Chapter 13
MYLES
There’s no way in hell I deserve this, but tell that to my greedy heart as it pounds away, like it’s trying to break right out of my chest. And every beat feels like his name. Char-lie. Char-lie. Char-lie—
God I’ve missed him. So much more than I can find the way to explain.
Charlie hasn’t said a word back, but the way he just threw himself at me, how he’s hugging me like he’s trying to strangle me, says everything he hasn’t. I wonder if he realizes he’s shaking.
Telling him I’d missed him was pure impulse. I’d meant to keep things light tonight. Hell, I’d felt like I had to.
The last thing I’d wanted was to make him feel like I thought I had some right to a second chance at his friendship just because I’d helped him out today.
Probably, I was doomed from the start. Ever since I realized it actually really was him I was seeing in his classroom that day he ran out on me, all I’ve wanted to do is throw myself at his feet and beg for his forgiveness.
In the end though, it was holding Cyril and feeling how fragile that old cat felt in my arms that really did me in.
Ten and a fucking half years.
I’ve lost ten and a half years of friendship with Charlie, all because I was stupid enough to let my dad’s bullshit manipulation make me think it was the right thing to do.
The emotions bursting through me as I close my eyes and just feel Charlie’s acceptance of my apology are crazy. There’s joy and excitement and hope and so much relief, like snapping awake from a nightmare I hadn’t realized was just a dream.
Then there’s rage. Livid, burn the world rage because it wasn’t a nightmare.
I’ve spent a decade knowing what I’d done to Charlie and knowing that I had to live with the consequences and accept that he was gone from my life, and I’m fucking furious.
So full of anger and resentment, it hurts.
A lot of it’s for my dad of course, but there’s a shit ton of it for myself as well. I did this.
But maybe it’s not too late to undo it.
Apparently the combination of all that contradiction makes for a nervous, totally overwhelming sort of buzz that’s winding me up so much that more of those weird, irrelevant thoughts are bouncing around my brain like crazy.
Like how good Charlie’s body feels in my arms—slim and a little smaller than mine, but masculine and firm.
So different than the softness of a woman’s body.
His hair is soft though, silky and warm and so nice against my cheek, and now I’ve gone and gotten my mind stuck on the thought that’s come out of nowhere that his skin’s probably soft too.
When I suck in a harsh breath, trying to dial back the prickle building at the backs of my eyes and the tightness gripping my throat, I get a whiff of whatever cologne he’s wearing. Muted bergamot and something fresh, like the scent of rain-wet grass.
I never want to let him go.
Chalk it up to the whirlpool of feelings playing havoc in my head and the fact that I’ve missed him so damn much, and maybe mix in the fact that it’s been way too long since literally anyone has touched me—since for some reason, in my chaotic brain, apparently hugs from Rachel and every other female member of the Riverside community who’s felt the need to squeeze the life out of me in welcome don’t count—but all I want is to just keep holding him like this forever.
It’s him that lets go of me.
When he steps away, it’s all I can do to not step after him and pull him back against my chest all over again.
Charlie’s smile is suspiciously watery, but the prickle in my own eyes puts me in no position to judge. Not that I’d ever judge him for anything.
A beat, and he’s not smiling anymore.
“It’s never too late, Myles,” he whispers across the space between us. “Not if you really mean it and want to be friends again. I’ve hated not having you in my life so much.”
His lower lip trembles, but the next second, he’s got it under control again, flashing me a too-bright grin that wobbles just a bit at the end.
“Now,” he spins on his heel, making off for the doorway off the living room that I assume leads to the kitchen.
“How about you come and help me make dinner like you said you want to?”
“I was about to leave for India when I got the call about Dad.”
Charlie’s face twists in sympathy as he silently holds out his hand to take the plate I’ve just washed so he can dry it.
The two of us have been talking hard for the last hour and a half, and it feels like finally coming home. Even more than when I’d stepped off the airport shuttle and that first big breath of the fir-scented Riverside air filled my lungs.
