time.”
My brother shakes his head and falls back against his seat. “The two of you are worse than an episode of Jerry Springer.”
Jerry Springer is a talk show host. How do I know this? I wonder if Charlie remembers this.
“You remember Jerry Springer?” I ask her.
Her lips are tight, pressed together in contemplation. She nods and turns toward the passenger window.
None of this makes sense. How can we remember celebrities? People we’ve never met? How do I know that Kanye West married a Kardashian? How do I know that Robin Williams died?
I can remember everyone I’ve never met, but I can’t remember the girl I’ve been in love with for over four years? Uneasiness takes over inside of me, pumping through my veins until it settles in my heart. I spend the next few miles silently naming off all the names and faces of people I remember. Presidents. Actors. Politicians. Musicians. Reality TV stars.
But I can’t for the life of me remember the name of my little brother, who is climbing out of the backseat right now. I watch him as he makes his way inside our house. I continue to watch the door, long after it closes behind him. I’m staring at my house just like Charlie was staring at hers.
“Are you okay?” Charlie asks.
It’s as if the sound of her voice is suction, pulling me out of my head at breakneck speed and shoving me back into the moment. The moment where I picture Charlie and Brian and the words he said that I had to pretend didn’t affect me at all. “She’s cheating on you.”
I close my eyes and lean my head against the headrest. “Why do you think it happened?”
“You really do need to learn how to be more specific, Silas.”
“Okay,” I reply, lifting my head and looking directly at her. “Brian. Why do you think you slept with him?”
She sighs. “You can’t be mad at me for that.”
I tilt my head and look at her in disbelief. “We were together for four years, Charlie. You can’t blame me for being a little upset.”
She shakes her head. “They were together for four years. Charlie and Silas. Not the two of us,” she says. “Besides, who’s to say you were an angel? Have you even looked through all your own texts?”
I shake my head. “I’m afraid to now. And don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t refer to us in the third person. You are her. And I’m him. Whether we like who we were or not.”
As soon as I begin to pull out of the driveway, Charlie’s phone rings.
“My sister,” she says right before she answers it with a hello. She listens quietly for several seconds, eyeing me the entire time. “She was drunk when I got home. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” She ends the call. “Back to the school,” she says. “My alcoholic mother was supposed to pick my sister up after her swim practice. Looks like we’re about to meet another sibling.”
I laugh. “I feel like I was a chauffer in my past life.”
Charlie’s expression tightens. “I’ll stop referring to us in the third person if you stop referring to it as a past life. We didn’t die, Silas. We just can’t remember anything.”
“We can remember some things,” I clarify.
I begin to head back in the direction of the school. At least I’ll know my way around with all of this back and forth.
“There was this family in Texas,” she says. “They had a parrot, but he went missing. Four years later, he showed up out of the blue—speaking Spanish.” She laughs. “Why do I remember that pointless story but I can’t remember what I did twelve hours ago?”
I don’t respond, because her question is rhetorical, unlike all the questions in my head.
When we pull up to the school again, a spitting image of Charlie is standing by the entrance with her hands crossed tightly over her chest. She climbs into the backseat and sits in the same spot where my brother was just sitting.
“How was your day?” Charlie asks her.
“Shut up,” her sister says.
“Bad, I take it?”
“Shut up,” she says again.
Charlie looks at me wide-eyed, but with a mischievous grin on her face.
“Were you waiting long?”
“Shut up,” her sister says again.
I realize now that Charlie is just instigating her. I smile when she keeps at it.
“Mom was pretty wasted when I got home today.”
“What’s new?” her sister says.
At least she didn’t say shut up this time.
Charlie fires a couple more questions, but her sister ignores her completely, giving her full attention to the phone in her hands. When we pull into Charlie’s driveway, her sister begins to open her door before the car even comes to a stop.
“Tell mom I’ll be late,” Charlie says as her sister climbs out of the car. “And when do you think Dad will be home?”
Her sister pauses. She stares at Charlie with contempt. “Ten to fifteen, according to the judge.” She slams the door.
