But How Are You, Really

Chapter 9

TEXT MESSAGE FROM CHARLOTTE THORNE TO REECE KRUEGER, 1:07 PM:You still at the pond?

TEXT MESSAGE FROM REECE KRUEGER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 1:10 PM:yeah! bring nachos

Cobalt Pond wasn’t actually a pond. Decades ago, the Hein family supplemented its fortune by carving marble out of the Massachusetts landscape. Nature had taken the quarry back, filling its deep crevices with rainwater and runoff from a nearby river.

Four miles from campus on land now owned by the county, the quarry was a destination for Hein students during the warmer months of term. The water could freeze your toes off except for a handful of weeks in August, but its grassy banks were the perfect place to stretch out with coursework and a cheap bottle of wine. Generations of local kids added their graffiti tags on the marble outcroppings. Bros jumped like falling stars from the taller cliffs, shouting and spiraling through the air on their way down. Every so often alumni returned to take their engagement photos at the water’s edge in the fall, the burning red leaves a perfect New England backdrop.

Today the quarry boasted a full house. Hein students and alumni scattered in small groups around the jagged edge of the quarry’s mouth. A few people waded in the water despite the chill.

Jackie dropped Charlotte off on the roadside. “I’m going to take a nap while you’re out, and then let’s head to the clothing swap at five.” She passed Charlotte a bottle of sunscreen from her tote bag. “Text me when you’re on your way back, okay? We can find something fun for you to wear tonight.”

“Sounds good.” Charlotte popped open the sunscreen and rubbed a splotch across the bridge of her nose. “Are you sure you don’t mind me ditching you? You’re welcome to join us.”

Jackie waved her off. “Go have fun, we have all night.” She tossed over the take-out bag of nachos. “Five p.m., don’t forget!”

“I won’t.”

After Jackie sped off, Charlotte crouched to roll up the cuffs of her jeans. The reunion committee had lucked out with the weather; today’s temperature was in the midseventies. Perfect conditions to hang out at an old marble quarry with your ex and his bros after a night of sex and unspoken feelings.

She strode through the grass to the pond. A quick scan confirmed that Ben wasn’t there. Maybe he’d only come to the reunion for the Thursday night panel? She wouldn’t put it past him to bounce as soon as he wasn’t the center of attention anymore.

A clique of proper adults—ten-year Hein alums, presumably—sat with a toddler on a faded quilt. Charlotte spotted the hockey guys on the opposite bank, a cooler open beside an old charcoal grill. Garrett stoked the flames under a bunch of burgers, an HU hockey cap backward on his head.

Misty romped toward her across the marble. Her red tail wagged like a flag on the back of a bicycle.

Charlotte kneeled to greet the pup. “Hey, honey.” Misty threw herself into her arms and arranged herself on Charlotte’s chest, panting happily. “Oh, you want to be carried, do you? Okay, princess.”

Garrett stiffened as she approached their cookout, but he gave her a polite enough wave with the spatula. He must have resigned himself to her presence after Reece went MIA last night and returned in a good mood. “What’s good? Burger?”

“I’m full, thanks. But I brought nacho fries from Terry’s.” She put her leftovers down on the cooler as a peace offering.

Liam sprawled in a beach chair, a baseball cap pulled down over his face. He patted blindly atop the cooler until his hand landed on the nachos. Then he pulled the bag into his lap and fed himself a chip, all without emerging from underneath the brim of his hat.

“Late night?” Charlotte asked.

Garrett flipped a patty. “Liam was foolish enough to partake in illicit drugs.”

The bro in question groaned inaudibly.

Charlotte winced, unable to relate but still sympathetic. “Where’s Reece?”

“He’s swimming again.” She followed the tip of his spatula to a head bobbing in the water.

“Jesus, he must be freezing.”

Garrett shrugged. “Spare towels are by the marshmallows.”

She nodded her thanks and eased Misty to the ground.

Charlotte stepped out of her loafers and sank her toes into the grass. She hadn’t brought a swimsuit with her, but as far as she could tell, the bros hadn’t either.

A well-worn dirt path led the way to the clifftop. She chose her footing carefully, dodging exposed roots and abandoned bottle caps. At the peak, the marble was slick and smooth against her skin. The outcropping over the water had softened underneath nearly a century of adventurous feet.

The warm air kissed her body as she stripped off her shirt and her jeans, leaving them in a heap on the stone. She ignored the voice in her head that worried over the temperature of the water and the height of the jump. Back in college she thought nothing of throwing herself off a thirty-foot cliff in her underpants and a sports bra.

Charlotte’s toes found the edge of the cliff. The water was black despite the sunshine pouring across its surface—the quarry’s depth ate up the light. She hugged her arms around her chest.

The impact would shock her body. She’d be freezing when she got out too; the air wasn’t hot enough to dry her thick hair. She’d forgotten to bring a scrunchie.

Reece swam laps below her. He sliced through the water with even precision, performing a steady freestyle, one arm after the other. She pictured him easily as one of those elderly men in the YMCA pool at six a.m., faded swim trunks and a white towel from the front desk. Reece would always be handsome, at any age. He’d still have those crinkling green eyes when he smiled.

