Not much else happened for the rest of the night after that. Zeke sat down on the ground and Charlie crowded close to him, and they stayed right there for hours until finally Zeke prodded her with his nose into standing up and he began to lead the way back to the car. Charlie jumped at every noise, as if every rustling branch and snapping twig would turn out to be Richard, barreling through the underbrush at her once again.
By the time they made it back to the parking lot the sun was only just beginning to creep up over the eastern horizon, so it was just a line of molten gold in the distance. They sat in silence until the sun began to climb the sky in earnest, and finally Zeke shifted back to his human shape. The silence lingered even after that as he pulled his clothes out of the back seat of the car and got dressed.
Charlie handed him the keys, ignoring the few drops of half-dried blood stuck in the teeth as she handed them over. Silently, she climbed into the passenger seat and buckled herself in, and for the entire drive back to her duplex, she stared out of the car, watching the scenery pass as it gradually shifted from rural to suburban to urban and back to suburban.
The sun was well and truly up when Zeke pulled the car to a halt on the edge of the road in front of Charlie’s duplex. It was still early enough that her neighbor was asleep, and with all of the lights off, it looked eerie and unwelcoming after the night she’d had.
“Be seeing you, then?” At last, Zeke broke the silence. He sounded oddly hesitant.
There was a pause before Charlie nodded slowly and offered a lackluster, “Yeah.” As she turned away from the car and Zeke, she couldn’t help but to think that he didn’t look like he put much stock in her answer.
In fairness, she wasn’t putting much stock in her answer, either. Her feelings were like mud just then, thick and muddled and murky and increasingly unpleasant to dig through.
She walked towards her door and stepped inside like a machine, just one step after the other. She sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the clock until she knew the restaurant was open, and she picked up her phone to call in sick to work. It was rare that she missed a shift, so her boss was perfectly willing to accept her apology. She waved off his concern, citing an unexpected stomach bug and that she would be just fine by her next shift.
Once she hung up, she stared blankly at her phone for a few long moments, as if she had suddenly forgotten what its purpose was, until she glanced at the battery warning and finally pried herself out of her seat to go plug the phone in.
From there, she trudged up to her bedroom, uncaring that it was literally the middle of the morning still. She lay down on the bed, pulled her blanket over her head, and squeezed her eyes shut.
Maybe she would wake up and find out that the night hadn’t happened. She would still be in Zeke’s apartment. It would all be a dream from her impromptu nap in the bathtub. She didn’t actually have any faith in that being the case, but the thought helped her relax enough to actually fall asleep. It had been… a busy night. If she wanted to sleep half the day away, she figured she had earned it.
Her brain, it seemed, didn’t actually agree with her. She dreamed of teeth like knives that gleamed with saliva and ill intent, and she dreamed of eyes as blue as ice and twice as cold. She dreamed of blood dripping from the sky until it began to pool around her ankles and she could do nothing but wade deeper and deeper into it, until it was up to her shoulders and pulling her deeper, dragging her under as if it had a will and a mind of its own, until her head disappeared beneath the surface and there was nothing but red and copper, thick and sticky in every direction, no matter how hard she fought to get back to the surface.
When teeth closed around her legs and dragged her down into the depths, she woke up, and she slowly crawled out of her blanket burrow just enough to stare at the ceiling, where the fan spun slowly. She watched the ceiling fan spin in endless circles and let her thoughts go blank. Or at least as blank as she could at that point.
She twitched anxiously every time she heard a noise outside. Each car horn, skid of tires, rattling trashcan, or closing door made it seem like someone was going to smash her door open and come stampeding up the stairs to get her.
It wasn’t a particularly restful day.
*
Eventually she dragged herself back out of bed and into the shower, and that evening found her on the couch in her pajamas eating pizza and watching the shopping channel. She couldn’t hope to afford most of what was being hocked, but the overly cheerful way it was all being advertised and talked up was strangely soothing, and it was sort of entertaining to try and decide which of the products were complete bullshit, which ones only had a grain of truth to whatever was being said about them, and which ones were actually legitimate.
