Chapter 38 #2
“No, you did not,” Charlie answers. “That was it. Bye.” He sets the phone down and looks at me.
“Fine. I’ll stay here.” It should at least be clear that I didn’t plan this.
“Hold up. I have a condition now.”
“Seriously?”
He crosses his arms over his chest. “No saying stuff like that.”
“Like what? That I love—”
“That. We will be regular Ruby and Charlie and all that stuff stays out.”
I suppress a snort. If Charlie thinks leaving that “stuff’ out is a thing I have any control over, we might be experiencing very different kinds of love. “It definitely feels like regular Ruby and Charlie right now.”
He smiles. “It does, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. So what do we do now? I think there’s official conference stuff tonight.” I open my event app to check. “A hosted welcome dinner, three courses, plus a moderated conversation with some pretty cool authors for the low, low price of an extra hundred dollars each.”
“Or we Door Dash a bunch of snacks from the 7-Eleven and stream Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.”
I set down my phone. “You’re a genius.”
“Been telling you that for a minute now.”
Three hours later, we are both resting against the headboard, full of junk food and watching the end credits roll on the movie.
In so many ways, it’s like old times. Us on my sofa or Charlie’s, watching a movie and eating snacks.
But there is a huge difference tonight: my senses are heightened, absorbing Charlie in a way I realize I must have been doing subconsciously for months. Has it been even longer? Is that why I couldn’t help seeing Niles’s proposal for everything it lacked?
We’re not even sitting that close—we could fit Ava between us and all still have room—but I still sense the warmth of his body, the comforting weight of it anytime he shifts and disturbs the mattress. And his Charlie smell. His real smell is Ivory soap, petrichor, and pine.
Between that and running through all the steps for tomorrow, the movie was barely background noise. At least I’d watched it enough as a kid to laugh along with Charlie at the right parts.
He looks at his watch. “It’s barely 9:00. Another movie?”
Sure, Charlie, if that will help you avoid any meaningful conversations. Enjoy your last night of freedom from them, because everything changes tomorrow.
“The TV has actual cable with a program guide and everything. When’s the last time you saw that?”
“Every time I’m at my parents’ house,” he says.
“Not me. Let’s channel surf.”
He looks at me like he’s trying to figure out if I’m serious. “Like . . . flip through channels?”
“Yes. Literally stop and watch anything that looks interesting and change channels the second it’s not anymore.”
He hands me the remote.
For the next hour or so, we gorge ourselves on empty TV calories, skipping from a weather report to a documentary on aliens, covering cartoons, fly-fishing, and a singing competition in between.
Finally, a yawn comes for me, and when it seems like every station is either airing old ballgames or reruns of sitcoms we’ve never heard of, I turn off the TV.
“Bedtime for all good children everywhere,” I say. “Tell me the plan. If you say you’re going to sleep on the floor, I’ll make fun of you because no, you are not.”
He gets up and gathers food wrappers. “Of course I’m not sleeping on the floor. You are.”
I throw a pillow at him, which he deflects without even looking.
“We’ll wash our faces, brush our teeth, put on pajamas.” He ambles over to the small garbage can to drop our trash. “And then we sleep in that bed. Genius in its simplicity.”
“Just to make sure I have it, we two who love each other madly, but one of whom is pretending we don’t, are going to sleep in this bed together as if none of those conversations has happened? Got it.”
He sighs and runs a hand over his face. “Off the bed.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
Bossy Charlie. Intriguing. I slide off to stand beside it. “Am I sleeping here like a horse?”
He ignores me and lifts the end of the stiff decorative coverlet, quickly rolling the whole thing before he flips it perpendicular and settles it in the middle of the bed.
“The plan is that you pick a side, then we go to sleep, and that bolster,” he points, like I won’t notice the only newly constructed bolster, “protects my maidenly virtue.”
“Charlie. We’re really not going to talk about us?”
He looks at me, his face tired. “Ruby. You’re really going to make me regret having you stay?”
I climb back on the bed and sit in my spot. “Why don’t you believe me?”
“Why won’t you let this go?”
“It’s important. The most important. There has never been anything more important in my life. Why would you let this go?”
“Because I have to!”
I draw back. Well. There’s a flash of temper he’s never directed at me before. I do what I did for years when my brothers’ moods changed with every teammate, girlfriend, or other Ramos who rubbed them wrong. I choose not to react. “You good if I get ready for bed?”