“Yo,” she shouted down to him. Reece stopped his laps, treading water as he peered around. “Up here!”

He craned his neck. “Charlie?” For a moment he looked disoriented, but then he beamed up at her from underneath his dripping hair. “Are you gonna jump?”

She wasn’t sure. Thirty feet didn’t look like much from the ground, but up here…Reece bobbed like a tiny LEGO man in the water.

“I don’t know!”

He laughed, not unkindly. “You don’t have to! I can swim around and meet you in the shallows.”

Because of course he would. Reece would never pressure her into doing something stupid, even if there wasn’t much of a risk to it. She didn’t have to do this if she didn’t want to—he wouldn’t think any less of her.

“How’s the water?” she called down.

His barking laugh was answer enough. “Awful!”

She looked around the pond. Reece was the only person actually in the water. The past winter had been a rough one, no doubt freezing the quarry into a thick layer of ice. By the end of the summer the water would be pleasantly cool. Today it only hurt.

Reece treaded water as he watched her make up her mind. He didn’t look cold, or maybe he just didn’t care. “You get used to it,” he yelled.

It was a terrible idea, but the whole point of the reunion was to do childish shit as long as no one got hurt. This was a reprieve from responsibility: no strategy, no five-year plan, no fail-safe.

Fun.

When was the last time she’d taken a risk? A real risk, not just ordering delivery at a new restaurant or experimenting with shoulder pads. Where was the brash impulsiveness she once had, the wonderful jerk who bought a box of cheap hair dye and blew off studying for finals to go to Amy’s a cappella concert?

Where was the girl who refused to apologize for her identity, even in the face of her mother’s disapproval?

Charlotte thought longingly of the girl she was before she graduated college. But that wasn’t right either—this went further back than that. She bubble-wrapped herself after her breakup with Ben. Since graduation, she insulated herself against happiness even more. Some of what she felt was burnout, and some of it was genuine clinical depression, but most of it was just her. She let herself stagnate.

Once upon a time, Charlotte hadn’t feared every risk and unknown path.

She wanted to be brave again. Fuck, did she want to be brave again.

Before she could consider the many ways she could injure herself, Charlotte stepped back from the cliff’s edge. She rolled her head until her neck popped and cracked. Then she took a deep breath, held it, and let it go.

One foot after the other, her toes found purchase on the marble. And then she was falling, the air rushing against her bare skin. All around her was blue sky and the gentle green of the trees bordering the quarry. She could hear Reece whooping from the water below, and Liam and Garrett cheering for her in the distance.

She closed her eyes and curled in on herself, her arms coming around her knees.

If she could bottle this moment—if she could synthesize this pure, reckless courage—maybe she could find her way back to herself. Back to Charlotte Thorne, bachelor of fine arts with a minor in sociology, resident cartoonist of the school paper, master chef of microwaved noodles, shy until you got to know her, formerly preppy, bisexual weirdo.

The water seized her in its sudden, cold embrace. It broke her down and left her spluttering for oxygen. When her face met the silky air again, she coughed and fisted pond scum out of her eyes.

Then she laughed. The sound bounced off the marble and ricocheted around the quarry.

She’d forgotten the beautiful timbre of her own laughter.

At Reece’s encouragement, Charlotte handed over her buzzing iPhone. Her anxiety roared as he slid it into his backpack.

“You’ll be with Roger all day tomorrow,” Reece reminded her. His hand offered a tantalizing distraction on her thigh, fingers splayed across her bare skin.

She shivered on a damp towel in her underwear and Reece’s shirt. He’d insisted she wear it when she started to turn blue. It was a sweet gesture, but her hair soaked the fabric through within minutes.

Charlotte gave his backpack a desperate look.

“There is no work for you to do right now,” Reece reminded her.

She knew he was right. Saturday afternoon fell securely outside her office hours. Roger was, if his most recent Slack messages were anything to go off, hammered. She couldn’t prepare Twitter coverage of his commencement address until he finished writing it…which he probably wouldn’t do until he sobered up.

For years now she’d gone above and beyond what was required of her, and it had gotten her nowhere. Roger could fend for himself until he arrived on campus tomorrow. She wasn’t going to let his bullshit ruin her Saturday, not when Reece sat next to her all sweaty and sun-kissed. Not after that jump.

“Fine,” she said. “Okay.”

She chewed the skin around her thumb without even noticing she was doing it.

“Here.” Reece clicked his tongue at Misty. The dog trotted over, her fur covered in dirt from a romp through the forest behind the quarry. “Hold her, she’ll calm you down.” He scooped Misty up and deposited her in Charlotte’s lap, covering them both in dust and grime.

Charlotte laughed and brushed a dirt clod off her towel. “She’s filthy.”

“If only there were a large body of water where we could wash ourselves off.” Reece lay back beside her, pillowing his head on his arms. “See? You look more relaxed already.”

She felt more relaxed too. She didn’t know if it was getting laid or relinquishing her phone or throwing herself off a thirty-foot cliff, but she did feel better. Lighter.

“I needed this,” she said. “It’s been a shitty few years.”