Despite that, her thoughts kept drifting back to the previous night. Of course, they did. It seemed pretty inevitable.
How many more times was it going to happen? Was that what she had to look forward to every time she was unattended? Was she going to need to be babysat like a toddler until the wedding, and possibly beyond?
Her mind railed against that possibility. She had fled from her father’s house as soon as she could to get away from being locked in a box for someone’s convenience. She wasn’t going to be locked in a box for her own safety, either.
She could leave. She could hand Zeke his ring back and break things off. He wouldn’t even blame her. She was pretty sure he was expecting exactly that to happen, and she was pretty sure that she was crazy for not doing exactly that.
But it wasn’t a decision she should make while she was frazzled. She knew that. She needed to give herself a chance to calm down and think things over rationally, and she knew exactly what she needed to do to calm down.
With a sigh, she levered herself up from the couch and ventured back into the kitchen, where her cell phone was still plugged in. She unplugged it and briefly checked to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important, and found a few texts from some of her coworkers wishing her well. She fired off a few thank you messages in return and finally dialed in Sam’s number.
She brought her phone to her ear as it rang and immediately she began pacing, strides carrying her back and forth and back and forth across the small kitchen. It rang three times before Sam picked up, grousing playfully, “I have a feast fit for a goddess in front of me, so you better have a good reason for interrupting me.”
“So it’s instant noodle night, I’m guessing,” Charlie deadpanned in return. Sam blew a raspberry at her, though the phone turned it into nothing more than a particularly emphatic burst of static.
“Stop maligning my dinner so,” she sniffed, followed by, “I ordered Chinese, if you have to know.”
“Pizza’s better,” Charlie returned plainly, her tone very matter-of-fact, as if she were simply presenting the facts for Sam to absorb.
Sam gasped theatrically. “Blasphemer!” she declared. “Heretic! Heathen!”
“I didn’t know takeout food was a religion,” Charlie mused thoughtfully, tapping her lower lip with one finger as she said it.
“Oh, yeah,” Sam replied, inexplicably cheerful once again. “Right up there with fast food joints, fashion magazines, and what you call subs.”
“They’re hoagies,” Charlie insisted firmly.
Sam made a shushing noise at her. “Uh huh, right. What’d you need, anyway?”
…What did Charlie need? They saw each other in person often enough that they tended not to just call for the sake of calling, but she hadn’t really put any thought into why she was calling. Sam was just… good at helping her clear her head. But she couldn’t say that, or else Sam would want to know why Charlie needed to clear her head, and that was an entire can of worms that she wasn’t in the mood to open just then.
When the words came out, they were just as much of a surprise to her as they were to Sam, as Charlie simply spit out the first thing that occurred to her.
“Zeke and I slept together,” she informed Sam, twirling a strand of her hair around one of her fingers as she said it.
Sam gasped, loudly and melodramatically, and Charlie could hear some shuffling that was most likely her putting a takeout container down. “No way! What was it like? Was he any good?”
“Pretty fucking spectacular,” Charlie admitted easily enough. “I came, like, four times. He’s very attentive.”
Sam whistled lowly. “Good god. You should share.”
“No thanks,” Charlie returned dryly. “I’m not good at sharing.”
“Oh, come on!” Sam whined in return, and Charlie could hear her stamping a foot. “The only action I’m getting lately is the vibrating kind! What if you just let me borrow him for an afternoon? I’ll return him in the same condition you gave him to me in.”
“Sorry, what’s that?” Charlie asked, purposefully raising her voice. “I can’t hear you. I’m going through a tunnel.”
“You’re at home!” Sam protested, though it sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “Unless you’ve dug a mine in your backyard, you don’t have a tunnel!”
“I can’t hear you, sorry, I’m losing you, what was that?” And with a final cackle, Charlie hung up.
