With her settled against my chest, I asked, “Smell better?”
Her hand skimmed my stomach. It wasn’t quite as toned as when we hooked up in February, but still pretty tight.
“Yes. I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”
“Shhh.”
Her hand found mine and our fingers entwined. “It is. My mom, I don’t even know. She just had this idea and it was all wrong, and I hurt you.”
We lay there silently for a beat or two before she asked, “Why are you here? You didn’t tell me.”
“I missed you and I decided to come. I kept thinking we hadn’t said I love you, and I wanted to. In person.”
A tear trickled down my chest, and then another. Softly, she said, “I wish it didn’t play out the way it did.”
“You know what? Our story isn’t straight and boring, and this just adds a little more flavor.”
She squeezed my wrist. “Thanks, but this is more than enough flavor. Bland may be good right about now.”
“Nah, like the ice cream you love so much, that’s us. Rich, creamy, and it takes a lot of licks to get to the cone. Our cone is strong, babe. A big waffle cone.”
“I think you’re still drunk.”
“Maybe.”
“Go to sleep,” she whispered, tracing figure-eights on my hand.
“’Kay,” was the last thing I remember saying.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Charli
I lay there a long time, awake, somewhat shaken about what path this all could have taken if I didn’t find Layton. My mom used to make me laugh with her advice and antics, but she’d gone too far this time.
Why?
And why was Layton so forgiving?
Everything was why, why, why.
My nervous bladder refused to let me rest, and I pried out from underneath him and padded to the bathroom. When I came back out, something by the TV caught my eye. There, halfway underneath the remote and casting a hypnotic prism around the room, sat an engagement ring. I picked it up with shaking fingers and turned it in my hand, hazily remembering him snagging his pants and rummaging through the pockets after he set me in bed.
I guessed he came to say more than I love you.
Well, my mom ruined that.
No, I did.
It was time I accepted responsibility for my actions. I went along with Mom’s plan, didn’t push back. And I’d allowed Janie to bully me when my mom wasn’t. I had to accept it all.
“Hey,” came from the bed.
Quickly, I set the ring down and turned. I’d been caught.
“I bought that for you.”
I stared at the floor, the floral pattern on the rug making faces at me. If I looked hard enough, I could see it sticking its tongue out at me.
Layton stood and walked toward me, pulling me against his chest when he got close. “I’m going to give you a ring, Charli. Just not this one, not today.”
“I ruined all this too,” I whined, nuzzling my face in his neck.
“You didn’t ruin anything. It just wasn’t the right time.”
His hand ran the length of my back. I was naked, and the warmth of his hand mixed with the cool air caused little goose bumps to raise up all over my skin.
He spoke softly, his breath warming my scalp through my hair. “I really wanted to tell you I didn’t want to live apart anymore. I hate the distance between us, and I was thinking I’d move here.”
Startled, I glanced up. “What? No, you need to live in LA.”
“But you’re here.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to be.”
“Listen, let’s go back to bed and discuss this in the morning when we’ve both had a full night’s sleep.”
“Okay,” I said.
Before I could overthink it, I rejoined him in bed, where he took his time allowing me to fall asleep.
* * *
“Mom!” I screamed loud enough to wake the whole building. “What the hell are you still doing here?”
She sat up on the couch, blinking owlishly. “You never came back last night, and your phone was off. I was worried.”
“Be quiet. No, you weren’t, you’re just…” I waved a hand in the air, exhausted. All the fight had been fucked out of me. “God, I don’t even know what. Can you please leave?”
“Where were you?”
“I went to find Layton, who showed up here when I was walking out with Garrett.”
“He called me. Garrett, I mean. Not your freeloader,” she said, tossing her tangled brown hair over her shoulder.
“You need to go, Mom. Seriously.”
“I only want what’s best for you. You don’t want to be me, fancy-free. Your dad wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“Please go,” I croaked, my throat hoarse and dry. I had no more emotion left in my body. I was dehydrated from feelings.
“Please,” she said.
“No.” I flashed her the palm of my hand. “Just go.”
“Can we talk soon?” She stood, wearing jeans and a rumpled long-sleeved tee, and picked up her duffel at the foot of the couch.
“Maybe soon,” was all I could answer.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Layton
“Oh God, holy shit,” Charli screamed.
“You sound like you did in bed last night,” I said with a smirk.
It felt damn good to be an arrogant hunk for a moment. No way I would let her affection go to my head. She was the kind of girl you spent a lifetime loving and adoring.
I’d come straight to Charli’s apartment when I woke up and found her missing.
“Your door was open so I came in, but I’m going to lock it now. This is New York, you know.”
Charli scowled at me from her perch on the couch. “My mom slithered out after I begged her to go, and I didn’t have the energy to get up.”
I kneeled at her feet. “Charleston, about the ring. It was my plan to ask you when I flew here on a whim—”
“Shhh.” She ran her hand around my ear, curving my hair behind it. “It’s not the time right now. We’re figuring things out.”
