Hard and soft, that was Charlie. Strong yet delicate. Her body was made for mine, and we spent the morning mapping each other with our hands and mouths, bathing in the morning sky bleeding in the windows, blue, then purple, orange, and finally yellow.
I had gotten so used to keeping a wall up with every woman that I’d forgotten how nice it was to let it down. Charlie hadn’t knocked and asked politely to come in; she’d just walked inside like she owned the place. I’d been taken by surprise and had no time to even put up a fight.
Not that I wanted to. At least, not now.
I kissed her breastbone and laid my head on her chest, her heartbeat in my ear. A bird chirped outside. A car or two passed by.
“I don’t want to get up,” she said.
“Don’t.”
“I have to. We have films in two hours. And I need coffee.”
She pushed off her elbow to get up, but I refused to move, keeping her against the mattress. She sighed, but went back to petting me. “Tell me about Alison.”
I didn’t want to interrupt this perfect moment and kept quiet.
“Silent treatment, huh?”
I thought maybe if I didn’t move or breathe for a while, she’d let it slide.
“Come on, Connor, I think it’s about time you told me.”
But of course she wouldn’t. Charlie Gibb, always on my case. “Why?” I asked, sitting up. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
She followed me as I threw on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t feel like it. We had a nice morning, why don’t we get some coffee and hang out?”
She did that dragon-like growl as she put her own clothes on. “Yes, let’s get coffee and hang out and talk.”
I went down the hall to the kitchen, but she dodged in front of me so I couldn’t open the cabinet for the coffee. “Talk to me. I want to know about Alison.”
I hung my head, staring at my bare feet, at Charlie’s toenails painted fire-engine red. I didn’t want to talk about my past. I was okay with leaving that particular history alone. Couldn’t we enjoy the present, have some coffee and another go-round on the couch? Besides, that story was humiliating—I didn’t want to tell it to a tough, confident Charlie. I wasn’t going to be the hurt puppy while she got to be the pit bull.
“You haven’t told me about any of your past relationships,” I said.
“Because I’ve never had any worth mentioning. You want to hear about Bobby Miller in first grade who told me he didn’t like me anymore because I could run faster than him? Or Ryan Lipton, I think I told you about him. He took me out on a pity date after a dare at the end of senior year because everyone, everyone knew I hadn’t been kissed. There was Eli, the Star Trek guy who didn’t care that I played football or had big shoulders. We had some fumbling nights in the dark during college. Or maybe you want to hear about Ira? He broke up with me because I didn’t know how to juggle my twelve-hour days at Tech with a guy who actually wanted to take me to nice restaurants. He said he wished I’d find another job. One that wasn’t so strenuous for me. Because I couldn’t handle it.”
I stared at her. Charlie’s poise shone like a sunbeam on the field. I never questioned her self-confidence. She’d face down giants. She was David against Goliath. But hearing this now, with the tiny crack in her voice, I realized that she hurt too.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked.
“Anything!” She slapped her hand down on the countertop. “It’s like pulling teeth with you.”
Looking up to the ceiling, I took a deep breath before lowering my gaze to the yellow-and-white-checkered curtains that still hung on the windows. Alison had picked them out.
“Ali and I met in college in a public speaking class.”
Charlie snorted. “You took a public speaking class?”
“You want the story or not? Christ.” I glowered at her.
She rolled her eyes at me, but stayed quiet.
“The class was a required credit. We got paired up for a presentation.” The memory of the day I’d met the little brunette at the library was seared into my brain. She’d looked up at me and smiled, saying, “I can tell you’re the strong silent type. I like that kind.” But I glossed over that part with Charlie.
“She was with me when I busted my knee. She wanted to be a writer and squirreled away notes in a journal she kept in her purse all the time. I used to tell her she didn’t need to write any secrets down because she always said the first thing that came to her mind.”
Charlie made a noise but didn’t say anything.
“She was a little bit wild, she liked parties and going out. She pushed me out of my comfort zone. Looking back, she probably had to push me a lot.”
Charlie tilted her head. “You, stubborn? I can’t believe it.”
I ignored the comment. “I asked her to marry me just after graduation. I had my job lined up, but she didn’t know what she was going to do. I bought this house, and she made it our home.”
“That’s why you have a china cabinet and cute little decorations everywhere?”
Here she was, asking me to cut myself open, while she made jokes and comments. “You wanted the goddamn story, and you keep interrupting me.”
She stopped me from walking away. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Connor.”
I set my attention on the corner of the ceiling and took a deep breath. I told myself it was like a Band-Aid. “She was acting all funny leading up the wedding. I assumed it was nerves. But after the rehearsal dinner, she left pretty quickly. I figured it was the whole groom-isn’t-supposed-to-see-the-bride thing. But it was really her going home to clean out all her stuff. She left a note that said I was holding her back. She needed to explore the world. And that was it, I never saw her again.”
I expected Charlie to have some kind of reaction, after all the begging to tell her about Alison. But she only gazed at me with a blank face.
“That’s the end.”
“Oh,” she said.
