Chapter 12
CHARLIE
By the time Myles is driving away in that clunky old truck of his—heading home for a well-deserved shower before dinner, I’m buzzing with a manic sort of nervousness that makes everything feel a bit surreal.
He just spent the last three hours splitting every last un-choppable piece of wood in my yard. His whole afternoon.
Other than hauling the split pieces off to stack in the woodshed off the side of the house, there hadn’t been a thing I could do to help. And all the while, Myles just worked quietly, smiling this little smile to himself, like this was what he actually wanted to be doing.
It felt so good just being near him.
So totally surreal.
I literally pinched myself a few times, just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Though, maybe pinching doesn’t work in the case of psychotic breaks. I’d beg to differ, but Gemma’s been telling me how crazy I am for forever, so maybe that’s what this is.
Well, if that’s the case, I’m going to enjoy the heck out of today’s delusions.
And yes, fine, maybe that did involve an awful lot of checking out the deliciousness that is my former slash maybe, possibly, once more friend.
Especially after Myles peeled out of his flannel, winding up in just a grey t-shirt that showed off his swoon-worthy arms and a pair of jeans that hugged his legs and highly biteable ass just right.
I know the whole secretly-drooling-over-your-friend thing is super questionable behavior, but since it’s also questionable whether we really are even heading back in the direction of friend territory, I’m going to give myself a pass.
I’m just about to pull open the fridge to grab some veggies for a stir fry when the slam of a heavy truck door out front sends a static charge of excitement through me. Myles is back.
I’m still honestly not sure how either of us feels about my offer to make him dinner. True, out in the yard while we were working—okay, while he was working and I was doing something work-adjacent—things had felt almost easy between us. But we hadn’t really had to talk to each other.
I’d wanted to. So badly it hurt. I’d wanted to hear everything and anything he would tell me about what his life has been like over the last ten and a half years that feel like a piece carved out of my own life.
The snippets I’d picked up from photos and stories he’s posted on Instagram hadn’t been nearly enough. Those were filtered and cherry-picked moments that he wanted to show the world.
I want real. I want…him. Unfiltered, uncensored, in the flesh Myles. The most authentic, beautiful person I’ve ever known, who, no matter how much time passes, could never not be a part of me.
But I have no reason to even begin to hope that he feels the same way.
What if—and how miserably likely this is—the moment he walks through the door, the combination of over a decade of separation and the elephant in the room of the reason for that separation is just too much?
Ohmigod, this was a terrible idea. Maybe I should—
A knock sounds at my door, and instantly, I break out in a sweat. As in, there is literal sweat making my shirt cling to my skin. Disgusting.
Ohmigod, I never showered…
Scooping Cyril up to deposit him on the floor so he won’t try to jump down on his own from the chair I’d pulled over to the counter for him so he could watch me cook—no, I will never be grateful for his arthritis, but I have to admit, this new arrangement is so much better than his days of endlessly jumping up onto the counter to try to help—I suck in a long, shaky breath.
It does precisely nothing to calm me down.
Neither do the three or four more I try as I cross through the living room to the front door where, attempting to ignore the way my hand shakes, I twist open the doorknob.
My first thought is why. Why does he have to show up at my door looking like this?
It’s a garbled, distant kind of why though, because Oh. My. God.
Myles didn’t just shower. Oh no, he also turned himself from not fair level gorgeous to can’t peel my eyes away and please get someone to come and scoop me up off the floor level gorgeous.
Instead of another flannel—not that you’ll ever catch me complaining about how he looks in those—the man standing at my door is dressed in a fresh pair of mouthwateringly perfectly fitting jeans and a white cotton button up (top two buttons left open, which is just so blatantly cruel, it shouldn’t be allowed) that pulls way too temptingly over his pecs and shoulders.
Oh, and the sleeves? Rolled right up to his elbows.
Is he trying to kill me?
Somewhere in the echoing recesses of my very switched-off brain, I feel vaguely certain that there had been pictures of him wearing a shirt like this one, paired with khaki shorts, walking the picture-perfect coastline of some tropical beach in one of his Instagram posts.
Or maybe I’m just imagining that simply because right now, he looks like he should be in photos like that, all modelish with his perfectly cut jaw and—
“Hi.” Was that me that just said that?
“Hi.”
There are words I’m supposed to be saying right now. I’m sure of it, but they just won’t come out, until, oh thank god, Cyril saves the day.
With his usual, croakily wavering meow, he comes stiffly padding up to the door, pausing at the safety of my feet to look up to the newcomer.
Myles’s eyes drop to Cyril before leaping back up to mine, all wide and amazed, and once again, that mind blowing, real-life Myles smile is there on his face. “That’s not Cyril, is it?’
