Chapter 16
16
NOVA
I almost kissed Charlie in his kitchen.
I wanted to kiss him, and I have no idea what to do with that. It’s been three days and I can’t stop thinking about the look on his face. Earnest and tired. Vulnerable and honest. His thumb at my bottom lip and our faces so close, all it would have taken is one press of my toes to bring my mouth to his.
I liked it. All of it. The pizza and the talking and the movie and his hand around my ankle. It’s the closest I’ve come to cuddling with another person in years and it was…nice.
Good.
Confusing.
But nice.
Jeremy knocks over something at the front of the shop with the end of the duster he discovered under a stack of boxes. He’s been doing a whole lot of nothing since he showed up this morning.
“When is the grand opening?”
I close one file and open another, double-checking the numbers on my screen with the numbers on the sheet. Everything seems like it’s in the right place, but instead of feeling calm and confident, I’m just paranoid that I’ve forgotten something. Especially since I’ve been spending most of my morning staring into space and checking my phone for texts from Charlie.
“We officially open October fifteenth. But we have a soft launch coming up.” I glance up when Jeremy makes a confused sound. “A party for invited guests only,” I explain. “Influencers and other tattoo artists so they can spread the word and hopefully bring in more business.”
I wasn’t sure about the concept at first, but I hit capacity for the event ten minutes after I sent the invitations. Layla is making little cakes shaped like succulents for people to snack on, and I rented a taco truck to serve food out front. Cake and tacos and tiny tattoos from a preselected offering list I printed out on fancy cardstock, Ink & Wild in looping print across the top. I pull the stack out of a drawer and trail my thumb over it. The tattoos I’m offering are all trademarks of my style—a bouquet with a trailing red ribbon, a hand holding a palm full of stars—color and delicate line work that I can replicate quickly and easily.
I’m excited for it. Excited and nervous. Charlie told me last night that I don’t have to be perfect, but I do. I do. This needs to work. Not only because it’s my dream, but because so many people have given up the things they’ve loved to get me here. If I fail now—if I lose focus for even a second—my house of cards could come tumbling down around me.
I wish it were easier to believe in myself. I wish it were easier to believe that all of this is going to stick around. That I’ve earned it. But imposter syndrome hangs over my head like a storm cloud I can’t chase away.
I close the folder and dig my thumb into the middle of my forehead. Apparently even when things are going well, I’m going to panic. Awesome.
“Oh. Can I come?”
“To the event?” I ask. Jeremy nods. “Are you going to help?”
He shrugs. “Sure.”
“Then, yes, you can come.”
He shifts on his feet and dusts the edge of a mirror, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “Can I get a tattoo?”
“No.”
The door to the tattoo shop swings open and Charlie appears. Expensive camel coat with the collar turned up and a thick green sweater beneath. Awareness lights me up, a knot of anticipation low in my belly.
I scowl at him. He grins.
“Hiya, Nova girl. Did you miss me?”
Yes. Unfortunately, I think that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.
“No.” I tip-tap my way across the keyboard and pretend like I’m doing something important. “Why? Have you missed me?”
He strolls his way to the table and drops a folder and two cups of coffee on the edge. “Desperately,” he says, still with that grin. He glances over his shoulder at where Jeremy is pretending to dust while I pretend to type. We really do make an excellent pair. Nothing is ever going to get done in this studio. “Are you aware that Jeremy is assaulting your tattoo displays?”
Jeremy huffs. “I’m dusting them.”
Charlie’s face collapses in confusion. “Why?”
“Because I work here,” Jeremy says, sounding far too smug for someone who has been employed for less than seventy-two hours.
Charlie turns back to me with both of his eyebrows raised. I raise mine right back.
“What?”
Charlie picks up one of the coffees, opens the lid to peer inside, then hands it to me. “Nothing.”
I reach for it and curl my palms around its warmth. It smells like cinnamon and pumpkin, my favorite Tuesday pick-me-up from Ms. Beatrice’s. Charlie takes the other cup for himself and props himself against my desk.
“It doesn’t look like nothing.”
He shrugs and picks up one of my printed tattoo cards. “You’ve got an ooey gooey heart, Nova Porter.”
I snatch the card out of his hand and put it back on the stack. “No, I don’t.” Apparently, I have a bubble-wrapped heart. A stone heart, if my siblings are to be believed.
He hums and plucks up another one. “Yes, you do. You’re a big ol’ softie beneath all of those tattoos. But don’t worry.” He winks and goose bumps erupt across my skin like a shower of sparks. “Your secret is safe with me.”
I might be safe with him, but I’m starting to think I’m not so safe from him. Not my secrets and not this feeling in my chest every single time he’s around. Like someone is pressing down and pulling me up at exactly the same time.
