Ike
“Who’s the kid?” Axel asked, jutting his chin toward the shore. Charlotte was kneeling in front of the little boy we’d seen near the cliff. Again? Why’d this kid keep showing up? They were too far away for us to hear them, but he seemed to be interacting with her a bit more than the previous times. Just as abruptly as before, the exchange ended when he disappeared. She stared at the place he’d just been standing, her brows narrowed in confusion.
“You don’t recognize him from anywhere?” I asked Axel without taking my eyes off Charlotte.
“Never seen him,” Axel answered.
“We saw him with the tour guides, and then he appeared to us another time. It’s strange he keeps showing up.”
“Kid probably learned how to morph before the guides explained everything to him. Maybe he’s just confused about where he should go.”
I nodded in agreement, not having any better theories. No other reason made sense.
Eventually, Charlotte stood and turned to us, lifting her hands and shrugging when she realized we’d been watching her. “I’m going to check on Grams,” she shouted and waved.
“We’ll be there shortly!” Axel yelled back.
She morphed out, and I thought she was gone, but a second later she appeared in front of us, wide-eyed and arms raised, shouting, “Boo!”
Completely surprised, Axel lost his footing and fell on his ass in the river. “Son of a bitch!” he griped as he sloshed in the water trying to regain his footing.
I did my best not to laugh too hard, though it was difficult, while Charlotte roared unapologetically. “I’m so sorry, but I had to,” she gasped breathlessly as she reached her hand down to help him up.
Axel took it, but instead of allowing her to pull him up, he tugged her arm, yanking her into the water and completely under the surface. She came up, hair matted to her face, coughing and sputtering, but managed a weak dick between hacks. He smacked her hard on the back. “Get it out, old girl,” he mocked.
Charlotte rolled to her butt, still hacking as she shoved hair from her face and glared murderously at her brother.
“You started this,” Axel reminded, his voice lacking any shred of remorse as he continued to pat her back.
“I only meant to scare you,” Charlotte argued calmly, her voice still hoarse from coughing. “You just tried to drown me.” Their eyes met and they burst out laughing, playfully smacking each other, pretending to fight.
Finally, Axel sighed dramatically and stood. “Now I have to go change,” he complained before vanishing.
Their sibling dynamic was incredibly entertaining. They were constantly messing with each other, but it was always with affection and love. Seeing it made me miss my brothers more than ever. “You two are nuts,” I chuckled.
“I know,” she agreed. “You never had sibling shenanigans with George and Cameron?”
“Yeah, I guess. We mostly just pantsed each other and tried to punch each other in the nads.”
She twisted her mouth. “I can totally see the three of you doing that.” Reaching a hand out, she asked in a fake southern drawl, “Would you be a gentleman and help a poor lady out, kind sir?”
“Your southern accent is terrible, Charlotte,” I informed her.
She batted her lashes and pretended to smack a piece of gum. “So ah whadda ya say, help a lady out, would ya…” she said, going for what could only be a Brooklyn or Jersey accent, but it was so awful I couldn’t really tell.
“Please, stop before you hurt yourself,” I chuckled.
“You’re just jealous of my exceptional imitation abilities.”
“Yeah, that’s what it is,” I replied dryly as I pulled her to her feet. My eyes locked on her as she smoothed her hair from her face again. Water lingered on her skin, reflecting the sunlight in waves as it glimmered on her skin. The fabric of her shirt clung to her, accentuating every perfect curve of her body. She looked like she’d just walked out of one of the Playboy magazines I’d kept hidden in my room when I was a teenager. My mind returned to our night together, the immeasurable amount of time we spent exploring each other, when I’d traced every curve of her with my hands, my mouth, and my own body.
With a big smile, she met my gaze, her eyes bright with mirth, and I didn’t try to hide my desire. Damn, she was beautiful. Even more so when the softest shade of pink blanketed her cheeks as she saw the heat in my eyes.
As she held my gaze, the need for a repeat of our night on the cliff increased. The feel of her dainty fingers walking up my chest, her perfect mouth subtly turned up in a mischievous smile. The smooth curve of her hip as my hand caressed it. The soft skin on the inside of her thighs. Her hair draped over her shoulders, curtaining her breasts. She was like art; a living, breathing, moving sculpture that caressed all of my senses.
“Oh, young love,” Axel mocked in a sing-song voice, having reappeared, interrupting our moment.
“Well, you two have fun,” Charlotte said, ignoring him. “I’ll see you in a bit.” With one last glance and a knowing smirk, she vanished.
Axel froze in place, bracing himself for another surprise attack. I laughed, “I think she’s really gone this time.”
Relaxing, he took a few steps until he was standing beside me. “So you really do this for fun?” he asked, his tone teasing as he gestured at the fly-fishing gear around us.