It wasn’t quite the conversation she had planned on having, but she did feel better. A bit more settled in her skin. A bit more firmly rooted to the ground. A bit less like she would go flying off into space as soon as she started pondering the actual important questions at hand.
She sighed out an explosive breath and passed her phone back and forth from one hand to the other hand as she continued to pace across the kitchen.
At the crux of it was the fact that she didn’t want to break up with Zeke. Even after everything that had happened. She would miss him. She was pretty sure she knew what that meant.
With another, much quieter sigh, she lifted her phone again and punched in Zeke’s number.
He answered after a single ring. “Charlie?” He sounded more than a little surprised to hear from her, as if he had expected her to simply drop off the face of the planet. She thought about feeling affronted for a moment, but honestly, she couldn’t blame him. If not for the fact that she would need to return his ring, then had she decided to break things off, she most likely would have simply dropped off the face of the planet.
(Granted, ghosting a billionaire sounded more than a little difficult, but she rather got the impression that Zeke wouldn’t pursue her if she decided she was done.)
“Hey, Zeke,” she returned quietly, scuffing a foot on the floor. “I, um.” She cleared her throat. “I think I might love you. I mean, maybe it’s a bit soon to tell, but that’s the impression I’m getting.”
There was silence for a moment, and it seemed more than a little stunned. When Zeke finally spoke, he sighed out a shaky laugh and admitted, “I was sure you were going to break things off.”
“So was I,” Charlie admitted quietly, and she shifted the phone from one ear to the other. Her hands felt strangely clammy. “But I don’t really want to.”
In order for it to actually keep her safe, she would have to quit seeing him entirely. Or else Richard would never actually buy that they weren’t together anymore. And the idea of just cutting Zeke out of her life entirely made her chest hurt, as if someone had punched her right in the sternum.
There was silence for a drawn-out moment, and finally, Zeke admitted quietly, “I’m pretty sure I love you, too.”
Charlie laughed quietly. “Yeah, I kind of figured as much,” she replied. “You sure we can’t just run off and elope? It would make everything so much simpler.”
Zeke huffed out a breath of laughter. “It doesn’t work that way,” he reminded her wryly. “Spectacle, remember? We need to be convincing.”
Charlie sighed slowly. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” she conceded. She hadn’t forgotten that detail, if for no other reason than because she kept thinking “Wouldn’t it be easier if we didn’t need to do that?” But she supposed she didn’t actually have too many objections. Spite wasn’t a great reason to look forward to having a wedding, but it was still at least a reason, and she was okay with that. “I’ll, uh. I’ll see you later. Alright?”
“I’ll see you later, Charlie.”
When she hung up the phone, everything felt a little bit less pressing. A bit less like the world was trying to squeeze in on her like the walls of a trap in a cheap adventure movie.
*
Zeke called the next morning to ask if he could stop into the restaurant on her lunch break. He had something to tell her, apparently. Charlie agreed, albeit warily. Maybe she was being paranoid, but as far as she was concerned, she was perfectly in the right to feel a bit anxious of anything that even stunk of the words “We need to talk.”
When her lunch break came around, she found Zeke loitering at the front of the restaurant, chatting idly with the hostess. Charlie loped over, winding her arms around one of his as she got there, using his size to pull her to a halt. He hardly even moved.
“You said you needed to tell me something,” she pointed out, prodding at his shoulder with two fingers. Frankly, she had no interest in beating around the bush.
Zeke led her closer to the door so it would feel less like the hostess was trying to rubberneck her way into the middle of the conversation.
“My parents want to have another family get-together,” he informed her plainly, his expression twisting slightly with distaste as he said it. “You know who’s going to be there. He won’t try anything in front of my parents, but I don’t imagine it will be a comfortable experience.”
Charlie heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment before she dragged her hand down her face. “Great,” she huffed, squeezing her eyes shut for a second before she opened them again to look up at him. “What do they want to talk about? As far as I’m aware, I don’t really have much to talk to them about.”