“ ‘Oh’? That’s all you have to say? After all of that?” I moved my arm in a circle encompassing every single time she’d asked me about Alison. “All you say is ‘oh’?”
“That sucks.”
“You know what? Forget it.” I waved my hands and stepped around her, heading back to the hall.
She grabbed me by the arm and swung me around to face her. “Don’t act like that.”
“Well, you bugged the shit out of me about it, and now you’re acting like it’s nothing.”
“It isn’t nothing. Obviously you were really hurt, are still really hurt. How many years later? You were kids, twenty-two, twenty-three years old?”
“So what? You’re going to tell me to get over it. I am over it.”
She motioned around the house with her hand. “Yeah, real over it. You live in a fucking shrine to her.” When I shook my head, she pointed at a side table in the living room. “There are purple and pink flowers painted on that lamp. You’re going to tell me you bought that?”
I stomped away from her. I didn’t need her telling me about my house. I lived in it. Every day. “I don’t need you to point out to me how pathetic I am.”
She followed me into the bedroom. “I never said pathetic, but the way you’re acting right now is childish.”
I sat on the bed, my elbows on my knees as I cracked my knuckles.
“Alison was an important part of your life. Thank you for telling me. But don’t make me be the bad guy because you’re still ashamed about it.”
“I do—”
“Don’t argue with me, McGuire. You’ve got the emotional maturity of moss. It’s pretty easy to see you’ve never quite gotten over what happened, no matter how hard you ignore it.”
In the past couple of weeks, I’d forgotten how much I could hate her, and right now I remembered.
She waited for me to say something, but I wouldn’t.
“Great! Sit there like a statue. Perfect.” She spun in a
circle. I could feel her anger toward me like arrows that clanged against a metal shield. “You’re infuriating, you know that? Everybody has a past. I don’t know why you try to hide yours all the time. You’re humiliated. I get it. I’ve been humiliated too. But you’re not the only one in the entire world who’s ever had their heart broken.”
I kept my eyes on the dresser in front of me as she picked up her things and put her shoes on. She finally stood right in front of me, her voice low as she asked, “What are you afraid of?”
You, I wanted to say, but didn’t. She walked out of the bedroom and through the house. The click of the front door shutting was her good-bye.
Just when I thought I was doing enough, I wasn’t. She’d met my family, knew my friends, had learned more about me than anyone else ever had, but still she wanted more. She wanted me to, what, be some kind of open book? I’d told her all of it. There was nothing else. What you saw was what you got with me, yet she acted as if I’d lived a second life and had all these secrets.
The only secret I’d kept was that I felt inadequate. I was a poor substitute for my father after he died. I wasn’t enough to keep Alison. And I evidently didn’t have the qualifications to be head coach. After all this time of coming in second place, she’d cut right to the chase and wanted to know what I was afraid of?
I mean, wasn’t it obvious?
I’d already lost out to her once for a job. I wasn’t going to lose out to her again for my heart.
I lay in bed for a while staring at my ceiling until it was time for me to get ready for film. I barely made it on time, but that was okay. I sat in the back and left as soon as it was over. She caught my eye once or twice when she wanted me to chime in with notes, but that was it.
When I got home, an alert came on my phone that Piper’s brewery opening was tonight at six. I didn’t feel like going and pulled up Blake’s number, figuring he’d be the one to tell since she was probably busy.
“Hey, man,” he said, after one ring.
“Hey. I’m not gonna be able to make it tonight.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
“No.”
“Why?” Noise on his end faded as if he’d gone into a quieter room.
“Not feeling up to it.”
“You’re sick?” When I didn’t answer, he scoffed, “You’re not sick. Don’t bail, man. This is really important to Piper and to me.”
“I know, I just . . .”
“What?” He waited a few moments before saying, “Don’t make me send Bear over there.”
Bear was the most emotional of the three of us. He read psychology books and shit, he listened to podcasts about communication and feelings. He hadn’t gone to college because of hockey, but he read a lot and didn’t think twice about dropping knowledge on any topic. I was sure that if he came over, he’d bring some feelings stick or something and annoy me until I spilled my guts.
“It’s Charlie.”
“Charlie? You got a thing going with Charlie?”
I pushed my fingers into my eyes. “A little thing, yeah.”
“You hesitated.”
I didn’t know if that was a statement about my sentence or my well-being.
“That means you’re not sure.”
Maybe it was both.
“Jump into the deep end for once,” he said. “It’s not so bad.”
I liked to stay away from the pool entirely, and Blake knew that. He also knew what to say to make the connections in my brain.
“You and Charlie are a lot alike. I think that’s why you butt heads so much.”
I didn’t disagree.
“Remember what you told me when Piper and I had our big fight? The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy. Alison was indifferent to you. No one who really cares about someone leaves a note and vanishes with all their stuff. But someone who cares will fight for you, fight against you, fight with you.”
“Yeah,” I finally said.
“He speaks! So, you’re coming tonight, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
“Good.”
“Hey,” I said before hanging up. “Don’t tell Piper about this.”
