Chapter 16
sixteen
“I can’t believe you actually pulled her in,” I said the second we got into Charlie’s car after work.
“You knew I was going to,” Charlie said. He laughed. “Honestly, I can’t believe I went through with it either. It was just so easy, you know? She was right there and I had plausible deniability because of the rope.”
“She deserved it.”
“Agreed.”
“I was sure Kelly was going to ream us out,” Charlie said.
He shook his head. “I never know what to expect from her or what she’s thinking.
It’s like sometimes she thinks we need to respect Courtney and always be nice to her, and then other times she couldn’t care less.
Like she sees through Courtney the same way we do. ”
“I think both are true,” I said. “I’ve actually been theorizing about this for a while. I think that she thinks we should respect Courtney as our boss since that’s, like, the objectively right thing for us to do, but then there are times like today where she sees Courtney the way we do.”
“And the day that Courtney made us stay even though our classes weren’t there.”
“Right! And did you see her face when she told Courtney to do the lane ropes herself? She totally knew what Courtney was doing and she wasn’t having it, so she called her out.”
“And Kelly definitely knew she was faking the whole ankle injury. Or at least playing it up.”
“But she couldn’t call her out on it as her boss, because that would be totally unethical. But we all knew.”
Charlie pulled up in front of my house, but instead of just pausing so I could jump out, he actually put the car in park.
“Are you coming in or something?” I asked jokingly.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Is that an invitation?”
I glanced at the driveway. Both cars were there, which meant Matthew was home—and he would not be pleased to see me anywhere with Charlie. He had barely even accepted that Charlie was driving me home every day.
“If only,” I sighed.
“Actually,” he said, “I had something I wanted to ask you.”
“Ask me? Color me intrigued.”
Charlie cleared his throat. “Has Matthew told you about the wedding we’re going to next week?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, well, it’s our hockey coach’s wedding, and he invited all of us to come,” Charlie said. “And I was wondering if you… maybe… wanted to go with me?”
“Go with you?” I asked. “You mean, like a date?”
Even though we’d been spending a lot of time together over the past few weeks, we hadn’t been on an actual date until now, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. It seemed so… formal, especially at a wedding.
“Yes,” Charlie said slowly. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” I said immediately. I didn’t want him reading too much into my hesitation. “I mean… Isn’t it a little last minute?”
“Very last minute,” Charlie agreed. “Penny was originally supposed to come, but something came up and she can’t anymore. So now I have a plus-one, and I thought that maybe it could be fun for you to come with me.”
At least that answered one of my questions—I wasn’t just a last-minute thought to him.
“Okay,” I said because I couldn’t think of anything better to respond with.
“Okay?” he asked. “Like okay, you’ll come?”
“What about Matt?” I asked. “Will he be mad that I’m there with you?”
Charlie let out a long breath. “Honestly? Yeah, probably.”
“But you don’t care?”
“I think we can convince him it’s not a big deal,” Charlie said. “Say that Penny asked you to go with me because she felt bad for ditching me. Or that your mom suggested it. Or some other totally platonic reason.”
“And you think he’ll buy that?”
“I—” He tilted his head back and forth. “Well… I’ll figure it out.”
I sighed and pressed my head back against the car window. “I wish we could just not hide this. Any of it.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” He leaned across the car and pushed some loose strands of hair away from my face. “Did I ever tell you how much I like the bangs on you?”
“No.” My lip curled up in a smile. “You didn’t.”
He mirrored my smile and then kissed me. It was gentle and slow, always the opposite of what I would expect from him. Warmth spread through my body, and my whole body felt like it was tingling. Would this happen every time that I kissed him? I hoped so.
Charlie pulled away suddenly.
“What?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
“I—” I jumped in surprise as someone knocked on my car window. “That.”
I cleared my throat and sat to face forward before I dared to check who it was. I slowly rolled down the window, unsurprised to see Matthew staring back at me.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Driving home from work?”
“Why are you still in his car then?”
“We were just talking about Courtney,” Charlie said. He rested his arm along his steering wheel, somehow going from cute lover boy to bored guy driving home his best friend’s little sister in five seconds flat. “She’s driving me insane.”
Matt snorted. “I told you not to go out with her.”
“Yeah, well, hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Charlie said.
“Well, maybe you should start listening to my advice about who to date,” Matt said. His eyes flicked towards me. “Both of you.”
The words were heavily loaded, and we all knew it. I just hoped it was still about Charlie driving me home and not what he may have just seen.
“Come in,” Matthew said to Charlie. “Pat’s in the hot tub.”
Charlie grabbed my bag from the back and handed it to me, then jumped out. I frowned but followed suit. The second I closed the car door, he locked it and followed Matthew inside—without glancing at me or bothering to say goodbye, which hurt more than it probably should have.
I refused to mope around because Charlie was hanging out with Matthew while I was all alone, so I called Violet to come over.