“My mother wants to get to know you, I think,” Zeke replied, shrugging one shoulder in a way that seemed to indicate he didn’t actually know what the entire thing was really about. “She’s always been a bit more… in tune with how people work than my dad. Honestly, if it’s not related to work or deepening the gene pool, he’s not particularly interested.”
Charlie wrinkled her nose. “And your mom didn’t run off?”
Zeke waved it off. “She’s comfortable, she loves me, and she’s allowed to do whatever she wants, within reason. She’s content, even if she’s not in love.”
Charlie supposed she couldn’t really say anything about that, considering how her engagement with Zeke got started. It would be more than a little hypocritical for her to judge the relationship between Zeke’s parents when she had been perfectly willing to settle for “content, but not in love” herself.
“Well, alright,” she sighed. “When do they want to have dinner?” she asked, running a hand through her hair. “Is it going to be as fancy as the last place?”
“Probably,” he informed her wryly. “Two nights from now,” he tacked on. “I’ll text you to let you know the exact time.”
Charlie heaved another sigh, more than a little melodramatic. “Yeah, okay,” she agreed. “I’ll make sure not to wear the same dress as last time.”
She bid him goodbye, and as he left, the hostess sidled up behind Charlie to observe, “He’s decorative. Yours?” As if the way Charlie had been hanging off of his arm hadn’t been enough of an indication.
“Yes,” she answered primly, rolling her eyes good-naturedly as she said it. “You can look as much as you want to, but keep your hands to yourself.”
With a snort of laughter, the hostess returned to her post, waving Charlie on her way to have the rest of her lunch break.
*
On the one hand, Charlie didn’t want to meet with Zeke’s family again. She didn’t like his dad. She didn’t know much about his mom. She was actively terrified of his cousin. Despite that, she couldn’t deny that she looked good as she gave herself a final once over in the mirror.
The dress was black and just long enough to be considered appropriate, with off-the-shoulder straps. It was covered in clear crystals, and while they were actually made of plastic, they looked real enough, and she was content with that. Once again, her black, mostly-mesh heels added a respectable six inches to her height, and her makeup and jewelry were all in shades of silver and gunmetal grey.
She looked like she was the queen of the world, she decided, as she finished pinning her hair up. And frankly, she was absolutely positive she was going to need that confidence booster.
She heard a car pull to a halt outside, and with a deep breath, she grabbed her purse. She paused briefly, just long enough to make sure everything was in it before she made her way down the stairs and out the door. Zeke’s car was idling on the edge of the road in front of the duplex.
That night would certainly be something. Whether it would be good or bad, Charlie wasn’t sure, but she supposed she would find out soon enough.
*
The restaurant, as Zeke had warned her, was just as over the top and ludicrously extravagant as the first family dinner, and Charlie peered around all of the decorations. Each one probably could have paid for Charlie’s tuition, and she felt like if she breathed wrong, something would break. Zeke made no comment on her discomfort as they followed the host to the appropriate table, where Zeke’s parents and his cousin were already sitting.
(Frankly, it was still a bit surprising just how much Zeke looked like his mother. Charlie supposed she was glad; his mother was a very attractive woman and she was aging gracefully. Much more gracefully than Zeke’s father, especially, who looked a bit like he was slowly starting to melt as he acquired wrinkles. Charlie didn’t like to think of herself as particularly shallow but, well, she supposed it was just something she would have to work on eventually. A project for later.)
Of the many things Charlie had been expecting, she hadn’t been expecting to need to valiantly hold in a burst of laughter. Richard had a pad of gauze taped over one eye, and there were stitches in his ear on the same side. It was rather apparent that not all of his ear could be saved, though, as it still looked rather mangled, even though stitched back together.
Zeke’s mother, evidently taking Charlie’s staring as curiosity rather than poorly controlled hilarity, explained pleasantly, “Poor thing was on the wrong end of a carjacker on his way out of the city yesterday. Honestly, can you believe the state of the world today?”