Charlotte ran a spare towel through her wet hair. It was a losing battle—her thick mane absorbed anything and everything it came into contact with. Misty licked her stomach, unbothered by Charlotte’s shifting around.

Reece squinted up at her. He cupped a hand over his eyes to block the sun. “Sounds like it. Want to give me the highlights since graduation?” A smile tugged at his lips, like he was aware of the question’s absurdity.

She raised her eyebrows. “Where to start?”

“You moved to New York,” he prompted, and gestured for her to continue.

Right. Charlotte moved to New York for her internship and the city’s thriving queer scene, thinking she could reinvent herself and leave the ghosts of Hein behind. It worked, sort of, for a while.

She frowned. “I had that internship at ChompNews. I loved it there, great people, fun projects. It was kind of all-consuming in a gross way, but I was happy.”

ChompNewswas the hottest website of 2013. Their home page would link to an industry-shaking exposé about discrimination in Hollywood alongside a quiz that told you which Pokémon was your ideal roommate. Instead of a salary or benefits, her internship in the art department paid her a stipend of a thousand dollars a month. She burned through her meager savings from waiting tables at Terry’s during college, and she racked up credit card debt to afford her apartment.

The financial sacrifice seemed like it paid off when ChompNews hired her as a graphics assistant at the end of her internship. For a magical nine months Charlotte drew infographics about immigration policy, sustainable fashion, and queer representation in television. Her new salary barely covered her expenses, but now she had health insurance and a manager who cared about her professional growth. She played Ping-Pong with her co-workers after hours and was the first in line at their weekly catered lunches. There was even a Slack channel for LGBTQIA+ ChompNews employees that hosted a monthly happy hour at Stonewall. She felt like part of a family.

Plus she could doodle on the subway to and from the office, her brain bursting with ideas for political cartoons and posters, maybe even tattoos…

Sure, she still had debt that wasn’t paid off, but for the first time it wasn’t getting worse. Charlotte felt like she had a little breathing room, especially with the money she saved on groceries thanks to free bagels in the ChompNews kitchen every morning. Thousands of aspiring illustrators would kill to be exactly where she was. In fact, it was the kind of job she’d always dreamed about—the opportunity to use her skills to help people understand issues that really mattered.

For a brief moment she had her dream job.

And then she woke up.

“I was too junior to know what was going on, but the company was bleeding money. Like every other digital magazine, I guess. Things started to change. The energy shifted.”

It started with the perks: no more free food or kombucha on tap. She dismissed it as innocuous corporate belt-tightening, the kind of budget-trimming a company did when it reached maturity. But then their healthcare policy changed, and premiums soared. Full-time staff writers were fired and replaced by freelancers.

“And then they sold the company, and tons of people got laid off.”

Reece shifted on the towel next to her, sitting up to see her expression. She shrugged, knowing her experience was crappy but unremarkable. Just shy of her one-year anniversary with the company, ChompNews was acquired by a venture capital firm. They promised nothing would change in a bland email lauding the editorial achievements of the brand. Not long after, seventy percent of the staff was fired during a conference call, Charlotte included.

And so she put her succulents and her ChompNews beanie in a cardboard box and started applying for jobs. As her inbox remained silent, she nannied for frantic, beautiful moms in Park Slope and sold some of her clothes on eBay. She kept it together for a while, radically economizing on a diet of bodega noodles, passing on invitations from ChompNews friends to grab drinks at the local queer bar. She was stressed and scared, but not terrified. Not truly screwed.

“Then my wisdom teeth decided to ruin my life.”

Reece groaned. Charlotte flashed him a humorless, toothy smile. She tapped her molars. “Yeah, great timing. No dental insurance, no sick leave, just a credit card.”

“That’s brutal,” Reece said.

Disasters compounded one atop the other: She couldn’t afford to go to the dentist for regular cleanings, and so she didn’t know her wisdom teeth were impacted until she couldn’t ignore the pain anymore. Then she couldn’t afford a good dentist, so she had to wait for a cheap appointment to open at NYU’s dental school. Even then, discount surgery still wasn’t free.

She had to miss nannying for the surgery itself, and for recovery time, which meant even more money down the drain. She wasn’t close with her roommates, and it wasn’t like she had family she could turn to, so she had to manage by herself while loopy on painkillers. Her bad credit went from manageable to monstrous.

“Shit got ugly for a while, financially,” Charlotte said. “I got desperate enough to contact the career center at Hein. And wouldn’t you know it, Roger Ludermore, Class of ’81, was hiring an assistant.”

She didn’t tell Reece about the weeks between the surgery and getting the job at Front End. She had trouble remembering that window of time, when it seemed like maybe she’d be better off not being alive at all. Being a human was expensive, especially in a city like New York, but relocating would cost money too—money she didn’t have. She started walking everywhere, ostensibly to save money on subway fare, but really because the edge of the train platform made her nervous.

Charlotte didn’t think Reece would judge her if she told him about the intrusive suicidal thoughts she had during those terrible weeks. She suspected he would understand. But her major depressive episode felt so far away under the early summer sun, and that chapter of her life was over. She would never let herself be that financially precarious again. She hated Roger, but she never, ever forgot the terror of her own mind suggesting that this could all go away if she wanted it to.