I am cracked wide open, want spilling out and filling me to the brim. I don’t understand how this happened. I don’t have cravings and I don’t do distractions. I don’t go back for seconds.
But I think Charlie might be the exception to that rule. He was supposed to get out of my system, not burrow himself deeper.
He looks at the tiny tattoo card in his hand and waves it back and forth. “What are these for?”
“Exclusive influencer party,” Jeremy answers from the front of the room. Christ, I forgot he was here. “You’re not invited.”
“Is that so?” Charlie ignores Jeremy completely and stares down at me, one dark eyebrow raised. “Am I not invited, Nova?”
“Do you want to be invited?”
“Depends.” He taps the card against the palm of his hand. “Can I get a tattoo?”
“I don’t know. Tiny Oompa-Loompas aren’t one of the selections.”
His navy eyes linger on one of the tattoos in the bottom right corner. It’s a small peony, the petals in full bloom. A twin to the one inked across my ribs. His gaze flicks to me and the old T-shirt I have knotted at my waist, considering. I brace for myself for impact, but the flirty innuendo never arrives. He jerks his eyes back to the card in his hands and clears his throat. Like he doesn’t want to be caught doing something he shouldn’t be.
“I think I’d like one of these,” he says, ignoring the suggestive comment wrapped in a bow that I dropped in his lap. I don’t know if it’s because Jeremy is here and clearly listening or because he’s suddenly concerned with holding a boundary between us. But it stings.
Last night, I stood with my face tilted toward his and waited for a kiss that never came. This feels just like that. Like he’s being careful to make the right choice when he has never once been careful with me. He hasn’t been careless either, but he’s been…open. Honest. Aggressively transparent with whatever is going on in that head of his. He’s made excuses to be close and flirted his way through conversations.
And now he’s standing on the other side of the table pretending to study a card and keeping his thoughts to himself. I thought that’s what I wanted. Everything kept in neat boxes. But I don’t like it at all.
I pluck the card from his hand. “No, you still can’t get a tattoo.”
“Got something special planned for me?”
I snort. “Sure.”
A warning label, right at the hollow of his throat. This man will upset all of your carefully laid plans. He will be your biggest distraction.
“I’m going to hold you to that. In the meantime—” He drops the files tucked under his arm on the table. “Here.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s Form 941 for your federal taxes. I didn’t see it with your other paperwork.”
“What other paperwork?”
“The paperwork on your kitchen table.”
I take a small sip from the take-out cup. It’s exactly the way I like it, down to the cinnamon sprinkled on top. “When were you going through the paperwork on my kitchen table?”
“When I was waiting for your coffee pot to brew,” he says, lowering his voice to a gruff rasp. “While you were sleeping.”
When I was naked in my bed, he means, and he was shuffling through my house in nothing but his pants, unbuttoned and low around his hips, bleary-eyed and messy-haired.
He taps the top of the folder. “You need to file that with the rest of your stuff.”
I flick it open and look down at the top piece of paper. Charlie has already filled out most of the information, down to my business-identification number. The itchy, claustrophobic feeling from earlier comes roaring back, pressing against my shoulders.
“I can’t believe I forgot something,” I murmur.
“Yes. I can’t believe you forgot this one document out of the seven hundred you need to complete in order to open a business in the state of Maryland.” He leans over the desk and shows me the blank line at the bottom of the page. “Sign here and I’ll send it in for you.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I’m happy to.”
I know he is and that somehow makes everything worse. That he’ll bring me my favorite coffee and the forms I forgot to fill out and ask for nothing for himself. I wish I knew what he wanted. I wish I knew what I wanted too.
I sign the bottom of the paper and toss it in the top drawer of my desk. I’ll send it myself. I don’t need any more favors from Charlie.
He slurps at his coffee, purposely making it louder than it needs to be. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a stubborn woman?”
“With alarming frequency and incredible detail,” I volley back. I give him a tight smile. He huffs a laugh and tips his head toward the door.
“You ready to go?”
“Go where?”
“Business visits,” he explains. “You said you wanted to do those this week.”
No part of me wants to walk with Charlie through town right now. I still feel too raw, too unfocused, too wobbly on the edge of…everything. But it’s a thing that needs to be done, and I did promise.
“Sure,” I sigh.
Charlie laughs. “What glowing enthusiasm.”
I stand from my chair and grab for my coat. Charlie is pleased with himself, watching me struggle with the sleeves of my jacket with unbridled amusement. “Stop making that face,” I snap.
“We’ve been over this, Nova girl. This is just how my face looks.”
“Well, it’s a dumb face,” I grumble.
Charlie laughs, a flash of white teeth, eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Sure it is.” He takes another slow sip of his coffee and winks at me. “That must be why you look at it so much.”
?I am a mess.
