She was crazy-ashamed of how she’d acted, and crazy-ashamed of sending that sexy picture in the first place, or the trying-to-be-sexy picture that now seemed so foolish. What had she been thinking? Ooh, look at me, I’m so hot?
Only Charlie, without knowing it, had given Wren the courage to think that maybe she was hot, at least in his eyes. He told her how beautiful she was all the time, and every time, it made her feel special—which made it hurt even more last night when he didn’t.
She felt selfish for wanting Charlie to be there to reassure her instead of helping Dev. She hadn’t even asked if Dev was okay.
But she also felt small, and exposed, because in addition to sending that picture, she’d told Charlie she wanted to have sex with him. She knew in her gut that he wanted that, too, but still. His reply last night had been something along the lines of, “Hey, sorry, but I’ve got to go. I’ll call when I can, all right?”
When Charlie had finally called her back, she was no longer tipsy but drunk. She was at P.G.’s house with Tessa, and drunk and sad, and she watched Charlie’s calls come in but didn’t answer. He left a series of voice mails, which she listened to and then deleted. She was drunk and sad and mad, and because she felt cut off from Charlie, she felt cut off from herself.
Her parents had been right all along, she’d told herself. They’d wanted to help her stay focused on her schoolwork, but they’d also wanted to protect her, even if she hadn’t seen it at the time. She wasn’t ready for this. She wasn’t ready for love. Stupid Charlie with his stupid auburn eyes and stupid gorgeous muscles, his stupid tousled hair and quirky-sweet smile.
Sitting on P.G.’s pool chair with her knees to her chest, drunk and mad and lonely, Wren had come to the obvious conclusion: She couldn’t love Charlie, because love hurt too much. Love could be withdrawn. Before Charlie, her world may have been small, but it had been predictable.
Then Charlie had stopped calling and started texting. Her rational mind knew that he wasn’t withdrawing. She was. She couldn’t seem to help it. So she didn’t respond and she didn’t respond, and then, when she finally did, her responses were non-responses. Non-answers. Words strung together that said I’m afraid that you’re leaving me, so I’m leaving you first.
And then, his last text …
Wren’s heart ached when she reread it:
I feel like my world is falling apart. Can I please please call?
And her response? Um, nah.
That’s what she typed back to him. Just nah, like what she might say if Tessa offered her some Skittles, or if she was at Starbucks and the barista asked if she wanted her receipt.
Nah. So cold. And she’d felt cold, huddled like a ball on P.G.’s chaise lounge while P.G. and Tessa laughed and splashed and skinny-dipped. She’d gazed vacantly at her phone, wanting Charlie to call again, text again, even while knowing that if he did, she was too wounded to reply. She felt as if she were watching her life from afar, willing to let it fall to pieces.
Last night, Wren had felt justified in hurting Charlie, because he had hurt her. This morning, all her justifications fell away like dead butterflies. She did love Charlie. She loved him with all her heart, and that was why it hurt so much.
Text him, she told herself, remorse gnawing at her belly. Make it right. Better yet? Call him. Talking was better than texting; it always was.
But she felt too quivery for an actual conversation, so she opened the text application on her phone and started typing. Once she began, she typed quickly and urgently. Charlie needed to know how sorry she was, and he needed to know now, before he called or texted her again.
If he was ever planning to call or text her again, that is.
Fear made her light-headed.
I am so so SO sorry, she typed. About last night. I should have answered when you called. I should have been … better … when you sent all those texts.
I don’t know exactly what was up with me. All I wanted was to see you. Be with you. And I sent that text, I think you know which one, and, Charlie, that was scary for me.
And then you disappeared. You were just *gone*.
I would love to see you today if you want to see me. So call me, or text me, or whatever. I’ll be here.
She hesitated, then typed one last message.
I hope Dev’s okay.
night of tossing and turning, although he finally crashed as the sun was rising. When he woke up, it was almost noon. Someone was banging on his door.