Her boss had saved her from ruin. Whatever nonsense he pulled, however miserable she became at work, it was worth it to pay down her debt and build a new foundation for herself. Every paycheck meant survival. Every holiday bonus meant security.

Front End’s health insurance paid for her antidepressants.

She cleared her throat, mentally changing the subject.

Reece fished a bottled water out of the cooler. He offered it to her, but she shook her head. “Do you still draw?” he asked.

Coming from him, the question didn’t smart. She wasn’t sure why it didn’t bother her the way it did with Jackie—maybe it was the gentleness in his voice. Reece didn’t look at her with expectations of who she could be if she worked harder. He knew that simply getting by could be an accomplishment too.

Reece just let her talk, bearing witness. Sometimes you only needed someone to keep you company while you cleaned out your brain.

What had he asked? Did she still draw. There was a sketch pad in her desk drawer that she hadn’t touched since she bought it years ago, but she knew that didn’t count. She couldn’t exactly brag about her collection of coloring books.

“I submitted to some places,” she said. “But there’s so much competition. I never heard anything back.”

She had a sneaking feeling that Reece could read between the lines, but he didn’t pry. “I loved your portraits in the paper,” he said instead.

“You remember those?”

“You kidding? They were great.” He tapped his knee, squinting as he thought back. “You drew one of Liam when he wrote an op-ed about the new rink. He had it taped in his locker for months. You got his eyes perfectly.”

Charlotte hid her blushing face, touched by his memory. She loved sketching portraits of students who submitted opinion pieces to the student paper. It allowed her to get to know Hein’s many personalities without having to introduce herself. On Wednesday and Sunday afternoons as the paper went into final layout, she holed up in the newspaper office and studied faces from the school directory. Every so often she got a complaint about an unflattering detail, but for the most part her minimalist profiles flew under the radar.

She chanced a look at Reece and found him studying her.

“I thought it was so cool, how much you did with just a few lines. You really see people,” he marveled.

She fought the urge to deflect.

Take the compliment, Thorne.

“Thank you.”

Reece looked proud of her, like he could see her discomfort with his praise. “I’m sorry work stuff sucks,” he said, returning to their original conversation.

“It is what it is. Not everyone gets to be a New Yorker cartoonist.” She stole the water bottle and took a sip after all, her throat dry. “What do you call someone who lives to work but hates her job?”

Reece’s eyes flashed. “A worker exploited by capitalism?”

Charlotte huffed a laugh. “I was going to say a masochist.”

“So you’re not seeing anyone, you work for a jerk, and you don’t have a dog even though you want one. Any hobbies?” His eyes twinkled at her, balancing out his snark.

“I bought myself a weighted blanket for Christmas. It feels like I’m being smothered every time I take a nap. It’s great.”

“I don’t think napping counts as a hobby, no matter how many accessories you buy.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “What about you? What’s your postgrad life story?”

Reece ran a meaty hand through his hair, sending it in all directions. “Pass.”

“C’mon, you can’t just ask me questions all weekend.” Charlotte poked his shoulder. “Tell me about your life. I want to know.”

“Buckle up, Charlie.” Reece stole the water bottle back and took a swig. “I lived in St. Louis for a year, walking dogs and doing SAT tutoring and stuff. Somehow managed to sober up. Drove around listening to Death Cab feeling sorry for myself. Then I applied to business school.”

Charlotte couldn’t contain her surprise. “What?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know. No idea what I was thinking. Didn’t get in anywhere, obviously.”

Reece filled her in on his ensuing move to Columbus for a marketing job, where he met his ex-girlfriend. Charlotte kept her face still at the mention of Jess, not sure what reaction she was entitled to as his weekend-hookup-ex-person.

“How long were you together?” she asked.

“Two years.” Reece’s eyebrows did a lot of communicating for him. She watched his face contort and smooth out again. “It feels like longer because we got serious so fast. She wanted everything as soon as possible.”

Charlotte didn’t follow. “What do you mean?”

“Marriage, a house, kids.” Reece fiddled with the cap of the water bottle, screwing it on and off and on again. “And yeah, I’d like those things someday, but now? I’m twenty-seven and broke, the country is falling apart, the world is on fire. Becoming a dad is the last thing on my mind.”

“That’s fair,” Charlotte said.

“The more I thought about it, the less sure I was that she was the person I’d want that future with anyway. So I moved back home.” He examined his hands, calloused and tanned. “I shouldn’t complain,” he added. “I have my car, and my health.” Reece’s face fell, no doubt thinking of his dad. “The city college has a good vet tech program. It’d mean more debt, but at least that’s a real track, you know?”

Reece looked at her, his green eyes swimming with poorly disguised insecurity.

Charlotte wanted to wrap her arms around him and squeeze until he understood that he had nothing to be ashamed of. His life wasn’t as glamorous as some of their classmates’, sure, but everyone else was full of shit. She didn’t care that he wasn’t living in a name-brand city or making his fortune at a scammy startup. It mattered more that he was finding his own way, building a life without a cheat sheet.

