Chapter 10
Dillon
There’s nothing but icy silence from Charlie, and yet, a week passes by faster than I can blink.
I’m not blocked. I still get her voicemail when she doesn’t pick up my calls. But she hasn’t responded to any of my messages, and she’s turned off her read receipts, so I don’t even know if she’s reading them.
I’ve been making it through each day with as much functionality as a zombie, even when everything around me carries on like normal.
I’m drinking and eating, even when it all tastes like ash.
I’m going to work every day, where my colleagues joke around me as usual, my mask so firmly in place they don’t see how lost I am.
I’m stuck in a haze, watching everything from a distance, as if my life is happening to someone else.
It’s hard to believe that no one else can see that my world is falling down around me, crumbling like a sandcastle being washed away by the waves of the ocean.
The group chat has been blowing up, Bliss relentlessly trying to nail down whether we’re coming to some party in a couple of weeks—and not so subtly asking about what happened to Charlie at The Violet Wire.
It’s hard to gauge her tone over the messages, but I swear, I can hear this malicious triumph, even if Bliss doesn’t actually know why she never came back from the bathroom.
In Bliss’s mind, it’s a victory, even if it is in a war that no one else is fighting.
Marisa has been oddly silent throughout it all, and even Jack is more aloof, only throwing out the odd thumbs-up response. I’ve been trying to convince myself that it is because they are just busy, but something significantly shifted that night—the final match, struck by Bliss’s blatant cruelty.
The blame doesn’t lie solely with her. Not really.
It has been seven days since Charlie moved out.
I’m moping around the apartment, missing the scent of her cooking our usual breakfast—something we’d eat sitting at the kitchen island together, right before we headed out to the farmer’s market.
It was close enough to the harbor that the brisk wind would twist through the stalls and tents but we never minded.
We would buy our vegetables for the week, slowly picking our way through the rest of the stalls.
Every time I caught sight of a ceramic owl, I would buy it, sneaking it into our bags when she wasn’t looking, ready to surprise her when we got home.
Like clockwork, we went every week, and it is tempting to go today, to pretend I still have some kind of normalcy—some kind of control. But walking through the throngs of people without Charlie at my side is too painful to even consider.
A knock at the door pulls me from maudlin thoughts, and I frown.
I’m not expecting any visitors today, so it’s probably another neighbor wondering where Charlie is.
And I can’t face the small talk or having to admit that she’s gone, so I don’t move.
Instead, I settle deeper into the couch, eyes fixed on the TV screen, half hoping they’ll just go away.
Another loud knock dashes that hope.
Still, I don’t move…until it comes again and again and again.
I drag myself off the couch, stomping toward the door and swinging it open with a thunderous scowl pinching my mouth. It falls away when I come face to face with Marisa’s glower—an expression that puts mine to shame.
She doesn’t say a word, barging inside and shoulder-checking me out of the way as she heads for the kitchen. I watch her go, trying to work up the energy for whatever the fuck this is.
I blow out a breath, slowly closing the front door and following her.
“Good morning, Marisa,” I greet pointedly. “What can I do for you?”
Her bag is already hanging off a stool, and the coffee machine is purring away as she digs through the cabinet next to it. She pulls out two mugs before going for the creamer in the fridge.
“Sure,” I grumble. “Make yourself at home.”
Marisa doesn’t answer, her focus on making our drinks.
I shift my weight impatiently as she ignores me until she slides a mug toward me.
I stare down at it, eyes tracing over the words, Shh, don’t talk until my cup is empty.
Marisa’s mug is the exact same style—black with white lettering—but hers says, I’m not arguing. I’m just explaining why I’m right.
My throat works on a swallow.
The mugs are Charlie’s. Another of her collections—one she started after she moved in. There’s a stall at the market that sells them. She bought one a month, always looking for one that made her smile, knowing she had to limit herself because there was only so much room in the cabinet.
I didn’t realize she left them behind, and seeing them gives her absence a more permanent feel. I slide my hands into the pockets of my sweats, eyes never leaving those stupid cups.
Did Charlie leave them on purpose?
Is this her way of erasing another memory of us?
I look up, catching the way Marisa watches me carefully. “Jack messaged me a couple of days ago,” she says after a moment. “He wasn’t going to, but apparently, he felt guilty about what went down last week.”