“It’s going to happen. You feel that? It’s our destiny. Do you want that? Can you love me any way I am? Big or lean?”
She nodded and a single tear dropped onto her cheek. I kissed it away, taking a long inhale of the woman in front of me.
“Lay, I love you and your big heart. That’s the only way I see you. The only way I want to see you. This new outside is only a bonus, but the inside is the prize.”
I leaned in, wedging myself between her thighs, and tried to kiss her.
“But marriage is so big,” she said, “and this whole thing I just went through with my mom…God help me, but it seems like her whole marriage to my dad was wrong. So we need to put the ring away. I need to understand why she thinks she made such an epic mistake.”
“For now,” I mumbled into her mouth and kissed her. “And you may never understand. That’s parents. We don’t always know why or how or when. Like mine. They were married a long time before they had me. Almost as if one day, they decided, ‘Holy shit, we want to be parents.’ Then they were too old to even enjoy me and who I became as an adult.”
“A wonderful man,” she said and her stomach growled, ending our moment.
“Come on. Let’s get food, and then we can go see where I can live in this massive city.”
“I’m leaving here,” Charli declared. “Heading west.”
We went out for breakfast and I still refused to believe she was really moving…until she wouldn’t give up. Girl was stubborn, I’d give her that. She maintained she’d wasted too many years on her career track to be unhappy, and now she was “beyond happy.” Her words, not mine.
And she insisted she wanted to be happier where the sun shone and where she could wear “flip-flops instead of stilettos.” More of her words.
My girl was a very literal person.
* * *
A week later, I received an e
-mail from Charli’s moving company. Her stuff was arriving in ten days, and she’d be here in eleven. She kept insisting she was going to find her own place, that staying with me was only temporary.
I disagreed, but I didn’t tell her that.
Charli was struggling with what happened with her mom, so I didn’t push. I knew she wasn’t leaving once she moved in with me, though.
Not to mention I had a few tricks up my sleeve. I laughed to myself as I let Harriette outside for a pee break. Oh yeah, I had a few tricks.
I nodded to the construction crew renovating the run-down garage behind my house. I never used the dilapidated thing, but soon it would be a writing studio for Charli. I was putting in new windows, hardwood floors, a kitchenette and bathroom, and painting the whole interior lilac. And she didn’t know.
That was only the first part of the plan.
* * *
Eleven days later, I went to the airport and grabbed my girl. Charli hurried down the escalator in her flip-flops and jumped into my arms at the bottom.
“Did you ship half of Manhattan to California?”
She laughed into my ear and slid down my body, leaving my chubby on display. “No, only a third. Now are you ready?”
“Oh, I am.” I grazed her wrist with my length.
“Come on, let’s go.”
She grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the airport and back to bed. Before I could show her the garage. Long before Harriette could steal her affections from me (yes, my dog loved her more than me.) Way before I pulled out the other tactics.
That night, we ate sushi on my back patio. Yep, sushi. I’d learned to survive on it at least one night a week. Or maybe I was filled up on Charli? I didn’t need a large pie when I had her waiting in my bed for me.
Fuck it, not just my bed but my life. I’d definitely learned moderation since reuniting with the formerly bitchy woman. So had she.
“Do you think it was meant to be? Us, the plane?” She ran her fingers down my forearm while we lay on the lounge chair.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I only work in movies.”
“I know, but I was on this path to nowhere special, and now I’m here with you, living my life.”
“Then it was meant to be.” I wrapped our hands together and kissed her earlobe. She was seated between my legs and leaning back on my chest. I breathed in and she breathed out.
“It was. I know it was. You taught me what was important. Oh God, I sound like a sap. But you did.”
“I know.” I turned her face and kissed her quiet.
* * *
I let one week pass before I started pulling rabbits out of my hat. Not rabbits literally, but close enough.
One afternoon as the sun was setting and I knew Charli would be slowing down the banging on her keyboard, I walked across the small yard to her domain.
“Knock, knock.” I peeked my head inside the door.
“Hey.” She looked up from Lucy v. 2.0. She’d bought herself a new laptop after she signed her book deal.
I took a moment to take in the beauty in front of me. Charli sat at her desk in an old Stones T-shirt of mine. It hung well below the minuscule jean cutoffs she sported. Her bare feet were stretched out in front of her on an exercise ball, and of course, Harriette lay in the corner. The traitorous bitch didn’t even raise her head when I walked in.
I was back to wearing music tees most of the time too. I’d gone a tiny bit soft around the middle, mostly due to Charli’s love for ice cream and newfound freedom. She was living her life, and I was living mine beside her.
“You finishing?”
She nodded, hit a button, and shut her laptop.
“Come on. We have to be somewhere.”
“Really?” She stood and ran her hands down my back, sticking them deep in my back pockets and pulling herself close.
I couldn’t help it—I kissed the fuck out of her.
“Yeah, really.”
“Should I change?”
“Nah, but I’d put sneakers on. I’ll let Harri do her thing while you grab them.”