She pictured Aubrey leaning back in her desk chair, filling out her fantasy bracket for The Bachelor while Charlotte skipped lunch to type up board meeting minutes. It wasn’t fair that someone as generous as Reece struggled while people like Aubrey sailed through life on a yacht of good connections.

“What’s the clinic like?” Charlotte asked, pushing her resentment aside. “Did your mom ever expand?”

“She did.” His face brightened with pride. “We can board pets now, which is a good revenue stream. Sometimes I work nights to keep them company, midnight pee breaks and stuff. When we get a super nervous dog, I take ’em into the office to watch Netflix.”

“I’m sure they find sci-fi very comforting.”

Reece grinned. “Dogs love Star Trek.”

“You’re a doofus.”

“I will not argue with you on that.”

They fell into a comfortable silence as Misty licked Charlotte’s hands. The sun moved out from behind a cloud and spilled across Reece’s back. He groaned as it baked his skin, his head rolling forward to rest his chin on his chest. She watched the blades of his shoulders move, muscle stretching taut across bone.

A memory of last night returned, her fingertips tracing his spine. The light pressure of her touch had sent a shiver through his body, his hips canting forward to rock into her just so. Charlotte licked her lips, her throat dry for different reasons.

When would they be alone again? She couldn’t kick Jackie out of their room two nights in a row.

Reece lay down on the towel. He moved to rest on his side, one hand propping up his head so that he could look at her. “How are things with your parents? Any progress?”

Charlotte frowned at the tonal shift. Her teeth found the inside of her cheek, worrying the tender skin. She shrugged with a practiced, blasé whatever. “My father looks me up when he’s in New York on business. We go out for a nice steak dinner and talk about the stock market.” He didn’t laugh at her crisp enunciation. She waggled her eyebrows. “Want any investment tips? Booth Thorne has loads of ’em.”

Reece’s brows crinkled. She didn’t know what bothered him more, that her parents made barely any effort to see her or that she called her father by his full name.

“I’m good, thanks,” Reece said. “I have a Starbucks gift card that will appreciate any day now.”

She snorted.

“And your mom?”

Charlotte stared at the dirt. She hated talking about her family under normal circumstances. Telling Reece felt like peeling back her skin to show him her small intestine.

He already knew her tale of queer teen neglect from support group. But no one other than Jackie knew the mortifying details and how they all connected: her mother’s homophobia, why she and Ben broke up, what had made her blow off Reece at graduation. She kept too many secrets, and this one was impossible to expose to the daylight after so long locked away.

But the door in her memory already sat ajar thanks to her return to campus. All she had to do was open it a little further. Bravery didn’t always mean jumping off cliffs.

“It’s been years. She’s not in my life anymore, not since graduation.”

She heard Reece’s quiet exhale of breath, his innocent surprise. Charlotte braced herself for judgment or pity. Or worse, for him to run away screaming. He knew her family was messy, but this was top-tier fucked-up family dynamics. Charlotte’s father had been functionally irrelevant for years, an unreliable pen pal on a different continent, but that was old news and not Charlotte’s choice. What kind of daughter didn’t speak to her mother for half a decade?

Family was everything to Reece. His dad’s death created a tight unit of respect and unconditional support. The Kruegers had been to hell and back, and they adored each other. Their nuclear-family love was never, ever in doubt.

But Reece didn’t say anything, and his face remained still. He caught Misty’s tail and ran it through his fingers before she squirmed out of his reach.

Charlotte wrapped her arms more securely around the dog, who settled down in her lap immediately.

That raw, dark wound in her chest roared inexplicably to life, the same way it did in the lead-up to graduation. The same way it did when Ben kissed her, when the honeymoon phase of their relationship ended and loving him required hating herself.

Ben understood that wound. When she explained her parents’ divorce shortly after her birth, he only nodded. He already spoke the language of a loveless home. Some wealthy families made a hobby of quiet cruelty, and Ben’s parents were just like hers. It took her too long to realize he wanted to continue his father’s legacy.

Charlotte took a deep breath. Before her confidence could fail her, she asked, “Can I say something that’s been bothering me?”

“Yeah, please.” Reece rushed to reassure her.

She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she chose her words with care. “You were a bit snide on Thursday when…when I said I was recovering from my relationship with Ben.”

Reece sat up on his towel, a wet lock of hair falling across his forehead. She longed to reach up and brush it back, but she braced herself for him to get defensive.

Instead, he kept his expression controlled, not letting his emotions leak out. He chose his words as deliberately as she did. “I’m sorry. Breakups are hard. I shouldn’t have been dismissive.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Charlotte ran her hand down Misty’s coat, unsticking clods of dirt. The dog stared at her with those big brown puppy eyes, giving her nothing but love. “I wasn’t heartbroken. I was recovering from…trauma, I guess?”

Reece folded his legs up to his chest and rested his chin on his knees. She had his full attention.

Charlotte took another deep breath. The word trauma felt self-indulgent, a Lifetime Channel for Women overstatement. She associated trauma with plane crashes and child abductions, not the obnoxious behavior of college boyfriends. It still felt like exaggerating to claim it as her own.

But she was getting ahead of herself.

Use your words, Charlotte Thorne.

“Our relationship was not great.”

Reece’s mouth turned into a hard line. He waited a moment before asking, “Did he hurt you?”

