She levelled me with a stare hot enough to warm the arctic, “Don’t you even dare. There’s more to this than my talking to him, and until you tell me what is it that happened between you two, you’ll continue to find yourself in these situations where he pushes your Charlie button and you lose it like a freaking madman-”
“I have a Charlie button?” I interrupted her tirade, amused.
She leaned her back against the side of the car, looking up at me with that gaze of hers, “That’s besides the point, and I won’t let you use it to distract me from asking you about your feud with your teammates.”
“Even if I take you out for ice cream?” I asked.
She smirked with self-satisfaction, “That would be more for your benefit than mine, so no. Let’s go somewhere else.”
She nodded towards the door of my Chevy, and I took her cue and walked over to the other side, opening the door for her to get in. In that moment, it didn’t occur to me that I hadn’t asked where we were going, because whenever I was with her, all I wanted was to grab her hand and escape from the world around me.
“Done for the day?” I turned to face her in the car. I still had one lecture to attend, but I could easily come up with an excuse about practice. After what had just happened, it didn’t feel right to disrupt her schedule, no matter how much I wanted to spend the day with her. It surprised me, and scared me to hell.
“Kind of. Right now, we’re going to the hospital,” she said, matter of factly.
My hand froze on the ignition. I wasn’t ready to go down that road with her.
She noticed my uneasiness and laughed, that throaty laugh I wished I could hear more of, but I rarely seemed to elicit it. “For such a troublemaker, you sure have a phobia for getting your wounds treated. Well, I’m not giving you much of a choice.”
I hoped my relief wasn’t palpable, and that I still had more close calls before she opened the can of worms that was my life and ran for the hills. “Look at you, caring and stuff,” I teased her.
“Oh no, normally I couldn’t care less. However, you and I have a paper to work on together, and I won’t get a B on your account,” she piped.
I laughed, hoping she was teasing me in return. I almost felt pathetic at the way I wanted her to care. “It’s just a harmless flesh wound, doctor. No need to go to the E.R.”
“A flesh wound that could be infected,” she retorted.
“It won’t. But you can spend the next couple days by my side, you know, to make sure that doesn’t happen.” I said, fighting to hide my satisfaction at cornering her.
She smiled warmly at me, then said, “If you don’t care about yourself, who am I to care?”
She kept her eyes on her manicured fingers, avoiding my questioning gaze. The silence stretched, and she began humming. Suddenly, I pulled over by the roadside earning myself a shocked stare before she turned to look ahead. I turned her head to face me, catching the surprise in her eyes. I wrapped my hand around her nape, and the silence in the car suddenly made it hard to breathe. She looked up at me, seemingly nervous, and I had to admit, the thought of making a girl like Charlie nervous ignited something inside me.
“I want you to care.” I said quietly, and I knew without a doubt, I meant it. “Tell me you care, Charlie.”
“Xander,” she whispered, “Don’t-”
But she couldn’t finish her sentence, because I knew that whatever she was going to say, I wouldn’t have liked it. Not as much as I liked to kiss her. And so that’s what I did. I kissed her like my salvation depended on it, like all she had to do was kiss me back and every pain that haunted me would be banished to the dark, powerless depths of my mind. When she kissed me back, it felt like all this was happening. And for the life of me, I wanted her to see what it could be like between us. I wanted to pull her in almost as much as I needed to put some distance between us.
We made it to the hospital in silence, but it wasn’t awkward. Not like the next hour would be. I felt like I was being pulled in two polar directions. I hadn’t seen my brother in days, and I felt guilty, but I also wanted to keep Charlie in this bubble where she couldn’t leave and she remained untainted by the complications in my life. I wished everything wasn’t so messed up, that I could just walk into the hospital with her hand in mine and show her where he lay peacefully asleep. But what if she ran? What if the painful story behind his condition proved too much for her to handle just for a guy she had met a few weeks before?