“It is way too hot outside,” Violet complained when she arrived.
“Never fear, air conditioning is here,” I said, pulling her inside. “Did you walk here?”
“No, my sister drove me, but the A/C in our car is broken, so it was almost worse than walking.”
I laughed. “Well, don’t worry. I’ll make you something to eat and you’ll feel better in no time.”
I started pulling things out of the fridge.
As I pulled out some frozen fruit, Violet seemed to quickly guess what I was going for as she immediately pulled out a blender.
Smoothies were a summer classic for us since they were pretty much the first thing either of us learned to make, and we both loved them.
The backdoor slid open just as I finished making the smoothies, and I almost dropped the blender in concern as I imagined having to see Charlie so soon when I hadn’t told Violet anything about what happened.
But luckily, when I looked over my shoulder to see who was there, it was just Matthew stepping inside.
He had clearly just gotten out of the hot tub since he was soaking wet from the chest down and dripping water all over the floor.
I curled my lip in disgust as I saw the trail he left behind him as he walked into the kitchen.
“Seriously, Matthew? You couldn’t have dried off before you came inside?”
“You sound like Mom,” he said. He reached over to ruffle my hair, and I ducked away with a scowl. “You gotta chill out a little, Mads.”
“Don’t call me Mads,” I snapped.
Matthew—the annoying guy that he was—just laughed. He dipped his finger in the blender and scooped out some smoothie to try. I elbowed him in the chest to move away, but I wasn’t fast enough to stop him. “Mm, this is good. Have any extra?”
“No,” I said coldly.
“So…” Matthew said. He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms. “I hear you’re Charlie’s date to the wedding.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back to the smoothies. I could feel Violet’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look at her. I didn’t want to have to explain what had happened. I poured the smoothie into two glasses and handed one to her, while still looking at the counter.
“I hope saying yes wasn’t some ploy to get Charlie to like you,” he said.
I felt like my heart leapt into my throat at his words, even though I could hear the mild teasing behind it.
It was like he didn’t think I actually liked Charlie, but just in case, he wanted to remind me that I wasn’t allowed to date him even if I wanted to.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Well, I’m just saying you could see how it looks,” he said. “You’re a serial dater who’s single while all your friends are in a relationship, and then this cute guy comes by, and you think—”
“I think that my coworker asked me to go to a wedding with him because he didn’t know anyone else who would be interested,” I interrupted.
I was glad that my voice didn’t shake at all as I said it because that felt like a real risk at that moment.
How did Matthew somehow perfectly understand what I was thinking?
Was I really that easy to read? Was everyone thinking this about me?
“Sure, you did,” he said, dragging out each word. “Next you’re going to tell me that you’ve never thought of Charlie that way at all.”
“I haven’t!” I exclaimed desperately. My reasons for not wanting Matthew to know were numerous, from hating the idea of my sibling knowing who I had a crush on to the fact that I knew he would kill me if he ever figured it out.
“Good,” Matthew said. His face suddenly changed from one of teasing to serious. “Because you can’t go out with him, Madison. You understand that, right?”
“What is up with you today?” I asked. I backed away a couple of steps. I felt a weirdly intense vibe coming off of him and it was freaking me out a little. I knew he didn’t want me anywhere close to Charlie, but I didn’t realize he cared quite this much.
Matthew sighed and shook his head. “Sorry. It’s just that Ella and Jack broke up last week, and things have been really weird between Jack and Pat ever since.”
Jack and Pat were some of Matthew’s best friends.
Ella was Pat’s little sister, who met Jack through her brother a couple of years ago and they started dating pretty soon after.
Although Matthew had always been possessive of his friends and not wanting me near them, his intensity about it had definitely increased once that happened.
Right from the beginning, he had predicted that something was going to go wrong and it would tear their friend group apart, but Jack and Ella hadn’t listened.
He probably felt pretty vindicated in his opinion now.
“I’m sure everything will work itself out pretty soon,” I said slowly. “I’m sure they won’t let go of their friendship over a relationship.”
“I don’t know,” Matthew said. He crossed the kitchen and started filling up a glass with ice from the dispenser. “It doesn’t look like that will happen right now. I told him not to throw away his oldest friendship for some girl, but he didn’t listen.”
“Maybe he really loved her.” I felt like I was grasping at straws here, but I couldn’t help it.
I wasn’t planning on pursuing Charlie beyond a fling, but I would be lying if I said I hadn’t imagined it a few times, and in every single one of those daydreams, I imagined Matthew changing his mind about how he felt regarding me dating one of his friends once it actually happened. But clearly, he wouldn’t.
“He didn’t love her,” Matthew said. His voice was strangely monotone. “He just liked the idea of her. Forbidden fruit, you know?”
I did know. Sadly, I knew all too well. Sometimes, I worried it was the only reason Charlie was attracted to me at all.