A few minutes later, we were settled in Charli’s new car with me driving. She’d bought a convertible, of course. Every transplant to Cali made that mistake. At the moment, she loved riding with the top down, no matter what.
We breezed down the canyon, her long hair flying around her face, her expression relaxed and her smile soft. She was at peace. Way more so than when I met her.
I pulled outside a ranch in the valley. A few kids ran around out front.
Charli gave me a curious look. “What are we doing?”
“You’ll see. Come on.”
She hesitated getting out of the car, but then I took her hand and led her to the garage.
“Oh. Hey, Layton,” the owner of the house called.
“Hey, Mrs. Green! This is my girl, Charli.”
“Nice to meet you, Ch—” was all the woman got out before the tiny pup in her arms squirmed free and trotted over the grass.
“Meet your puppy.” I pinched Charli’s side.
“What? You’re nuts. We have Harriette.”
“And now we have this little guy. Don’t worry, he’ll stay little. Maybe twenty pounds.”
She picked up the small tri-colored beagle and nuzzled his cheek. Mrs. Green faded into the background but she didn’t seem to mind. She’d already been paid.
“He’s so cute,” Charli said, beaming as she looked up at me. “I’m going to call him Jay after Janie.”
“For real?”
“Yes. Her personality is like all this guy’s different-colored spots, varied and dark and light. But at the core, she means well.”
“I’m not sure she’s going to like hearing that you named a dog for her.”
“Okay, we’ll name him James but call him Jay.”
“Deal.”
We drove home with the little guy on Charli’s lap, stopping for a crate and some food.
That night, curled up in bed with our legs twined together, we kissed and touched.
She rolled over onto her back and sighed. “I’m not going to be able to rent a place that allows me to keep Jay, and soon there’ll be no way to separate the two dogs.”
“I know,” I said, grinning in the darkness. “That was my plan.”
Epilogue
Charli
The sun rode high in the sky as I dug my feet in the sand and enjoyed the soothing sound of the water lapping the shore mere feet ahead of me. I breathed deeply, then pulled my hair into a messy bun and slipped my sunglasses on my face.
This was heaven. I didn’t know what they were blabbering about when they bitched about the smog here in LA. They’d clearly never tried to get a cab in New York City in a hailstorm, or been shoved into someone’s stinky armpit on a crowded subway. Or witnessed what happened to the city after a snowstorm, dirty brown snow piled high by the snowplows.
This was my bliss, this place. Mostly because it was the home of the man who warmed my feet at night.
After a long sip of my decaf iced coffee, I rested my notepad on my lounge chair’s built-in tabletop and jotted down some notes. I was working on a love story of the unconventional kind. Girl meets boy and she doesn’t really see him; boy meets girl and she’s all he can see.
It was our story, I supposed, but I wanted to share it. For all those girls who thought they needed to be this or do that. Sometimes seeing and just being was the key.
My books had zoomed to the top of the NY Times bestseller list, and secretly I hoped our story would too. If it did, maybe people who had ever judged someone too quickly would realize it was a terrible sin. And vice versa—maybe those who were all-too-quickly judged would find love at the end of their journey.
It was a Tuesday and the beach was quiet. Seagulls drifted over the water, and the Ferris wheel turned in the distance. A few men and women glistening in sweat ran by, reminding me of my long runs when I first moved here. Layton would always push me to go further, which was sort of
funny.
Now I didn’t do much more than walking and yoga. For the moment, at least.
My phone dinged at my side, and I rifled through my tote to grab it. I’d only recently given up my place in New York. For a while I sublet it, but it was time to let it go. I wasn’t going back. Now I was waiting for the return of my security deposit. I had more important uses for the money these days.
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Harriette misses you
Hey—
Where are you writing today? The beach?
Harriette and Jay are lonely and they want to visit you. She’s begging for the beach, so I’m hoping you have a spot on the sand.
—Your guy, L
I smiled to myself. Your guy. He’d started calling himself that after we made it official, as if there were any competition.
Nope.
Never.
He was my guy since I sat in 2C; I just didn’t know it at the time.
I texted him back, not bothering with e-mail, and told him where I was. Even though I was sure he had his suspicions. He’d been on a run when I left home.
The salty air tickled my nose as I went back to my writing. I took a deep breath of it and continued to jot notes, make character sketches, and fill plot holes.
An hour later, Harri poked her nose in my face, licking my chin and nearly bowling me over.
“Hey, girl.” I scratched the top of her head and she jutted her chin toward the sky to give me better access, heat radiating off her fur. “Did you get here by yourself?” I moved my scratchy fingers under her jaw and she plopped down at my feet.
A shadow fell over me and I looked up, and there was my guy holding a leash, Jay securely fastened to it. Layton wore a white T-shirt with the Stones logo across his chest, now damp, and loose-fitting Nike shorts. His physique was somewhere between when I met him for the first time and when we came together. He let go more frequently these days, munching fries or cookies, especially considering my current circumstances.
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