“Penny for your thoughts?” she tugged at my hand, making me realize that she was holding my injured hand in her small one.
“I was just thinking, this isn’t necessary.” I faltered, “I mean, it doesn’t even hurt that bad, I think I’ll just go home.”
She arched her eyebrow, “No. You need to get that checked out. Besides, I get to stay here until my shift, which is in an hour.”
I nodded stiffly, feeling uncomfortable at the thought that entered my mind. I needed to ask her before it drove me mad.
“Uhh, so do you work with all the kids in the hospital, or is it just a few?” I glanced at her, waiting for a sign that she knew about Cole.
“No, just the ones in the cancer ward, just to relieve their parents for a while,” she replied, her eyes earnest. Those brown irises tugged at something inside me, made me want to hold her and cower away, both at the same time.
I shrugged the sensation off when I noticed her curious stare. I needed to get out of there, but I also couldn’t go home. For the first time in many months, I felt no compulsion to drive to the edge of the cliff and wait for courage to either go back home or drive off it.
“I should probably go home,” I said, rubbing my palm on my nape.
Her eyes followed the movement, making me annoyed at myself, “I didn’t know you had something to do. Sorry,” she said, taking her bag from my grasp.
“Yeah, no problem. I just need to put disinfectant and a bandage on my hand” I tried to smile, feeling some unexplainable reason to reassure her that she hadn’t made me uncomfortable in any way.
“Well, bye then,” she turned to walk away from me.
Without thought, I reached out to touch her elbow. I needed to tell her everything, but I also wanted her to be the island amidst the turbulent ocean that was my life.
She searched my eyes, waiting for me to say something, and I was fast running out of reasons to keep her with me.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing. I wanted to ask what time I should come to fetch you.”
She smiled, disarming my fears, and igniting my doubts about having lost control of this situation. “You don’t have to do that, I’ll call my dad.”
“Oh yeah, okay,” I conceded, as she turned to walk into the hospital. I stood until I lost sight of her, until her two-hour shift was almost over. I had lost myself to her and given her no reason to have me.
Charlie
It was days after he kissed me, but I felt his lips on mine each time I touched my lips. In just a few weeks, Xander had become a constant thought, an unshakeable feeling demanding to be acknowledged. But I couldn’t do that, not when he hid things from me. Maybe I was being intrusive, but my mother always said that the point wasn’t being ride or die, it was knowing where the ride was taking you and delaying the dying part. Not that I wanted to go anywhere with Xander. Like I said, I didn’t know him all that well…which is probably why I had lunch plans with him that day.
He didn’t attend any of our classes that day, and I knew he was stuck at basketball practice. The regionals were coming up in a little over a month, and because of that, he had to spend most of his time with his teammates, who blamed me for Ron’s stitched-up eyebrow.
I got to the cafeteria before he did, and waited for him. Fifteen minutes later, he still hadn’t shown up and I decided to text him. I was too preoccupied with staring down at my phone that I didn’t notice Ron’s unwelcome presence until he spoke.
“Oh, he’s not coming,” he said smugl
y.
“Who’s not coming?” I raised an eyebrow. From my experience with my elder brother and his arrogant high school friends, mean teenage boys weren’t an impossible task.
“Your boyfriend, Alexander,” he smirked, popping a grape from my tray into his mouth. “Or Xander, whatever he’s called these days.”
“And you’re the one he trusted to deliver the message?” I smiled with cool civility.
“Maybe, but I think we should focus on the fact that you didn’t correct me calling him your boyfriend.”
“Or you could focus on getting that nasty bruise on your eye checked out. By his own admission, he’s outdone himself this time. It looks permanent.” I shot back, digging into the yoghurt cup.
He narrowed his eyes at me, “Things never last between girls like you and guys like Alex. You might not know it, but I bet you he does.”
