Chapter Twenty-Six
TWENTY-SIX
CHARLIE
I’m sorry.
That’s all the text says.
Charlie is sorry, too. Sorry for getting his hopes up. Sorry for believing love and change were possible for a guy like him. Sorry for telling his family when nothing was set in stone.
Every response text fails to send. Every voice call goes unrung.
Is he being ghosted by a world-famous chocolate maker?
He fails not to look devastated over breakfast, which he barely touches. He stares into his watery Keurig coffee, watching as the creamer separates into clumps. His heart mirrors them, glopping off into tiny bits floating through the vacuous nothing of his body. On they swirl until—
“Charlie?” Mom asks.
“Huh?”
“The syrup. Can you pass the syrup?” she repeats.
He wakes up enough to perform the simple task that feels Herculean. What did they put in the bottle, cement?
Mom made pancakes. Dad griddled bacon. They both took paid days off from work to prepare the house for Dario’s arrival tomorrow morning.
Grandma and Grandpa were too excited not to be up, showered, dressed and ready to be wheeled to the kitchen table to share a rare morning meal together.
It’s a full house for the denouement, though it seems this isn’t the comedy that ends in a wedding they all hoped it would be.
Charlie slaps a pad of butter in the center of his pancake stack. It melts and oozes off the sides.
Mom opens a window to dissipate the overwhelming scent of frying grease that the barely functioning stovetop fan couldn’t handle. The early-morning air carries in the first traces of autumn—a nip and an earthy wetness. It mixes with the nearly tangible anticipation crowding the kitchen.
“Dario isn’t coming anymore,” Charlie says, unable to hold back for another second.
The room quiets save for Loretta Lynn crooning over the radio, a mid-tempo ditty about being a coal miner’s daughter.
“What’s happened, Charlie?” Grandpa asks.
Grandma clasps her hands together. “Is he in good health? Has something happened to Amorina?”
“I think so, and I don’t think so, and I don’t know what to think.” His brain is as fried as the bacon.
“What did he say?” Mom asks, standing beside the sink.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Charlie. It’s not your fault,” Grandpa is quick to add.
Charlie shakes his head. “That’s what he said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Nothing else.”
“Why, that could mean anything!” Grandma says.
“Maybe there were other texts that didn’t go through,” Mom says.
Grandpa: “Perhaps that was meant for someone else.”
Grandma: “What if he had gifts to bring you and he forgot them all, and that’s what he’s sorry about?”
“There will always be a million reasons to think the worst,” Dad says, surprising everyone by jumping into the conversation. “If you can find even one reason to think the best, you can keep the faith.”
For someone who didn’t seem on board with having Dario come at all, he is the most helpful in leashing Charlie’s worry, which follows him like a mangy, stray dog for the rest of the day.
Charlie goes to work as usual, figuring he’s back to needing the income.
Is this what forever looks like for Charlie Moore? Sitting in a sagging chair behind a glass window selling alcohol in Slatington, Pennsylvania?
The Amorina bars have been restocked in the snack stand. Even after everything, they call to him. He exercises restraint. The taste alone would make him lose his hope, and maybe his mind. His father told him to be positive, so he will be.
In his sketchbook, instead of drawing, he writes up a list of all the things Dario could be sorry for instead of standing him up. As his spirits lift with every scribbled bullet point, a car drives up. Charlie is too focused to notice.
The click of dress shoes instead of boots on the cement floor is what pulls Charlie from his brainstorm.
“Charlie,” Dario says, appearing in a five-piece suit before him.
Charlie leaps out of his booth and into the chocolate maker’s arms. The firmness of his short king confirms he is not a fabrication of Charlie’s flowery imagination. Dario Cotogna is in America, in his arms, where he said he’d be. Where he belongs.
“Your text—I thought—” Charlie can’t form coherent sentences because the familiar smell of Dario’s shampoo fills his nostrils.
“I should’ve never sent that. I had a moment of weakness. I’m so sorry, Charlie,” Dario says. He holds Charlie tighter to punctuate his apology.
“What did you mean?” he asks.
Dario pauses. Charlie pushes a few strands of hair back behind Dario’s ear so he can see his dashing face better. “I gave in to my anxiety for a moment before leaving. I needed a little push. Emilio came to do that for me,” Dario says.