I wasn’t expecting that, and apparently neither was Charlie. She slowly turns around in her seat until she’s facing forward again. She inhales a slow breath and carefully releases it. “My sister hates me. I live in a dump. My mom’s an alcoholic. My father is in prison. I cheat on you.” She looks at me. “Why the hell are you even dating me?”
If I knew her better, I’d hug her. Hold her hand. Something. I don’t know what to do. There’s no protocol on how to console your girlfriend of four years who you just met this morning.
“Well, according to Ezra, I’ve loved you since before I could walk. I guess that’s hard to let go of.”
She laughs under her breath. “You must have some fierce loyalty, because I’m even beginning to hate me.”
I want to reach over and touch her cheek. Make her look at me. I don’t, though. I put the car in reverse and keep my hands to myself. “Maybe there’s a lot more to you than just your financial status and who your family is.”
“Yeah,” she says. She glances at me and the disappointment is momentarily replaced by a brief smile. “Maybe.”
I smile with her, but we both glance out our respective windows to hide them. Once we’re on the road again, Charlie reaches for the radio. She scrolls through several stations, settling on one that we both immediately begin singing. As soon as the first line of lyrics comes out of our mouths, we both immediately turn and face one another.
“Lyrics,” she says softly. “We remember song lyrics.”
Nothing is adding up. At this point, my mind is so exhausted I don’t even feel like attempting to figure it out at the moment. I just want the respite the music provides. Apparently so does she, because she sits quietly beside me for most of the drive. After several minutes pass, I can feel her look at me.
“I hate that I cheated on you.” She immediately turns up the volume on the radio and settles against her seat. She doesn’t want a response from me, but if she did I would tell her it was okay. That I forgive her. Because the girl sitting next to me right now doesn’t seem like she could be the girl who previously betrayed me.
She never asks where we’re going. I don’t even know where we’re going. I just drive, because driving seems to be the only time my mind settles down. I have no idea how long we drive, but the sun is finally setting when I decide to turn around and head back. We’re both lost in our heads the entire time, which is ironic for two people who have no memories.
“We need to go through our phones,” I say to her. It’s the first thing spoken between us in over an hour. “Check old text messages, emails, voicemail. We might find something that could explain this.”
She pulls her phone out. “I tried that earlier, but I don’t have a fancy phone like yours. I only get text messages, but I barely have any.”
I pull the car over at a gas station and park off to the side where it’s darker. I don’t know why I feel like we need privacy to do this. I just don’t want anyone approaching if they recognize us, because chances are, we won’t know them in return.
I turn off the car and we both begin scrolling through our phones. I start with text messages between the two of us first. I scroll through several, but they’re all short and to the point. Schedules, times to meet up. I love you’s and miss you’s. Nothing revealing anything at all about our relationship.
Based on my call log, we talk for at least an hour almost every night. I go through all the calls stored in my phone, which is well over two weeks’ worth.
“We talked on the phone for at least an hour every night,” I tell her.
“Really?” she says, genuinely shocked. “What in the world could we have talked about for an hour every night?”
I grin. “Maybe we don’t actually do a whole lot of talking.”
She shakes her head with a quiet laugh. “Why do your sex jokes not surprise me, even though I remember absolutely nothing about you?”
Her half-laugh turns into a groan. “Oh, God,” she says, tilting her phone toward me. “Look at this.” She scrolls through her phone’s camera roll with her finger. “Selfies. Nothing but selfies, Silas. I even took bathroom selfies.” She exits out of her camera app. “Kill me now.”
I laugh and open the camera on my own phone. The first picture is of the two of us. We’re standing in front of a lake, taking a selfie, naturally. I show her and she groans even louder, dropping her head dramatically against the headrest. “I’m starting to not like who we are, Silas. You’re a rich kid who’s a dick to your housekeeper. I’m a mean teenager with absolutely no personality who takes selfies to make herself feel important.”
“I’m sure we aren’t as bad as we seem. At least we appear to like each other.”
She laughs under her breath. “I was cheating on you. Apparently we weren’t that happy.”
I open the email on my phone and find a video file labeled, “Do not delete.” I click on it.
“Check this out.” I lift the armrest and scoot closer to her so she can see the video. I turn the car stereo up so the sound can be heard through Bluetooth. She lifts her armrest and scoots closer to get a better look.