“Mom wants to know if you’re alive,” Dev said. He wheeled his chair to Charlie’s bed. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said groggily. He rubbed his eyes, checked the clock on his bedside table, and pushed himself up, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress. “Whoa.”
“Whoa what?” Dev said.
“It’s late.”
“No shit, it’s late. That’s why Mom sent me to check on you.”
“Don’t say ‘shit.’ Pamela doesn’t like it.”
“Don’t call her Pamela. She likes that even less. And Dad needs you in the shop. Something about the chairs for that old lady with the nose ring.”
“Agnes,” Charlie said. “Right.”
Dev wheeled his chair closer and picked up a framed photo of Charlie and Wren. Wren was laughing. Her arm stuck out in that funny way of self-photos, and they were squeezed together to fit in the frame. Wren was looking at the camera; Charlie was looking at Wren.
When Wren had pulled the phone back and they looked at the picture together, Charlie remembered, Wren had groaned and claimed she looked goofy. She didn’t. She looked luminous.
“You look adorable, though,” she had said, and Charlie, as a complete afterthought, glanced at the image of himself. He was startled to see the softness captured in his eyes as he gazed at Wren.
“You look so sweet,” she went on. “Like a little boy, almost.”
“A little boy?” Charlie said, feeling heat creep up his neck.
“Well, not a little boy, but just … sweet, that’s all. I bet that’s how you looked when you were a kid, playing with your Matchbox cars. Did you play with Matchbox cars, Charlie Parker?”
Charlie had never owned a Matchbox car. There’d been a toolbox in his mother’s garage, and during the interminable season he spent there, he’d lined up the hammer, the screwdrivers, and the wrenches in different patterns on the concrete floor, over and over again. He didn’t remember much about that time, but he remembered that.
“I did,” he said. “Did you?”
“Nope, for me it was stuffed animals all the way.”
She had looked at the picture of them one more time before putting her phone in her pocket. She’d wrapped her arms around Charlie’s neck and peppered him with tiny kisses. Then she’d grabbed the back of his hair the way she did and kissed him for real.
Two days later, Wren had given him a copy of the photo. She’d printed it at Kmart and put it into a frame for him and everything. These small things. No one had ever treated him like this before.
Dev tapped the image of Wren, pulling Charlie back. “Your girlfriend is hot,” he said.
“Yeah. Uh-huh. Put down the picture, Dev.”
“How many times have you kissed her?” Dev asked. “Five times? Eight? More than a dozen?”
“None of your business,” Charlie said.
Dev grinned. Until Wren, Dev had never had much material to tease his big brother about. But Dev liked Wren, and Wren liked Dev. She knuckled his hair and praised his elaborate LEGO constructions. He’d asked her how to make his crush like him, and she’d said, “Just smile at her and talk to her like a normal person. Dev, you’re a catch.”
“You’re the catch,” Dev had said, waggling his eyebrows. “If Charlie doesn’t ever treat you right, you know where to find me.”
“Thank you, Dev. You’re very chivalrous,” Wren had said. She looked fondly at Charlie. “But your brother knows how to treat a girl. He takes amazing care of me.”
Charlie stood up from his bed and took the framed photo from Dev. He put it back where it had been.
“Is there any breakfast left?” he asked.
“Fat chance,” Dev said. “And it was pancakes, so sucks for you.”
Charlie pulled on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. To Dev, who was blocking the path out of his room, he said, “You gonna move or be moved?”
Dev hiked his chair onto its back wheels and spun to face the door. “There might be one pancake left. Maybe three. Or not.”
Charlie’s throat tightened. He predicted there’d be a whole stack waiting for him, staying warm in the oven. Even though it was noon.
“Hey. Dev.”
Dev glanced over his shoulder. “What?”
“About Pamela. Why I call her that, instead of …”
“Mom?” Dev supplied. “It’s not a hard word to say. It’s only one syllable. Want to know another word with one syllable? Dad.”
