by Amy Star
Charlie handed him the keys, ignoring the few drops of half-dried blood stuck in the teeth as she handed them over. Silently, she climbed into the passenger seat and buckled herself in, and for the entire drive back to her duplex, she stared out of the car, watching the scenery pass as it gradually shifted from rural to suburban to urban and back to suburban.
The sun was well and truly up when Zeke pulled the car to a halt on the edge of the road in front of Charlie’s duplex. It was still early enough that her neighbor was asleep, and with all of the lights off, it looked eerie and unwelcoming after the night she’d had.
“Be seeing you, then?” At last, Zeke broke the silence. He sounded oddly hesitant.
There was a pause before Charlie nodded slowly and offered a lackluster, “Yeah.” As she turned away from the car and Zeke, she couldn’t help but to think that he didn’t look like he put much stock in her answer.
In fairness, she wasn’t putting much stock in her answer, either. Her feelings were like mud just then, thick and muddled and murky and increasingly unpleasant to dig through.
She walked towards her door and stepped inside like a machine, just one step after the other. She sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the clock until she knew the restaurant was open, and she picked up her phone to call in sick to work. It was rare that she missed a shift, so her boss was perfectly willing to accept her apology. She waved off his concern, citing an unexpected stomach bug and that she would be just fine by her next shift.
Once she hung up, she stared blankly at her phone for a few long moments, as if she had suddenly forgotten what its purpose was, until she glanced at the battery warning and finally pried herself out of her seat to go plug the phone in.
From there, she trudged up to her bedroom, uncaring that it was literally the middle of the morning still. She lay down on the bed, pulled her blanket over her head, and squeezed her eyes shut.
Maybe she would wake up and find out that the night hadn’t happened. She would still be in Zeke’s apartment. It would all be a dream from her impromptu nap in the bathtub. She didn’t actually have any faith in that being the case, but the thought helped her relax enough to actually fall asleep. It had been… a busy night. If she wanted to sleep half the day away, she figured she had earned it.
Her brain, it seemed, didn’t actually agree with her. She dreamed of teeth like knives that gleamed with saliva and ill intent, and she dreamed of eyes as blue as ice and twice as cold. She dreamed of blood dripping from the sky until it began to pool around her ankles and she could do nothing but wade deeper and deeper into it, until it was up to her shoulders and pulling her deeper, dragging her under as if it had a will and a mind of its own, until her head disappeared beneath the surface and there was nothing but red and copper, thick and sticky in every direction, no matter how hard she fought to get back to the surface.
When teeth closed around her legs and dragged her down into the depths, she woke up, and she slowly crawled out of her blanket burrow just enough to stare at the ceiling, where the fan spun slowly. She watched the ceiling fan spin in endless circles and let her thoughts go blank. Or at least as blank as she could at that point.
She twitched anxiously every time she heard a noise outside. Each car horn, skid of tires, rattling trashcan, or closing door made it seem like someone was going to smash her door open and come stampeding up the stairs to get her.
It wasn’t a particularly restful day.
*
Eventually she dragged herself back out of bed and into the shower, and that evening found her on the couch in her pajamas eating pizza and watching the shopping channel. She couldn’t hope to afford most of what was being hocked, but the overly cheerful way it was all being advertised and talked up was strangely soothing, and it was sort of entertaining to try and decide which of the products were complete bullshit, which ones only had a grain of truth to whatever was being said about them, and which ones were actually legitimate.
Despite that, her thoughts kept drifting back to the previous night. Of course, they did. It seemed pretty inevitable.
How many more times was it going to happen? Was that what she had to look forward to every time she was unattended? Was she going to need to be babysat like a toddler until the wedding, and possibly beyond?
Her mind railed against that possibility. She had fled from her father’s house as soon as she could to get away from being locked in a box for someone’s convenience. She wasn’t going to be locked in a box for her own safety, either.
She could leave. She could hand Zeke his ring back and break things off. He wouldn’t even blame her. She was pretty sure he was expecting exactly that to happen, and she was pretty sure that she was crazy for not doing exactly that.
But it wasn’t a decision she should make while she was frazzled. She knew that. She needed to give herself a chance to calm down and think things over rationally, and she knew exactly what she needed to do to calm down.
With a sigh, she levered herself up from the couch and ventured back into the kitchen, where her cell phone was still plugged in. She unplugged it and briefly checked to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important, and found a few texts from some of her coworkers wishing her well. She fired off a few thank you messages in return and finally dialed in Sam’s number.
She brought her phone to her ear as it rang and immediately she began pacing, strides carrying her back and forth and back and forth across the small kitchen. It rang three times before Sam picked up, grousing playfully, “I have a feast fit for a goddess in front of me, so you better have a good reason for interrupting me.”
“So it’s instant noodle night, I’m guessing,” Charlie deadpanned in return. Sam blew a raspberry at her, though the phone turned it into nothing more than a particularly emphatic burst of static.
