by K. C. Crowne
“What?” I turned to look at my brother, who I forgot was even there for a moment.
“The way you look at her. It’s written all over your face. You’re not over her, man. Not even after all these damn years.”
I scowled at him, but I couldn’t deny it either. To tell him otherwise would be a lie, and my brother could tell when I was lying just as easily as I could tell when Charlotte was.
“You need to be careful, Eli. She’s just getting over her ex, she could easily fall into bed with you as a rebound and it mean nothing -- but we both know, if that happens, it will mean something for you.”
I said something that surprised us both. “You’re right. And I’m being careful, Graham, I am. But I can’t turn her away, and right now, I need to go check on her.”
I hurried up the stairs, not looking back at Graham as I went up to Charlotte’s room. I found the door closed, and I knocked - remembering the mishap from the other day and feeling bad about it still.
“Yes?” she responded.
“Are you decent?” I asked.
“Yes.” Was that a chuckle? “Come on in.”
I opened the door, and I found her sitting on the bed, phone in hand. She wiped at her cheeks before turning to me, her eyes red. She tried to put on a smile, but I knew.
I knew she’d been crying.
“What’s wrong?” Who do I need to kill?
“It’s Peter. He’s been messaging me for the last couple of days. I blocked his number initially, but he bought a new phone and is now using it.”
“Can I see?”
She handed over the phone, and my blood pressure rose the minute I read the first text.
You’re nothing without me, Charlotte.
I helped make you. You wouldn’t be anywhere without being attached to me.
You need me.
“What a self-righteous prick.”
“Tell me about it,” she muttered.
“He’s full of shit, you do know that, right?” I hadn’t kept up too much with her professional life, but at times, it was hard to ignore. She had really made a name for her in the landscape architecture world. She wasn’t just known locally, she worked all over the country, and had done some impressive projects.
“I do. I mean, some of his contacts did help.”
“But your work is what got you jobs. Don’t let this egotistical asshole take credit for what you’ve done,” I said, tossing the phone on the bed beside her. “And my suggestion? Get a new number. Ditch this one entirely.”
“I can’t. This number is my professional one. I’ve sent out proposals all over the country, giving them this number as a way to contact me.”
“Can’t you just contact them all and tell them your number has changed?”
She rubbed her temples and sighed, closing her eyes. “It would be a pain in the ass. And some of these cities accepted hundreds of proposals, so to make sure they link my number back up with my proposal and not mess things up… I mean, have you ever worked with the city on anything? It’s often a mess, especially in the city planning departments where everything is understaffed and underpaid.”
“Do you intend to keep working while you’re here?”
“I’m lucky to be between jobs right now, but these proposals are for projects months from now, and I need to keep working toward them if I want to keep up my reputation in the industry.”
“Then I would suggest simply ignoring him, and not reading his bullshit,” I said.
“Yeah, I know you’re right. He knows my weak spots, and right now, he’s exploiting them. He knows how important my work and my gardens are to me. Like the one back home that I’ll probably never get to see again.”
My heart broke for her. Even after everything we’d been through, the pain she had caused me, I didn’t want her to go through this. I wanted nothing more than to make that pain go away.
Graham was right to be worried about me. I still loved her, as stupid as that sounded. I would have done anything to make her smile.
“I know it’s not the same thing, but there will be other gardens and other projects,” I said to her. “You’ll build more, wherever you end up, I have no doubt.”
“I know. It’s just a garden, but--”
“It’s not just a garden to you. Listen, I may not understand everything, but I know what it means to you, and you have every right to grieve, Charlotte. You don’t need to downplay it to me. I don’t think you’re silly to be sad over something you worked hard at.”
She turned her head up to me, and she really looked at me. Her eyes were bright, and the tears had long since dried up. She was even smiling, just a teeny bit.
“Thank you, Eli. I forgot how easy you are to talk to.”
“I try. Even if I don’t get it, I at least try to be empathetic.”
“And you are, naturally so,” she said softly.
My heart was now lodged in my throat, and the fist around it seemed to be clenching it even tighter. I wasn’t sure what to say. Leave it to Charlotte to keep rendering me speechless.
But all I could think about was how much I wanted to kiss her.
Her sweet lips were there, beckoning me. At least in my imagination, they were. She stared up at me through her thick lashes, and I had to ball up my fists to not reach out and stroke her face.
“Am I interrupting something?” a voice said from the doorway. I cursed myself for not closing the door behind me. I was used to having the place mostly to myself.
“Oh no, it’s fine, Graham,” Charlotte said, looking away from me. Her cheeks were pinker than normal. Was she having the same thought? Even if she was, it would have been in a moment of weakness.
Graham stepped into the room, and his eyes bored into mine. He didn’t even seem to acknowledge Charlotte, his gaze fixed on me.
“We were just talking about her ex. He’s sending her messages, even though she keeps blocking the number.”
“Maybe she should get another number,” Graham said dryly. He was talking about Charlotte as if she weren’t in the room.
