Charlie
“So,” I said to Cameron over dinner that Friday night. We were at our small dining table, the one not reserved for entertaining guests. “I was thinking.”
His eyes were on the steak I’d cooked for him as he sliced off another bite. I waited for him to look up at me, but when he didn’t, I continued.
“It’s Friday night, and it’s been so long since we’ve gone on a date. A real date, like we used to.”
He popped the next bite of steak into his mouth, hand reaching for his water, ready to wash it down.
“I heard on the radio that there’s a wine festival going on in the city this weekend. You can buy tickets for the whole thing or just for certain events, and tonight, there’s a special tasting event featuring a bunch of the local wineries. I was thinking… maybe we could go. You know, get all dressed up and wine drunk, come home and run a hot bath together? Doesn’t that sound nice?”
I was asking my husband on a date, but you would think I was telling him I was leaving him for the way I had to swallow past the knot in my throat. I’d barely touched my meal, too nervous to eat much before asking him. Now that the question was out in the open, all I could do was take a sip of my water as I waited.
He looked so handsome that night, his strong jaw lined with a hint of stubble, his eyes a bit crinkled at the edges. He’d grown older in the years we’d been together, and it only made me want him more, getting to watch time change him, the same way it’d changed me.
We were aging together, and that was a beautiful thing to me.
“It does,” he said after a moment, and I sat up straighter, my eyes wide with hope. “It really does, Charlie. But we have that huge merger call on Monday.”
The hope inside me deflated like a pin-pricked balloon. “It’s Friday.”
“I understand that, but we’ll all be working the entire weekend to prepare. I’ve got a list of things I still have to wrap up before I can even sleep tonight, and I’ll likely be in the study most of the weekend.” He shook his head, sticking a few green beans with his fork. “I just can’t take the night off, and I can’t be hungover tomorrow, either.”
“We can go easy,” I tried. “You can drive, and I’ll get tipsy and tear your clothes off later.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t tonight. This is a really important call.”
I pursed my lips, tongue poking into my cheek to try to stop me from reacting the way I wanted to. But it was no use. I dropped my fork to my plate, bringing my napkin to my mouth before letting it fall, too. “Is Natalia on this call?”
He paused at that, fork hovering over his plate as his eyes finally found mine. There were a million words flitting through those dark eyes of his, but he didn’t say a single one of them.
“It’s fine,” I conceded with a sigh, knowing bringing her up was unfair of me. I’d promised both myself and him that I wouldn’t do that, but sometimes it was too difficult not to. “Work is work, right?”
“I really am sorry,” he said, voice lower now. His eyes begged me for understanding, and mine begged him for love. “Maybe next weekend.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
For a while I just sat there, watching him eat the dinner I’d cooked for him, foot shaking where it hung over my opposite leg under the table. I couldn’t remember the last time we went on a date. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d done anything more than exist together, and for the first time in years, it didn’t just make me sad.
It made me angry.
The longer I sat there and watched him chew, the more silence that passed between us — the more I realized I didn’t want to be silent any longer. And I didn’t want to sit still, either.
“Well,” I said when he’d finished his steak. “Since you’ll be working, I guess you wouldn’t mind if I went to this happy hour thing some of the teachers are going to, would you?”
Cameron wiped his mouth with his napkin before dropping it on his own plate to mirror mine. “Happy hour?”
I nodded. “I know it’s not really my thing, but there are a bunch of teachers going. It’d be a good chance for me to network. You know, make some friends with the faculty.”
He considered me as he stood, gathering his plate and utensils first before reaching for mine. “I don’t see why not. Like you said, would be a good opportunity for you.”
“Great,” I clipped. I stood, too, ready to storm upstairs to change, but I stopped myself, closing my eyes and forcing a breath as Cameron finished picking up my mess. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” he said easily. “You cook, I clean. We’re a team, remember?” He leaned forward to press a kiss to my forehead. “I’m going to wash up and head into the study. Have fun with the other teachers. Give me a call if you need a ride home, okay?”