“Yeah.”
I grab my toiletry kit and pajamas and shut myself in the small bathroom.
It’s a nice hotel, but we got budgeted for the cheapest rooms. At least, the one of us who remembered to reserve one did.
There’s only a shower, no tub, and the vanity isn’t big, but it’s big enough.
I change into my pajamas, thankful I brought my long-sleeved knit ones because I’m always freezing in hotel rooms.
Ten minutes later, I emerge with my hair pulled back by a soft headband, secured in a stubby ponytail to keep it off my clean face while I sleep.
Charlie is sitting at the foot of the bed, elbows on his knees.
“All yours.” I pass him to put my stuff back in my suitcase.
“Ruby.”
“Charles.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Forgiven.”
“No, I mean I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay. I pushed and I shouldn’t have.”
“It wasn’t okay for me to snap at you like that.”
I turn to face him. “That’s true.”
He looks relieved that I’m not letting it slide completely. “You’re too important to me to lose. I don’t want to be ruined.”
“You won’t be,” I say softly. “I would never let that happen.”
He speaks as quietly as I do. “Those weeks after the Treehouse were hell. But instead of learning my lesson, I kissed you. Told myself as long as you were good with it, I could satisfy my curiosity and think of it as a goodbye kiss to pointless hopes.”
“I wasn’t good with it. I wanted it,” I say fiercely. “Getting it was what made me understand why I wanted it. Untangled some things.”
“It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.” His voice is flat, and his eyes look both restless and bone weary. “Knowing makes everything harder.”
“Knowing what? That we kiss each other like it’s what we were born for?” I’m standing in the corner where I left my suitcase wedged between the desk and the wall, but it would only take three steps to reach him. To remind him.
“I don’t think this is how love is supposed to be. The kind I feel, it doesn’t take figuring out. It just is. I’ve been over here, grateful for every crumb you give me, but at some point, you’ll run out of them, because it’s not the same kind of love. That poem—”
“I’m really beginning to dislike that poet.”
He gives a soft laugh. “I keep coming back to lines from it. He said that love will crown you, but it will also crucify you. Only one person ever came back from that, and I’m no saint.”
“And I’m not a distant mountain or whatever else he said. I’m right here.” I point at the floor. “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy—”
“Do not Notting Hill me.”
“Don’t call me a mountain.”
“You’re not a mountain, Ruby. You’re a gem.”
“I might actually kill you.” But I can’t fight a smile.
He returns it. “At least it would stop the merry-go-round.”
It’s a merry-go-round we don’t need to be on, but I can see I’m not getting through to him. It’s time to retreat, but only to regroup. “I’m going to ask you a question that I don’t want you to answer yet. I want you to think about it. We can talk about it when we get home.”
“Can’t promise I’ll answer.”
I shrug. “You will.”
He raises his eyebrows, waiting.
“How do you know if someone loves you? You, specifically. That’s the question. Will you think about it?”
He gives a slow nod, like he already is.
“And not answer in the form of quoted poetry?”
He smiles. “Okay.”
“Awesome. Are you done talking? I need to go to bed.”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, sorry I forced that conversation and kept it going.”
“I forgive you.”
“Do I get to make a demand now?”
I wave my hand like a gracious queen. “We will hear your request.”
He points to the bolster. “Respect the boundary.”
“You’re acting like I’m a sex-crazed maniac.”
“I’m acting like you don’t listen so well when I say I don’t want to be climbed like a tree, because you don’t.”
“You definitely want to be climbed like a tree.”
His eyes flash with the same desire I saw in his kitchen during the incident under discussion. He takes a deep breath and rolls his neck. When he looks at me, his eyes are guarded again. “You’re making my point.”
“It was one time, Charlie. You’re safe.” I pause to consider this. “Unless we both get too close to the bathroom counter at the same time. Seems like counters might be a thing.”
He puts his hands on his hips and stares at the floor. “Ramos. You’re not listening.”
“Look at me, Charlie Bucket.” I say it softly, and when he looks up, I meet his eyes and let him see how serious my next words are. “I heard everything you said. You’re safe with me.”
“It would be the stupidest thing in the world, Ruby.”
“Go brush your teeth and wash your face and come to bed. No one is going to cross the bolster to ravish you in the middle of the night.”
His stuff is already in the bathroom, and he walks toward it, muttering.
I can’t be sure, but it sounds a whole lot like he’s cussing out the bolster.