The ragged edge of his voice knocks the wind out of me. I fight the impulse to rein in my shock, and then it all clicks, the bits of Charlie I’ve been collecting like puzzle pieces becoming a full picture. Not the Darcy trope. Not the self-important, dour academic I met for one very unpleasant lunch. A man who craves complete honesty, the realist who doesn’t always understand when he’s not seeing realism. Charlie, who wants to understand the world but has learned not to trust it.
“I’m so sorry, Charlie,” I whisper.
He swallows. “I know he just didn’t want me to think I was anything but his son,” he says. “But it was a bad way to find out. Everyone in town was more or less nice to my parents’ faces, but those first few years of school were hell. My mom’s approach was to kill them with kindness, and it worked. She won the whole fucking town over. But I couldn’t do it. I can’t make small talk with people I know hate me. I can’t play nice with people I think are assholes. Carina was in third grade the first time someone told her she was probably born with an STD because our mom was such a whore.”
“Holy shit, Charlie.” I unknot my arms from his back and take his face between my hands, feeling like my lungs are on fire, like there are feelings my vocabulary isn’t advanced enough to put into words. I want to drape myself over him like chain mail, or swallow some gasoline, go downstairs, and spit it out as fire.
“I spent half of middle school in the library and the other half in the principal’s office for getting into fights, and honestly those were the only two places I felt like I had any control over my life.” He shakes his head, like he’s clearing it. “My point is, being that ‘magic free spirit’ you think is this mythical perfect woman? It comes with its own problems. Just because not everyone gets you doesn’t mean you’re wrong. You’re someone people can count on. Really count on. And that doesn’t make you cold or boring. It makes you the most . . .” He trails off, shakes his head. “You and your sister might have your differences, and she might not totally understand you, but you’re never going to lose her, Nora. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“How can you be so sure?” I ask.
Now his eyes are all liquid caramel, his hands tender, moving back and forth over my hips, a tide that draws us together, apart, together, each brush more intense than the last.
“Because,” he says quietly, “Libby’s smart enough to know what she has.”
I want to pull him down into the ridiculous car bed and wrap myself in the smell of his shampoo, to feel the pressure of his fingers grow frantic on me, for the warm, hard press of his stomach and our steady rocking together and drawing apart to mount.
“Until you got here,” he rasps, “all this place had ever been was a reminder of the ways I was a disappointment, and now you’re here, and—I don’t know. I feel like I’m okay. So if you’re the ‘wrong kind of woman,’ then I’m the wrong kind of man.”
I can see all of the shades of him at once. Quiet, unfocused boy. Precocious, resentful preteen. Broody high schooler desperate to get out. Sharp-edged man trying to fit himself back into a place he never belonged to begin with.
That’s the thing about being an adult standing beside your childhood race car bed. Time collapses, and instead of the version of you you’ve built from scratch, you’re all the hackneyed drafts that came before, all at once.
“You’re not a disappointment.” It comes out faint. “You’re not wrong.”
Charlie’s eyes sweep down my face. His fingers brush the smooth spot at the right corner of my mouth, his jaw tightening. When his eyes lift to mine again, they’re blazing, a trick of the warm light coming from the bedside lamp, but I still I feel heat rising off of him.
“And all those people who made you feel like you were,” he says huskily, “have fucking terrible taste.” The affection in his voice rushes me like a warm tide, filling a million tiny tide pools in my chest.
We really are two opposing magnets, incapable of being in the same room without drawing together. I want to scrape my fingers through his hair and kiss him until he forgets where we are, and everything and everyone that ever made him feel like he was a disappointment. And he’s looking at me like I could, like there’s an ache in him only I could soothe.
I want to tell him, You are someone who looks for a reason for everything.
Or, You are the person who pulls things apart and figures out how they work instead of simply accepting them. You’re someone who would rather have the truth than a convenient lie.
Or even, You’re the person who only has five outfits, but each of them is perfect, carefully chosen.
“I think,” I whisper, “you’re one of the least disappointing people I’ve ever met.”
The line beneath his bottom lip shadows as his lips part, and his warm, minty breath is light against my mouth. For a second, we’re caught in a push and pull, tasting the space between us. It feels like there’s no air left in the room, but what I really want anyway is to breathe him in.
All my reasons for keeping those walls up between us seem suddenly inconsequential. Because the wall isn’t up. It’s not. Charlie sees me. He’s touching me. And for the first time in so long—maybe even since we lost Mom—I feel like I’m not outside the scene, watching through glass, longing so badly to find a way in.
My phone chirps, and all that warm heaviness evaporates as Charlie straightens, jolted back to reality, to his own reasons for trying to build a barricade between us.
He turns to face the shelves, and my throat goes dry when I realize he’s adjusting himself.
Everything in me aches to touch him again, but I don’t. My feelings may have changed, but there’s still Charlie’s end of things: This can’t be anything. Things are complicated.
My mind goes straight to Amaya, and guilt, jealousy, and hurt wriggle together in the pit of my stomach.
Another message comes in from Libby, and another.
Where are you??
When you’re done introverting in a dark corner, I found us a ride home.
HELLO? U alive????
“It’s Libby.”
Behind me, Charlie clears his throat, says hoarsely, “You should rescue her before the knitting club recruits her. They’re the Sunshine Falls equivalent of the Mafia.”
I nod. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Good night, Stephens.”
* * *
I almost collide with Sally at the bottom of the stairs.
“I was just looking for your sister!” she says. “I dug up the number she asked for—could you pass it along?”