“You remember him?” So maybe it’s ridiculous how literally everything Myles does makes my heart skip, but this? This has to be an excusable moment for at least a tiny bit of swooning.
“Of course I do.”
Oh, does his voice really have to be so deep and warm and sincere?
And then, sweet Jesus, he’s sinking down to his knees in front of me.
Obviously, I know it’s just to greet Cyril, but ohmigod, even though that makes it a whole different scenario than the other versions of this scene that I will not allow to play out in my head, this is almost as incredible for a whole, totally separate cast of reasons.
Would I have positively died of happiness if the moment of reunion between Myles and me had been as happy as this instead of the never to be lived down fiasco in my classroom?
Yes. So many yesses, it’s not even funny.
But seeing him coo and exclaim over Cyril as he strokes his hand over my now shamelessly purring cat’s head does something warm and glorious to my soul.
Myles always loved Cyril, but he missed him. Even if it’s not me, he missed this little, furry extension of my heart.
I am not going to tear up.
“How old is he now?” Myles asks long seconds later, looking up from his cuddling of Cyril, who is by now delightedly snuggled against his chest, one clawed paw rhythmically kneading the exposed skin of his forearm.
“Eighteen.” And just like that, I can feel the reminder of how much time has passed hanging in the air between us.
Myles looks down at Cyril, scratching his chin until Cyril extends his neck and closes his eyes with joy at receiving his favorite form of affection. “You look good for such an old man, Captain,” he murmurs.
“You—”
“Remember?” Myles laughs, saving me from the broken record I’d been about to turn into. “How could I forget? Do you remember how many times you made me watch that movie? Cyril Ritchard as Captain Hook is forever burned into my brain.”
“Made you?” I gasp, pressing a hand to my chest in mock indignation, giddy with the way the tension between us has just shattered.
“I don’t remember making you do anything, Myles Marlow.
After the first time I showed it to you, it was always you who said we should watch Broadway Peter Pan on repeat. ”
“Because you told me it was your favorite.”
“You loved it too.”
“Maybe.” His grin tells me he did, and yet again, the hope that maybe it’s not too late for our friendship sparks brightly through my chest.
“I’m not done making dinner yet,” I tell him apologetically as he stands, setting Cyril down after a final cuddle. “But—”
“I could help you?”
I laugh, shaking my head. “You already did way more than enough of that today. I was going to say you could hang out in here,” I flick my hand vaguely over at my living room with the small, dated TV. “Watch something?”
“I’d rather help you.” Ohhh that smile of his is going to be the end of me, it really is. “And that way we could catch up?”
The way I’m nodding probably looks unhinged. “That would be good. Really, really good.”
“Good,” he echoes, and ohmigod, my face hurts from how hard I’m grinning. Except, suddenly I realize he’s not smiling. And that hand of his is at the back of his neck, rubbing.
“I,” he sucks in a breath, and across the feet of space between us, I can hear the shudder in it, noticeable enough to make my heart lodge right up in my throat.
“I’ve missed you, Charlie. Throwing away our friendship was the worst mistake of my life, and I’m so fucking sorry for it.
I don’t want it to be too late to fix what I did. ”
I’m not sure my feet are even touching the ground anymore, because I literally can’t feel them, or anything else for that matter, over the crazy leaping of my pulse.
If he notices the tears springing up in my eyes, he’s too sweet to say anything, but maybe he doesn’t get a chance to see them at all because the next moment, he’s hugging me. Or maybe it’s me that’s hugging him, because I kind of think I might have launched myself at him.
Either way, he’s hugging me back, and it’s the best thing I’ve felt…ever. Like all the pieces of me that he ripped away ten years ago that I thought were gone forever have just been put back, and being whole again feels so good, I really don’t know how I’d survived.
Forget how jaw-droppingly gorgeous he is and the fact that he’ll still never love me. This is what I’ve been yearning for.
It doesn’t matter that Myles’s shoulders have traded the thin boniness I felt beneath my hands last time I hugged him for thick, solid muscle, or that he’s so much denser and more in my arms than he ever was when we were younger.
He feels like him, on so much deeper of a level than anything physical.
Just one touch, and I’d know him anywhere.
He smells like himself too. Forest and fir trees and Myles; that scent that’s etched into my heart and memory so deeply that it suddenly feels like it has to have been just yesterday I last smelled it.
I’m not delusional enough to think the two of us can just pick our friendship up where we left it and all of a sudden be woven so tightly into each other’s lives that it’s impossible to tell where Charlie ends and Myles begins, but just knowing he’s missed me and that he wishes we could go back is everything.
And if breathing him in and feeling the warmth of his strong, solid body pressed close against mine makes me feel other things too, I can deal with that. After all, I’m no stranger to unrequited love when it comes to him.