by Sage Rae
Back Before Midnight
Manu was prepping a margarita for himself in the kitchen while Charlotte scampered across the apartment, hunting for her stilettos. He squeezed a half-a-lime into the glass, ranting about something he’d recently seen on television. Some infomercial that had particularly pissed him off. “How dare they try to sell that shit on TV?” he scoffed. “It’s really a testament to how downhill the world is heading these days. Everything is complete drivel, Charlotte.”
Charlotte hardly listened. Her brain whirled a million miles a minute, only picking up the occasional word. She snuck her feet into the stilettos, making a “hmm” noise. Manu hardly picked up on her hesitation. What the hell would he think, if he knew she was heading out to meet his arch nemesis? He would think her to be a traitor, beyond anything else. He would assume that she was out to ruin him.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” Manu asked. He lifted his margarita, with its line of salt around the top. His belly had snuck out of his t-shirt and looked bulbous around him. His skeletal frame just didn’t suit this 28-year old fatty layer. Charlotte found herself fixating on it.
“Oh, um. Nowhere.”
“You’re pretty dressed up for going nowhere,” Manu said. He shoved a handful of almonds into his mouth and tilted his head. God, he’d been so handsome as a younger man: on top of the world, one of the most eligible bachelors across New York City, Paris, London…
“I’m just meeting a friend,” Charlotte said, her cheeks tinging red with fear.
“Okay. I’m at the bar tonight, working,” Manu offered. “If you and whatever friend want to drop by. Is it Amy?”
“Um, no. Amy’s on holiday in Italy,” Charlotte said, speaking of her best friend in Montpellier, a girl she’d rekindled a relationship with after their arrival back a few years before. She and Amy had been close as younger children, prior to her family’s move to New York. It was miraculous to see that, despite fifteen years passing, they still had endless things to speak about. They spent many nights in, cackling together over glasses of wine. One thing they never discussed? Peter Bramwell. Amy knew better than to bring him up.
“Then who?” Manu asked. His voice was bored, low. He didn’t give a fuck. In fact, his eyes had already snaked back to the television, inhaling the television’s infomercial.
“I’ll be back before midnight, I guess,” Charlotte said, flipping her curls behind her ears. “Do you need anything while I’m out?”
“Naw. Just a better career, I guess,” Manu said, chortling.
This was a refrain he often had. One that generally made Charlotte’s blood boil. He’d had a remarkable career, previously. He’d been a man amongst boys, a superior business-minded brain in a world of idiots. Peter hadn’t gotten ahead without Manu, and there was a reason for that. But Manu had lost his confidence. His eyes were somber, uncaring. It was like he’d stared at the sun too long.
“Manu, you know you can do whatever you want,” Charlotte said, her nostrils flared.
“Whatever you say, Charlotte,” Manu said, cutting his margarita toward his lips. “Whatever you say.”
Charlotte walked along cobblestone streets to the restaurant she’d agreed to meet Peter at, her feet stumbling slightly on the road. She swung her head left and right, feeling like she might spot him before entering the restaurant. After their interaction the previous night, she’d been apprehensive, hardly sleeping. Memories of the last time she’d seen him were burned into her mind. How she’d hated him! In another reality, she’d imagined that he’d become her husband, the father of her children. She’d envisioned her, Manu, and Peter—all living alongside one another, with a whole passel of children scampering at their feet. She didn’t have such romantic notions about the world any longer.
Perhaps that was how everyone experienced the world. They became too cynical, after a time, to give a shit about anything else. It was how everyone became so entrenched in their own minds. It was how everyone became so goddamn selfish.
But Peter was already at the restaurant when she arrived, to her surprise. He was seated at a table with a white tablecloth, wearing a suit with a white button-down beneath (unbuttoned at the top, to show those coarse chest hairs). God, how handsome he was. He stood from his seat, so dominant, nearly a foot taller than her. And his eyes connected with hers almost immediately, sending a jolt of electricity up and down her spin. She pressed her lips together, waiting. Her heels clacked across the floor as she approached. Jesus, she knew she could sleep with him again. And she could see it—so hungry in his eyes.