“Emilio?” Charlie asks, unable to conceal his surprise.
The tinted car window zips down behind them. Emilio waves. “Ciao, Charlie. Pretend I am not here!” The window slides right back up.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” Dario says.
“I thought ‘I’m sorry’ were the last two words you were ever going to say to me,” Charlie admits. Good things can come and go so quickly, as he’s learned. He didn’t want to believe Dario could leave him like that. The situation with Max all over again.
“The whole flight here I was afraid you’d never speak to me,” Dario says, hanging his head.
“With this face?” Charlie cups Dario’s cheeks in his hands and lifts his gaze again. “Not a chance, Candy Man. I love you.”
The words are sweeter than any Amorina bar ever could be. They taste like truth.
Dario beams, and Charlie can’t help but squeeze his rosy cheeks.
He takes on the appearance of a glubbing fish.
An adorably glubbing fish who swam all the way upstream against the raging current of his mental health to be here.
Right now. Charlie swans in and kisses him, his brave little chocolatier.
“Ti amo, Charlie. I love you, too,” Dario says with his whole chest. They kiss again.
“My shift ends in a half hour,” Charlie says, glancing at the clock.
“Are you going to give me a tour then?” Dario asks, gesturing around.
Charlie honks out a laugh. “This is it. It’s not going to be much of a tour.”
“I gave you a tour of the Amorina Factory,” Dario says.
Charlie shrugs. “Fair is fair, I guess.”
He points out all the different merchandise—the beer fridge, the seltzer fridge, the shelves of hard liquor. They pass by the self-serve ICEE machines that slosh radioactive-looking drinks around.
“This is the snack shelf where I get my Amorina bars.” Charlie dances his fingers over the surface. He loves the oh-so-familiar feel of that shiny wrapping.
Dario lifts the bar off the top and announces he would like to purchase it. Charlie rings it up. The heart in the Amorina logo means more to him now that he has captured the real heart of a Cotogna.
Dario makes a yikes face when he peers into his wallet. “You don’t happen to take euros, do you?”
“This one’s on me,” Charlie says with a wink.
“Shall we share it?” Dario asks, waggling the bar in the air.
“I’d like that,” Charlie says.
“Can’t I come back there?” Dario asks. “I came all this way and now there’s a wall between us.”
Charlie points to a sign plastered on the door that says EMPLOYEES ONLY. “Sorry I don’t make the rules.”
Dario leans in conspiratorially. “If I have anything to say about it, you won’t be an employee here much longer, so maybe you can bend the rules this one time.”
“Excellent counterpoint.” Charlie rolls his chair across the floor and unlocks the door.
A couple weeks have passed, yet their bodies remember what it’s like to be in a small space together. A wire runs between them, creating a feedback loop of electricity powering their hearts. The charge is much too great to ignore.
Dario unwraps the Amorina bar. In Charlie’s mind, the chocolate bar is Dario, and the wrapping is Dario’s clothes.
He is overwhelmed by lust and love for this miraculous man who made it all the way to America to propose.
There will be a ring, and a wedding, and a whole lot of change, but right now, there needs to be sex. Sex with the man he loves.
Dario breaks off a piece of the chocolate bar and holds it out to Charlie. Tipping forward, Charlie takes the entire square in his mouth. His lips graze over Dario’s long, outstretched fingers. He leaves the chocolate in his mouth to liquefy, then shares it with Dario through a soft, sensual kiss.
It dribbles a bit down Dario’s smooth chin.
A single drop lands on his crisp white shirt.
Charlie regrets his actions, aware he’s ruined a one-of-a-kind garment.
But Dario smiles and shakes his head. His eyes beam a message: I have other shirts, but there is only one you and there is only right now.
Needfully, Charlie takes Dario by the lapel. Charlie sinks onto the counter in a seated position, and he draws Dario as close as possible with his calves. His ankles interlock behind Dario’s waist. There is no denying that they just fit together.
Charlie guides him in by the back of his neck for another kiss.
“My brother can see us,” Dario says.
“The windows are tinted,” Charlie says. Kiss. Nip. Lick.
“That only means we can’t see in,” Dario says.
Charlie laughs at himself, then leans back and pulls a cord. Wonky blinds plink into place.
“Better?” Charlie asks.