“Thanks, Dev. Thanks for that English lesson.”
“Always happy to help.”
Charlie frowned. He didn’t have to say any more. He could quit now. But he pushed on, because it was important. “Listen, Pamela and Chris are great. You know that, and you know that I know that. I only call them Pamela and Chris because …” He tried again. “The reason I don’t call them what you call them …”
“Charlie, forget it. It’s okay.”
“I know,” Charlie said. “It’s just that sometimes, even when you love somebody—” He broke off. He was hopeless. Hopeless and worthless.
Dev was acutely uncomfortable with the conversation. Charlie could see that, even if he couldn’t always see his own emotions clearly.
He found a dark stain on the carpet to focus on and said, “It’s nothing they’ve done wrong or anything. It’s just … me.”
“I know,” Dev said.
“But I’m glad you do. Call them that.”
Dev nodded.
Charlie nodded back.
The chairs Chris wanted Charlie to work on had legs with tapered tenons, and Chris wanted Charlie to sand the grooves. This sort of detail work was best served by sandpaper, not a sander, which was good, because power tools required attention to the task at hand. Charlie’s thoughts were very much elsewhere.
His phone lay on the table by the router, but he resisted flipping it open to check for messages. If Wren had called or texted, that would be one thing, assuming her message wasn’t Screw you, I’m done, good riddance. But if there were no messages, it would kill him all over again.
He was a mess.
He was angry at Wren for doing this to him. For playing with his mind, for treating him like …
He didn’t want to go there, but maybe he had to step into that dark place if he was to have any chance at figuring out how he felt about last night.
Kneeling on the floor of the shop, he smoothed the swelled cove on the leg of the first chair. Chris had done a nice job. The chair’s leg narrowed and widened elegantly, and Charlie thought of Wren. Her hips tapering inward to her waist, her waist stretching into the swell of her breasts.
Dammit. He closed his eyes. He gave himself a moment, then started up again. Work was work.
He sanded the chair leg and tried, for the first time ever, to think about Wren from a distance. He added himself to the mix, too. He added in his past, his present, his unknown future. He added the relationships he’d severed and the relationships he continued to maintain.
Chris, Pamela, Dev. Solid. They’d had their bumps in the road, but what he’d tried to tell Dev was true: Charlie considered Dev and his foster parents his family, and Charlie’s inability to say so out loud was his failure alone.
Ammon? Also solid. Ammon was a good and loyal friend. At the same time, Charlie doubted that he and Ammon would keep in close touch when Ammon went to Mercer in the fall. Their friendship was fine for what it was, but it wasn’t more than what it was.
And then there was Starrla. A hot mess in miniskirts and fishnets. A sad girl in sweats and oversize T-shirts. For the most part casually cruel, and yet sometimes kind, like last year when she’d picked up on the fact that Charlie was having a shitty day. Starrla skipped class with him and drove him to the mall. She bought him an Orange Julius despite his protests, saying, “Just drink it, asshole.”
As for sex. Well. They were fourteen the first time they “fucked,” and afterward, Charlie tried to tell her how pretty she was. In his mind, back then, she was. Objectively, she still was, beneath her black eyeliner and vampy outfits. But that first time, tangled together in Starrla’s bed, Charlie came fast and hard and then collapsed on top of her.
She laughed and shoved his torso. “You’re crushing me,” she said. “Get off.”
He rolled sideways, dazed and spent and thankful, so thankful. He was also worried that he’d hurt her. “Sorry,” he said. “You okay?”
She looked at him as if he were nuts. Then a knowing look altered her features. She smirked and said, “Is this you being tender? In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t do tender.”
He reached for her. She might be hard on the outside, but it was a front. He knew it was. He ran the back of his hand over her cheek. “Starrla … that was …”
She pushed his hand away and got out of bed. “Shut up and get dressed. My mom’ll be back soon.”