“You know, if you want him all to yourself, all you have to do is tell him.” I said, hoping my poker face wasn’t slipping away. I knew that what he had said about girls like me and guys like Xander would linger in the back of my mind, and I feared that even Xander might not be able to dissipate that worry.
He sneered at me, “If you knew the things I know about him, you might not want him at all.”
I wanted to believe that no revelation would change the way I felt about Xander, but considering the circumstances of our first meeting, I couldn’t help wondering how deep his scars ran. However, I couldn’t lose faith in him, especially not in front of Ron.
So, taking another spoonful of yogurt, I said, “What makes you think I don’t?”
“I know you don’t, but ask yourself this: how did you come to the school and find the most popular guy on campus available, with no competition on your side?”
I couldn’t let him plant any more seeds in my mind, so I got up to leave. I hadn’t seen Xander talk to any other girl, but that didn’t mean that there was something wrong with him. Maybe he just hadn’t found the right girl before, or he had just broken up with someone. Maybe I so wanted to be the right girl that I would convince myself of anything to keep this-whatever this was between us-going.
I expected Xander to call and explain why he had stood me up, and why I had to find that out from someone who, for some reason, disliked me. But he didn’t, and I went to sleep resenting myself for being the type of girl who idly waited all night for a boy to call. I resented that I didn’t resent him.
The next morning, I arrived to class to see Xander sitting in his usual seat, next to mine. I contemplated sitting elsewhere, but we were still partnering up for the presentation, and I had to show him that him bailing on me without explanation wasn’t the end of my world.
“Excuse me,” I said, moving behind his chair to my seat.
“Sure.”
Silence. I mentally threw insults at him, then at Ronald for being right about my position, or lack thereof, in his life.
Professor Mikel gave us a topic and instructed us to discuss it in pairs, leaving me with no choice but to talk to Mr. Moody beside me. After rambling on about the importance of setting in postcolonial literature, I noticed he was barely listening.
“You stood me up yesterday,” I said.
“Hmm,” he played with the ring on his index finger..
“Where were you?” I probed, wanting to give him a change to explain, to tell me that there was a crisis that he had to attend to.
But I knew it wasn’t going to happen, even before he tilted his head to stare blankly at me and sighed. “I was out.”
I castigated myself for being the fool who actually thought he could like me. Things really never did work out between guys like him and girls like me. The earth was too big, and we were meant to stay on opposite sides of it. Right now, seated next to this cold version of Xander, I wished that that same earth would open up and swallow me whole.
Xander
I heard the noise from inside the house before I got in, and I knew my parents were fighting again. For a year now, this had become the norm in our house. I got in, silently closed the door and made my way to the staircase before my dad’s voice boomed at me.
“Where the hell are you coming from?” he demanded, bypassing my mother who half sat on the sofa and half knelt.
He was drunk, and I had to tread lightly. “The library.”
“Lies!” he yelled, tossing the bottle in his hand to the tiled floor. It broke into pieces at my feet and I had to back away. Even with all that I had suffered at the hands of my parents this year, I still felt glad that no one else could see this broken side of the golden family of Whitfield County.
My mother remained where she was, staring at our exchange. She never bothered to defend me these days, but that was okay, because she could barely defend herself against her pain too. In a way, we were all suffering, but they had just chosen to suffer separately, and not as a family.
“I’m not lying, I was at the library catching up on homework and I lost track of time,” I replied, standing my ground. A year ago, I would have stormed to my room and sulked, but I guess the pain had aged me.
He laughed mirthlessly, “You know, if you’re going to be a judgmental prick about our parenting style, you should at least be a parent to the brother you so desperately keep holding on to.”
I ground my jaw and took a step towards him. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me, boy. I’ve been saying we should let him go, but you won’t let them switch off the damn machines!”
He shoved me, backing me against the wall. “And now you’ve found a new hobby, you won’t even visit him. They had to call me. Me! I had to receive the updates which you insisted on getting! What is it, huh?” He slurred, “Who have you been hanging out with these days, son?”