“Stop maligning my dinner so,” she sniffed, followed by, “I ordered Chinese, if you have to know.”
“Pizza’s better,” Charlie returned plainly, her tone very matter-of-fact, as if she were simply presenting the facts for Sam to absorb.
Sam gasped theatrically. “Blasphemer!” she declared. “Heretic! Heathen!”
“I didn’t know takeout food was a religion,” Charlie mused thoughtfully, tapping her lower lip with one finger as she said it.
“Oh, yeah,” Sam replied, inexplicably cheerful once again. “Right up there with fast food joints, fashion magazines, and what you call subs.”
“They’re hoagies,” Charlie insisted firmly.
Sam made a shushing noise at her. “Uh huh, right. What’d you need, anyway?”
…What did Charlie need? They saw each other in person often enough that they tended not to just call for the sake of calling, but she hadn’t really put any thought into why she was calling. Sam was just… good at helping her clear her head. But she couldn’t say that, or else Sam would want to know why Charlie needed to clear her head, and that was an entire can of worms that she wasn’t in the mood to open just then.
When the words came out, they were just as much of a surprise to her as they were to Sam, as Charlie simply spit out the first thing that occurred to her.
“Zeke and I slept together,” she informed Sam, twirling a strand of her hair around one of her fingers as she said it.
Sam gasped, loudly and melodramatically, and Charlie could hear some shuffling that was most likely her putting a takeout container down. “No way! What was it like? Was he any good?”
“Pretty fucking spectacular,” Charlie admitted easily enough. “I came, like, four times. He’s very attentive.”
Sam whistled lowly. “Good god. You should share.”
“No thanks,” Charlie returned dryly. “I’m not good at sharing.”
“Oh, come on!” Sam whined in return, and Charlie could hear her stamping a foot. “The only action I’m getting lately is the vibrating kind! What if you just let me borrow him for an afternoon? I’ll return him in the same condition you gave him to me in.”
“Sorry, what’s that?” Charlie asked, purposefully raising her voice. “I can’t hear you. I’m going through a tunnel.”
“You’re at home!” Sam protested, though it sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “Unless you’ve dug a mine in your backyard, you don’t have a tunnel!”
“I can’t hear you, sorry, I’m losing you, what was that?” And with a final cackle, Charlie hung up.
It wasn’t quite the conversation she had planned on having, but she did feel better. A bit more settled in her skin. A bit more firmly rooted to the ground. A bit less like she would go flying off into space as soon as she started pondering the actual important questions at hand.
She sighed out an explosive breath and passed her phone back and forth from one hand to the other hand as she continued to pace across the kitchen.
At the crux of it was the fact that she didn’t want to break up with Zeke. Even after everything that had happened. She would miss him. She was pretty sure she knew what that meant.
With another, much quieter sigh, she lifted her phone again and punched in Zeke’s number.
He answered after a single ring. “Charlie?” He sounded more than a little surprised to hear from her, as if he had expected her to simply drop off the face of the planet. She thought about feeling affronted for a moment, but honestly, she couldn’t blame him. If not for the fact that she would need to return his ring, then had she decided to break things off, she most likely would have simply dropped off the face of the planet.
(Granted, ghosting a billionaire sounded more than a little difficult, but she rather got the impression that Zeke wouldn’t pursue her if she decided she was done.)
“Hey, Zeke,” she returned quietly, scuffing a foot on the floor. “I, um.” She cleared her throat. “I think I might love you. I mean, maybe it’s a bit soon to tell, but that’s the impression I’m getting.”
There was silence for a moment, and it seemed more than a little stunned. When Zeke finally spoke, he sighed out a shaky laugh and admitted, “I was sure you were going to break things off.”
“So was I,” Charlie admitted quietly, and she shifted the phone from one ear to the other. Her hands felt strangely clammy. “But I don’t really want to.”
In order for it to actually keep her safe, she would have to quit seeing him entirely. Or else Richard would never actually buy that they weren’t together anymore. And the idea of just cutting Zeke out of her life entirely made her chest hurt, as if someone had punched her right in the sternum.
There was silence for a drawn-out moment, and finally, Zeke admitted quietly, “I’m pretty sure I love you, too.”
Charlie laughed quietly. “Yeah, I kind of figured as much,” she replied. “You sure we can’t just run off and elope? It would make everything so much simpler.”
Zeke huffed out a breath of laughter. “It doesn’t work that way,” he reminded her wryly. “Spectacle, remember? We need to be convincing.”
Charlie sighed slowly. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” she conceded. She hadn’t forgotten that detail, if for no other reason than because she kept thinking “Wouldn’t it be easier if we didn’t need to do that?” But she supposed she didn’t actually have too many objections. Spite wasn’t a great reason to look forward to having a wedding, but it was still at least a reason, and she was okay with that. “I’ll, uh. I’ll see you later. Alright?”