Charlotte concentrated on Misty as she considered her words. “Not physically.”

It had been a long time since she’d talked about Ben. These days Jackie preferred to pretend Charlotte’s ex-boyfriend was simply dead.

But he wasn’t dead. Ben was very much alive, and successful, and maybe within a five-mile radius of this conversation. Charlotte reflexively scanned the quarry for his blond hair.

Reece seemed to figure out what she was looking for, his brow furrowing. “I always thought the guy was a snob, but I didn’t know him. Do you want to tell me about it? About him?”

No.

Maybe.

Reece’s face was blank. She suspected he would keep it that way.

And, well, he asked. No one ever asked.

“I can start from the beginning,” Charlotte said. He nodded, and she took a deep breath. “Okay. Junior year, Jackie went to Paris for fall semester. I had to stay here to finish requirements for my sociology minor. I missed her more than I expected. Obviously, I had other friends, but we’d been inseparable for two years and I was lost without her.” She gave Reece a weak smile. “Probably some codependency issues there.”

“Who among us?” Reece joked, and she laughed.

The levity didn’t last. She ran a fingernail along the soft skin of her thumb, the sharp bite grounding her. “That’s when I met Ben,” she continued. “He was intense. I’ve never known anyone like him.”

She liked it in the beginning. Ben Mead didn’t do anything by halves. With Jackie away on study abroad, Charlotte’s world hollowed out, and Ben leapt in to fill the void. He saw her standing off to the side at a party for the newspaper staff, and he chatted her up, remembering a portrait she’d drawn of him. When they went home together that night she assumed it was a one-night stand. But as sunlight crept into his bedroom at the Sigma Delt frat house, he tucked her hair behind her ear and said, This is something real. I already know.

When she got back to her room at Acronym the next day, a bouquet of roses waited for her on the mat. On Friday, he took her out for Thai food off campus. I’m a feminist, he told her as he dropped a metal credit card on top of the check. But as long as there’s a wage gap, men should pay for dinner.

They talked about everything: the future of journalism, her favorite classic movie posters, his political ambitions, their families. After years of campus hookup culture, everyone competing to care the least, Ben’s seriousness disarmed her. It scared her a little too, but Ben assured her that was her fear of commitment talking.

It’s not your fault you don’t know what love looks like,he said. Your parents didn’t teach you.

And then there were the Faber-Castell colored pencils as a one-month anniversary present, and Thanksgiving with his family in Tahoe. She got swept away. Finally Charlotte got to experience the kind of love that Nina and Eliza had, the Technicolor joy she always worried she wasn’t born to feel. Ben didn’t just create space for her in his world; he made her its center. He wasn’t afraid to want her. To show up for her. To know everything about her.

But as the first snow fell on the eaves of Acronym, Ben’s intensity showed a different side.

“I guess you could say he was clingy.” Her thumb returned to her mouth, her teeth snagging a torn cuticle. An old fear returned that she was exaggerating, or that she misunderstood Ben’s behavior. It wasn’t like she had much relationship experience to compare him to. She’d had partners before and since Ben, but none that felt that serious, that intense. It was hard not to see him as her only Real Relationship.

Charlotte did her best to set her doubt aside. Jackie told her again and again that her feelings mattered and that she wasn’t making it up. She couldn’t smear Ben’s reputation in the privacy of her own mind.

“No, it was worse than that,” she said. “He was controlling and manipulative. When I told him I needed more alone time, he said I was being selfish. If I told him he hurt my feelings, he said I was too sensitive. He could turn every conversation around and make me the bad guy.”

Her throat tightened and she stopped for a second to breathe. The wound in her chest smarted and ached. Ben’s words sounded crisp and new, burned into her memory.

You’re so pathetic, Charlotte. Christ, what’s wrong with you?

“He made me feel crazy,” she breathed.

Reece recaptured Misty’s tail and rolled her fur between his fingers, listening in silence.

“I should have seen through it. I did see through it. But he told me I didn’t know what a real relationship was because of my parents. That I was lucky he was so patient and understanding. And I believed him.”

That hurt more than Ben’s words: She felt complicit in his behavior. Every so often she stirred as if from a deep sleep and saw their relationship clearly, only to get sucked back in again. She didn’t want to know. Finally, someone had chosen her. Finally, she was ready to be chosen. Finally, someone loved her, and it felt so good when it didn’t feel horrible.

The illusion of their relationship took more work to maintain when it had a witness. “Jackie saw right through it,” Charlotte said. “When she got back from Paris in January, she just…she hated him. But I didn’t want to hear it, you know? I loved him and Jackie didn’t know him. That’s what I told myself.”

Charlotte expected embarrassment to slow her down, but it was a relief to tell Reece the truth. He didn’t rush to condemn Ben’s behavior or ask her insensitive questions. There was no why didn’t you listen to her or how could you have been so na?ve. Or worse, why didn’t you just leave. His face revealed the occasional flare of outrage or concern, but he didn’t make her story about himself and his feelings. He knew she needed to keep going until she was done.

“Ben told me she didn’t support our relationship, and that she was judgmental and pushy.” Charlotte took a ragged breath, ashamed of her betrayal. “I found myself agreeing with him.”