“I can’t, not easily, for work reasons.”
“Hmm,” Graham said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. He didn’t say much else about that. Normally, my brother would be all for coming up with suggestions and solutions, but right then, his focus was on me. “Well, I’m going to head out. Mind walking me down, Eli? I wanted to continue our conversation from earlier.”
“Sure,” I said. But before I left, I turned to Charlotte. “Let me know if the messages turn threatening or anything. Or if you have any reason to suspect he would try to come find you or hurt you.”
“Of course. Thanks, Eli.”
I shut the door behind us and walked with Graham down the steps. As soon as we were out of hearing range, he said to me, “Be careful, Eli.”
I didn’t even have to ask him what he meant by that. It wasn’t about the potential ex coming in and hurting us - we both knew I could handle my own if it came to that. But with matters of the heart? Well, I was a little more uncertain as well.
We stopped at the front door and I held it open for him.
“I will, Graham. Trust me.”
Problem was, I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust myself.
Chapter 5
Charlotte
Dammit, Charlotte. You really almost kissed him.
The shame inside of me was strong. After all, I was supposed to be getting married to another man this weekend, and here I was, days after calling off the wedding, thinking about running back into the arms of my ex. It wasn’t right. Even though things between Peter and me had been terrible for a long time, it was still too soon to rush into anything else.
It felt like a rebound, which would be dangerous right now. Not just for me, but also Eli. He deserved better than that. I’d already broken his heart once in this lifetime.
But all I could think about was his lips, which I remembered to be softer than they should be for being attached to a man. And thos
e eyes, deep brown and filled with so much emotion. He was never one to hide his feelings from his face, even when he tried, and I knew he had wanted to kiss me too.
Hell, he wanted to do even more than kiss me, and I couldn’t deny that the feeling was mutual.
But it was wrong.
I closed my eyes and tried to get the image of him out of my brain. His scent still lingered in the room - musky and clean. I felt like I would have to scrub my brain and this room of all images of him.
I had to get out of there.
I left the room and realized I had nowhere else to go. I could hear Eli moving around downstairs, and these other rooms, were they empty bedrooms? The doors were all closed except for one. I walked down the hallway to that room, and instead of a bedroom, I found what looked to be a study.
A desk was pushed against the far well with a computer and a lot of other high-tech gear that I’d never seen before. That didn’t really interest me too much. The room was filled with bookshelves, however, and that caught my attention. It had been a long time since I’d lost myself in a good book, maybe I’d find one to occupy my mind while I waited for… well, whatever it was I was waiting for.
I ran my finger along the spines of the books on the shelf closest to me.
Nonfiction, of course. Some books on fishing. A couple on woodworking. And a ton of books about security equipment, technology, and programming. A lot of techy stuff that didn’t interest me in the slightest.
I continued looking over the shelves when my eyes fell on some photo albums on the bottom of one in the far corner. I knew I was supposed to be forgetting about Eli, but a smile pulled at the corners of my mouth.
I was a sucker for baby pictures.
I grabbed the pile of them and walked over to the desk. I sat in the office chair and began flipping through the first one. It was clearly Eli’s old baby book, put together by Mrs. Harvey herself. I’d actually seen many of the photos already, as Mrs. Harvey kept larger versions in frames around her house. But some were new to me. In addition to the traditional baby photos, which were oh so adorable, were tufts of his hair after his first haircut. It was so sentimental, and I had to admit, I was a sucker for things like this. I used to collect everything, all the sentimental trinkets and photos over the years. If I had children, I would love to keep a memory book like this for them someday.
I flipped through the rest of the books - one for each of the sons and even a wedding album for Mr. and Mrs. Harvey. I knew the marriage didn’t last and all but seeing a younger Mrs. Harvey all decked out and in love filled me with a warmth.
After I finished looking through the albums, I went to put them back on the shelf, and noticed a turquoise binding sticking out from another row of books. My heart raced. It couldn’t be, could it?
I slipped the book out, and I stared in shock.
My old scrapbook, the one I had saved all the trinkets and photos from my time with Eli. When I left our apartment in San Diego, I had left the book behind, along with most everything we owned. I didn’t want the reminders. Years later, I regretted leaving it, assuming it got tossed or lost over the years, but there it was, in my hands.
I was undecided about whether I should open it or not.
The memories that the book held… so many of them were memories I had tried to forget over the years. That time was a chaotic mess of both the best days of my life and the worst. Did I really want to relive it?
I didn’t even make it back to the desk, I just sat down right there on the floor while holding the book in my hands, staring at cover. I had been learning calligraphy at the time, even though I wasn’t very good, and had used some glittery art pens to write our names inside of a heart. Eli and Charlotte. Together Forever was below our names.
