22. Nothing Says Romance Like a Fast Escape
NOTHING SAYS ROMANCE LIKE A FAST ESCAPE
OWEN
I t’s Tuesday evening, and I am in the middle of looking up some local and federal preservation codes related to my next project.
Because my current project always keeps me busy during normal working hours, all the prep work for the next project has to happen at home in the evening or on the weekends.
Normally, I’m in deep focus when doing stuff like this.
But I keep thinking about last night at Charlie’s place.
I just can’t get over how good it feels to have someone care about what’s below my surface.
To really care about the real me, not just about my cheerful front.
I’m so impressed that she even noticed. Or could tell.
With the exception of my family, who were at my side as I was going through it all, I’ve never had someone see beyond the smile before .
It has made me realize that because of past relationships and other losses, I had kind of stopped believing in love. Charlie has made me believe again.
Her views on forgiveness were so different from mine. Last night, when I got home, I spent a good amount of time picturing myself physically handing over the responsibility for Cordell’s consequences. I’m not all the way to where I want to be yet, but I haven’t felt this light in years.
I’m staring at the information on my screen, not really seeing anything, when my phone lights up. It’s a text from Charlie.
Charlie: Miles is heading out of town tomorrow, so he’s soaking up time with Reese. They roped me into playing Back Pictionary, which is played in pairs, so clearly, we need a fourth victim. Are you busy? Or are you free to come lose with me?
I have no idea what Back Pictionary is, and honestly, I don’t care. I text her back.
Owen: I’ve spent the past hour trying to focus on federal code, but turns out all roads lead back to you. I’m in. For the game, the chaos, and whatever version of losing you have planned .
Charlie greets me at the door with a kiss.
“Mmm,” I say. “My night has already improved by a thousand percent.”
She grins and leads me to their living room. Miles is sitting on a side chair, Reese is on the couch, and in front of the couch sits a pad of big art paper on an easel that Reese borrowed from her work, based on the “Property of Cipher Springs Middle School Library” sticker on its side.
“Great! We’ve got our fourth!” Miles says as he stands, and Charlie and I take a seat on the couch. “Okay, here’s how this works. Reese and I are on one team, and Charlie and Owen are on the other. When it’s your team’s turn, the person guessing will come up to the easel.”
Wait. The person guessing?
“The person drawing will pull a card from the box and show the other team. Then they’ll tape a piece of paper to the back of the guesser’s shirt, and they’ll draw that object on the guesser’s back.
The guesser has to draw whatever they think was just drawn on their back on the big paper.
So they are trying to figure out what the card said based on their own drawing.
Oh, and you’ve got two minutes to guess right. ”
Oh, okay. Now I get why it’s called Back Pictionary.
“Remember to keep your drawing simple,” Reese says. “Or don’t. Actually, you two can go full-on Picasso. Miles and I are here to win.”
“We’re also here to not lose our dignity,” Miles says, already peeling himself out of his hoodie like a man preparing for battle. “But mostly to win.”
“We’ll go first.” Reese grabs a marker and a sheet of paper and then turns to Miles. “Guess or draw?”
“I’ll guess.”
She tapes the paper to his back with enthusiasm. Then she draws a card, flashes it to Charlie and me—Roller Coaster—and starts the timer.
Reese begins drawing what could generously be described as a roller coaster track. There’s a steep incline, a sudden drop, and then an unhinged curve that looks more like an EKG reading.
Miles mirrors the chaos on the easel. “Snake?” he guesses.
Reese ignores him and adds four rectangles at the top of the track, connected like a train.
Miles squints at his paper and draws boxes. “Centipede?”
Charlie and I exchange a look. I raise an eyebrow. She bites her lip, trying not to laugh.
Reese draws a stick figure with its arms in the air in the front box. Miles draws something similar, but he didn’t guess correctly on where to put it, so his little guy ends up floating in front of the roller coaster like he’s leading a conga line .
“Caterpillar?”
I guess it kind of looks like it might be feelers on a bug. Or a nose and whiskers on a cat.
“Nope,” Reese says, now rapidly sketching three more people in the remaining boxes.
Miles hesitates. “Parade?”
Reese lets out an exaggerated sigh and begins furiously retracing the roller coaster track over and over again as the timer counts down, the marker squeaking in protest.
Miles watches, squints, tilts his head… then suddenly straightens. “Oh! Roller coaster!”
Reese throws her arms in the air like she just rode one. “Thank you. I was one step away from adding vomit for accuracy.” They give each other high-fives.
Charlie gives a tiny golf clap. I lean over and whisper, “Fingers crossed we get a category with fewer individual parts.”
We decide I’ll guess first, which feels like a mistake the second Charlie tapes the paper to my back with a grin that says she’s either about to crush this or completely ruin my confidence in my object recognition skills.
I grab a marker and face the easel, taking a deep breath to prepare myself.
She draws a card, flashes it to Miles and Reese, and starts the timer.
Then she begins drawing. Her line starts low, curves outward, then circles around and curves inward close to where it started.
I’m pretty sure she drew a line that connected the two bottom lines, so I do the same.
Then she draws two lines coming down from the sides, and a box under that.
“Oh! A light bulb!”
“Nope.”
No? Really? But this looks exactly like a light bulb. If this were a multiple-choice test, I’d fill in B: Light bulb with total confidence.
Now it feels like she’s drawing mostly vertical but somewhat curved lines in the middle of the light-bulb-shaped object.