My chest goes tight, and I cross my arms over my chest defensively. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Marisa lifts a blonde brow, her nose wrinkling. She looks around the kitchen, asking, “Where’s Charlie, then?”
I press my lips into a tight line, looking away from her. It’s not enough of an answer for Marisa, going off the sigh she lets loose.
“Dillonnnn.” She drags out my name like I’m an unruly child. “Where. is. Charlie?”
I drop my chin to my chest, my answer an inaudible mumble, and Marisa huffs loudly.
“For Christ’s sake, Dillon, could you—”
“She’s gone, okay?” I blurt furiously. “Charlie moved out on Saturday. After…” I trail off, and her expression shifts into something sympathetic.
But I cloak myself in anger, refusing to see it, the sensation eerily similar to what happened when I lost it at Charlie.
“She took off that night and wouldn’t take my calls or my messages.
I didn’t know if she was hurt or what. Turns out, she was just holed up with her Barrett.
” Bitterness and anger coat my tongue as I sneer out his name.
“She came around the next morning, with him following her like a little puppy, and she just…” I shrug, the venom drying up as fast as it came.
“She just left.” I flick a bleak look up at Marisa, seeing that her expression hasn’t changed.
“She ended us, and now she won’t talk to me. ”
She makes a thoughtful noise, tapping her fingers against her mug. “I had coffee with her. Three days ago.”
The words drop like a bomb between us. My eyes widen as I stand up straight, tension coiling in my gut. “What? You did? You guys…You’ve never…” I swallow roughly, asking what I really want to know. “Is she okay?”
Marisa lets out an unamused laugh, her eyes narrowed into slits. “No. No, Dillon. Charlie is not okay. She’s absolutely destroyed. And can you blame her?”
I stiffen, my shoulders hunching up to my ears. There’s no way she had anything good to say about me. “That’s just one side of it,” I snap defensively. “Her side.”
Marisa watches me carefully, tilting her head to the side, her white-blonde hair brushing her shoulders. “Don’t you think she deserves to tell her side?”
The denial is on my lips, but I shut my mouth at the last moment, sensing the hole that’s only growing deeper around me. I rub a palm against my chest, trying to ease the agitation, trying to understand why I’m reacting like such an asshole.
Fuck.
Marisa sighs, the sound full of frustration and weariness.
“Do you like Bliss?” she asks quietly, startling me with the change in topic.
“As a person, I mean. Jack…He has his moments, I guess. And both Corey and Amber are just—” She shakes her head, unwilling to say anything bad about them.
That’s always been Marisa; nice to her core, even when people don’t deserve it.
She’s not like me. The conversation I had with Jack flows into my mind, his accusation that I just wear nice as a costume—a pretense to hide what’s underneath.
Shame rushes through my chest as I think about every word that spilled out around the table that night, the way Amber and Bliss laughed, and the way I just let it wash over me as if none of it mattered.
To anyone else, it would have looked like I agreed with them. To Charlie, it would have sounded like I agreed with them.
I didn’t. I fucking loved Charlie’s dress that night. It made her green eyes pop and clung to every curve of her body. I don’t think I had ever seen her in anything like that dress, and when I walked into our room that night, she stole my breath away.
And I love the gap between her teeth, and the way it used to peek out at me every time she gave me a genuine smile—the kind where she forgot to feel self-conscious and just let all her happiness out.
When I first met Charlie, those smiles were rare.
It wasn’t until she started to trust me that they came more freely, and it guts me to have lost them.
I’ve never really met anyone like Charlie before. Someone so willing to put other people first, even if it means forgetting about herself. She wears her heart on her sleeve, but she keeps her pain tucked close up against her chest, hiding it from the world.
All because she spent years being torn apart by her bitch of a mother.
My heart drops as it fully sinks in that I let my friends do the exact same thing. I might have told myself it was fine because Charlie wasn’t there to hear it…but she was right when she said that someone who loved her would never let anyone speak about her like that in the first place.
I did love her, so why did I stay silent?
“I sense an epiphany in the air,” Marisa chirps.
A rough, broken chuckle leaves me. “Why did I do it?” I rasp.