Chapter 16 #2
“Figures the one time you decide to wear a shirt is the only time you really shouldn’t have,” I quipped as he stood up and yanked it over his head.
I usually tried to keep my focus squarely on Charlie’s face when he was shirtless.
It was too much—the expanse of skin and muscle—but here it all was, deeply tanned and coated in sweat.
He caught me staring before I could scrape my eyes away, and flexed his bicep.
“Show-off,” I muttered.
I lay back in the sand, eyes closed to the sun while Charlie swam. I’d almost dozed off when he sat beside me again.
“You still writing?” he asked. We hadn’t really talked about writing before.
“Umm . . . not much,” I said. I hadn’t felt particularly creative this summer. Not at all, was the truth.
“They’re good, your stories.”
I sat up at this. “You read them? When?”
“I read them. I was looking for something in Sam’s desk the other day and found a stack of them. Read them all. They’re good. You’re good.”
I was looking over at him, but he was staring out over the water.
“You’re serious? You liked them?” Sam and Delilah were always so effusive, but they had to like them. Charlie wasn’t in the habit of doling out compliments that didn’t involve body parts.
“Yeah. They’re a bit weird, but that’s the point, right? They’re different, in a good way.” He looked over at me. His eyes were a pale celery in the sun, bright against his browned skin. But there was no hint of teasing in them. “Might help with the escaping, to write something new,” he said.
I hummed a noncommittal sound in response, suddenly fully aware of all the ways Charlie had been trying to help me get out of my funk this summer. Even though I had been a troll. And if it hadn’t been obvious to me then, it would have been later that evening.
We had pulled up to the back of the Tavern, my legs too wobbly for the walk from the town dock to the restaurant, and Charlie turned off the engine and turned to face me. “So I’ve got an idea, and I think it might cheer you up a bit.” He gave me a hesitant smile.
“I already told you three-ways are a hard limit for me,” I told him with a straight face, and he chuckled.
“Whenever you get sick of my brother, let me know, Pers,” he said, still laughing.
I went still. I’d never spent so much time with Charlie.
And the thing was, I enjoyed it. A lot. Some of the time I even forgot how mad I was at Sam and how much I missed him.
Charlie didn’t have a girl hanging off him that summer, and he was a surprisingly good listener.
He bulldozed over my bad moods, either ignoring them completely or calling me out.
“Being a bitch doesn’t suit you,” he told me the last time I snapped at him after receiving another painfully short email from Sam.
Now the air in the truck was as thick as caramel sauce.
“The drive-in,” Charlie blurted, blinking. “That’s the idea. They’re playing one of those cheesy old horror movies you like, and I thought it might be a good distraction. Your parents are in the city this week, right? I figured you might be a bit lonely.”
“I didn’t know there was a drive-in in Barry’s Bay,” I said.
“There’s not. It’s about an hour from here.
Used to go all the time in high school.” He paused.
“So what do you think? It’s playing Sunday, and we’re not working.
” It felt dangerous in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Horror movies were mine and Sam’s thing, but Sam wasn’t here. And I was. And so was Charlie.
“I’m in,” I said, hopping out of the truck. “It’s exactly what I need.”
I GOT SAM’S email on Saturday. I had trudged up from the lake after a hectic shift, my skin still sticky despite the cool wind on the boat trip home.
Practically every order was for pierogies, and we’d run out halfway through the night.
Julien had been foul, and the tourists weren’t too happy about it, either.
The cottage was completely empty. I showered and fixed myself a plate of cheese and crackers while I booted up my laptop to check my email.
This was my usual post-work, pre-call-with-Sam ritual.
What was unusual was the unread message from him waiting in my inbox, sent a couple of hours earlier.
Subject line: I’ve been thinking. Sam’s emails usually came in the morning, before his seminar, or in the afternoon, right afterward.
One- or two-sentence updates, and they never had subject lines.
My limbs went numb with dread as I opened it and saw the paragraphs of text.
Percy,
The last six weeks have been hard. Harder than I thought.
I’m still not used to this room or the bed.
The school is huge. And the people are smart.
The kind of smart that makes me realize how growing up in a small town gave me a false sense of my own intelligence.
I look around during a lecture or a lab and everyone seems to be nodding along and following instructions without need for clarification.