But it wasn’t right. It couldn’t be so. He didn’t have the kind of heart to love, and she knew that. She’d given him a chance, and he didn’t deserve a fucking second one.
“Hello,” Charlotte said as she approached, bringing her hand forward. She shook Peter’s, trying not to show how her face contorted when they touched. “I’m surprised you’re still in Montpellier. Isn’t it like you to dart off to the next destination as soon as you can?”
“I told you, Charlotte,” he said. “I’ve purchased a villa.”
“Purchasing, in your world, doesn’t mean a goddamn thing,” Charlotte said, giving him a snide smile. “We both know that.”
She sat across from him, perched at the edge of her chair. He’d already ordered a bottle of wine, and he poured her a half-glass, his eyes burning into her. It was clear that he wanted something from her. Something she couldn’t completely comprehend.
“What?” she demanded, her eyebrows lowering.
“It’s just. It’s just that I don’t think I want to be at this restaurant right now,” Peter said. He turned his eyes left, right. Charlotte followed suit, analyzing what he spotted. On either side, they were surrounded by rich assholes, French people with their heads tossed back, cackling.
“You suggested it,” Charlotte said, half-rolling her eyes. Yet, there was something about Peter’s reaction, at this moment, that she liked. In his reaction, she spotted that man she assumed they’d left far behind—back in Greenwich, as a teenager, unable to become the Peter that would have billions.
“Well, I am allowed to change my mind,” Peter said, shrugging. “And right now, I want to head out to the sea. It’s still early, dammit. And I don’t know why we waste a single moment inside.”
Charlotte was surprised. She couldn’t fake another reaction. She brought her arms over her chest, tilted her head. Peter lifted a hand toward the waitress, who arrived swiftly. He pushed a fifty-dollar bill toward her and stood from his chair. “I don’t know about you, Charlotte. But I’m heading to the sea. If you want to discuss the ways we can work together out there, please. Come with me.”
Charlotte paused, conscious that her lips were parted. She probably looked like a monstrous version of herself, lost and anxious. But she followed after him, darting out to his convertible and diving into the passenger seat. She watched as he pressed the key into the ignition and revved the engine. Already, he was a portrait of a southern Frenchman, handsome and egotistical and ready to take on the world. And, to anyone passing by, she was his partner in crime.
“What makes you think you can just get away with whatever you want?” Charlotte demanded, just before he pressed his foot against the gas and revved them back into the road, before yanking forward. “What makes you think you can do anything at all?”
But Peter didn’t answer. He just flashed a smile and sped them out toward the water, making Charlotte’s curls whip out behind her. She gazed out from the convertible at the French countryside, her body falling backward. Strangely, for the first time in months, she felt like she was relaxing, allowing tension to fold from her muscles and shoulders. But it went against every impulse, as she was seated alongside her family’s biggest enemy.
But within 10 minutes, Peter drew the car right, down a long gravel driveway, with a large gate at the end. He leaped from the convertible, cranked the key into the gate, and opened it. Then, he marched back to the driver’s seat, slid inside, and arche
d a single eyebrow toward Charlotte. He was showing off. Charlotte wanted to blare her true opinions toward him. Tell him—who the hell did he think he was, showing off his money to her? If he hadn’t eliminated Manu from his company, she might have been all right, as well. Certainly not struggling the way she currently was. The bills had been piling high the past few months. Bills that Manu had shoved across the counter, telling her he couldn’t possibly think about. Not with “everything else” he had to do.
As the car snaked up the driveway, however, Charlotte caught her breath. Her fingers traced lines over her throat. The large house still upheld more ancient French aesthetics, the kind she hadn’t seen up close in all her years of studying architecture. When Peter parked the car, she darted from the car, taking soft steps across the cracked driveway toward the front door. The door was cracked slightly, showing marble floor on the other side. Her fingers itched to slide over the material, to feel the gorgeous hand-formed sculptures along the staircase, to literally understand the historical nature of what other people’s hands had wrought…
“It’s really something, isn’t it?” Peter asked her. She could feel his eyes burning into her face, through her cheeks and across her lips.