There’d been awkward moments when Charlie first set me to work cutting vegetables for the stir fry he made us for dinner.
More than once, conversation stuttered to a halt, and there’d been long pauses where the small kitchen was silent other than the chop of my knife against the cutting board and the sizzle of the pan of noodles Charlie was heating on the stove.
By the time we were at the table though, with Cyril winding around our legs like the sweet old beggar he is, Charlie and I were trading stories and questions like it was the easiest thing in the world.
As much as I can, I’ve summarized the list of places I’ve been, along with some of the highlights of the things I’ve seen there. The River. A wildebeest migration. The northern lights. The foothills of the Himalayas. Sunrise over the South China Sea.
He’s told me about his family. His parents recently retired and have been traveling. Gemma’s a journalist. Her older sister married the boyfriend of hers I’d met once and the two of them have twin girls now.
I learned from him that he’d started doing yoga seriously in high school, and before he’d decided he wanted to be a middle school teacher, he’d gotten certified and worked as a yoga instructor.
That one threw me. Images keep popping into my mind of him bending into all sorts of impossible positions, and they’re...distracting. Probably because I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea of him doing yoga. The Charlie I knew growing up was never one for anything really physical.
Fortunately, there’s not too much time for me to get hung up on the random distraction of that revelation about his recent past. It feels like we’re both trying to fill in the time we’ve lost from each other’s lives, and I’m so greedy for it that my need to know more about what I missed in his life and to tell him more about mine drowns out the opportunity for regret or awkwardness or anything else.
I know those words Charlie wrote in the sketch journal he gave me by heart, and tonight, they just keep going on repeat through my head.
Because I want to see what you see when we’re not together.
Draw it and show me when I see you? I’m definitely not ready to show him what I’ve put in that book—hell, I don’t know if I ever will be—but telling him as much as I can about everything I’ve seen and done is the next best thing.
The stir fry Charlie made was probably delicious, but I honestly can’t say I tasted a single bite.
Every bit of my brain power was focused on him and on hearing whatever he wanted to tell me and on trying to cram as many of my own stories into however much time we have together tonight, in case he changes his mind and ends up wanting to just go back to that horrible, nothing but civil coworkers thing after this after all.
Fuck though, I don’t even want to process what it’s going to do to me if this ends up being nothing but a one-off…
“What happened? To your dad?” Charlie stretches to the side, feet still in place beside me as he reaches up to tuck the plate he’s just dried on the shelf in the upper cabinet.
I hadn’t been looking forward to getting to this part, but now, like everything else, I just want Charlie to know.
“Heart attack. And apparently, he was in the early stages of liver failure. I don’t think I ever remember him actually being drunk, but I also don’t remember many times when he wasn’t nursing a beer, no matter the time of day, so, it figures I guess.
” I shake the excess water off our pair of freshly washed forks and hold them out for him.
“And who knows what things were like after I left.”
“I’m so sorry, Myles.” He reaches forward, and I think he’s going for the forks, but instead, his hand closes around my arm, just above my wrist. And just like when we’d hugged before, that small touch is everything I’ve been missing.
There’s a terrible second where I feel like I might actually tear up.
It’s a lot of the way because of Charlie and what it means to me to be here with him, in his tiny kitchen, talking each other’s ears off with all the million and one stories that have had to wait until now.
I can’t hide from the fact that some of it’s because of Dad too though.
“It just fucking sucks,” I look down, sort of at the forks still in my grip, but mostly at Charlie’s hand where it’s so warm and comforting against my skin.
“Even though I hate so many of my memories of him, I don’t hate them all, and it’s honestly just exhausting trying to work out how I feel about any of it.
He made my life complete hell so much of the time, trying to mold me into what he thought I should be, but I know that underneath all of that and under his controlling BS, he loved me. ”
There’s more I can’t say out loud. How his bigotry was inexcusable, and I will never forgive him for the way he manipulated me, but that I don’t hate him still, even though, for years, I genuinely did.