I feel so behind. How did I even get accepted into this workshop in the first place?
Is this what all of school will be like?
I know I spent our last bit of time together studying, but it wasn’t enough. I should have worked harder. I need to work harder now if I want to succeed here.
And I miss you so much. I can’t concentrate sometimes because I’m thinking about you and what you might be doing.
When we talk, I can hear your disappointment in me—for not telling you about the workshop and for how unhappy I seem here.
I don’t want it all to have been a waste.
I will work harder. I will succeed here. I have to.
And that’s why I think we need to establish some boundaries.
I love hearing your voice on the other end of the phone, but I hang up and feel nothing but loneliness.
Soon you’ll be starting school too, and you’ll see what I mean.
We owe it to ourselves and each other to immerse ourselves—you in your writing and me in the lab.
What I’m proposing is a break from constant communication.
Right now, I’m thinking a phone call every week.
We can make it the same time—like a date.
Otherwise, you’ll be all I think about. Otherwise, I won’t be able to do this thing that I’ve wanted for so long, I won’t be the person I want to be.
For you, but also for me. Just a little space—to build a big future.
What do you think? Let’s talk about it tomorrow—I was thinking Sunday could be our day.
Sam
I read the whole thing three times, my cheeks wet with tears, a wad of crackers lodged in my throat. Sam wanted space. From us. From me. Because talking to me made him feel lonely. I was a distraction. I was holding him back from his future.
Sam was kidding himself if he thought I’d wait till tomorrow to talk about this. To fight about this. This was not how you treated your best friend, and it was absolutely not how you treated your girlfriend.
His phone rang three, four, five times until he picked up. Except it wasn’t Sam who yelled hello over the music and laughter in the background. It was a girl.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“This is Jo. Who is this?” Was this why Sam didn’t want me calling? He wanted to have other girls over?
“Is Sam there?”
“Sam’s busy at the moment. We’re cheering him up. Can I take a message?” Her words slopped together.
“No. This is Percy. Put him on.”
“Percy.” She giggled. “We’ve heard so . . .” Suddenly she was gone, the music went quiet, and there was muffled laughter before a door closed. Then silence until Sam spoke.
“Percy?” From the one word, I could tell Sam was drunk. So much for needing space to work harder.
“So was this whole email bullshit? You just want more time to get drunk with other girls?” I was yelling.
“No, no, no. Percy, look, I’m really wasted. Jo brought over raspberry vodka. Let’s talk. Tomorrow okay? Right now, I think I’m gonna . . .” The line went dead, and I curled up on the couch and cried till I passed out.
CHARLIE PICKED ME up a bit before eight the next evening. By that time, I was all out of tears. I had sobbed through a long conversation with Delilah and then again when Sam sent a short apology for hanging up on me to puke. He wrote that he wanted to talk tonight. I didn’t reply.
I didn’t think it would be possible to laugh, but the mountain of snacks Charlie had assembled on the front seat was truly insane.
“There are burgers, dogs, and fries there if you want something more substantial,” he said as I eyed the packages of chips and candy.
“Yeah this probably won’t be enough,” I joked. And it felt nice. Light. “I usually go through at least four party-sized bags of chips a night, and there’s only three in here, so . . .”
“Smart-ass,” he said, glancing my way as he headed down the long driveway. “I didn’t know what flavor you like. I was covering my bases.”
“I’ve always wondered what happens to all those girls you date,” I said, holding up a box of Oreos. “Now I know. You fatten them up and eat them for dinner.”
He shot me a mischievous grin. “Well, one of those things is true,” he said in a low drawl. I rolled my eyes and looked out the window so he couldn’t see the blush spreading from my chest to my neck.
“You scare easily,” he said after a minute had gone by.
“I don’t scare easily. You like to provoke people unnecessarily,” I told him, turning back to study his profile. He was frowning. “What? Am I wrong?” I barked, and he laughed.
“No, you’re not wrong. Maybe ‘scare’ is the wrong word, but it’s easy to get you worked up.
” He looked over at me. “I like it.” I could feel the flush move down through my body.
He turned back to the road wearing a big enough smile that a hint of a dimple appeared on his cheek.
I had a strong urge to run my finger over it.