“Jackie is judgmental and pushy,” Reece granted.

Charlotte nodded. “Yeah, she can be. So I didn’t see it as an isolation tactic, I was just like, sure, my best friend is kind of abrasive. But it wasn’t only her. He would go on about how jealous Nina was of our relationship, and how weird the support group was. He cut me off from everyone.”

“That’s hard to see when you’re in the middle of it.” Reece placed his hand palm up on the towel next to her. She considered it but couldn’t take it, not wanting to be touched right now. To his credit, he didn’t react to her subtle rejection. “How did it end, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t mind,” she said, surprised to find she meant it. The more she spoke, the easier it was to keep going. “We were in this cycle. He would do something shitty, and I would either take it, or go back to my place to get away from him. If he sensed I wasn’t going to let it go, he would start crying about how he didn’t want to turn into his asshole father, and he needed my help to be a better man.”

That line usually worked on her. Who could understand not wanting to become your parents better than her, the only daughter of Booth and Olivia Harrington Thorne? It mattered that he knew he had to change, that he wanted to change. In her heart of hearts, she had desperately wanted her mother to want to change too.

I want to do better, Charlotte. I want to deserve you. Please don’t give up on me. You know how much I love you, right?

She was in too deep to recognize Ben’s pleas for help as another manipulation.

But then the cycle was interrupted.

“One night in the spring, we had this fight.”

It wasn’t even a big fight, just another stupid fight in a long line of stupid fights. Could you even call it a fight when only one person raised their voice? When only one person cried?

She’d tried to get a stain out of his shirt and accidentally made it worse. Charlotte and Jackie had moved into an apartment in Rawls Tower when she got back from Paris, and Ben came over to pick up the shirt before a Sigma Delt formal event.

You idiot, look what you’ve done. Do you know how expensive this is? This is Italian linen.

Charlotte rubbed at her eyes. She wasn’t crying but they itched, that tension headache threatening to return.

“Ben thought we were alone, but Jackie was in her room. She recorded us on her phone through the wall. You remember how thin the walls were in that building?”

Charlotte threw Reece a nervous look, and he nodded at the rhetorical question.

“After he left, she played the fight back for me.”

Thank goodness for her best friend. Charlotte would always feel indebted to her, no matter what distance grew between them, because sometimes she wondered if she would be dead if it weren’t for Jackie. How much would Ben’s abuse have escalated without Jackie’s intervention? How much more of herself would she have lost if she’d stayed with him?

Charlotte trained her focus on the smooth surface of the quarry and the gentle sway of the grass in the breeze.

I’m safe. It’s over. This happened years ago.

Even here, the past had a way of bleeding into the present. Ben’s voice crackled out of Jackie’s iPhone, dangerously tight. Her ex never lost his temper. He wielded it with expert precision.

“She made me listen to him call me an idiot and a bitch and a spoiled brat, all because of a shirt.”

Reece clenched his fist on the towel.

“And I just…kept apologizing.”

The memory caught in her throat like a shard of glass. She sounded terrified on the recording, groveling for forgiveness over a fabric stain. Her biggest fear in that moment was that he would walk out the front door. That Ben would leave and she’d be alone again, forgotten and replaced by some other girl.

That hurt more than anything Ben could ever say. When she saw their relationship from the outside, she didn’t recognize herself. What happened to the girl who repaired Acronym’s roof as a freshman after watching a shingling tutorial on YouTube? Where had the Charlotte gone who found a room-and-board-inclusive internship in Boston so that she wouldn’t spend the summer before junior year with her mother? When did she swap out her combat boots for bougie ballet flats from Ben’s mother?

She used to be so capable. She used to be strong.

Two years at Hein taught Charlotte to value her authentic self. Ben destroyed that progress in just a few months.

“It still took me a while to break up with him after that, and he didn’t take it well. I told him outside the library so he couldn’t make a scene in public, but he still threw a classic Ben Mead tantrum. He sent me batshit text messages until I blocked him. I barely left the apartment, I was so worried I’d bump into him. And even when it was over, it wasn’t over.” She laughed humorlessly. “He told everyone at the paper that he dumped me, and that I was having a nervous breakdown and he just couldn’t help me anymore. When that version of the story didn’t catch on, he tried to convince people I cheated on him with Jackie. It was so fucked up.”

Her chest felt tight, and she realized she was holding her breath as she spoke. She inhaled slowly and then let it out.

Her heart broke twice that spring: once when she understood her boyfriend didn’t really love her, and again when Hein morphed from safe haven to enemy territory. Everywhere felt like Ben’s turf: the newspaper office, the student gym where he played tennis every other day, the dining hall at the heart of campus. Even the library felt dangerous, bearing his last name at the entryway. Charlotte skulked from Rawls Tower to classes and back again. She and Jackie cooked most of their meals at home or walked to Terry’s.

Summer break was a blessing: She focused on her thesis and bartending at the restaurant. But the panic attacks started in the fall.

“There’s so much about senior year that I don’t remember,” Charlotte said. “It’s a blur.”

“Trauma,” Reece recalled.