I hit play. My voice comes through the speakers of my car, making it apparent that I’m the one holding the camera in the video. It’s dark, and it looks like I’m outside.
“It’s officially our two year anniversary.” My voice is hushed, like I don’t want to be caught doing whatever it is I’m doing. I turn the camera on myself and the light from the recorder is on, illuminating my face. I look younger, maybe by a year or two. I’m guessing I was sixteen based on the fact that I just said it was our two-year anniversary. I look like I’m sneaking up to a window.
“I’m about to wake you up to tell you happy anniversary, but it’s almost one o’clock in the morning on a school night, so I’m filming this in case your father murders me.”
I turn the camera back around and face it toward a window. The camera goes dark, but we can hear the window being raised and the sound of me struggling to climb inside. Once I’m inside the room, I shine the camera toward Charlie’s bed. There’s a lump under the covers, but she doesn’t move. I move the camera around the rest of the room. The first thing I notice is that the room on the camera doesn’t look like it would be a room in the house Charlie lives in now.
“That’s not my bedroom,” Charlie says, looking closer at the video playing on my phone. “My room now isn’t even half that size. And I share with my little sister.”
The room on the video definitely doesn’t look like a shared room, but we don’t get a good enough look because the camera points back at the bed. The lump under the covers moves and from the angle of the camera, it looks as though I’m crawling onto the bed.
“Charlie baby,” I whisper to her. She pulls the covers over her head but shields her eyes from the light of the camera.
“Silas?” she whispers. The camera is still pointed at her from an awkward angle, as if I forgot I was even holding it. There are kissing sounds. I must be kissing up her arm or neck.
Just the sound alone of my lips touching her skin is enough reason to turn off the video. I don’t want to make this awkward for Charlie, but she’s focused on my phone with as much intensity as I am. And not because of what’s happening between us on the video, but because we don’t remember it. It’s me…it’s her…it’s us together. But I don’t remember a single thing about this encounter, so it feels like we’re watching two complete strangers share an intimate moment.
I feel like a voyeur.
“Happy anniversary,” I whisper to her. The camera pulls away and it looks like I move it to the pillow beside her head. The only view we have now is the profile of Charlie’s face as her head rests against her pillow.
It’s not the best view, but it’s enough to see that she looks exactly the same. Her dark hair is splayed out across the pillow. She’s looking up and I assume I’m hovering over her, but I can’t see myself in the video. I just see her mouth as it curls up into a smile.
“You’re such a rebel,” she whispers. “I can’t believe you snuck in to tell me that.”
“I didn’t sneak in to tell you that,” I whisper quietly. “I snuck in to do this.”
My face finally appears in the video, and my lips rest softly against hers.
Charlie shifts in her seat next to me. I swallow the lump in my throat. I suddenly wish I were alone right now, watching this. I’d be replaying this kiss over and over and over.
My nerves are tight, and I realize it’s because I’m jealous of the guy in the video, which makes absolutely no sense. It feels like I’m watching a complete stranger make out with her, even though it’s me. Those are my lips against hers, but it’s pissing me off because I don’t remember what that feels like.
I debate whether or not to stop the video, especially because the kiss that’s happening right now looks like it’s turning into more than just a simple kiss. My hand, which was resting against her cheek, is now out of view. From the sounds coming out of Charlie’s mouth in the video, it seems like she knows exactly where my hand is.
She pulls her mouth from mine and glances into the camera, just as her hand appears in front of the lens, knocking the camera face down onto the bed. The screen goes black, but the sound is still recording.
“The light was blinding me,” she murmurs.
My finger is right next to the pause button on my phone. I should press pause, but I can feel the warmth of her breath escaping her mouth, flirting with the skin on my neck. Between that and the sounds coming from my speakers, I never want the video to end.
“Silas,” she whispers.
We’re both still staring at the screen, even though it’s been pitch black since she knocked the camera over. There’s nothing to see, but we can’t look away. The sounds of our voices are playing all around us, filling the car, filling us.
“Never never, Charlie,” I whisper.
A moan.
“Never never,” she whispers in response.
A gasp.
Another moan.
Rustling.
The sound of a zipper.
“I love you so much, Charlie.”