“No, I won’t. Unless she sexes it out of me.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
He laughed on the other end. “I can’t help that I’m a sex god, and she’s wild for me.”
“Okay. Good-bye.”
I hung up and tossed my phone on the couch.
Charlie was wrong in one assessment of me: I was over Alison. After a while, I’d gotten tired of chasing a ghost. True, I hadn’t changed my house at all, but it wasn’t like I had any idea what to do to change it. By the time I forgave Alison, I didn’t care much about the lemon wallpaper in the kitchen or the fancy pillows on the couch. They were just there, and I didn’t want to bother with it.
I’d assumed eventually it would change, maybe be changed by another woman, but I spent so much time keeping myself locked up tight I didn’t allow anyone to come to my home. Charlie was the first woman in my bed since Alison. And I wanted to keep her there.
• • •
BY THE time I got to Out of the Bottle, it was almost seven. The whole front of the building was glass, and I could see the nice-size crowd from the parking lot. Inside, huge tanks lined the right side, with a bar on the left, where I spotted Bear and Sonja serving pints. In the middle were picnic tables with different board games on each one. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and I could just make out Piper’s red hair bouncing among the bodies. I found a place at the bar in front of Bear, and he greeted me with a cheesy grin.
“So, Charlie, huh?”
I groaned. “Son of a bitch.”
Bear got me the beer I liked, the Gray-Haired Lady. Usually it came in a bottle with a dark label that had the name scrawled across in gray with just the very top of a head with curly gray hair all over it like it blew in the wind. But here all the beers were served in pint glasses that had the Out of the Bottle logo printed on them.
“I told him not to tell anyone.”
“Correction,” Blake said, coming up next to me. “You told me not to tell Piper.”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d tell everybody else.”
“I didn’t tell everybody else,” he defended himself with three fingers up in a Boy Scout salute. “Only Bear.”
“That is basically telling everyone else.”
Bear shrugged.
“And stop trying to lawyer your way out of this.”
“Whatever. I have more important things on my mind. Stay right here—I’m going to get Piper, and then I’m asking her.”
Asking her, meaning the question.
“Here?” I said.
“Yeah, what better place? I’ve got it all worked out with Sonja. Just don’t go anywhere.”
He backed away from us, practically kipping, just as I found Charlie across from me at the other end of the bar. She wore a pretty blue top and tight-as-hell jeans. No fire-engine red lipstick though.
I stared at her, hoping she’d get the message and look over at me, but she didn’t. Not even when Blake motioned us over to the middle of the bar. Sonja made sure everyone had a glass. Charlie’s was only half-full, but she held it up, pretending she’d drink it.
She wouldn’t.
“I just wanted to say a quick little something,” Blake said.
I huffed. “Quick?”
“Yes, quick.” He elbowed me. “But I wouldn’t be making jokes about length of time, if I were you.”
“Yeah, just length,” Bear added, and I quietly told him to go to hell.
Blake stood between us like a teacher between students. “First of all, I wanted to thank you all for being here to support Piper, but also for being great friends. You’re all more than friends, you’re family.”
He held his glass aloft, and we did the same. I once again found Charlie, and as she brought her glass to her lips, her eyes met mine, unreadable. I watched her, ign
oring the commotion of Piper finding an engagement ring in her pint. Her laughing and crying over Blake on his knee was distant from Charlie’s small but sad smile. For such a happy moment for our friends, neither one of us seemed that way.
I was jealous of Blake and Piper. For sure. I wanted to have what they had. At one time, I’d had it in my fingertips, but it had fallen through my grasp. And I knew Charlie wanted the same thing. She’d hinted at it before.
But before I could talk to her, apologize about today, she hugged Piper, talking animatedly. I suspected she purposely stayed away from me for the next hour. Always putting distance or people in my way until finally she was gone. Without a word to me.
She’d told Sonja she was going home to sleep. She had a big week coming up with round one of playoffs.
I had a big week too.
The whole team did.
And I couldn’t argue with that. I couldn’t tell her to pay attention to me. To not focus on the team. So I let her go.
CHAPTER
25
Charlie
Peach cobbler was my favorite. Apple came in a close second.
There weren’t many things Gram and I had in common, but her baking was one of them. I had always loved being with her in the kitchen. It was just about the only place we got along. She let loose in the kitchen, sang songs, danced. She never followed a recipe but knew by intuition how much butter to use.
At times when my stress was maxing out, I took a trip to the grocery store for fresh fruit. At the beginning of November, I wasn’t going to find any peaches, and settled on a couple of Granny Smiths for a pie. Normally on Thursday nights I’d stay late in my office preparing for the game, but I couldn’t tonight. I needed to get out and relax.
I needed to feel close to somebody. And baking always made me remember Gram.
I’d invited Sonja to join me, but she had plans to go to yoga with Bear. I’d almost decided to tag along to witness Bear hitting a triangle pose, but chose the smell of a freshly baked pie instead. Even though my love life had taken a turn for the worse, I was glad Sonja had whatever she had with Bear. Romantic or not, they had a special connection.
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