Charmed at First Sight

by Sharla Lovelace

  “It’s almost dark,” I said as I got out. “You do notice that, right?”

  “It’s the only chance I have to get things done,” he said. “It’s not going to clean itself and it doesn’t care if it’s day or night.”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Whose car is this?” he asked.

  “A friend’s.”

  He turned again. “You already made a friend good enough to loan you a car?”

  “I know; it’s like voodoo,” I said, wide eyed. “Except that, hey, people actually like me.”

  “Don’t make me point this thing at you,” he said.

  “And what?” I said. “Scrub my sins away?” I attacked him from behind, wrapping my arms around his middle, burying my face between his shoulder blades. He smelled comforting, like home. “Too late, big brother. Nothing can do that.”

  “Hey, baby girl.”

  “Hey.”

  * * * *

  An hour, two coffees, and a root beer float later—because that was always the universal comfort food in our house—I was eyeing the clock on my new phone, putting off leaving. It had been a long time since I felt comfortable there. In fact, every time Jeremy and I came over, I was the one looking for an out within an hour or two. This was different. There was no Mom, no Jeremy, no one pulling my strings. My neck muscles weren’t knotted and painful. Huh. Who knew? I dug in the bottom of my glass for ice cream dredges for the fiftieth time, actually wishing I could stay sitting at that worn-out kitchen counter forever.

  How many life issues/problems/dramas/dilemmas/celebrations/fights/confessions had occurred at that very counter over a root beer float? Too many to ever remember. Everything important in my life had been discussed right there, probably on the same stool, in view of my dad’s mounted firefighter hat and our parents’ wedding photo. It was one of the few things I felt my mother got right. Even the end of Thatcher’s marriage had pretty much happened before my eyes, about a foot from where he sat now. I don’t think there was ice cream involved in that one, though. Whiskey might have trumped it that time.

  “You know your old room is still the guest room? I turned mine and Jackson’s into the weight room, but you could come stay here,” Thatcher said, getting up to rinse out his glass, grabbing mine before I started to lick it.

  I knew he’d been holding that question back since I got there, saving it for my most vulnerable moment. I was savvy to his game.

  “I know, Thatch,” I said, watching him go through the motions of domesticity. Closing cabinet doors I’d left open. Wiping the countertop. There was something so lonely about it, knowing that all he had to clean up after normally was himself. He was good. He was content. But Thatcher Roman was born to take care of people. He’d wanted to be a firefighter, or a paramedic like our father, something to help people. Life kept dealing him other plans, however, and seeing him alone always broke my heart a little. I knew he wanted to take care of me right now, but I couldn’t do that. “And I love you for offering. But—” I wasn’t sure how to articulate it. It was better, but not move back in better. “This house makes me weak.”

  He turned around, one eyebrow cocked in question, shirt sleeves rolled up and the tails untucked from his jeans. Such a different image from the perfectly together guy he was at work. Maybe it made him weak, too.

  “The house?”

  I nodded. “It’s like the floats, Thatch. It’s my comfort zone and it’s dangerous at the same time.”

  He gave me a look like I was about to make him tired.

  “How is it dangerous?” he asked. “Are you on Mom again?”

  And I was making him tired?

  “It’s home,” I said, ignoring his question. “Yes, my memories here aren’t as warm and fuzzy as yours, but also—it’s like a time capsule.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

  I sighed. “You grew up here basically in charge your whole life.” I watched him blink an uncomfortable moment away, and I paused a second, knowing that was a thing with him. “Nothing has changed there. You can be here and still be on top of your life. For me, though, I come here and fall into old habits. Old resentments. Bad choices. I left here to get away from something and ended up in another version of it. I can’t get stronger, here,” I let out a slow, calming breath as I felt the emotion thickening in my throat. “And I desperately need to.”

  Thatcher’s eyes narrowed. “What did he do to you?”

  I shook my head, my eyes burning with unexpected tears. Until a couple of days ago, I wouldn’t have been able to point to anything. I wouldn’t have thought anything was really wrong, other than I just wasn’t happy. Funny how being outside the bubble for a minute gave a whole different meaning to clarity.

  “Nothing tangible,” I said softly.

  The doorbell ringing made me jump, and I swiped under my eyes with a chuckle as he frowned in the direction of it.

  “Booty call you forgot about?” I asked, palming my keys.

  “I don’t forget those,” he said, following up with a look. “I don’t have booty calls, Micah.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because I’m not twenty-two,” he said over his shoulder. “Or sixty-two.”

  “Excuses.”

  He started to make a smart-ass remark as he opened the door, but there wasn’t time. Namely, because the presence in the doorway filled up all the space.

  “Hey, almost-brother-in-law,” the presence said loudly, in a voice that sent all my ice cream comfort to a bad, acidic, curdled place.

  Shit.

  “Not a good time,” Thatcher said, his voice stern.

  Fight or flight.

  “Never a bad time for beer, man. Hope that car out front isn’t a woman, because a bro in trouble trumps—”

  He’d walked around Thatcher’s attempts to thwart him and stopped short at the sight of me, now standing next to my stool. I didn’t remember getting to my feet. I couldn’t even feel them.