Charlotte picked at her nails. “Yeah. Trauma.”

She still struggled not to blame herself for falling for Ben. The scar tissue of their relationship would take years to heal, no matter how many books she read about love-bombing and gaslighting. And when she looked back at senior year, she understood why her brain scorched with terror anytime Reece said something too kind. It made no sense to her when he wanted more from her than sex.

How could a man so good want to be with someone like her, someone weak enough to love a monster like Ben? How could Reece want such a disaster? Why would anyone choose her?

Charlotte remembered Reece standing with his family after the commencement ceremony, his arm around his little sister’s shoulders. Reece had asked her weeks before if she would meet them at the picnic, and she agreed. She even looked forward to it. Charlotte wanted to shake the hand of the mother strong enough to carry her family through tragedy while running her own business. She wanted to hug the little sister she had heard so much about in support group.

Then graduation day finally arrived and Charlotte found herself alone. She didn’t have parents to hug her, or doting grandparents to gush over her internship at ChompNews, or aunts and uncles to hustle them all together for a group picture. No one came to celebrate her accomplishments. She felt Ben’s words all over again, a year after their breakup: You’re so pathetic, Charlotte. Christ, what’s wrong with you?

When the agreed-upon time came for her to meet the Kruegers, Charlotte just couldn’t do it. She saw them across the quad and turned the opposite direction. His affection for her made no sense, a rose extended to a wood chipper. Maybe Reece couldn’t see it, but his family would. She was the last girl who a mother would choose for her son.

Reece broke the silence. “That must have been a lot to process.”

“I didn’t trust myself for a long time after that,” Charlotte confessed.

There was a sheen of understanding in Reece’s gaze. He connected the dots without her needing to explain.

Let’s go back in time, Charlie.

“I’m proud of you for leaving him,” Reece said. “I hope that’s not weird for me to say.”

Shame crawled up her esophagus like acid reflux. “Thank you,” Charlotte said, wishing she were an easier person to love.

Reece was quiet as he considered the implications of what she had shared. Misty sniffed the air and sprang out of her lap to disappear into the grass, on the hunt for some unlucky animal. Charlotte felt strangely bereft without her.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t more supportive,” Reece said at last. “I had no idea what you were going through.”

Charlotte waved off his apology. “How could you? I didn’t know.”

“But I never asked. I was too busy dealing with my own shit to help.”

“Oh stop,” Charlotte huffed. “You were so kind to me, Reece. And I kept thinking, What’s the catch? When is he going to tear off his face and reveal that he’s a psycho too?”

“I probably freaked you out when I got attached.” He kept his voice level, but she could still hear the embarrassment lurking in his words.

“You did, a little,” Charlotte said. “But that wasn’t your fault. You were just trying to get to know me, and my dumb trauma brain saw that as a threat.” She laughed at herself. “Which is ridiculous because you are literally the nicest person I have ever met.”

“Aww, stop.” Reece flashed her that big smile she loved. This time when he extended his hand to her, she took it. His fingers were sticky with sweat and fresh sunblock, but so were hers. They were equally messy.

Charlotte found herself speaking before she’d fully processed the words. Another confession tumbling out of her mouth after the others. “I like talking to you.”

Reece smiled again. A private one this time, like he’d figured out a puzzle. “You said that last night.”

She rolled her eyes, flustered. “It’s still true.”

They fell quiet again, processing. Reece pressed a kiss to her wrist, and then to her palm. She finally reached out to smooth his hair back into place, a few droplets of pond water trickling down the side of his nose.

He found his words again before she did. She realized he’d been avoiding her eyes as he gathered his thoughts. “I always thought you…” Hurt made his voice choppy and he trailed off. Charlotte combed his hair with her fingers until he continued. “I heard the rumor that he broke up with you, and I thought you wanted him back. And that I wasn’t good enough.” He forced a self-deprecating smile. “There’s no building on campus with my name on it.”

Rosewood affection and reseda guilt bloomed in her chest. Charlotte cupped his chin in her hand, forcing him to look her in the eyes. “I’m so mad at myself for making you feel that way for a second, Reece.” He gave her a thin smile. She gave his chin a gentle shake. “No, I’m serious. You were never the problem, ever. I just wasn’t ready for you then.”

They both heard it at the same time. Reece blinked but didn’t say anything as Charlotte realized what she’d let slip.

Thenimplied a now.

Charlotte hit her vulnerability limit. Self-consciousness crawled across her skin like a cold sweat. She let go of Reece’s face, her hands dropping to her lap.

He recognized the wall going up and didn’t try to stop it. Maybe it was too much for him too, their hearts exposed to the elements after all this time apart. They had barely twenty-four hours left together, and where could this possibly go when there was so much distance between them in the real world? The deeper this went, the harder it would be to walk away.

“Thank you for telling me,” Reece said.

She bit her lip as anxiety garbled her brain. “Thank you for listening,” she said. Words were woefully inadequate, failing her yet again. She met his gaze with as much courage as she could gather.

Reece’s brow knitted together as he read her face. Then, just as her stomach began to squirm again, he leaned over and kissed her forehead.

That was enough of five years ago, Charlotte decided. Enough of anything before today.