by Q. B. Tyler
“Holy fuck, Charlotte!” He drops the bottle of water that he had pulled to his lips and opens the fridge so that I don’t have a view of his dick. “What—what are you? Why are you here in the dark? Yo, Lauren!” he calls for her, and I pull my legs up to my chin and put my head on my knees as I try and stop the tears that are falling yet again. God, I didn’t even cry this much when I left Matt.
“Drew, I—”
“Oh my God, Char!” Lauren bolts for me, her body wrapped in one of her cashmere robes and engulfs me in her arms. “What are you doing here? Not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but how long have you been here?”
“About ten minutes. I saw you…had a visitor.” I nod to where Drew is standing, but he’s gone, making me believe he had slipped out to hopefully put on clothes.
“Babe, why are you crying? What’s going on?” She clasps her hand with mine and squeezes. “Did you and Will have a fight?”
“Sort of…” I whisper. “Lauren, everything is so…hard!”
“Okay, why don’t we start from the beginning.”
“Well, I’m pregnant.”
“No shit!” I hear from the entryway, and I look up to see Drew staring at me with the largest smile on his face, completely dressed. “Congratulations, future sis! Why aren’t we celebrating? Popping some bubbly…though none for you.” He points at me. “Where’s that asshole brother of mine? I—”
“Drew!” Lauren starts. “Can’t you see that she is clearly not in the celebrating mood? Now either hush or leave.” She turns to me. “Do you want him to leave?”
“Well…”
“Go!” she orders Drew immediately and he crosses his arms across his chest as he shoots her a look.
“I think it would be best if maybe you checked on your brother?” I tell him. I’m not sure if he has anyone to turn to, and I don’t want him wallowing in self-pity. I want someone who loves him. Even if Will doesn’t think they do.
“What…what exactly am I walking in to? Did you…did you leave him?”
“He thinks I did.” I bite my bottom lip. “But I love him. I did it for us. I swear I just…”
“Okay,” Lauren says wrapping her arms around me. “Drew, go and call me once you know what’s going on.”
“On it, boss.” He salutes her and if that didn’t make me smile, then him being two steps from the door, turning around and walking back towards us to plant a kiss on her lips followed by one on her nose, brings a smile to my face despite the tears leaking from my eyes. He looks at me. “I don’t know what happened but…my brother loves you so much. You make him happier than…I’ve ever seen him.” He smiles at me. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks, Drew.”
6:00 pm
I ignore Drew’s call for the fourth time in the span of five minutes. He is the last person I want to talk to. He is probably calling to see if I want to go to some bullshit nightclub. I’m lying on my bed flat on my back when the phone rings again. I’m hoping for either Charley or Tuck to call me back but this time it’s my mother.
Fuck that.
I turn over, groaning, as I can already hear the passive aggressive voicemail she’s about to leave me. Well, since you can’t be bothered to answer the phone…
“How did I let my fucked up relationship with my parents ruin the one thing I love the most?” I say to myself as I sit up hearing my front door open. “Charlotte?” I call out, praying for her to manifest in my doorway. “Baby?”
I’m so sorry I left, Will. I love you so much, we’ll work this out. I’m here, I’ll never leave your side.
I can almost hear her voice saying the words. I stand up, my brain having convinced my body that Charlotte is on the premises when my brother appears in my doorway. I drop like a log to my bed.
“What are you doing here? I’m really not in the mood to go out or whatever it is you’re hearing bugging me for.”
I look up and he looks as if he’s been punched and the wind knocked out of him. He looks forlorn, almost sad. “I just came to check on you, bro.” He makes his way through my room slowly before standing up against the wall, his hands in his pockets. “You and Charlotte have a fight?”
How the hell does he know that? Do I look that bad?
I don’t even have to look in the mirror to know the answer to that question.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, get over it, because she’s in hysterics at Lauren’s house right now. What the hell happened? You’re pregnant, shouldn’t you be like over the moon right now? You don’t think it’s that asshole ex-husbands of hers, do you?”
The thought makes me enraged. “It’s mine,” I grit out.
He puts his hands up in defeat. “Then what happened? What’s going on?”
“How the fuck do you even know?” Did Lauren call Drew when Charley showed up? Did Charley call Drew?
“I was at Lauren’s when she showed up. I overheard them talking.”
I nod in understanding. To be honest, I wasn’t aware that they were still seeing each other that frequently. Not that you ever know much about your brother and his sexcapades.
“What else did she say?” Does he know everything?
“That’s all. She didn’t say what happened. She just asked if I could come check on you.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. Not that I thought Charlotte would unleash all of my issues on him, but I’m grateful that at least he doesn’t know much. “I’m good, Drew. I don’t need anything.”
He rubs the area behind his neck and gives me a worried look. “She said you think she left you.”
What’s there to think about? I begged you not to go, and you did anyway. “You don’t see her here, do you? She did leave me.”
