Chapter Nineteen #2
I try to imagine it. In some ways, the only thing that isn’t there is a physical relationship.
But how are we supposed to go from work spouses and best friends to suddenly .
. . what? Making out? I can’t even meet Charlie’s eyes as that thought shoves its way through my brain.
I hate this, and I don’t know what to do.
“Why now?” He studies his clasped hands for a few seconds. “Ever since the bet started, we’ve been hurtling toward a reckoning. I didn’t want it to be an explosion where the best either of us could hope for was shrapnel wounds.”
“So this is a controlled detonation.” Knowing Charlie is the one taking damage right now causes more cracks to spider across my heart.
“I guess it is.” The words are subdued.
I didn’t do this to him, but I’m the cause of it. Does that mean I’m the one person who can’t help right now? I want to. I don’t know what to do.
Charlie groans. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what? I’m not doing anything.”
“Like you’re trying to figure out how to donate your kidney to me like I’m dying. You’re making it weird.”
I gasp, my head flying up. “I’m not the one who—”
I break off when he starts laughing.
“Better,” he says. “We can’t fix this if you act like I’m broken.”
“How am I supposed to act?” It comes out like a whine, and I hate it, because that makes it about me. I force my tone to be more matter-of-fact. “Tell me what you need me to do, and I’ll do it.”
“Nothing. It’s okay. It’s my problem, not yours.”
“But it is!”
He looks startled by the way the words burst out of me. It deepens the sense I’ve been doing things wrong for months but no one told me, and I hate that I had no chance to get it right.
I shift to my knees and give the net another hard yank to let him know I’m bugged.
Everything is changing, and I don’t like it.
It’s hard enough not to think about when Madison marries and leaves me, with Sami not far behind.
I’ve been fighting to stay in my bubble, and Charlie is supposed to be my constant.
“We’ve always been so good. Why couldn’t it have been enough? ”
“I didn’t choose this, Ruby.” He doesn’t change position, but he’s tense now, the muscles in his arms corded.
Good. Good. He’s spent the last several minutes wreaking havoc on our friendship, and I’ve been trying to keep it together, but it’s jagged glass and it won’t hold anything. It’s all pouring out.
“This detonation isn’t controlled at all.
” I hear the edge of panic in my voice, but I lost control the second Charlie said he didn’t know what he needed me to do.
“You blew everything up because you were tired of waiting, and you can’t .
. .” I search for the words, upset that I can’t articulate the feeling.
“You can’t even give me a damage report. I don’t know what to fix or how.”
“You don’t need to fix anything.”
“But it’s broken now!”
“No, it isn’t. We aren’t.”
“Can you promise everything is going to be the same? You can’t,” I say, reading the answer on his face. “It was fine before, and now it’s not.”
“It was fine for you before,” he says.
“It’s not my fault that it wasn’t fine for you!”
Charlie is looking at me with a mixture of frustration and puzzlement.
He’s seen me get annoyed when things go wrong at work, even seen me get downright mad when I feel like one of my people has been wronged, but I’ve never turned on him.
The puzzlement is an insult, like he can’t fathom why I’m mad.
“You know what, Charlie?”
Charlie shifts to his knees, his face unreadable. “Tell me, Ruby. Tell me what.”
“You broke this, and it sucks.”
Hurt rolls across his face before his mouth tightens.
I hear the sound of footsteps approaching on the bridge, reminding me that our cocoon is an illusion. We’re about to lose even that delusion of privacy, and it makes me madder.
Charlie stands. “Let’s get out of here.” His voice is flat as he offers me a hand.
A group of five college students steps from the bridge onto the netting. I accept Charlie’s help up, not in the mood for their friendly noise.
As he pulls me to my feet, a dude who looks like he wrestles heavyweight bounds onto the mesh. It’s not springy like a trampoline, but the force of his landing tips me off-balance, and I fall backward, yanking Charlie with me.
As The Rock’s friends laugh and protest his antics, Charlie lands over me, pressing me into the net. I’m not hurt, but he immediately leverages himself to his elbows, his bangs falling into his anxious eyes as he looks down at me.
“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
I feel him everywhere around me, his breath brushing against my cheeks, his elevated heart rate from being startled.
His warmth feels strange to me now when it was familiar to me not even an hour ago as I’d tucked into his side when we got here.
I want to get away from it because I don’t understand how it could change so fast.
Realizing he has me trapped, he sucks in a sharp breath and pushes away from me.
I scramble to my feet and look down at him, unable to name the feelings tumbling noisily inside me. “I’ll walk myself home.”
I don’t like being alone, but I’ve found something I dislike more: feeling alone when I’m with Charlie.