“Okay.”
I stood rooted to that spot until he disappeared into the kitchen. When I was alone, the anger I’d felt morphed back into sadness, and suddenly I didn’t even want to go to the stupid happy hour. But what else was I supposed to do? Sit around and watch TV? Teach Jane and Edward a new song? I shook my head, dragging myself up the stairs to change.
Maybe getting out of the house would make me feel better.
I guessed I didn’t really have any other choice but to find out.
Reese
Blake laughed at the tail end of my story as I took another swig of beer, eyes focused on the sports highlights sprawling across the TV in front of me. I didn’t keep up with sports, but it was something to watch now that I was alone in a bar. The Westchester faculty happy hour had lasted for, literally, one hour, before everyone made excuses to leave.
So, I’d picked up the phone to call my old roommate.
I’d been avoiding the phone call long enough, I figured I might as well get it out of the way with a little booze in my system.
“Well, you’re missed around here,” Blake said, still laughing. “But it sounds like you’re getting settled in just fine.”
“I am. It’s kind of weird. Feels a little like coming home and a little like starting over fresh at the same time,” I said. I went to tell another story, this time about old Mrs. Garrett who wouldn’t stop pinching my ass in the break room, but my voice faded off when I saw Charlie.
She was standing just inside the door of the bar, looking around with pinched brows as she unwrapped her scarf. Her eyes finally landed on me, and she smiled, though I would have sworn she’d been crying just moments before.
“Sorry, Blake, I have to go. I’ll text you later.”
I didn’t wait for a response before I ended the call, sliding my phone into my back pocket as I stood to wave Charlie over.
Her hair was still pulled up into a tight bun, just like it had been earlier that day when we’d had lunch together. But she’d changed into a tight pair of dark jeans and a classy, long sleeve blouse that peeked out under her ivory pea coat. Her smile was wide as she shrugged it off her shoulders, slinging it over the back of the bar stool next to mine before leaning in to hug me.
Lemonade. How did she smell like summer in the middle of January?
“You made it,” I mused, pulling her chair out for her.
“Looks like I’m the only one.” She chuckled, looking around the mostly empty bar. “Where is everyone?”
“Well, apparently I’m the only poor sucker who doesn’t have a family to rush home to on Friday night,” I teased. “Shortest happy hour in history.”
“Doesn’t surprise me with the guest list.”
This time I laughed. “Fair point. You drinking?”
Charlie eyed the bottles behind the bar, sucking her thumbnail between her teeth for just a second before she tucked her hands between her thighs with a shrug. “Oh, why not. What are you having?”
“An IPA. It’s hoppy, kind of bitter.”
“That sounds fine.”
I cocked a brow. “You sure? You could get wine, or a martini or something.”
“I can handle a beer, Reese. I did survive a Wild Walker just seven days ago.”
I threw my hands up with a grin. “Alright, alright. I was just saying you could get whatever you want and that you didn’t have to drink what I was drinking. So sassy tonight.”
She blushed. “Not sassy, just thirsty.”
“Well, we can fix that.”
I tapped my knuckles on the bar, nodding to the bartender down at the other end of the bar. “Another one when you get a sec, Walt.”
The old man saluted me, tossing a wink in Charlie’s direction as he pulled a fresh glass from the shelf. We watched him fill it from the tap, though my eyes were mostly on her rather than the beer. Once it was in front of her, I thanked Walt and held my glass up.
“Happy Friday,” I said, clinking my glass to hers.
I watched her face as she took the first sip, expecting her to grimace at the bitter hops, but she just licked the drops that were left on her lips and sat the glass down in front of her, one hand hooked around it.
“You like it?”
“It’s bitter, like you said, but I like the flavor.”
“Charlie Reid, an IPA lover. I never would have guessed.”
“Pierce,” she corrected. “You know, you’re lucky we don’t have a wrong last name jar like we have a swear jar at school. You’d be broke by now.”