Sometimes she wouldn’t have sex with him unless she’d had a shot or three of whatever cheap liquor was stashed above the fridge. On those occasions, she made a point of telling him that’s what it took, given that Charlie was Charlie. “I have to be drunk. No offense, right?”
The chair leg Charlie was working on was sanded to perfection. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, rotated the chair, and started on the next leg. The scratch of sandpaper against wood comforted him. He felt the satisfaction of it in his gums, way back in his mouth. Probably he’d been grinding his teeth without realizing it.
The last time Charlie slept with Starrla was after their eleventh-grade homecoming dance. Someone rented a hotel suite. There was an after-party. Starrla got very, very drunk and complained of being hot, so she fumbled for her zipper and started to take off her short, shiny dress right in front of everyone.
“Starrla, no,” Charlie had said. He steered her to the room with the bed while the others hooted and whistled.
“Have fun, kids!” one girl called.
It hadn’t been fun. Charlie had taken her to the bedroom for the sake of her privacy, not to have sex with her. But things happened, and he did have sex with her, or she had sex with him. Ten sweaty minutes later, it was over.
“I’m not even your date,” Starrla had said, pushing herself up. Her hair was mussed, and one blue high heel dangled from her foot. Her dress was scrunched around her waist.
“I asked you to be my date. You said no,” Charlie had said. She’d sobered up slightly, and her eyes had a certain glint in them that Charlie recognized. Anger. Desperation. Defiance.
“I said no because I knew you didn’t want me to be. You asked me out of pity. Duh.”
“Starrla …”
“But you still want me to be your slut, so here I am. Yay. Happy?”
No, and neither was she. They made each other the opposite of happy.
“Starrla. Just tell me what you want from me,” Charlie’d said.
Starrla had fixed her dress, jamming her arms back through the sleeves and tugging down the hem. “Nothing, so don’t worry, pretty boy. You’re doing great.”
After that, no more sex. Charlie’s decision. Too much wrongness and not enough rightness.
And now. With Wren.
Charlie knew it was right with Wren, or he thought he knew, but last night had changed things.
He wanted to believe that he knew the real Wren, and he wanted desperately to believe that the real Wren was solid and cared about him as much as he cared about her.
He rocked back on his heels and put the sandpaper down.
Did Wren treat me badly? he
asked himself.
Yes—but he’d stopped texting with her to run to Starrla, goddammit, and he couldn’t help but believe that Wren hadn’t set out to hurt him. It was an accident, wasn’t it? Maybe she’d been in a bad place herself?
Clearly she’d been in a bad place. Still …
Once upon a time, Charlie had let Starrla treat him like shit. Last night, Wren had treated him like shit.
But he wasn’t perfect, either. Wren had told him she wanted to have sex with him—and Jesus, he wanted that, too—and yet for reasons he didn’t fully understand, or maybe it had been purely a knee-jerk response, he’d run off to check on a girl he knew was beyond his help. God, he was an ass.
Never again, if there was an again.
Charlie’s heart told him that Wren was still Wren, that he still loved her, and that he would always love her. If she would have him, he would have her—forever.
flew to the park’s turn-in. Where was he?
Meet at our ditch? he’d texted, and she’d typed back immediately: Yes!
She’d brushed her teeth, borrowed a clean shirt from Tessa, and dragged a brush through her hair. Then she came here, to the parking lot. She didn’t go straight to their ditch, because they always walked there together. Plus, she knew he wasn’t waiting for her there, because she’d have seen his car.
Where are you, Charlie? I need you!
He pulled into the lot, and the sight of his ancient Volvo made her feel boneless.
“Charlie!” she cried, running to his car. She stopped when she was maybe three feet away. What would his face tell her? Would it be good or bad? He wouldn’t have said to meet at the ditch if it was bad, would he?
He cut the engine and got out of his car. He wasn’t smiling.
“Wren,” he said. He raked a hand through his hair. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said. She took half a step toward him. She extended her hand, her heart beating furiously, and he took it. Oh, thank God, he took it.
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