“It didn’t sound like she agreed with that.”
“Fine, if you’re determined to talk, you may want to sit.”
“Sounds like there’s a story, should I grab us some beers?”
I blanche, my blood feeling like ice in my veins. “You have no idea how bad I want to say yes.”
6:00 pm
I’m lying flat on my back on Lauren’s bed as she lies next to me, both of us silent. I imagine she’s trying to let everything sink in. She has a glass of vodka next to her that she’s been nursing since I started explaining. She’d said she needed something stronger than wine for this before she promptly poured it down the sink. She looks over at me and gives me a small smile. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit.”
“You did the right thing, Charley.”
I turn my head towards her. “Did I?”
“Yes. Will needs help, and you’re right he was so dependent on you to make him happy.”
“Is that so wrong?” I made him happy and he wanted to be with me, maybe I was overreacting.
“No, but it could get exhausting. It’s a lot to be everything for someone.”
“He was everything for me.”
She scoffs. “Um false. You have me.”
“Not for much longer.”
She rolls her eyes. “And you have hobbies. What does Will do besides work and worship the ground you walk on?”
“He plays golf and umm…” I sit up, trying to think about what he’s done in the past few months besides dote over me.
“Drink, evidently,” she says before she takes a sip of her drink.
“That’s not funny,” I warn her.
“I wasn’t joking.”
“Lo…” I shake my head. “How did everything get so screwed up? A year ago, today I was…”
“Way more miserable. Don’t start.”
“I just mean my life was less complicated.”
“A loveless marriage probably does that. You were also bored out of your mind. At least now your life is interesting.”
“Cute.” I nod.
“Should we start thinking of names? Obviously, Lauren if it’s a girl…” she jokes, and I smile at her attempt to make me feel better.
“He sa
id if I left it was over.” The tears spring to my eyes remembering his threat. What if he makes good on it?
“You know he didn’t mean that.”
“What if he did?”
“Will is angry and upset and he thinks you abandoned him, but eventually he will see that you did this for him. For you. For your family.”
7:00 pm
“What the fuck!?” Drew screams as he paces my bedroom. I lay on the bed with an icepack on my head as I try to numb the headache. “I should have known something was off when we went out last weekend. You never go that hard. What the fuck, man?”
“I know. I know.” I pull off the icepack and stare at my angry brother who hasn’t stopped yelling since I told him everything that has been happening the last two weeks.
“Fuck.” He drops like a log next to me on my bed. “But she’s a wreck, man. You know she loves you.”
“The rational part of me knows that.”
“And the irrational?” he asks.
“The irrational wants me to go over to Lauren’s and drag her out of there and bring her back here where she belongs.”
“It sounds like she just wants you to get yourself together.”
“Thank you, Dr. Obvious. It’s not that simple. And you need a support system. One she up and bailed from.”
“She’s not bailing, Will.”
“And how would you know?”
“Because I know what it looks like when someone bails, and that’s not it. She knew if she stayed you wouldn’t change, or it would be a temporary fix, and then you’d fall back into old patterns. She had to show you she was serious. You’re hurting yourself, Will, and she doesn’t want to sit around and watch you do that. That’s not bailing. That’s love.”
“You would know what it looks like when someone bails,” I snort as I get up and make my way out of my bedroom.
I can hear him right on my heels. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Forget it, you hungry? I haven’t eaten today, and I’m fucking starving.”
“No Will, what does that even mean?”
“Pizza okay?”
“WILL!” he screams, and I turn to look at him.
“What?”
He’s silent, and it’s as if I don’t need to answer, because his face falls. “I didn’t bail on you.”
“Oh? What would you call it?”
“Fed up with your bullshit to be honest.”
“Excuse me?”
“I never did understand your issue with me. It was like you hated me so much, and I never understood why. So finally, I just stopped trying.” He shrugs. “You didn’t try either, so I figured that was that. Only in the last year or so have you started coming around, and my guess is that has to do with Charlotte. I saw a change in you. She made you happy. You should have seen your face that first time we went to that bar all those months ago. I knew then. I knew there was someone.”
“I didn’t hate you, Drew,” I murmur as I lean on the counter, putting my head in my hands. “I envied you.”
“Envied me?” I look up and he’s equal parts confused and horrified. “Why would you envy me? You have a badass house, and a job that you love, helping people. You have a woman that loves you.”
“I don’t have those things anymore.”
“You have them, they’re just on hiatus. But what could you have to be jealous of?”
“All those years ago, I mean. I envied you because you had the one thing I didn’t have. The one thing I’ll never have.”
“What is that? A big dick?” He smiles.
I raise an eyebrow at him and shake my head. “No. Mom and Dad’s approval.”
“Mom and Dad? Like…our mom and dad?”
What the fuck? God, he really is clueless. “Yes, who the fuck do you think?”
