Chapter Twelve - Danny

The kitchen pantry is missing four loaves of bread and five blocks of cheese. Hank and I have fought in more recent conversations than not. The missing money is still gone. The Naval Academy Ball is almost here. The unscheduled inspection is even closer.

And somehow, all I can think about is Charlotte.

With everything happening, a flirtation, a woman I’ve slept with once on what should feel like an impulsive whim, ought to be the last thing on my mind. Instead, it feels like Charlotte is the first thing on my mind at all times. Maybe I’m a hypocrite. After all, I keep telling Hank we can’t take risks right now, don’t I? I keep telling him we don’t need to take needless risks or complicate things. And pursuing anything with Charlotte is nothing but a huge, needless risk and complication, to so much more than the Naval Ball and the restaurant’s troubles. I know it is. I know all the women I could be trying to start things with, Hank’s daughter should not be a viable option at all.

I could jeopardize the best friendship I have. I could jeopardize the entire future of the restaurant. I know that. I can’t help but worry that it’s old habits, wanting a woman I can’t have, not caring about the consequences. I don’t want to think it, but I can’t help but worry that they’re someone else’s habits. For years, when I was in middle school, my dad’s girlfriend had been a married woman. She was married to a police officer, who always knew something was happening and used to come search our little house at random, looking for any reason to haul Dad away for a night or two on. Most of the time, he found them, because Dad wasn’t much of a fan of paying for things or going through the right legal channels for services.

Dad kept seeing her anyway, having her over at the house all the time. She was as loud as he was, and she used to make me serve her dinner, telling me I had to learn how to treat a lady in order to grow upright. I remember how she’d sit on Dad’s lap and put her hand down his pants right there in front of me. Then, before I knew it, they’d be shouting at each other and throwing things, until they were all over each other again, sending me to my room and yelling at me to lock the door behind me so they could have sex in the living room before she went home to her husband.

Dad kept piling up speeding tickets and possession charges, but he kept seeing that woman anyway. They’d kept up their affair, even for the nights in jail it earned him until her police officer husband had taken a job with the state troopers and they’d moved away. I’d been relieved. But Dad had been angrier than ever, drinking heavier and not coming home for days at a time. (“Never trust a stupid bitch,” Dad had said when he was home like he was teaching me a lesson, “and trust me, kid, they’re all like that. All of them, only good for one fucking thing.”)

Charlotte is nothing like Dad’s old girlfriend, of course, but maybe my wanting her so much is the same. Maybe I’m making his mistakes after all. Maybe I’m still like him, despite all my efforts over the years to not be. Here I am, screwing up business and friendship for a woman he hardly knew, a relationship that’s centered around little more than sex, as it stands now. It certainly seems like something he would have done.

I feel like I know Charlotte better than people I’ve known for years though, feel like she’s making a huge impact on me just being here. When I was in my twenties, dating every available woman I saw and not caring to learn anything about them, that had been like Dad. I’ve come so far from that, worked so hard to be better than that. I’d like to think I am. I was raised to be a womanizer, to never actually fall for anyone, and I used to believe it was all I could aspire to, but I don’t think like that anymore.

But maybe I’m just looking for something I can control. I worry. I don’t know what’s happening at my own restaurant, but kissing Charlotte had felt like all those problems were miles away. Being with Charlotte feels easier than it should, feels easier than dealing with the issues at the Dock’s End. I could just be looking for a distraction.

Charlotte already feels like much more than a distraction, though, feels like something a lot more lasting. Feels like a challenge, not something easy. I think it’s the opposite of being like my dad, like if I was with Charlotte if I deserved someone like her, could make her happy, then I’m actually the person I’ve been trying to be, the person Hank always, somehow, seen me as.

I’m not used to wanting someone feeling this complicated and I’m uneasy that it does now. I do very much want Charlotte, though. I can’t deny that. I can’t even really try. Maybe, more than anything else, it’s that. Maybe I don’t care about the potential consequences. Maybe I’m being reckless because I want Charlotte so much that it all feels worth it.

That might be the most alarming possibility of them all.

I stare at the numbers on my desk again, the missing money staring at me in red, bold, letters. And, in spite of everything, I think, fuck it.

I need Charlotte’s help on this. I want her help on this. Even if I don’t know exactly what else is going on, what’s going to happen with all this mess, I know that’s a fact, I need another opinion on all this, and I need it to be Charlotte’s.

So I text her and ask her come by later before I can talk myself out of it.