I winced, knowing that I hadn’t been to the hospital in days, which was unlike me. Even in this moment, I found it hard to hate my father. The rope that holding onto the hope of Cole awaking from his coma was for me was barbed wire to him. We were both holding on, but he thought I was too selfish to let my brother rest and I thought he was selfish for wanting to make the decision to let him die. As for my mom, she remained a listless ghost in this storm…staring, unseeing. Shattered into a mosaic of the happy woman she once was.
Lately, my attraction for, and fascination with Charlie had been warring with my duty to check on Cole. I was being pulled between wanting to protect my brother from the world and wanting to protect what I had with Charlie from the damage that knowing my secrets would cause.
My father fell to his knees, landing on the pieces of broken glass. I could see the tears in his eyes as he tried to pick up the pieces, and I wished they were pieces of his life he was picking up.
He looked up at me briefly before his head fell and he spoke again, sniffling. “I told you that’s not how I wanted to see my boy...to remember him. You said you’d go, dammit you said…remember what happened the last time you were meant to be there for him but weren’t.”
I pursed my lips, trying to keep my tears at bay, before driving to the edge of the cliff and sitting in my car while I thought about Cole…and Charlie.
I couldn’t face Charlie, knowing that I couldn’t explain to her that I bailed on her because I was at the hospital visiting my brother whom she didn’t know existed. Part of me knew that she wasn’t like any other girl I’d dated before the shooting, that she would understand. That part was continually silenced by the doubts and the what ifs. My feelings for her were creating a battlefield in my head which at times overpowered the emotions she made my heart feel. For the first time in my entire life, I chose not to fight. I liked her, maybe even loved her for saving me even when she didn’t know it, but to stay sane, I had to run from my feelings for her. Even while the thought of pushing her away made me want to ram my fist into a brick wall.
When she got to class the following morning, I almost second-guessed whether or not this was necessary. I thought about not letting her go, but not letting her in either. But this wa
s Charlie. My feelings for her could not be half-expressed, nor could I imagine giving her half of me. Before all that happened had happened, and my mother was so full of life, she had been like her. In those days, my father always said that women like her would always get what they deserved from a man, not the crumbs he tried to give.
And so it was the hardest mission of my life to pretend she wasn’t there, and that I didn’t regret missing our date. Even worse, I felt like a total dick for being rude to her, and seeing how hurt she was made it harder for me. Her scent (a sweet, fruity mix), and her wild crown of hair almost made me reach out to touch her. But I didn’t. Like my father had said, I didn’t need the distractions. As soon as class ended, she stood up to leave without a word to me. I watched her leave and she didn’t look back. It was better this way.
I sat in the cafeteria with a few of the guys on the team, fiddling with the cap of a juice bottle. Frankie, the first team power forward, tapped his fork on my tray, drawing my thoughts away from Charlie.
“What?,” I blinked in confusion.
“I said,” he sighed, and I realised he had been speaking to me for a while, “Don’t let what happened with Ron and your girl yesterday bother you. Ron’s just being a dick.”
It didn’t take me long to know who ‘my girl’ was, she was the only girl I acknowledged these days.
“What happened between Ron and Charlie yesterday?” I asked coolly, but the way his eyes lowered to my clenched fists made it obvious that I wasn’t succeeding.
“Umm…nothing,” he shifted uncomfortably.
“Frankie.” I probed, recognizing the menacing tone in my voice. Since when did I speak so aggressively?
“Look man,” his gaze darted to the cafeteria entrance, “You didn’t hear this from me, but Ron confronted your girl yesterday. I didn’t see the whole exchange, but she must’ve held her own. He seemed beyond pissed at her.”
“And Charlie? How did she seem?” I asked, hoping he hadn’t given her another reason to be angry at me. Where she was concerned, it seemed I was perfectly capable of messing things up on my own, I didn’t need his backup off the court.
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