He drops onto one of my stools that line my marble bar. He doesn’t say anything for a second and his face is one of pure realization as if all it took was my words for him to see things in a new light. “Will…”
“You are Mom and Dad’s favorite. The favorite Montgomery child.” I rest my arms on the counter, as I stare into similar eyes. “You were right, I did push you away. I hated you when we were kids. You always got your way, they always took your side. You were the model child, the first born, I was the second born that never lived up to you. I lived in your shadows for…my whole life.”
“That’s not true. Mom and Dad were thrilled when you became a doctor.”
“What parent wouldn’t? It took years and three degrees, one of which they didn’t even see me receive, for them to recognize me. Do you know what that does to a person? Do you know what that kind of rejection did to me? It’s why I can’t handle Charlotte walking out right now. It feels like everyone else that’s left me, because I wasn’t perfect.”
“Charlotte didn’t leave you because you aren’t perfect, Will. She left you because you need help. She left you because she chose your child over you…and herself. And I wouldn’t necessarily call it leaving you.”
“What would you call it?” I clench my fists. She left me, stop fucking sugar coating it.
“Space.”
“Well, that’s not what I want!” My voice booms through my kitchen, reverberating off the walls.
“What about what you need?”
I’m about to speak when I hear my front door opening again and my ears perk up immediately. “Charley?”
8:00 pm
“I should call him.” I set down the sausage pizza I suddenly craved and look up at Lauren.
“And say what?” Lauren grabs my phone before I can pick it up and sets it in her lap, out of reach.
“That I love him. That this isn’t over. He thinks I left him!”
“Drew says he’s handling it, and that he’s trying to talk some sense into him. He says his therapist showed up?”
“Tucker?” I groan, letting my head fall into my hands. “God, he probably hates me.”
“Why would he hate you?”
“I don’t know, breaking his protégé? How the hell should I know? Will is so loyal to him, I can’t imagine the feeling isn’t mutual.”
“He’s a therapist. I’m sure he understands.”
“I want him to know that I’m still here, even though it may not feel like it.”
“You’re supposed to be giving him space.” She raises an eyebrow at me.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t want to be supportive.”
She grabs my hand and squeezes, “Char, one day he will see that you did this for him.”
I frown, knowing she’s right, but hating that he doesn’t realize that now. Now, he thinks I’ve abandoned him like everyone else in his life. “And until then?”
“Until then, you focus on keeping that little one healthy.” She cocks her head to the side. “I swear did you get pregnant just to try and keep me here?”
I smile, letting my hands find my flat stomach that I can’t wait to get bigger. I’m having a baby! A warm sensation spreads throughout my body and I realize I haven’t really allowed myself to think about how much my life is about to change. I shut my eyes picturing a baby that is equal parts myself and Will. A little boy or girl with Will’s piercing blue eyes. His eyes, his nose, his…heart. The man with the kindest heart I’d ever met. The man that loves me with every inch of it.
He understands, Charley.
* * *
IT HAD BEEN TWO DAYS since I’d seen Charley. Two days without seeing her smile or holding her in my arms—or making love to her. It had been almost two weeks since I’d done that, and my body had definitely taken notice. I rub my dick through my pants, as a vision of her underneath me floods my brain.
Fuck.
We’d spoken on the phone a few times, and I’d let her know that I would be spending the week in a rehabilitation center of sorts. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea, knowing just how those facilities can be, having worked at the very one I was attending, but I needed to turn my life around, and not just for C
harlotte.
But not just for me either.
There’s a baby now.
A baby that will need their father, sober.
“When do you leave?” she speaks softly and slowly, as if she can’t get the words out.
“Monday.”
“Can…can I see you before you go?” she stutters slightly.
“I would like that.” A feeling of hope runs through me and I can’t help the small smile. I miss her so fucking much.
“How are you getting there?”
“Drew offered to drive.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I’ve been forced into a bit of a breakthrough,” I chuckle.
Drew and I had sat on my kitchen floor, a large pizza between us, and talked about everything. And nothing. It had been unreal just how much I’d missed in my brother’s life.
Who knew that he’d recently started doing yoga—with Lauren.
That he was training to run a half marathon—with Lauren.
That he thought he might be in love—with Lauren.
I felt like an asshole for not being more involved in his life. For not caring enough to try and have a relationship with him because of what had happened when we were kids.
We’re adults now, and I always urged people to try and repair their broken childhood relationships once they were in adolescence.
It’s Monday and I haven’t heard from Charley. Did she decide not to come?
No, she wouldn’t just not show up. She would at least call.
I glance at my watch. I asked her to come earlier than Drew, so we could have a few moments alone before I have to leave.
Where is she?
Charley is always on time. It’s one of the things I always admired about her, and not for the same reasons I was punctual as well. She wasn’t brought up on waspy cotillions and “proper etiquette classes.” No that was me, and the thing about being someone that grew up with that chain around your neck disguised as an eighteenth century social construct was you always recognized when someone else had the same past.