My hands trembled, but I proceeded to open up the scrapbook. The first picture was of our first date - the junior prom. Eli was dressed in a tuxedo, one of the only times he’d ever worn a suit. He looked so dashing and handsome - clean-shaven with his hair shaggier than it was now. His face was so youthful, missing a lot of the strong lines and curves that he had today. Then again, I looked a lot different too. My face had less lines, my hair was shorter. I had worn a turquoise dress, almost the same color of the book in my hand, reminding me how I went through a phase where I was obsessed with the color. Eli even wore a matching bow tie - brightly colored and obnoxious even for the times, but he’d been okay with it.
We were just kids.
We were standing outside of his family home in Tennessee, in front of the giant tree they decorated every Christmas. Eli and I had spent many nights sitting underneath the tree, staring at the stars and talking about our plans for the future. That tree was where he said he loved me for the first time, and our plans for college and future careers turned to planning our lives together, rather than separately.
My heart ached, and I told myself to just put the book back. But I couldn’t. I needed to relive these memories for some reason.
I flipped to the next page, having to pull at it since they wanted to stick together after so long sitting close.
The next pages held movie tickets, concert tickets, a flyer from a Valentine’s day event we’d gone to together…. Just little mementos. Some of them I remembered in vivid detail - like when we went to the state fair and saw some unknown country artist perform because what else are we going to do on a Saturday night in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee?
The next page had some Senior Year splashed upon it, along with photos from our senior prom - I had moved out of my turquoise phase by then, apparently, and went with a sleek, black dress that hugged my curves. Eli looked classy in an all-black suit. Already, we had grown up a bit, and only a year had passed since the first photo, but we were still very much kids.
The next pages were filled with senior year mementos. The newspaper article interviewing him about a football win, some photos of us around the halls of our school. And then, of course, the announcement that we were crowned “Cutest Couple” of Red River High that year, because of course we were.
Graduation followed, and of course we had photos of us together, along with both of our families. For the longest time, it was like our lives were intertwined. Wherever he went, so did I. Which was why I put off all my plans to attend college to follow him to San Diego after graduation - to a city where I didn’t know a soul except for him. I had trusted in our love for one another and thought that would be enough to sustain me, even though I had had plans and goals for myself as well. But the thought of going to Clemson while he was on the other side of the country was too much for my young heart at the time, so I put it on hold and decided to look into programs in California once we got settled.
Even though we were out of high school, we were still very young and immature. And yet, I had made the very adult decision to leave everything I knew to follow him across the country.
I continued flipping through the scrapbook, more carefully this time. At first, San Diego was amazing. The beaches were beautiful, and there was so much to do. So many photos of us at restaurants, at Sea World, at the San Diego Zoo…. happy times that had made it all seem worth it. Even though I had been smiling in the photos, I knew that as the days went by, I was feeling more and more uncertain about living there. It wasn’t home to me. It had felt like a vacation at first, but then the realization hit that it was to be my home and I just couldn’t fathom it.
And then there was the photo with Eli right before he shipped off. He would be gone for over a year, and you could see the tears in my eyes as we said our goodbyes. That was the last time I had seen him until recently.
I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump that had formed in my throat as I continued turning the pages. Finally, before getting to the end of the book, I landed on the last page I had decorated. I stared at it - the glittery border I’d added to it. The blue and pink details. Thankfully I never got much further than that in the decorating. It just looked like an empty page to most people, but I felt that
emptiness deep within my soul.
Without even realizing it, I rested a hand on my belly and thought about the life that had once grown inside of me.
Eli’s baby.
I clenched my eyes shut as I closed the book, letting it slide to the floor beside me. I pushed back the tears, but my chest was already heaving from sobs. It had been years since I cried about the lost child and the decision I had made.
“You were still a child yourself, Charlotte,” my therapist had told me that over and over again, and seeing the photos, I knew she was right.
I could have been a mother. Had I not been so stupid and selfish, Eli and I would have had a family like his brothers did today. I never would have left him and gotten together with Peter.
So many possibilities, and I had screwed everything up.
I was so distracted by my thoughts that I hadn’t heard the footsteps. My eyes were still closed, blocking out the tears.
“Charlotte?” Eli’s voice took me by surprise.
“Yes?” I said, my eyes popping open. I started to climb up off the floor, acting like I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t be doing.
“Sorry, I was just checking up on you,” he said.
His eyes fell to the floor, right beside my feet, and I saw his neutral face turn to a frown. “Wow, you found that, huh?”
“I did, I was looking for something to read and I came across it.” My voice cracked.
Eli walked over to the scrapbook and knelt to the ground, picking it up and turning it over in his hands. He then sat down in the middle of the room and began flipping through it.
“I haven’t seen this thing in years. I was surprised you left it behind when you--” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. We both know what I did.
“Yeah, well, I regretted leaving it later, but in the moment, I felt like it was best to not take any reminders with me, you know?”
“I see,” he said. His voice was so soft, it was barely audible. “Wow look at us. Just a couple of kids.”
“That’s what I thought too. We were just babies back then, and we had no idea what we were doing.”