Sounds of bodies shifting on the bed.
Heavy breaths. Lots of them. They’re coming from the speakers surrounding us and also from our mouths as we sit here and listen to this.
“Oh, God…Silas.”
Two sharp intakes of breath.
Desperate kissing.
A horn blaring, swallowing up the sounds coming from my speakers.
I fumble with the phone and it falls to the floorboard. Headlights are shining into my car. Fists are suddenly beating on Charlie’s window and before I can retrieve the phone from the floorboard, her door is being jerked open.
“You feel incredible, Charlie,” my voice barrels through the speakers.
Loud bursts of laughter escape the mouth of the girl who is now holding open Charlie’s door. She sat with us at lunch today, but I can’t remember her name.
“Oh, my God!” she says, shoving Charlie in the shoulder. “Are you guys watching a sex tape?” She turns around and yells at the car whose headlights are still shining through the windows. “Char and Si are watching a sex tape!” She’s still laughing when I finally have the phone back in my hands and press pause. I turn the volume down on the car radio. Charlie looks from the girl to me, wide-eyed.
“We were just leaving,” I say to the girl. “Charlie has to get home.”
The girl laughs with a shake of her head. “Oh, please,” she says, looking at Charlie. “Your mom is probably so drunk she thinks you’re in bed right now. Follow us, we’re headed out to Andrew’s.”
Charlie smiles with a shake of her head. “I can’t, Annika. I’ll see you at school tomorrow, okay?” Annika looks overly offended. She scoffs when Charlie continues to pull the door shut, despite her being in the way. The girl steps aside and Charlie slams her door and locks it.
“Drive,” she says.
I do. Gladly.
We’re about a mile away from the gas station when Charlie clears her throat. It doesn’t help her voice because it still comes out in a raspy whisper. “You should probably delete that video.”
I don’t like her suggestion. I was already planning on replaying it tonight when I get home. “There could be a clue in it,” I say to her. “I think I should watch it again. Listen to how it ends.”
She smiles, just as my phone indicates an incoming text. I flip it over and see a notification at the top of the screen from “Father.” I open my text messages.
Father: Come home. Alone, please.
I show the text to Charlie and she just nods. “You can drop me off at home.”
The rest of the ride is slightly uncomfortable. I feel like the video we just watched together has somehow made us see one another in a different light. Not necessarily a bad one, just a different one. Before, when I looked at her, she was just the girl who was experiencing this weird phenomenon with me. Now when I look at her, she’s the girl I supposedly make love to. The girl I’ve apparently made love to for a while. The girl I apparently still love. I just wish I could remember what it’s supposed to feel like.
After seeing the obvious connection we once had, it only further confuses me that she was involved with that Brian guy. Thinking about him now fills me with a whole lot more anger and jealousy than it did before seeing us together in that video.
When we pull into her driveway and stop, she doesn’t immediately get out. She stares up at the dark house in front of us. There’s a faint light on in a front window, but no sign of movement anywhere inside the house.
“I’ll try to talk to my sister tonight. Maybe get more of an idea about what happened last night when I came home.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” I tell her. “I’ll do the same with my brother. Maybe figure out what his name is while I’m at it.”
She laughs.
“Want me to pick you up for school tomorrow?”
She nods. “If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t.”
It’s quiet again. The silence reminds me of the soft sounds that were escaping her in the video that’s still on my phone, thank God. I’ll be hearing her voice in my head all night. I’m kind of looking forward to it, actually.
“You know,” she says, tapping the door with her fingers. “We could wake up tomorrow and be perfectly fine. We might even forget today happened and everything will be back to normal.”
We can hope for it, but my instincts lead me to believe that won’t happen. We’re going to wake up tomorrow just as confused as we are right now.
“I’d bet against it,” I say. “I’ll go through the rest of my emails and messages tonight. You should do the same.”
She nods again, finally turning her head to make direct eye contact with me. “Goodnight, Silas.”
“Goodnight, Charlie. Call me if you…”
“I’ll be fine,” she says quickly, cutting me off. “See you in the morning.” She exits the car and begins walking toward her house. I want to yell after her, tell her to wait. I want to know if she’s wondering the same thing I’m wondering: What does Never Never mean?