Chapter 3
Charlie
I didn’t have any set date in mind for starting at the motel, and Nic had told me I could start whenever I got there. That meant I could take my time on the drive. Which was good, because Google maps told me it would take about forty hours to get there if I, somehow, could drive straight through.
Obviously, I needed to take safety into account—I’d promised Harper, after all—so I chose to find a place to stop whenever I felt tired. I took breaks, too. Checked out some random silly attractions and ate at roadside diners whenever it suited me.
The freedom was… immense. To know that I wouldn’t have to stress about my parents was everything to me. It took me about three hundred miles to realize that this move was long overdue. I’d known it, of course, but some random song on the radio I didn’t even recognize had a line and that just hammered it into my thick skull.
I choked up and steered the filled to the brim SUV to the next possible gas station so I could have a break to cry it out. For once, I didn’t consider how I looked: a grown man weeping in a car at the edge of the parking lot in broad daylight.
Once I was cried out, I wiped my face and blew my nose and wiped my face again. Then I cleaned my glasses because of those annoying dried salt drops that happen when you cry with your glasses on. I pushed them back up my nose, then grabbed my wallet to go get something to drink and use the restroom while I was here.
It was relatively slow time of day, so I managed to get through the bathroom and shopping without bumping into anyone. Then, at the cash register, the person behind the desk gave me a very obvious head to toe look and their eyes sparked with interest.
My stomach dropped, and I corrected my glasses without needing to. I took a deep breath while trying not to show how unsettled they’d made me.
“That’ll be fifteen dollars and forty-five cents,” they said, smiling in what would’ve looked flirty and charming to someone else.
I quickly used my card and gathered the stuff, mumbling my thanks as I dashed out of there like someone lit a fire under my tail. My heart was trying to escape my chest, and I felt my whole body trying to start shaking. I couldn’t let it. Not now.
I made it to the car and inside it, dumping the drinks and snacks on the passenger’s seat. I grabbed the steering wheel and pressed my forehead against it, concentrating on breathing through the anxiety.
I hated my faulty brain sometimes. A lot of the time. Most of the time, really.
Getting those looks, what Nic called “elevator eyes” was normal to me. I knew I was what people thought handsome. I also worked out almost compulsively, which kept me fit, and I liked my clothing to be comfortable and well-fitting, not loose.
None of that was the problem.
I took in a deep breath and reached blindly for one of the waters I’d bought. I closed my eyes, opened the drink and took a sip. It calmed me down a bit more, but I still gave myself a few more minutes of quiet time, trying to reorganize the chaos one flirty look had pushed me into.
I needed to back out of the parking spot, so I stuck one of the lollipops I’d bought into my mouth, made sure I didn’t see myself in the mirrors, and then backed the car slowly and carefully.
Sometimes, I got fixated on something about myself. My hands, for example. There was nothing wrong with them, they were perfectly average, but my brain locked onto the shape of my knuckles and I couldn’t even look at my hands for a while.
There’d been a whole summer when I’d been so disgusted with my feet, that I’d had trouble putting on socks for months.
Most of the time, it was all of me I had problems with. I had gone to therapy for a while, knowing that my issue had a name: body dysmorphia. But the therapist had been…. Let’s just say she wasn’t very professional and tried to figure out if I was dysmorphic because of some well-hidden transgender issues.
Which, no. I knew I was a man, a cisgender one at that. I didn’t want to be a woman, nor did I feel like one. I was perfectly content in my gender identity. It was the body I couldn’t stand.
I turned on the radio and steered the SUV back onto the highway. I could lament on my sad little life later, it was time to concentrate on staying alive until the first motel I’d booked.
For the next six days, I made my way across the country slowly but surely.
On the second to last day, somewhere just past Indianapolis, the car’s AC started to blow hot, so I found the closest mechanic who could luckily help me with that. It wasn’t a big issue, and the guy said it would be an easy fix. I took his word for it, because I wasn’t technically savvy at all when it came to cars.
Instead of getting worried as I walked across the street to a diner for late lunch as the mechanic did his thing, I embraced the forced stop to that day’s journey.
Since I knew I’d be back on the road in a couple of hours, I could still make it to Buffalo tonight, for one final motel night. Then, tomorrow, I’d likely get to settle down in a more permanent location.
My phone rang while I was sitting in a booth, waiting for my chicken Caesar salad.
“Hey, Blue,” I answered, smiling.
