Finally, quietly, he says, “Perfect.”
“Perfect,” I agree. That’s the word. I clear my throat, try to think critically when all I want to do is bask in this moment. Settle. “Would the cat really come back?”
Without hesitation, Charlie says, “Yes.”
“It’s not her cat,” I say. It’s Nadine’s constant refrain throughout the book, the reason she never names the little stowaway.
“She understands it,” he says. “Everyone looks at that cat and sees it as a little monster. It doesn’t know how to be a pet, but she doesn’t care. That’s why she says it isn’t hers. Because it’s not about what the cat can give her. It can’t offer her anything.
“It’s a mean, feral, hungry, socially unintelligent little bloodsucker.” The sky is black beyond the window, the rain thick as a sheet every time the lightning slashes through it. “But it is her cat. It’s never belonged to anybody, but it belongs to her.”
I feel an uncanny ache. This is what looking at Charlie is like sometimes. Like a gut-punch of a sentence, like a line so sharp you have to set the book aside to catch your breath.
He opens his mouth to speak, and another earthshaking crack of thunder rends the rooms. The lights sputter out.
In the dark, Charlie clatters out from behind the desk. “You okay?”
I find his hand and cling to it. “Mm-hmm.”
“I should lock the front door,” he says, “until the power’s back up.”
At the edge to his voice, I say, “I’ll come with you.”
We creep out of the office. With the shop in the dark, the emptiness takes on a slight chill, and the hair along my arms pricks up as I wait for Charlie to flip the sign and lock the door. “There are flashlights in the office,” he tells me afterward, and we shuffle back the way we came. He releases his hold on me to riffle through the desk drawers. “You cold?”
“A little.” My teeth are chattering, but I’m not sure that’s why.
He hands me a flashlight, flicks on the emergency lantern in his other hand, and carries it to the hearth. His face and shoulders are rigid as he piles logs in the hearth, the same way he showed me and Libby the other night: a nest of logs, its nooks filled with crumpled newspaper.
“You really don’t like the dark,” I say, kneeling on the rug beside him.
“It’s not the dark, exactly.” It takes a minute, but the kindling catches, warmth and light rippling over us. “It’s just so quiet here, and when it’s dark too, it’s always made me feel sort of . . . alone, I guess.”
This close, I can see all the fine details of his face, the darker brown ring in the middle of his gold irises, the crease under his lip and the individual curves of his lashes.
I push myself onto my feet and walk toward the desk. “I need to say something.”
When I turn, he’s standing again, his brow grooved, his hands in his pockets.
“Maybe, for whatever reason, you just don’t want to date right now,” I say, “and that’s fine. People feel that way all the time. But if it’s something else—if you’re afraid you’re too rigid, or whatever your exes might’ve thought about you—none of that’s true. Maybe every day with you would be more or less the same, but so what? That actually sounds kind of great.
“And maybe I’m misreading all of this, but I don’t think I am, because I’ve never met anyone so much like me. And—if any part of all this is that you think, in the end, I’ll want a golden retriever instead of a mean little cat, you’re wrong.”
“Everyone wants a golden retriever,” he says in a low voice. As ridiculous a statement as it is, he looks serious, concerned.
I shake my head. “I don’t.”
Charlie’s hands settle on the edge of the desk on either side of me, his gaze melting back into honey, caramel, maple. “Nora.” My heart trips at his rough, halting tone: the voice of a man letting someone down easy.
“Never mind.” I avert my gaze but I’m unable to remove him from it entirely, not with him so close, his hands on either side of my hips. “I understand. I just wanted to say something, in case—”
“I’m not going back to New York,” he interrupts.
My eyes rebound to his. Every sharp edge of his expression takes on new meaning. “That’s why,” he says. “The reason I can’t . . .”
“I don’t . . .” I shake my head. “For how long?”
His throat bobs as he swallows. “My sister was supposed to come back in December to take over the store. But she met someone in Italy. She’s staying there.”
My heart has gone from feeling like an over-caffeinated hummingbird to an anvil, each beat a heavy, aching thud.
“I already emailed Libby about the apartment,” he goes on. “It’s hers if she wants it. It was always going to be.”
My eyes sting. My heart feels like a phone book whose pages have all come loose, and I’m trying to stuff them into an order that makes sense, that fixes this.
“That first night I ran into you in town,” Charlie says, “I’d just found out Carina was staying awhile longer. I wasn’t sure how long, but . . . she and her boyfriend eloped. She’s not moving back.”
His words wash over me in a buzzing, distant way.
“I’ve been trying to find a way out. But there isn’t one. My dad’s the one who held everything together. Their house is old—it constantly needs work that I’m trying to figure out how to do, because he won’t let me hire someone, and the store’s worse than ever—my mom’s trying, but she can’t do it.
“The way we’re going, the shop has maybe six months left. Someone needs to be there, every day, and my mom didn’t even manage that before she had to help my dad get around. And fuck, he’s terrible at relying on people, so even if we could afford to hire a nurse, he wouldn’t let us. And if we could afford to hire a store manager, my mom wouldn’t allow it. It’s always been in her family. She says it would break her heart to have someone else running things.”
The muscles in his jaw work, shadows flickering against his skin. “And they weren’t perfect, but my parents gave up a lot for me. So I could go to the school I wanted and have the job I wanted and—I can’t keep this up. Loggia wants someone local, and my family needs me. They need someone better than me, but I’m what they’ve got. I’m leaving after Frigid’s done. That’s the job opening, the one I put you up for.”
His job. His apartment. Like he’s just handing over the life he’s worked so hard for, wholesale. Giving up the city where he belongs. Where he feels like himself. Where he doesn’t feel wrong or useless.