  “Jeremy.”

  He blinked as if I might not be real, setting the twelve-pack of beer on the nearest surface.

  “Well, well,” he said after a long painful pause.

  I swallowed, feeling the urge to run out the door, or up the stairs, or behind the fireplace to the little hidey-hole I’d found as a kid and didn’t tell anyone about. The knotted-up feeling that had been blessedly missing before was back with a vengeance, requiring all the adulting properties I could muster. He’d already had some beer—his eyes told me that—but he wasn’t so gone that the shock value didn’t resonate.

  “Well, at least you aren’t dead,” he said slowly. Too slowly. He’d had more than I thought. “That’s good to know.”

  “Jeremy,” I repeated, forcing myself to say it slowly, to not let him work me up.

  “Although apparently your brother was already clued in on that,” he said, dragging his eyes around to Thatcher.

  Thatcher neither confirmed nor denied; he just walked up to Jeremy, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  “Have a seat, Jeremy,” he said. “I’ll let y’all talk.”

  No!

  “Thatch—”

  “Talk,” he said, raising an eyebrow. Not understanding. Walking away. He held up a finger in response to my silent plea and mouthed the word again. I closed my eyes and shook my head slightly.

  Jeremy shrugged. “Not much to say, I venture to guess,” he said as I opened my eyes. “Look at you, all hatted up again. That didn’t take long. Getting a tattoo tomorrow?”

  I felt my blood pressure rising as his backdoor insults swirled around me like a cage.

  “Jer—”

  “You didn’t want to get married,” he said, cutting me off as his eyes dropped to my left hand. “You ditched the ring, already?”

  I automatically looked at my han
d, even though I already knew the status of it.

  “I didn’t ditch anything,” I said. “It’s safe at—where I’m staying.”

  “And where is that, exactly?” Jeremy asked. “With the guy you’re screwing?”

  “What?” I yelled, expanding the word to at least three syllables and raising it more than one octave. I felt every nuance of boiling blood rise up my neck, threatening to explode out my eyeballs. “How could you say that?”

  “Seriously?” he scoffed.

  “I’ve never cheated on you, not once,” I said through my teeth. “How dare you—”

  “Yeah, well, you’ve never left me at the altar to run away with another man, either,” he said. “So, my baseline is a little unreliable.”

  Begrudgingly, he had a point, no matter how slurred it was.

  I took two slow breaths to cool the lava flow, dialing it back the way I’d been taught two therapists ago. Imagine talking to a trickling stream and your words just need to land in the water and float with it.

  “Okay,” I breathed. “Let’s back up. Slow down.”

  “Screw this,” he said under his breath, turning back toward the door.

  “Jeremy, I’m sorry,” I said. “Please don’t leave. I know what I did was horrible. I know I’m a troll. I know you’re mad—”

  “You think?” he said, wheeling back around, nearly taking out an end table.

  I swallowed. Adulting. “And you have every right to be.”

  “I know.”

  “Please sit down,” I said, pointing to the couch next to him.

  “I’m fine.”

  I sat purposefully in a love seat, facing him. Perched on the edge so that I could jump if I needed to, but still sitting.

  “Please.”

  He rubbed at his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, sinking onto the couch with a disgruntled sigh, listing to the left. I waited for him to look at me again, and it took a while.

  “I didn’t run away with anyone,” I said slowly, softly, concentrating on my own body language. No facial reactions that would trigger a bigger event. “I just ran.” Breathe in. Breathe out. “I ran until there was another mode of transportation in front of me.”

  That probably wasn’t a trickly, floating kind of statement, but to be fair, I hadn’t been prepared for this. I should have been. I should have been thinking about what to say to him for the last two days, but I hadn’t. I’d purposely steered my thoughts everywhere but there. Now he was looking at me like I was a strange food on a plate he didn’t recognize and wasn’t likely to try.

  “Why?” he asked gruffly, the word drawing out. “Why run? Why didn’t you just say something if you had doubts?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. Did I? “Or I—wasn’t aware of it, really.” I covered my face with my hands, wanting so much to make sense, knowing I wasn’t even in the ballpark. “There wasn’t some thought-out plan,” I said through my fingers. “There was no plan. I was just standing there, and—” Love you, Micah. “Then the music started and I was on the street.”

  His blinks slowed as I talked, to the point that I wasn’t sure his eyelids were coming back up.

  “Jeremy?”

  “It was like that with the fire,” he mumbled.

  I frowned, confused. “What? What fire? Your old house?”

  He never talked much about that, except that he’d been the one to come home to find it burning when he was twenty-one. His parents had been out of town, and Jeremy said he saw the guys leaving it. They’d left a cigarette lighter behind and robbery/arson had always been assumed but I guessed it was never proven. His family had money, so it was sadly logical, but I’d always felt like that was a hell of a thing to deal with alone at twenty-one years old. Not to mention, what if he had been home? That had to mess with a person’s head. Much of the leeway I’d given him over the years was rooted in this.

  “It just—was,” he said, making a circling gesture with his hand. “It wasn’t, then it was, and I had to deal with the consequences.”