“Much.” Dario pitches in for a kiss that gets walled by a loud stomach gurgle.
“Hungry?” Charlie asks.
“Starved,” Dario admits.
Charlie bites his lip as he breaks off a piece of chocolate, waves it under Dario’s button nose. “Want it?” he asks.
Dario salivates and nods.
Charlie wastes no time fishing his erection out of his shorts. “Beg for it, Candy Man.”
Dario slips down onto his knees. His slacks slip up his legs a bit, giving Charlie a view of the garters holding up his semi-sheer dress socks.
Fuck. Charlie never realized calf belts could make his dick throb. He hops down off the counter. With his erection pointing straight out, he balances the bit of chocolate on top of his rock-hard shaft. “Mangia,” Charlie instructs.
In the blink of an eye, Dario takes Charlie between his lips and carefully scrapes his upper teeth down his length to retrieve the chocolate. The sensation causes Charlie’s knees to buckle. He grips the counter behind him for support.
Dario sits back on his haunches and savors the chocolate.
It’s simultaneously the cutest and most erotic sight Charlie has ever seen.
Half of him wants to take Dario by the scruff of the neck and face fuck him into next week.
The other half wants to hold him close and frot with him until they both cum buckets.
Dario licks his fingers clean, then says with a naughty smile, “I’m still hungry.”
God, he could do a backflip over how happy he is to have Dario back in his life, back in his space.
“Come here, Candy Man.” Charlie beckons him with a finger and a pulse of his cock. “I’ve got just the thing to satisfy you.”
Dario barely gags as Charlie thrusts into his mouth. Charlie clutches the threadbare fabric of his work shirt in the center of his chest. He looks forward to stripping it off one final time and instead of throwing it in the hamper, throwing it straight into the trash bin.
Dario grips Charlie’s covered ass, tugging him toward him, faster and harder. The tip of Charlie’s dick pummels the back of Dario’s throat.
Dario glances up with an innocent and pleased glint in his eyes. It is preposterous how handsome the chocolate maker looks with a mouthful of dick. He ruffles Dario’s hair, delighting in the unwashed silkiness of the strands.
Dario stands to pull his well-proportioned, uncut cock free. Charlie lines up their dicks so they are one on top of the other. He slicks them with spit and, using both hands, creates a tunnel for them to thrust into. Back and forth like a double-cut saw.
They kiss, and Charlie can taste both the Amorina chocolate and his own cock on Dario’s tongue. If only it were appropriate to package and market that combination of flavors. He’d fucking buy in bulk.
“Don’t miss your snack,” Charlie says as a general warning.
Dario bends down and works the swollen, sensitive head of Charlie’s cock into his mouth again. In under a minute, Charlie shoots four pent-up ropes of protein down Dario’s throat. The candy man gulps it all down without wasting a single drop.
Smiling, Dario stands and starts putting his cock away.
“What about you?” Charlie asks through his post-orgasm fog, to which Dario shakes his head.
“I got what I wanted,” Dario says. “Andiamo. There’s a hotel bed waiting for us. Maybe you’ve got another round in you.”
Charlie wraps a possessive arm around Dario’s waist and nips at the tip of his warm, pink ear. “There’s no maybe, Candy Man. I’ve got as many rounds as you need.”
Dario twirls inside Charlie’s arm so they are chest to chest. “Time to clock out?”
Miraculously, it is.
“Have your driver pull out into the lot so I can close up. I’ll be ten minutes, max,” Charlie says.
Dario smushes the tips of their noses together. Charlie has never been more certain that those are the eyes he wants to see every night before he shuts off the lights and goes to sleep. Those are the eyes of his dreams.
Loath to have Dario anywhere but at his side, Charlie makes quick work of shutting down the machines, locking the fridges and counting out the register. The little red lights on the motion-sensor security cameras blink each time he passes as if giving him a final salute.
After unpinning his name tag and dropping it on the desk, he grabs a piece of computer paper from the funky printer. It takes him three tries before he grabs a working pen, but once he does, he has no hesitation about writing the date and time, and then: I quit, effective immediately.—Charlie Moore
Before exiting, he takes an empty envelope from the box under the desk. He hums Loretta Lynn as he exits the garage and pulls the gate down. Once locked, he slips his keys into the envelope and sails his past through the mail slot.