I am grumpy and frustrated and far too aware of Charlie. The stretch of his shoulders beneath his coat and the smell of his cologne. The strong line of his jaw and the way he twists his big body to block me from the wind that keeps lifting my hair. He tries to engage me in conversation, and I grunt in response, too stuck in my own head.
This is why I don’t date. This is why I don’t do relationships. I should be focused on the harvest festival and the shop, and instead I’m worried about why Charlie didn’t kiss me in his kitchen. I hate feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’ve never had any clue when it comes to relationships.
I feel stupid. Childish. A silly girl with a crush.
We abandon any attempts at conversation by our second stop on Main Street, standing in the record shop like two people who don’t even know each other. Charlie is charming and I am…not, flicking through a collection of eighties punk rock instead of trying to do what I volunteered to do. I’m just going through the motions, stuck in my own head and this weird tension that won’t seem to break.
He’s still holding strong to his infuriating level of careful. Careful to keep a polite amount of space between us. Careful to only speak when spoken to. Careful, careful, careful. He doesn’t knock into my shoulder or tease me about his theoretical tattoos after our third stop. He keeps his head down with both hands gripped tight to some invisible boundary we never discussed. All of his touches are polite and brief, and while I’m busy trying not to think too much about any of it and why it feels like a sledgehammer in the middle of my chest, he’s acting like Inglewild’s prodigal son.
This is what you wanted , I remind myself. This is what you told him you wanted.
Everywhere we go, it seems like someone wants to talk to him. I’ve lived here my entire life, but he greets people I’ve never seen before with a smile and a handshake, asking after grandchildren and pets like everyone is a long-lost family member. The attention and well-wishes make him light up, and I’m the black storm cloud trailing after him.
“How do you know all of these people?” I grumble as Becky Gardener waves over her shoulder. I’ve been in and out of three stores while she and Charlie stood on the sidewalk and talked about bean dip recipes. He agreed to write his down for her and drop it by the daycare center. Something about Taco Tuesday. I really don’t know. I’m still too confused on the how to investigate the why. Also, I don’t care.
Charlie scratches once behind his ear and squints into the sun. He pulls a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and slips them up his nose. I am quietly devastated once again by how good-looking he is, and then annoyed that I’ve noticed. I never used to notice.
Then he fucked me in twelve different positions across my bedroom and watched a Katharine Hepburn movie with me and now I can’t stop noticing.
Charlie glances at me over his dark lenses. “I spend a lot of time in town, Nova. I know who people are.”
But there’s a difference between spending time somewhere and knowing the dates of dance recitals…allergy information and whose kids have been working on their T-ball swing. He knows details. He cares about them. He’s invested.
“Why?” I ask. Charlie is here almost every other weekend, even before he committed to overseeing Lovelight Farms for Stella. “Why do you spend so much time down here?”
“Stella is here.”
“You don’t always see her when you come down.”
A half smile tugs at his mouth as he pushes his glasses back up his nose. “Are you keeping tabs on me?”
“You’re difficult to miss, Charlie. Especially when you’re wearing a tutu and doing a keg stand at trivia night.”
“It was ballet themed,” he mumbles to himself, referencing the long-held, passionately defended town rule that all trivia nights adhere to a dress code related to the theme. He kicks at a loose rock on the sidewalk. “My friends are here,” he says quieter, seemingly talking to his boots. “Alex and Caleb. Your brother. Luka.”
“You don’t have city friends?”
“I have city friends,” he replies, but he doesn’t sound too sure of that answer. He sighs. “I like it here.”
“You like it here.”
“Yes. I like it here.” His eyes are unreadable behind the dark lenses of his glasses. “The food is good.”
“You’re visiting from New York and you think the food is good? Here?”
Ms. Beatrice has a decent breakfast and Matty makes some excellent pizza, sure, but it’s not New York.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” His lips are twisted down in a frown. It’s a strange look on his handsome face. Out of place. “What’s with the inquisition?”
“I’m trying to figure you out.”
“Well, best of luck with that. Let me know what you discover when you do.” He nudges my shoulder with his and tips his chin toward Rooted, a tall, domed glass building at the very end of the block. Mabel’s greenhouse is our last stop of the day. “Let’s finish up. I know you’ve got other stuff you want to get to.”
His comment sours my mood further. If I wanted to be doing other things, I’d be doing them. For some reason that defies logical explanation, I wanted to do this with Charlie today. I wanted to bring him pizza the other night. I wanted him to kiss me in his kitchen, and I want him to kiss me now.
And it’s making me a grump.
As we’re crossing the street, I catch him reaching for my elbow, only to redirect himself and tuck his hand in the pocket of his jacket instead. It snaps the tether I’m keeping on myself.
“What are you doing?”
He blinks at me. “I am…crossing the street with you.”
“With your hands,” I clip. “What are you doing with your hands?”