Zeke nudged Charlie with his elbow as he pulled her chair out, and she cleared her throat as she jerked back into motion and sat down. “Well, that sounds scary,” she settled on, smoothing her hands over her skirt just for something to do to keep her hands busy as Zeke sat down beside her. “How did he get away? Or did he knock out the carjacker?” she wondered, sliding a glance towards Richard.
His visible eye narrowed sharply, and Charlie felt her heart rate pick up and she couldn’t help but wonder if she was reaching too far. She calmed when she remembered that they were in the middle of a restaurant, surrounded by people. Two of those people were his aunt and uncle. One of them had chased him off twice already in a rather short time span. So, if she really wanted to, she could probably afford to throw caution to the wind for a little while.
It’s not like he could become more homicidal.
Zeke’s mother laughed lightly and set a hand on Richard’s shoulder. “Richie chased him off well enough, though not unscathed, as you’ve no doubt noticed.”
Uh huh. Right. Richie chased him off. Charlie tried very hard not to roll her eyes and she succeeded just by the skin of her teeth. She was almost proud of herself.
Clearing her throat quietly, she said, “Well, hopefully whoever it was learned a lesson and won’t bother anyone else like that anymore.”
Zeke’s mother laughed again, more earnestly that time. “Well, I certainly hope so, but you know what young people are like in this world. Not you, of course, Miss Charlemagne, but in general.”
Pasting a beaming smile into place, Charlie assured her, “Just Charlie is fine, Mrs. Croasdell.”
“Oh, come on, now, dear,” Zeke’s mother scoffed. “You can call me Carol.”
“Carol,” Charlie corrected. “Got it.”
Dinner was getting off to a… reasonably harmless start, if nothing else. It was better than everything immediately devolving into an unmitigated disaster. Though Richard was still trying to bore a hole in her head with the power of his glare alone, which was more than a little uncomfortable.
If either of Zeke’s parents noticed, they said nothing about it, but Charlie couldn’t really say she was surprised about that.
*
“You know, the ring used to be my grandmother’s,” Carol informed Charlie pleasantly. She had taken Charlie’s hand hostage to admire the way the ring looked on her finger. It would have been nice if she asked permission, but Charlie had rather resigned herself to never being treated as much more than a particularly precocious poodle by most people who had actual money. “I’m glad it fits you so well.”
Charlie’s smile felt no less pasted on than it had at the beginning of the evening. “It’s beautiful,” she assured Carol, carefully extricating her hand from Carol’s hold. “I’m honored to wear it.”
“Have you thought about what sort of dress you’ll wear?” Carol wondered, letting Charlie take her hand back.
No, in fact, she hadn’t really put much thought into that yet. She had been sort of distracted by other matters, but she wasn’t going to say that. Explaining to someone that a member of her family was a murderous monster in the middle of a restaurant was not really something on Charlie’s to-do list. Her smile grew slightly more strained.
“I’d prefer not to wear white,” she replied, which was honest enough. “Nothing crazy—I don’t plan on walking down the aisle in hot pink or neon green or something like that—but I would prefer… I don’t know, off white or champagne or something like that. Maybe with sleeves.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I know more about what I want the flowers to be like than… pretty much any other aspect.”
Carol reached over to pat her hand. “I understand. I got overwhelmed thinking about it all, too.”
And for a moment, Charlie was… actually a bit sad. Because Zeke’s mother hadn’t actually wanted to get married, just based on what Zeke had said about the topic. She had been rather candid about that, just based on how much Zeke knew about the subject.
There wasn’t long to dwell on the topic, though, as Carol had a gleam in her eye like she was planning something.
“It’s awfully loud in here, don’t you think?” she wondered, glancing around for a moment before she settled her gaze on Charlie once again. “I think I need to head outside for a moment. Would you care to join me, Miss Charlie?”