  Sometimes it still messed with his head.

  “I know,” I said, placating.

  Placating.

  I glanced to where Thatcher had left the room. I needed someone to pull the tether.

  “There has to be consequences,” Jeremy said, his words almost lost in the mumble. “Can’t take the girl with no consequences.”

  “What girl?” I asked.

  His eyes sprung open then suddenly, as if someone pushed a button. “Whose car is that outside?” he asked.

  “A friend’s,” I said.

  “Same friend?”

  I sighed. Be patient. “No. And on that subject, I need my car, Jeremy.”

  “It’s at our house,” he said, frowning. “My house. The house.”

  “Thatcher said you have the keys,” I said.

  “Well, of course I do,” he said, the words slurring together more. “It’s in my name.”

  It was my turn to pause. Possibly slur.

  Wait, what?

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The car,” he said, his eyes doing the slow dance again.

  “My car,” I reiterated.

  “Meh,” he said with a shrug. “You drive it.”

  “And pay the note,” I said.

  “But the title is in—”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head loose of the understanding I didn’t want to see rise to the top. “No, you didn’t,” I said. “You told me you put it in my name.”

  My sexy little Mustang. That he had sitting in the driveway with a giant bow on my thirtieth birthday. Not as an actual birthday present, it turned out, since I paid the car note every month, but as more of an incentive to live a little fancier. Work a little fancier. Get my hands out of the dirt and into an office space. I’d been actively looking for a new car, so he just jumped ahead a little.

  “Better rate under mine,” he said, letting his head rest heavily back against the couch. “You never noticed you didn’t sign anything?”

  Was he fucking kidding me?

  I couldn’t breathe over the triple-time pounding my heart started doing. I pushed forward to the edge of my seat, barely able to keep my ass down.

  Dial it back.

  “Jeremy,” I said slowly. Deliberately. With as much willpower as I could muster. “I’ve paid every penny of that note. It’s my car.” I licked my lips. “I need my car.”

  “Well, you know where it lives,” he said, sliding down onto a pillow.

  I narrowed my eyes. “So, you’ll let me have it? Sign it over to me?”

  There was a weak chuckle as he descended into la-la-land. “Hell no,” he mumbled. “Just saying you know—where it lives.”

  And he was out.

  Consequences.

  Motherfucker.

  * * * *

  “No, Micah,” Thatcher was saying from somewhere behind the red haze.

  I dug in Jeremy’s pockets for his keys, tempted to sock him in his open, snoring mouth.

  “He stole my car, Thatch,” I said through my teeth. “From day one. Three years ago!”

  Thatcher sighed behind me. “In all fairness, did you really not notice whose name was on the account?”

  I spun around, nearly ripping Jeremy’s pants as I yanked the keys out. Not that he noticed.

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m just saying,” he said, holding his palms up.

  I pointed a key at him. “Don’t even. Don’t you dare side with him on this.”

  “I’m not.”

  “He bought the car for me, set up the automatic draft—for me, all to be so fucking helpful,” I spat. “Three. Years. Ago.”

  “Micah—”

  “We weren’t even living together yet,” I said. “Not really. I was just blissfull
y sleeping over at his place because the plumbing at my apartment sucked. He was duping me way back then.” I stared around the room I’d know blindfolded, seeing nothing. “What else did he fuck me over on?”

  “You can’t go over there right now,” Thatcher said.

  “The hell I can’t,” I said, grabbing my wallet off the counter. “He’s out. I have his keys; he’s not going anywhere. It’s the perfect time to go get all the shit I can fit in my friend’s car.”

  “And do what with yours?” he asked. “Strap it to the roof?”

  Thoughts were pinging off the sides of my skull like a rogue pinball.

  “I can at least find my keys, then come back for the car tomorrow.”

  “Micah,” Thatcher said, stopping me with a firm grip on my shoulders. “You can’t. He’s a Blankenship.”

  I blinked, irritated. “And I’m a Roman.”

  “Well, unfortunately, that doesn’t have the same knockdown power,” he said. “They can have you arrested for trespassing. For theft.”

  “It’s my stuff.”

  “You want to think about that in jail?” he said. “You have to be sure he’s there, he sees everything, and bring witnesses. With the car being in his name…baby girl, you have no legal claim to it, no matter what you’ve paid.”

  I could hear my blood rushing through my head, my breathing in my ears. And his words—I knew they made sense. I knew he was right. But—fuck. Hot tears filled my eyes and I squeezed them shut.

  “How did—how did I let myself get so screwed?” I said under my breath. “How did this happen?”

  “You trusted,” he said, pulling me into his big embrace. “You know, that thing we keep learning not to do?” He leaned back suddenly, looking down at me with alarm. “You didn’t put your money together, did you?”

  “No,” I said. “It was my one holdout.”

  “See there, you had instincts,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “You weren’t completely duped. And you didn’t walk down that aisle.”

  I looked up at him. “I thought you thought I was being flaky.”

  “I did,” he said wearily, glancing over at the lump snoring on his couch. “But now there’s this.”