Chapter 19
nineteen
Cash
G uys’ night.
That’s the sham of a title James gave it when he told us all to meet at Fourth and Goal, a popular sports bar in Honeyville.
But it was all a setup.
When Liam and I arrived, James and Griffin had already snagged a table. Bowen was wowing the restaurant at the piano on the tiny stage in the corner. His fingers coaxed out a stripped-down, aching version of Noah Kahan’s “Orange Juice.” At least half of the people on this side of the restaurant were watching, mesmerized. Bowen hardly noticed them.
Liam stepped to the side and gestured for me to scoot into the booth ahead of him. “I get claustrophobic if I sit on the inside.”
So I obliged, taking the seat closest to the wall, across from James and Griff who were studying their menus.
“ Yes. ” I pounded a spirited rhythm on the table. “Guys’ night!” I forced a laugh, overruling my brain which was teetering on the edge of a terrifying depression. “Where’s Theo?” I asked James.
James peered over his menu. “He was finishing up a website for a client. He should be here any minute.”
I grabbed a menu and offered one to Liam.
The waitress walked up. A middle-aged woman who looked around my mom’s age. “Hey, everyone.” She waved. “My name’s Angie, and I’ll be taking care of you tonight.” She glanced around the table, giving each of us a second, like she was memorizing our seating order. I braced for the flicker of awareness. “I have a table full of Duprees, don’t I?”
My shoulders dropped and I hated that she caught it.
But I was worn out. The past two weeks had been full of emotional sprinting —dodging heartbreak, stumbling over the wreckage, dragging myself forward, no matter how bloodied or breathless. But I refused to go down.
Dang it.
Even letting myself think about Charlie for one second had me diving into the free-fall of grief. I grabbed hold of myself before I could drop any further.
“You do.” Liam grinned.
“No worries,” Angie said. “There will be no fangirling. Just waitressing. Does everyone know what they want to drink?” She glanced at me. “Why don’t we start with you?”
“Uh,” James said. “We’re still waiting on two people.”
“Two?” I asked.
Griffin rammed his elbow into James’s side.
Okay.
James’s eyes widened. “Sorry. We’re waiting on one more person.”
“That’s okay,” Angie said. “I’ll bring an extra water and your friend can order a drink when he gets here.” She glanced at me. “What’ll you have?”
“Dr Pepper, please.”
“Shouldn’t be putting all that sugar into your body during race season,” Bowen chided.
“Let me worry about myself,” I sang. I needed endorphins wherever I could get them tonight. Bring on the sugar. Bring on the caffeine. I turned back to the waitress. “And can I get two orders of chicken wings for everyone?”
“Aw, thanks, man,” Griff said, rubbing his stomach.
“Sure thing. And how about you?” Angie asked Liam.
“Water with lemon. Thank you.”
“I’d like a Dr Pepper as well, please,” James said, making Bowen tsk again.
“Hit me with the doctor, too.” Griffin’s eyes twinkled at how much that annoyed Bowen.
The waitress nodded and walked away.
Bowen shrugged. “You’ll all be crying into your Dr. Peppers when I win the money pool.”
“Mkay,” Griffin snorted.
“Nope.” I pounded a spirited rhythm on the table. “Nopity, nope. Only good vibes tonight.” I pounded again.
Griffin’s lips curled up at the corners and his nostrils flared, fighting a laugh. “Tell the truth. Which one of you slipped something into Cash’s drink before I got here?”
“Nada,” Bowen said. “That’s just his frenzied, barely-holding-it-together energy.”
James sat up taller, tipping this way and that, peering at the entrance. “Oh, Theo just got here.”
Like a stoplight had turned red and this was a game of Chinese Fire Drill, Bowen, Griffin, and James slid out of the booth while Liam scooted closer to me.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“What up, boys?” Theo asked.
My eyes followed his voice but they didn’t land on Theo.
They landed on Charlie.
For thirteen days, avoid, avoid, avoid had played on a loop in my mind—every moment a struggle with her living in the same house. It was only broken up by a secondary mantra: distract, distract, distract. Which was what tonight was supposed to be: one large distraction.
From her.
And here she was, looking as sideswiped as me. James gestured for her to sit. Her forehead crunched but she slipped in, opposite me, against the wall.
As my cousins sat back down, I looked at anyone but her, my chest thick with pain. “What is this? Y’all said this was guys’ night.”
James grabbed a vacant seat from the table behind him, flipped it around, and straddled it at the end of the table, clearly the ringleader. “This is an intervention.”
There was fire in Charlie’s eyes, all her ire aimed at Theo. “You said you were taking me out for a burger.”
“I am,” Theo said. “And an intervention.”
“For what?” I snapped.
“For you two,” Theo said.
“Because you belong together,” Griff said, like it was obvious.
“And because we feel like we’re caught between two thunderclouds,” Bowen said with an unrepentant shrug.
“You’ve both been in terrible moods since that kiss in Anna and Blue’s pool,” Liam rounded it out.
Why had Charlie been in a bad mood?
I couldn’t help it. I looked at her then.
I shouldn’t have. She was too freaking beautiful—hair in a half up-half down style. Her beautiful eyes were glossy and wrecked, pulling me in even while trying to let me go.
My own burned with hot tears. I closed them and rubbed my temples, irritated at my well-meaning, but completely off-base cousins.
“We saw the kiss,” Liam said. “Both of them. Everyone knows you’re in love with each other.”
“So you can quit acting like you’re not,” Griffin chimed in. “No one believes it.”
“Literally,” Bowen said.
“Charlie’s not acting,” I said under my breath, staring at a scratch in the wood.
“What does that mean?” James asked.