He glances at his hands in his pockets like the explanation for my sudden outburst will be there. “My hands are in my pockets.”
“I know they are. Why are they in your pockets?”
“Because it’s…cold?” He answers my question with a question, his eyebrows furrowed in a confused slash. “What are we arguing about right now?”
I wish I knew. I wish I could figure out this tangled-up, twisted feeling making an ugly mess in my chest. This…want that won’t go away.
“You keep—” I bite off the rest of my sentence, frustrated. I step up on the curb and tell myself to get it together.
Charlie pulls me to a stop on the sidewalk, tucking us both halfway in the alley between the duckpin bowling alley and the bar. It’s the first time he’s touched me with intention all day, and he immediately drops my elbow to tug off his sunglasses, hooking them in the front of his green sweater. It dips in the front, exposing the hollow of his throat. I stare at that tiny patch of skin instead of his face.
He ducks his head down and tries to meet my eyes. “What’s going on with you?”
“Me? You’re the one with the problem.” I poke him hard in the chest. We somehow keep finding ourselves here, arguing about nothing. “You’re different.”
His lips flatten into a line. “No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You’re…” I think about our conversation in my kitchen, the night all of this started. He told me he wouldn’t fuck me if it would change things between us, but he’s the one doing the changing. “You’re hiding from me.”
His jaw clenches tight. “I’m not.”
“You are,” I tell him. “You’re acting differently, and I have no idea why.”
“Nova.”
“Don’t ‘Nova’ me,” I snap. It’s making me feel like I’m imagining things and I’m not. I know that I’m not. “I thought we fixed things. Are you still mad about what I said at my parents’ house?”
“I’m not mad,” he mumbles, but he thrusts his hand through his hair, pulling lightly at the ends. “I was never mad, Nova. We’re fine. Everything is fine.”
“We are not fine.” I cross my arms over my chest, tugging my coat tighter around me. The six inches of space between us might as well be a mile. “What’s changed? Why are you acting like…this?”
“Like what?”
“Polite,” I spit, like the word is personally offensive. He’s acting like a watered-down version of himself. Like we were never friends to begin with.
“I know it’s hard to believe, Nova, but I can be a polite, mature person.”
“Not with me,” I say. “With me, you’re just yourself. You don’t try to be anything other than Charlie.”
And that’s the painful rub of it, I think. The part that chafes. Last night in a kitchen that was too small to contain the whole of him, Charlie was more himself with me than he’s ever been. He didn’t try to shape himself into anything other than exactly who he is. An honest, kind man. No fancy clothes or quippy comebacks. No flirtation or innuendo. Just Charlie and the person he is beneath everything else. He dropped the performance.
And then this morning, he showed up at my shop and acted like it never happened.
“I’m trying to—” He huffs, eyes flashing. “I’m trying to do what you want.”
“And what do I want?”
“I wish I fucking knew!” It explodes out of him in a rush, frantic energy crackling like bursts of static. “I wish I knew what you wanted, Nova. That would make all of this a hell of a lot easier.”
“I want you to be normal with me.”
“And what is normal, huh?” He drags his palm along his freshly shaven jaw. His gaze holds mine, frustration in the lines by his eyes. “What’s normal for us, Nova? Sometimes we argue, sometimes we laugh, but most of the time, you can’t stand the sight of me.”
“That’s not true,” I tell him.
“Isn’t it?” He steps closer until I’m pressed against the brick wall, his chest brushing against mine. I suck in a breath. “I like you, Nova, but I’ve got no fucking clue what normal looks like for us. I’m not being different on purpose. I’m just…I’m trying to hold myself together around you.”
My chest feels fit to burst. Everything is hanging on by a thread. The shop, the fight with my brother, Charlie and all the things I don’t want to be feeling. I’m being tugged in too many directions and it’s all of my own doing. Why is this so hard for me? Why do I tuck myself in these carefully constrained boxes? Why do I put…all of this pressure on myself to be perfect in every single way?
Why do I feel like if I want too many things, I’m going to lose all of it?
My heart thunders in my chest. I tip my head back and stare at Charlie, letting go of all the things I should and should not be thinking and feeling and doing. I let myself be right here. In this spot. With him.
I let myself want.
“Well, stop it,” I breathe.
Charlie looks at me, exhausted, one hand anchored against the back of his neck. He releases it with a sigh and props himself against the wall at my side, his palm against the brick, his long body slouched in exasperation. Loose lines and slumped shoulders.
“Sure, all right,” he says. “What should I stop?”
“Stop holding yourself together,” I tell him, and then I do exactly what I’ve wanted to do every single time I’ve seen him since he left me in my bed with a Post-it note smiley face and a hickey on my neck. I do the thing I told myself I wasn’t allowed to do.
I press up on my toes, cup Charlie’s face in my hands, and I kiss him.