Shit.
I ran a hand through my hair, shaking my head. “Sorry. Old habits die hard, I suppose.”
“It’s okay,” she assured me with a smile.
I couldn’t get over the fact that she was in jeans. It was the first time I’d seen her not wearing a skirt since the first day of school. I tried not to check her out, to notice the way the denim hugged her thighs, or the way her blouse dipped down to show her modest cleavage with the way her posture was on the bar stool.
The woman just reminded me she was married, and I couldn’t stop staring at her like she was coming home with me. It was the kind of thoughts I’d fought against when we were younger, when her bare legs swung from where she sat on my piano, her young eyes wide as they watched me with adoration. She’d always made me feel like I was worth more than I really was, like I was the only boy to ever catch her eye at all.
I cleared my throat, shaking the memory away. “Speaking of which, I thought you had a date tonight.”
Charlie had started to take another drink when I mentioned the date, and once the words were out of my mouth, she tilted the glass up farther, chugging down more than half her beer in one fell swoop.
There was the grimace I’d expected earlier.
She sucked a breath through her teeth, shaking out the burn from chugging as she placed her glass back on the bar. “Yeah, well, so did I.”
A strand of her hair that had been tucked into the top of her bun fell forward, and she swept it back behind her ear, not bothering to pin it up again as her eyes focused on the glass in her hand. I ached to reach for her, but reminded myself it wasn’t my place.
“I’m sorry,” I said after a moment. I wasn’t sure what else there was to say. I didn’t need to know what happened to see that whatever it was, she’d been hurt by it. And I hated seeing her that way. “Want to talk about it?”
“Honestly, I really don’t. Can you talk, instead?”
I scoffed. “Come on, don’t you know who you’re sitting next to? Can I talk…” I joked.
Charlie smiled as I jumped right into the story I was going to tell Blake about Mrs. Garrett, and before she’d even finished that first beer, I had her laughing. We ordered another round as soon as she’d polished off the one in her hand, this time opting for a citrus wheat ale from a brewery in Georgia. It went down even easier than the first beer, and before I knew it, we were four beers in. I switched to water after that, knowing I’d need to drive eventually, but Charlie ordered another round.
There was something different about her that night, and it wasn’t just her jeans. I could feel her slowly opening up to me, slowly letting me in, and the more she gave me, the more I wanted. If she offered me a smile, I begged her for a laugh. When she gave me a sentence, I pried for a paragraph.
I’d always been greedy when it came to Charlie.
“That’s so disgusting,” she said as I lit my second cigarette. Her nose wrinkled when I inhaled the first hit, blowing out a big puff of white smoke with a wink in her direction. “I thought for sure you’d have given up that habit by now.”
“Nah. It’s like my dad used to say. Something has to kill me eventually, might as well be something I enjoy.”
“You don’t have to speed up the process. You’re going to have lung cancer at forty.”
“That’s still five more years of good cigarettes, great beer, and even better sex.”
Charlie laughed, her cheeks flushing a deep pink. “It’s like trying to argue with a five year old.”
“You would know better than I would,” I told her, taking another pull from my cigarette. I was careful not to blow the smoke in her direction, though my eyes stayed on her. “You’re drunk.”
“Maybe.” She giggled the word, picking up her beer to take another drink, anyway. “It’s been so long since I’ve had beer. I forgot how it makes you feel all… swimmy.”
“Swimmy?”
“You know,” she said, extending her arms to the side and doing a weird version of the wave. “Floaty. High. Free.” Her smile settled into a lazy smirk, her glazed eyes finding mine. “You were responsible for my first beer, you know.”
“Ohhh, no,” I corrected, holding up my right pointer finger. “Don’t even try to pull that. You begged me for your first beer. I said no. You threatened to tell my parents about the porn stash you and Mallory had found under my bed. And then I gave you a Stella, which you couldn’t even finish because you hated the taste so much.”