“Nothing,” I muttered.
“It means something,” Theo barked. “Or you wouldn’t have said it.”
“Stop,” Charlie said weakly. “Leave him alone.”
“Fine,” Theo said, crossing his arms. “You tell us then. Why aren’t you together?”
“It’s none of your business,” she said, making her tone hard. “ None .”
“Nah. Nuh uh. That’s not going to cut it,” Liam said with a frustrated laugh. “Maybe if we weren’t all family. But we are.”
“You’re making us all miserable,” Griffin said.
“And uncomfortable,” James added. “We feel like we’re children in the middle of a custody battle.”
“Dramatic much?” I huffed.
But it wasn’t. When Charlie came to sit with us on the back deck during Dupree Family Sunday Dinner, I’d gotten up and left. Same with our last game night. I wasn’t trying to be a douche. It was simply a matter of survival. The ache of her not wanting me was so intense, it hurt to breathe when she was around. Just like it did right then. It only lessened slightly when she wasn’t. But at least when I was alone, I didn’t have to mask the hurt.
I looked away. Only to see a table of guys ogling her . One guy was egging another to come over and talk to her. That was obvious from their gestures. And I’d have to sit here and watch it happen.
My fists curled as I lost the battle, a tear slipping out of the corner of my eye.
Charlie was the only one who saw. Which only made it worse.
“Cash,” she whispered, her foot rubbing down my shin like that was some kind of comfort. I yanked my leg back.
“I…I need to go.” I motioned for Liam and Theo to move.
“No.” Liam shook his head, jaw set. “I have strict instructions not to let you pass until we get all these feelings out in the open.” He gestured at everyone like we were in group therapy.
The same resolve was on all their faces like they’d made a secret pact not to let either of us leave the table until it was done.
Something inside me snapped. “You want my feelings out in the open?” I hissed, my glare swinging from person to person. “Well, here they are. She wrote me a freaking song about how she doesn’t ‘feel that way about me.’” I used air quotes. “And made me sing it to myself. Happy now?”
No one responded. But hey, they did offer me varying expressions of shock and chagrin. Which only proved I was a pathetic loser. Girls only wanted me for my name and what I could do for them. Or they didn’t want me at all.
It was more than I could take, the swell of pain burst through the emotional dam I’d kept plugged all week.
As another tear rolled onto my cheek, I narrowed my eyes on Charlie. “You know, for someone who doesn’t have feelings for me, you sure do have a way of making sure I never get a second to breathe without you in it. Why didn’t you go live at your own house? Or anywhere but mine, for that matter? But no, you have to be everywhere I turn. Just give me some freaking space!”
The moment the words were out, I wished I could take them back. It was the opposite of what I actually wanted. I wanted her so in my space I didn’t know where she stopped and I began.
The group went uncomfortably silent.
Now her eyes were watering. “Y-you’re right. I’m so sorry. I’ll get out of your way, Cash.” The way she said it screamed that she was leaving. And not just this restaurant or my family’s house.
She was leaving for good.
She turned to Theo next to her. “I need you to let me by.”
“No, I’m not doing that,” he said stubbornly.
“ I’m leaving ,” she said again, this time deep and baleful.
“Charlie, no,” I said, voice wobbly.
One second, Theo’s key fob was lying on the table, the next it was in her hand. She sprang up, strutted over the table like it was a runway, and hit the ground running—ducking past James, using a waiter as cover.
The restaurant quieted, everyone looking at us. But I couldn’t care. As I watched her disappear behind a family, fear wrapped around my lungs like barbed wire.
“I can’t believe you said that,” Theo snapped.
“Really?” I asked. “You can’t stage a showdown and expect no one to bleed.”
“She loves you, man,” Bowen said. “She’s just covering it up for some reason.”
“Why do you think she chose to live at your house?” James power-whispered.
“She wanted to be close to you ,” Liam said like it should’ve been obvious. From the expressions on everyone’s faces, I was the only one who hadn’t figured that out.
My head turned, gaze scrambling over the room, desperate to find her. I gestured for Liam and Griff to move . Finally, they scrambled off the seat.
I jogged through the restaurant, gaze skittering from person to person, trying to find her, cussing myself the entire way. I hit the sidewalk outside, slowing only to turn right, then left. She wasn’t anywhere. At least that I could see. My stupid eyes weren’t helping, blurred from my tears.
Thankfully, I heard a woman say, “Are you Charlie Dupree?” somewhere on the far end of the parking lot.
Charlie didn’t answer. But I heard a beep-beep and saw the taillights of Theo’s black Toyota Tundra light up when she was still twenty feet away.
“Charlie!” I yelled. I shouldn’t have. It only made her break into a run. “Charlie!” I sprinted, my tennis shoes smacking against the pavement, clocking a time that would’ve had Blue claiming I got my speed from him. I caught her around the waist, slamming us both into the driver’s side door. “No! Don’t go.” I ripped the fob from her hand and tightened my arms around her like a vice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t. I didn’t.” I was crying—sobbing actually—into her hair. “Please don’t leave. I’ll be your friend. I’ll be whatever you need me to be.”
“Hey,” she said softly, her torso shaking as she sobbed. Her arms came around my shoulders and her fingers gently scraped over my scalp. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Cash?”
“Huh?” I sniffed.
“We’re gathering a crowd.”
She was right. Seven people were staring at us. One had his phone out recording.
She shifted my weight and opened the door. “Get in.”
I slid across the bench seat. She climbed in, shut the door, and locked it. Then she turned and opened her arms, her coffee-colored eyes offering a warmth I didn’t deserve.
And that’s how I ended up sobbing against her shoulder while the guys ate my chicken wings.