I adjusted my rod and grinned. “Some of the best times of my life were had standing in a river with my dad and brother. I learned a lot out in the water.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Well there’s the obvious,” I began. “The whole ‘give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for all of his days’ was one of my father’s favorite sayings. I must’ve heard him tell us that a thousand times.”
Axel nodded. “I like that.”
“He was the best man I knew. He took pride in his work and family, and on the surface he didn’t seem to be much more than that, but in the water with a fly rod in his hands, George and I got to see a side of him he kept tucked out of sight of my mother, or anyone else, really. I had my first beer while fly-fishing with my old man.” I flicked my wrist and watched the line dance over the water before yanking it back. “He’d tell us stories about chasing women before he met my mother, and how after he’d met her, no other woman would do.”
“Did he give you the sex talk out there, too?”
I turned to look at Axel, contorting my face into one of my father’s classic expressions, and in my best imitation of his voice said, “Boys, sex is a beautiful thing. Having babies is a beautiful thing. But if you’re ever caught up in the heat of a moment with a girl, and you think to yourself that one time without a condom won’t get you in trouble, just remember this: Sex leads to babies, and babies lead to less sex. Wrap em’ up every time, you hear me?”
Axel choked on a laugh. “He sounds like he was a pretty cool dude.”
I nodded and glanced out over the river. Reminiscing about my father made me miss him, but I knew I’d see him again someday. Until then, the memories and love he gave me kept me content. I was a lucky man to have had a father like him.
When I turned back, Axel was holding two beers. “I may not be good at this fishing gig, but beer...well, I was a master of drinking it.” He handed me a bottle and said, “Here’s to your dad.”
I took the proffered beer, clinking it to his in toast before taking a few gulps. When we finished, Axel stared down at his drink, his mouth tight. It wasn’t hard to tell he had something on his mind and was trying to decide if he wanted to talk about it with me. I had no doubt it had to do with Charlotte. I returned my gaze to the water, content to let the silence continue until he was ready.
After several moments he finally spoke, “She was always a little different, you know?”
“Was she?”
He sipped his beer. “Pretty. Nice. Liked by everyone, yet somehow she never really seemed to fit in.”
I tilted my head. “How do you mean?”
“Like she knew how to fit in, but she just didn’t. Not really.”
I sipped my own beer as I worked to understand what it was he was getting at.
“From what she says, she found that in your town—because of you. She found a place to fit in.”
“I’d like to think it was all my doing, but my town…the people there are just good people. Most of them anyway,” I added. The population of Warm Springs was small, but what it lacked in numbers it made up for in heart, and the majority were all honest-to-God good folks. “Honestly though, it was Charlotte. There’s just something about her that draws people in. She’s the one who won them over. All I really did was stop a girl from jumping off of a bridge and pointed her in the right direction.”
He lifted his chin, squinting his eyes questioningly. “Jumping off a bridge?”
I mentally scolded myself for forgetting Charlotte had left that part out when she’d explained how we met because she was ashamed and didn’t want her brother to think her weak. It was a part of her past—her life—she understandably didn’t want to remember.
I sighed, knowing I couldn’t put the proverbial cat back in the bag. “She was going to kill herself. It was complete chance that I showed up on the bridge that night.”
He ran a hand down his face and sighed, “She was that bad, huh?”
Images of Charlotte, soaked and wearing an oversized jacket that was plastered to her body, wet hair and trembling blue lips, ran through my mind. “She was at the end of her rope,” I admitted. “I don’t like to remember the way I found her that night.”
“Does she...seem okay to you? Now, I mean.” Axel broached.
I twisted my mouth in thought. Before my visit to Marlena, I would have said yes, but now, knowing what I know, the moments I’d previously taken as her just being lost in thought, now looked to be a side effect of her being on this side while she was technically still alive. And while she, herself, didn’t know that, maybe she somehow, on a subconscious level, knew something wasn’t right.
“I think so,” I finally answered him, inwardly cringing at myself for how easily the lie had come. “Why?”
“I don’t know. We’re all sad when we first get here, but eventually…we settle. You come to understand the people you miss will be here with you at some point. But Charlotte just seems…anxious. She hasn’t found that calm yet.”
I masked my growing anxiety at Axel dancing so close to the truth. I couldn’t let him think I might know anything. I wasn’t ready to risk losing her by telling anyone the truth. “I don’t know, Axel. Charlotte is different. Maybe for some of us it just takes a little longer.”
“Maybe,” he surmised and dropped the subject, moving on to planning a fish fry with anything we caught. I made the expected comments as he planned, but my mind was churning endlessly on what to do, when to tell her. Marlena could pull me back at any time, expecting to have answers on how to help Click, and while I knew I should be more concerned about that, I couldn’t bring myself to. For the first time in my life, my selfish asshole side was in control, and I had no immediate intentions of setting into motion anything that could take Charlotte away from me.