“How’s it going?” he asked, and I could hear him smiling, too.
“It’s okay. Not too far to go now, except car trouble.”
“Oh. You at a mechanic?” His tone was instantly that of a concerned big brother, which I loved. “Nothing too big, I hope?”
“Nah. He told me to go eat and he’ll check it meanwhile. Shouldn’t be too expensive, either, it’s just the AC playing tricks. I lucked out with there being an opening though.”
“For sure. I’m glad.” He sighed, relaxing now that he knew it wasn’t a big deal. “How’s the journey been so far?”
And there it was again, that different tone of his voice. The one that was all protective brother, but this one came out whenever he wanted to protect me from myself and was gauging if he needed to do so.
“Couple of times something’s triggered me, but nothing too bad. Mostly smooth sailing. Glad I’m not hating my hands right at this moment, though,” I snarked.
Blue huffed. “Just know that if it gets bad at any hour, you call me immediately, okay? Promise me.”
I smiled. “Of course. Hey, my food is here. I’ll talk to you later?”
“Anytime.”
“Tell Mini-Me I’m being careful.”
Chuckling, he replied, “Will do. Talk to you later.”
“Bye!” I put the phone down, then smiled at the waitress. “Thank you.”
“Do you want a refill?” she asked, nodding at my coffee.
“Please.”
Soon, I was eating my salad and having probably too much coffee.
Harper, Law’s eldest, was named after me. They’d wanted to call her Charlotte, but I told them that having two Charlies in the same family would be a bit much, so they went with Harper for the first name. I called her Mini-Me most of the time, because how often did you know someone who was named after you and loved you unconditionally if it wasn’t your own kid?
She and her siblings were great kids. My brother and Caitlyn had done exceptionally well with them, even amongst their marriage falling apart. They were still best friends, which allowed them to do what was right for their children. You couldn’t help but admire that.
I ate slowly, meticulously. That’s how I always did it when I was alone. But this time, it served an additional purpose: passing time.
I sometimes wondered if I had a touch of OCD but had come to the conclusion that it probably wasn’t enough for a diagnosis. How my life had started had fucked up my whole family, myself included. I’d been told over and over again how much of a life-ruiner I was, and that sort of thing had to damage one’s psyche.
In fact, I was pretty sure the way my mother especially had fucked me up had caused most of my issues. I could only hope that getting away from her would help.
The last motel was noisy, and I could barely sleep. By the time some people stopped being so loud, others were leaving for work and slamming doors. I gave up on sleeping around eight, having already tossed and turned for a couple of hours.
At least this way, once I had some breakfast in me, I’d be at Fairville well before dinnertime, which was when Dana had told me to be there. Nicole was normally the one in charge of communication, but when it came to anything food, Dana took over and her word was the law.
She’d been the head chef for a restaurant in New York City for two and a half years, until she’d crumpled. Before that, she’d worked in various restaurants for over a decade. She was one of the strongest people I knew, but when Nic had started to talk to me about how much her wife was changing, I’d gotten worried.
I wasn’t sure what the last straw had been, but around the time Dana’s burnout pulled her under, Nic had told her they were leaving the city and Dana’s restaurant days were over.
Earlier this year, in the springtime, Nicole had called me, telling me they’d move upstate because they’d bought a motel and whatever else came with it. She’d sounded enthusiastic, and told me Dana was doing better as well.
I couldn’t wait to see them again; it’d been too long.
Once upon a time, while I was in college and Nic was in trade school in Tucson, we ended up living in the same shared house. For some reason, we hit it off pretty much immediately. Maybe it was the fact that while there was always some drama between our other housemates, the two of us liked to stay out of it and had met a kindred spirit in that sense.
Given that I was gay and she a lesbian, we were also 100% platonic from the start. That gave us certain freedom to form our friendship into whatever it ended up being.
She’d come to visit my family a couple of times, because hers sucked in a whole different way. My mother had hoped that we’d become lovers, just so there would be one less unseemly thing about me. Nic had laughed at Mom’s hinting, though, openly telling her that our parts didn’t match in any configuration that would be constructive to a romantic relationship. Besides, even then, she’d had her eyes on a cute butch in a chef’s jacket. Which she’d also told my mother point blank.
I grinned at the memory. The expression on my mother’s face had been priceless. Dad had hidden his half-a-smile, while Law had fist bumped her.