She didn’t want to answer, as she knew she would show her amazement. She certainly wouldn’t be able to calm her voice. She whipped her head toward him, trying to make her eyes dull. “It’s all right. Mid-century, what, 1700s?”
“Something like that, yes,” Peter said. “Very good.”
“It’s what I studied. It’s not impressive to know something that’s been your entire adult life,” Charlotte said, refusing to take the compliment. She flipped her hair behind her. Every inch of her body wanted her to march through that ten-foot tall door, to walk up the circular staircase, to feel the depth of history within the mansion walls.
“Well, why not go in there and see what you can see?” Peter asked.
But Charlotte knew she’d be trapped if she entered. Her eyebrows lowered. “I think it’s a bit too early for that, Peter,” she said. “I think, what we both know is this. We have to discuss rates, before you screw me over the way you screwed over my brother. I’m no idiot.”
Peter let out what seemed to be an involuntary laugh. “No, my dear. It seems you really are not.”
Charlotte flipped her hair once more, turning her body entirely away from the mansion. She shrugged, batting her eyelashes. She sensed that Peter wasn’t entirely immune to her beauty. He wasn’t able to ignore her, the way he had so easily back when she’d visited him in New York—an idiot 21 year old, ready to hold his hand into the hereafter.
It was enough to make her chuckle at herself, now. Her stomach spasmed with the humor of it all. The passage of time. The regrets she had for the past. And now, she stood before Peter Bramwell, preparing to broker a deal.
Sail Boat
Charlotte slid back into the passenger seat, spreading her fingers across her lap. She was jittery, her arms and legs tense. It seemed that she fought every inclination to head into the villa and explore. Peter could almost read the thoughts barreling through her mind. “Fuck you. Fuck you for having such an incredible place. Fuck you for tempting me with this job.” But regardless, she was sitting there before him, latching herself into the car once more, and saying: “Well. Where do you want to go to discuss it?”
She was prepared to agree to the job, if the price was right. And given what Peter knew about her current money situation, he sensed that she would probably blare a resounding “YES,” no matter what.
Peter drove the car toward the coast. He told her that he’d explain more when they arrived at their final destination. The heaviness of the silence between them allowed the French winds to whip between them, through their hair. It was a relief to be able to sit with someone in the midst of that chaos, not wanting to cut through it. Several times, Peter had the strange animal-like notion that he needed to reach across and grip Charlotte’s hand. But he knew that touching her would tear down a boundary that she’d spent the previous five years building up.
Peter parked the car in the Sete harbor, just a quarter-mile’s walk from the sailboat he’d purchased a few weeks back. Since then, he’d had a sailor named Montie fix it up for him, painting and sanding and cleaning the sails. Peter, who’d learned to sail a few years back, in Asia, strutted up the side of the boat, his boots teetering across the edge as he gazed down at Charlotte, still on the dock.
“Are you coming?” he asked.
Charlotte dotted her fists on her waist. “I should have known you were going to show off,” she sighed. But her face maintained a wide stretch of a smile. “It’s just who you are, isn’t it?”
“Come on. I want to take her out today. You can either stay or go,” Peter said.
Within 20 minutes, the boat cut out over the waves of the Mediterranean, its sails flapping in the breeze. Charlotte, eternally fearless, didn’t cower against the floor, like many other women. Rather, she gripped the mast and gazed out across the waves, toward the far horizon. Her hair whipped across her face and behind her, untethered.
Peter removed his jacket and his button-down shirt, tearing across the boat deck to man the sails and steer the boat out toward flatter water. Charlotte giggled at his quick actions frequently, her eyes glowing.
“I’m glad I can be a cartoon character for you,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Better that than a villain, huh?” Charlotte returned.
“I suppose so,” he called back. “Although I have to say. I can’t imagine how much you’ll rip me off, as a cartoon character, rather than a villain. This stage of negotiations might be a bit rocky for yours truly.”
“Ha. As if I could possibly rip you off,” Charlotte scoffed. “You’re one of the richest men in the world. It’s not like I haven’t avoided reading about you. Forbes did that whole spread on you a few years back. With that projection of what you’d be making by the year 2020. I had to vomit after that.”