Charlie squeezes my arm for a moment before pulling away, and just like before, I don’t want to lose his touch.
“I’m glad I came back when I did.” And I mean it. Fuck, I mean it with everything I have. One year earlier, and I would have already been gone by the time Charlie came back…
“Me too.” Gently, he tugs the forks out of my loose grip. “I’m glad I came at the right time too.”
“Why did you come back?”
He drops the forks in the utensil organizer, then uses his hip to bump the drawer shut before tilting back toward me. The way he moves is…mesmerizing.
“I just wanted…something different for a little while. Like, I needed to get out of Seattle for a bit, and when I saw there was a job open at the school here, I jumped at it, sort of on impulse, I guess.”
He drops his eyes down to fiddle with the dish towel in his hand. There are a few more dishes in the sink that need to be washed, but my attention’s way too tuned in on Charlie and the way he’s gotten so obviously uncomfortable all of a sudden to bother with them.
“I’d just broken up with my boyfriend,” he glances at me nervously, like he’s checking my reaction to this first time admitting that he’s not straight.
Without meaning to, I give him a little encouraging nod, and he breathes out this sharp breath, like he’d been holding it.
“We’d been living together for over a year, but neither of us was really all in.
I’d known I wasn’t, but I was trying, because it’s not like I’d ever…
” He twists the towel in his hands, looking down at it, and I wonder what it is he’s leaving out of the story.
“I was trying. But I guess he wasn’t all that happy either.
Turns out he was cheating on me, so that was the end of that. ”
“Fucking tool.” The angry growl of my voice surprises even me, but I’m fucking disgusted with that jackass for having the nerve to hurt Charlie like that.
Even if Charlie’s heart wasn’t in the relationship, it’s obvious that he’s still shaken up over what happened, and no matter what, he didn’t deserve to be cheated on.
“How could he not have seen what he had in you?”
A faint hint of pink spreads across his cheeks as he peeks at me out of the corner of his eye, and suddenly, I feel like I said something I shouldn’t have.
The feeling’s confusing as hell though, because there’s this little smile lifting his lips, and I know I’d do pretty much anything in the world to keep it there.
Charlie shakes his head. “Ben wasn’t a tool. We just weren’t right together and neither of us was willing to say it. No, I totally didn’t love how it happened, but I’m glad we’re not stuck in that loop anymore, trying to force what wasn’t working.”
“I still say he’s a tool.”
The grin he flashes me sets off another one of those weird tugging sensations that feels like there’s an actual tie between the two of us telling me not to fucking dare let him out of my life ever again.
“You sound like Gemma,” he laughs, giving me a nudge with his hip before widening his eyes in an obvious nod toward the dishes left in the sink.
If I hadn’t already been smiling, I definitely would be now. Charlie’s always had a bossy streak. That he’s unleashing it on me now is so much like before, it feels too good for words. Just like the casual way he’s just touched me. Again.
How weird is it that I just want him to keep doing it?
“She won’t let it go about Ben either,” he goes on, still laughing lightly as I get to work scrubbing the pan that’s been soaking through dinner. “And she really has it in for—”
He goes quiet so fast, his silence is as damning as the rest of his sentence would have been.
“For me?”
“Myles, I—”
“I’m glad you’ve got such a loyal friend.” It would be impossible for me to mean anything more sincerely than I mean those words. Doesn’t mean they don’t cut on the way out though. Because loyal’s exactly what I wasn’t. “That is what you deserve, Charlie.”
“Will you tell me what happened?”
There’s only one thing he could mean by the question, and by the look on his face, I can tell there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to know the answer any more than I want to give it, but he’s asked, and I can’t not tell him the truth, even if it blows up our second chance at a friendship just when it’s really starting to feel like it could be real.