When I’d met Dana a few weeks later, it had been right after Nic had gotten her to go on a date for the third time. She’d introduced us with a flourish and told me, “Since you’re my best friend and I’m gonna marry this girl one day, I thought you should meet asap.”
Dana had chuckled fondly, as if humoring Nic’s quirky self. But they’d gotten married six months later and the rest was history.
I stopped in Syracuse to eat a late lunch at the first Popeyes Google Assistant directed me to, and then continued to drive through the afternoon. The scenery was really nice, and I couldn’t wait for the fall when the colors would change.
Already, it was so different to what I was used to back in Arizona. It felt like proper summer here; it was green and lush and wonderful, and once I turned off the highway and onto Route 11, I found myself slowing down, lifting my foot off the gas whenever I drove past something beautiful whenever the traffic was light enough to allow it.
I filled the tank in some little town an hour or so away from Fairville, then put the address into my phone’s GPS. It wasn’t as if I could miss the motel, apparently, but I wanted the warning that I was getting close to it so I wouldn’t just drive past and panic.
Not that it’d matter, but I felt like a smooth landing would be nicer than scrambling to find somewhere to turn back around.
In the end, Nic had been right. You couldn’t miss the motel, and the road past it went uphill and then curved to the left enough that you had to slow down naturally. There, nestled among the trees, behind a parking lot by the road, sat Black Dog Inn.
I smiled. It looked exactly how Nic had described it to me. The long rectangular building had a set of room doors facing the parking lot, and I knew there’d be a matching amount of doors on the other side of the building.
I parked next to the office end of the building and got out of the SUV. I rolled my shoulders and shook out my legs a little. I was here.
Suddenly something caught my attention. The sun was getting lower in the sky, but there was still enough sunlight that some of the shadows near the entrance were pretty deep.
One of the shadows had eyes.
I froze, then did my best not to smile too widely when I remembered Nic had told me about the dogs.
“You must be Steve,” I said in my most polite tone and walked closer.
I didn’t look him in the eyes as I crouched a respectable distance away and held out my hand.
“It’s nice to meet you. Where’s your sister?” I asked, knowing that she wouldn’t be far.
With a put upon sigh, the big, sleek, black dog got up and came to sniff my hand. He was a Cane Corso, looked mean with his cropped ears—a practice I hated with vigor—and slightly droopy face.
My attention strayed from him, when I saw another dog amble toward us from across the parking lot. She’d been in the direction where I knew a road led to some cabins.
“Hi, pretty girl,” I cooed at her.
Unlike her stoic brother, she wagged her tail immediately. She was some sort of a mix of those super fluffy, large guardian breeds. Nic had told me both dogs were friendly and loving when they weren’t in work mode. I guess the female—whose name escaped me right then—was taking a break or was just friendly to those she didn’t see as a threat to her property.
I pet her gigantic head. Steve decided he was done with me and slipped through the propped-open door. I heard him let out a deep “boof!” right inside what I thought must’ve been the reception area.
“Steven! Why are you being loud?” Nic asked the dog.
He barked once more, then turned around to come back outside.
“What on earth—Charlie, you’re here!”
I had just enough time to brace myself before I had a pint-sized octopus of a builder wrapped around me.
“Hey, Sweetie,” I murmured against her hair as I squeezed her close.
“I missed you so much, Glasses,” she sniffled as she pressed impossibly closer.
“Missed you, too.”
Dana walked out and spotted us, joining the hug.
“Hey,” I told her as I pulled her closer.
“Nice to see you, stranger.”
“You, too.” I let them both go, then looked at the dogs. “I see you’ve had kids since the last time we met.”
Dana chuckled. “A bit hairy and slobbery, but otherwise perfect.”
“Did you just sort of quote Scuttle from The Little Mermaid?” Nic asked, looking up at her significantly taller wife.
Dana smirked. “And what if I did?”
“Oh, you’re so getting lucky tonight!”
I burst out laughing. I’d missed them so damn much. “What’s a guy to do here to get a cup of coffee? Sing Part of Your World ?”
“She likes Under the Sea better,” Nic whispered loudly.
Dana grabbed the door and opened it all the way, gesturing for us to go through, all the while whistling quietly the song.
“Oh no, no!” I exclaimed at her amused expression. “I just remembered part of the lyrics!”
Dana sang the line, emphasizing the word wetter, following us as we ran inside, giggling our fool heads off.