“A multi-colored light bulb?” I guess. Really, I’ve got nothing else.
“Nope.”
I just stare at it, wondering what else it could possibly be. Charlie draws something to the side of the object that I’m thinking might be a flower, or maybe cotton candy, and I draw it, too, the best I can, based just on feeling it. Now that I can see it, I realize it’s a cloud.
“A hot air balloon!”
“Yes!” Charlie shouts, and when I turn around, she’s grinning, and I give her a hug, spinning her in a circle before I can think twice about it, and she laughs against my shoulder.
Reese guesses next, and first thinks that the oval with two lines leading back to a propeller that Miles drew on her back is a sideways balloon instead of the body of a helicopter.
When he adds the landing gear, she asks why it has whiskers.
When he finally draws two blades on top, she guesses it correctly.
When Charlie is at the pad, ready to guess, the card I draw is Wedding Cake.
I draw it with three architecturally sound tiers, each one sitting atop the one below it.
Charlie guesses it’s a filing cabinet. I add a cute little couple standing on top, holding hands, and Charlie guesses the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
It isn’t until I add something that can maybe be considered frosting flowers along the base that she guesses correctly.
We play a couple more chaotic rounds before Reese leans back and says, “Do you know what we should’ve gotten for tonight? Ice cream.”
“Mmm, ice cream,” Charlie says.
Miles looks at Reese. “Should we go get some?”
“Right now?”
“Sure. We can just take a halftime intermission on the game.” He motions at us. “I bet Charlie and Owen can think of something to do while we’re gone.”
Charlie raises an eyebrow at me, and I raise one back.
When Reese and Miles leave, I turn to Charlie. “Was today at work any better than yesterday?”
“So much better.” She grins. “And, I’ve been headache-free ever since you kissed it away. How was yours?”
“The frustration that found you yesterday found me today. But Tuesdays are always that way. I’m thinking of officially naming it ‘Issue Tuesday.’”
“What happened?”
“We discovered a rare historical element on a wall in the upper floor that leads to the balcony boxes. It was a hand-painted mural that was hidden behind a wooden facade. Which sounds cool, but it was found when a subcontractor—who wasn’t supposed to even be in that area yet—accidentally damaged it.
So now, the preservation board wants a full report before any work upstairs can be done. ”
“I am so sorry.” I can tell that Charlie feels bad, and her mind is churning, like she’s calculating something. Then she says, sounding defeated, “I don’t even know how to help with that.”
“You don’t have to help,” I say. “Just listening is enough.” She gets an expression on her face, though, that I can’t quite interpret, but it doesn’t seem good.
I want to distract her. I’m sure that when Miles and Reese left, they both assumed that Charlie and I would spend the time kissing.
And there’s a big part of me that wants to do just that.
But I also want to do something else. I say, “I know you’re passionate about safety. The intruder drill you ran with Miles the other day—do you like doing that kind of thing? ”
“I used to get my family to do all kinds of drills when I was a kid. Reese, though?” She chuckles. “Yeah, that’s not really her thing. She’s more of a ‘go with the flow, figure it out when we get there’ kind of girl.”
“I’ll do one with you.”
She sits up straighter. “Are you serious? You don’t have to.”
“Of course, I will. Do you want to do it now?”
“Yes!” She lights up more than I would expect a person to light up when hearing that we are going to run a drill of some sort. “How about a fire drill?”
“Lead the way, Chief Safety Officer.”
She takes us to the kitchen area, and I stand in front of the stove, pretending to cook something.
“Okay,” Charlie says, holding an actual stopwatch, the likes of which I haven’t seen since high school, and pointing like a very friendly drill sergeant. “This one starts in the kitchen. Let’s say there’s a grease fire on the stove and smoke is pouring up from it. What do you do first?”
“Panic,” I say solemnly.
She cracks a smile. “After that.”
“If it’s a small fire, I grab the baking soda and pour it on the fire.”
“Very good! And if it’s a big fire? Already licking the walls?”
“Exit the building, along with everyone else. Calmly. Without rescuing the flaming quesadilla that betrayed me.”
“Correct. Bonus points for not grabbing flammable food. When do you call nine-one-one for help?”
“When I’m safe outside.”
She smiles. “And…” she says, holding up the stopwatch, “big fire starts now. Let’s go!” We run out of the townhome, down the stairs, and to the tree in the front yard. Charlie presses the stop button. “That was good. Want to run the drill from upstairs?”
“I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do right now.”
So we do. She has me start in the upstairs bathroom, and we both test our doorknobs for heat before opening them, then we crawl under an imaginary cloud of smoke on our way to the stairs.
She was extra impressed that I handed her an imaginary damp cloth to hold over her nose and mouth to keep her from inhaling too much smoke.
“You know,” I say, mid-crawl, “this is exactly how I imagined our evening going.”
Charlie laughs. “I knew you were the type to dream of tactical drills.”
“I like a girl who keeps me on my toes. And keeps me from catching on fire.”
After the third drill, we head back into Charlie’s place, both winded but grinning, especially since Charlie announced that we got the fastest time ever. I wrap my arms around her and say, “I’ll always do everything I can to keep you safe.”
She tilts her head to look at me, and gives me a very sincere, “Thank you. For running the drills. And especially for not making fun of my fears. For just reassuring me.”
I smile, kiss her forehead, then whisper, “Always.”