Peter remembered the interview. What a Casanova he’d been, back then: watching the interviewer’s eyes as they snaked along the thickness of his muscular thighs, along the bulge of his pants, toward his burly chest. Even as she’d asked him questions, her lips had glistened with want. The world had been hungry for him.
But the world hadn’t revealed a remarkable taste, in return. It was like he’d bit into a sour apple, a soggy one, without the crispness of the apples of his youth. The world was a pie apple—something you either threw away, or needed to hone and toss into a pie for an hour, before really being able to take pleasure in it.
“All right. I think we can work something out,” Charlotte said.
They’d reached calmer water. She sat against the edge of the sailboat, tossing her heels to the edge of the boat and dipping her toes into the waves. The sun had begun to set, casting oranges and pastel pinks across the gleaming water. Peter watched her from behind, safe in the fact that she didn’t know he was gazing at her. Her neck was swan-like, so gentle and gorgeous, shifting to the right so that she could look down at the waves below.
“What did you have in mind, then?” he heard himself ask. He remained near the mast, ensuring that the boat remained on-course.
Charlotte whipped her head toward him, her eyes still fiery. Yet, when she spoke, there was a somber quality to her voice. “Peter, why did you come to Montpellier?” she asked.
Peter hadn’t expected her to be so outright with her first question. He’d imagined them dancing around the topic forever, bickering in the way of old lovers. He flashed her a smile, unwilling, yet, to answer.
“I’m not sure,” he said, shrugging. “Why does anyone do anything? Drawn to some kind of story of it all, I suppose. We’re all trying to make decisions that continue to make it all interesting, aren’t we?”
“Make what interesting?” she asked, tilting her head. “The very fact of life, you mean? Some of us don’t have that option, Peter. We just have to keep fighting to stay afloat.”
Peter felt his eyes turn to the floor. His feet, bare, gripped the wood as the boat tilted to and fro. If Charlotte had been any other woman, besides the sister of the man he’d wronged (something he admitted only to himself), he might have swatted her words away. He would have forgotten them within moments. But now, they burned into his skull.
“Is he doing all right?” Peter heard himself ask. It was his first attempt at being vulnerable in years.
Charlotte returned her eyes toward the horizon. For a long moment, Peter wondered if he’d even asked the question at all. Perhaps he’d dreamed it.
“He’s not, really,” Charlotte said, stuttering slightly. “Manu’s got this shit job at a bar. He’s gained weight. He no longer looks at the world like it’s this opportunity, like it’s wide open for him.”
She paused, clearing her throat. “And it didn’t happen all at once, after we left for France. When we found out about you. He struggled at first, trying to make his own company. I’m sure you heard about it. He was written up in a few French newspapers and magazines. But he, um. He orchestrated a few half-illegal dealings, which nearly put him in jail. That was a shit-show, Peter. I mean, Jesus. Having to go up to the judge and plead your brother’s case… Trying to explain to him that your brother’s lost his mind because he just lost his best friend and career…”
Peter’s throat felt tight. He tilted the boat more toward the harbor, wondering if Charlotte would continue to speak. He’d, of course, heard mention of Manu’s half-attempt at building his own company abroad. “It didn’t go well,” had been the words of his at-the-time assistant (sometime before he’d met Tyler). And because knowing this had made Peter feel endlessly guilty, he hadn’t followed up on it.
“So, then, he bartended for a bit. Taking fewer and fewer shifts. He kind of gave up on everyone and everything. Including me. Like, I don’t think he knows how much I’ve sacrificed for him,” Charlotte continued.
Peter dropped his hand from the mast and stepped forward, seating himself along the edge of the boat. From this angle, Charlotte looked more beautiful than ever: the orange sunlight glittering across her cheeks and nose. He wanted to draw his hand over the softness of her cheeks and lips, to bring her face toward his. It had been five years since they’d last kissed, and he struggled to make sense of that passage of time. How could he remember just what she tasted like, if, since then, he’d traveled to every single continent, made deals with fifty millionaire businessmen, bought five different houses?