Suddenly, Charlie had a very bad feeling about whatever was coming. Despite that, she kept her practiced smile in place and nodded once before she pulled her napkin from her lap and stood up. She smoothed her skirt down and fell into step behind Carol, following her towards the front of the restaurant and out the door. They took a few steps down the sidewalk so they weren’t in the way of the door or the people going in and out.
As they came to a halt beside the next building over, neither of them spoke for a moment. Just as Charlie was gathering up her courage to ask what was going on, Carol asked plainly, “So, what are your intentions towards Ezekiel?”
She didn’t sound malicious, or at least not quite. She sounded more like she had been around that block too many times to assume something actually was the way it was being presented. And, in a sense, she wasn’t wrong.
“Now, or from the beginning?” Charlie asked, with a low, slow sigh.
“Whichever you think is more relevant,” Carol returned, folding her arms over her chest and shrugging. Her expression was expectant.
Charlie fought back the urge to run a hand through her hair. All she would do was mess her hair up, and she didn’t want to go back into the restaurant looking like she lost a fight with a bee’s nest.
“I needed money at first,” Charlie answered simply, shrugging one shoulder. She folded her arms over her chest, hands curled protectively around her upper arms. “He needed to be married. It worked out pretty well.”
Carol eyed her dubiously. “And you were just… alright with that?”
“I mean, I thought he was sort of crazy at first, considering some of the, uh… family lore he explained to me.” Charlie snorted out a laugh despite herself. “But other than that, yeah. I was alright with it. I mean, I liked him basically from the get go. It’s not like I was looking at it as some sort of heartache to be with him.”
“You said you needed money at first,” Carol pointed out. “What about now?”
“I still need money,” Charlie conceded, shrugging loosely. “But beyond that, your son is very good at getting people to fall for him.”
Finally, Carol’s expression softened slightly. “That he is,” she agreed. “So, you really don’t mean any harm?”
Charlie scoffed before she could help it. “I don’t know what sort of harm you think I could do, but no. I’m pretty thoroughly attached to him by now.”
“You would be amazed what sort of things people can do, even if they think they’re harmless,” Carol cautioned, her voice mild. Whether it was a threat or a warning or merely an observation, Charlie couldn’t tell. She didn’t get much of a chance to parse it before Carol sighed and decided, “Well, it’s about time we head back inside, don’t you think? If we leave the boys to keep each other busy for too long, we’ll head back in and find the restaurant in pieces.”
Charlie was pretty sure that was an exaggeration, but it wasn’t something she wanted to risk. She fell into step behind Carol, following her back inside and back to the table. It felt like they had been outside for hours at that point, though it hadn’t even been ten minutes.
Zeke glanced up curiously as they returned to the table, and his father blustered in irritation as Zeke began promptly ignoring him.
“Everything alright?” Zeke wondered as Charlie took her seat again.
“It’s fine,” Charlie assured him. “Just needed a bit of fresh air, is all.”
“Mmhm.” Zeke didn’t sound like he believed her. He didn’t look like he believed her, either. But he did look like he was going to drop the topic, at least, and for that, Charlie was grateful. It wasn’t something she wanted to explain with the rest of Zeke’s family right there.
“I think it’s time for dessert,” Carol decided, and as pleasant as her tone was, it brooked no argument. Without waiting for anyone to agree or disagree, she lifted a hand to flag their waiter over once again.
It could have been a worse evening, all things considered, Charlie supposed. If nothing else, Zeke’s mom didn’t hate her and she was going to get a really good chocolate torte.
That was better than she had expected things to go, if she was honest, and quite frankly, she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
It was after they left the restaurant, as Zeke and Charlie were walking back to Zeke’s car, that Charlie decided, “I think I’m ready to move in.”
Zeke stared at her for a moment, quiet surprise written across his features. And then he nodded slowly and agreed, “Okay. If that’s what you want to do.”
While it was true that she hadn’t left the house that evening planning on saying that, it was. It was what she wanted to do.