“Is that how it went?” she asked, feigning innocence.
“It was. You were such a brat for being a quiet little pigtail-wearing bookworm.”
She threw her head back in a laugh. “Oh, my God. I still can’t believe my mother let me wear those things for as long as she did. What sixteen-year-old still braids her hair into pigtails?”
I swallowed, not wanting to admit the answer to that question — at least not out loud. The truth was, Charlie had been unlike any other sixteen-year-old girl I’d ever met. She was smart, quiet, witty, and way too sexy for her own good. Charlie didn’t even have to try to look sexy, either. She had this innocent school-girl thing going for her — no makeup, petite frame, pink lips and rosy cheeks. It was even worse when she wore her glasses, which I noted she’d traded in for contacts sometime in the years we’d been apart.
At sixteen, she knew more about the world than most of the kids I hung out with at college parties. Hell, she knew way more than I did, and I was five years older. I used to love just talking to Charlie, even though I’d fake that she and Mallory both annoyed me. Sometimes I’d even complain when I’d come home from a party and Charlie was there in the kitchen, the only other person still awake in my house. I’d pretend I didn’t want her to be awake, that I didn’t want to hang out with her, didn’t want to spend the entire night playing music for her and listening to the thoughts inside her head — but it was always just that. An act.
Charlie had always been different. Special. She just never saw it herself.
Taking one last drag of my cigarette, I pulled up the sleeve of my cardigan, checking the time on my watch. It was half past ten, and as I drove what was left of my cigarette into the ashtray to extinguish it, I eyed Charlie with words I didn’t want to say balancing on my tongue.
“It’s getting kind of late,” I unwillingly pointed out. “Are you… do you have to go soon?”
Charlie’s eyes grew sad again, and she stared at the amber liquid in her glass before tilting it to her lips, finishing what was left. She wiped the corners of her mouth with a shrug.
“Go where? Home to go to bed alone while he works?” Her fingertips skated the top of her empty glass. “Not exactly in a hurry for that.”
My brows bent together, hand twitching to reach for her again. I gripped my glass of water to keep from reacting the way I wanted to. “So, that’s what happened to date night,” I mused. “He works with your dad, right? I remember him working long nights and weekends when we were younger, too.”
Charlie sighed, running her hands back through her hair before she realized it was still in a bun. She messed it up with the drag of her nails, but instead of fixing it, she just tore the hair tie out and shook out her long brown hair, letting it fall over her shoulders.
I couldn’t help but stare as the strands fell over her shoulders. I was almost positive it was the first time I’d ever seen her hair down, and I had to fight the urge to reach forward and run my fingers through it.
She was so damn beautiful.
“Yeah, he works with Dad,” she said. “And I know he wouldn’t be working if he didn’t have to. I didn’t mean to sound like such a brat.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did,” she argued. “But, it’s not just tonight. It’s not just work.”
I swallowed, feeling like my next words needed to be the right ones. “What is it?”
Charlie looked a little like the young girl who used to read books on my porch in that moment, her eyes a little softer, skin a little younger. The way her hair surrounded her face like a halo took at least five years off her appearance.
She closed her eyes tight, shaking her head before she opened them again and found mine. “Can we go somewhere?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. I just… I don’t want to go home yet.”
I understood what she didn’t even have to say. I knew all too well what she was feeling — that terrible, sickening realization that home wasn’t really home anymore. That what once made it home was now missing. My family had always been home to me, not the place where we lived.
Now that they were gone, I was convinced home was a thing of the past, something I’d marvel at in the museum of my memories and wish I could relive.
I didn’t know why Charlie felt the way she did that night, or what was now missing in her home that had been there at some point before I’d moved back to Mount Lebanon. I didn’t know exactly what to say to make her feel better, or if there even was anything I could say that would comfort her. I didn’t know who she was five years ago, or even five months ago — didn’t know what had changed her since the last time we’d stood together in the garage of my old house.
But I did know exactly where to take her to clear her head.