“I’ll see you later, Charlie.”
When she hung up the phone, everything felt a little bit less pressing. A bit less like the world was trying to squeeze in on her like the walls of a trap in a cheap adventure movie.
*
Zeke called the next morning to ask if he could stop into the restaurant on her lunch break. He had something to tell her, apparently. Charlie agreed, albeit warily. Maybe she was being paranoid, but as far as she was concerned, she was perfectly in the right to feel a bit anxious of anything that even stunk of the words “We need to talk.”
When her lunch break came around, she found Zeke loitering at the front of the restaurant, chatting idly with the hostess. Charlie loped over, winding her arms around one of his as she got there, using his size to pull her to a halt. He hardly even moved.
“You said you needed to tell me something,” she pointed out, prodding at his shoulder with two fingers. Frankly, she had no interest in beating around the bush.
Zeke led her closer to the door so it would feel less like the hostess was trying to rubberneck her way into the middle of the conversation.
“My parents want to have another family get-together,” he informed her plainly, his expression twisting slightly with distaste as he said it. “You know who’s going to be there. He won’t try anything in front of my parents, but I don’t imagine it will be a comfortable experience.”
Charlie heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment before she dragged her hand down her face. “Great,” she huffed, squeezing her eyes shut for a second before she opened them again to look up at him. “What do they want to talk about? As far as I’m aware, I don’t really have much to talk to them about.”
“My mother wants to get to know you, I think,” Zeke replied, shrugging one shoulder in a way that seemed to indicate he didn’t actually know what the entire thing was really about. “She’s always been a bit more… in tune with how people work than my dad. Honestly, if it’s not related to work or deepening the gene pool, he’s not particularly interested.”
Charlie wrinkled her nose. “And your mom didn’t run off?”
Zeke waved it off. “She’s comfortable, she loves me, and she’s allowed to do whatever she wants, within reason. She’s content, even if she’s not in love.”
Charlie supposed she couldn’t really say anything about that, considering how her engagement with Zeke got started. It would be more than a little hypocritical for her to judge the relationship between Zeke’s parents when she had been perfectly willing to settle for “content, but not in love” herself.
“Well, alright,” she sighed. “When do they want to have dinner?” she asked, running a hand through her hair. “Is it going to be as fancy as the last place?”
“Probably,” he informed her wryly. “Two nights from now,” he tacked on. “I’ll text you to let you know the exact time.”
Charlie heaved another sigh, more than a little melodramatic. “Yeah, okay,” she agreed. “I’ll make sure not to wear the same dress as last time.”
She bid him goodbye, and as he left, the hostess sidled up behind Charlie to observe, “He’s decorative. Yours?” As if the way Charlie had been hanging off of his arm hadn’t been enough of an indication.
“Yes,” she answered primly, rolling her eyes good-naturedly as she said it. “You can look as much as you want to, but keep your hands to yourself.”
With a snort of laughter, the hostess returned to her post, waving Charlie on her way to have the rest of her lunch break.
*
On the one hand, Charlie didn’t want to meet with Zeke’s family again. She didn’t like his dad. She didn’t know much about his mom. She was actively terrified of his cousin. Despite that, she couldn’t deny that she looked good as she gave herself a final once over in the mirror.
The dress was black and just long enough to be considered appropriate, with off-the-shoulder straps. It was covered in clear crystals, and while they were actually made of plastic, they looked real enough, and she was content with that. Once again, her black, mostly-mesh heels added a respectable six inches to her height, and her makeup and jewelry were all in shades of silver and gunmetal grey.
She looked like she was the queen of the world, she decided, as she finished pinning her hair up. And frankly, she was absolutely positive she was going to need that confidence booster.
She heard a car pull to a halt outside, and with a deep breath, she grabbed her purse. She paused briefly, just long enough to make sure everything was in it before she made her way down the stairs and out the door. Zeke’s car was idlin
g on the edge of the road in front of the duplex.
That night would certainly be something. Whether it would be good or bad, Charlie wasn’t sure, but she supposed she would find out soon enough.
*
The restaurant, as Zeke had warned her, was just as over the top and ludicrously extravagant as the first family dinner, and Charlie peered around all of the decorations. Each one probably could have paid for Charlie’s tuition, and she felt like if she breathed wrong, something would break. Zeke made no comment on her discomfort as they followed the host to the appropriate table, where Zeke’s parents and his cousin were already sitting.
(Frankly, it was still a bit surprising just how much Zeke looked like his mother. Charlie supposed she was glad; his mother was a very attractive woman and she was aging gracefully. Much more gracefully than Zeke’s father, especially, who looked a bit like he was slowly starting to melt as he acquired wrinkles. Charlie didn’t like to think of herself as particularly shallow but, well, she supposed it was just something she would have to work on eventually. A project for later.)