Chapter 36
CHAPTER 36
C HARLIE
It’s getting late and I’m trying to distract my mind from thinking about Emily, so I have Jeopardy on the television, thinking it will exercise my brain and change its focus. It’s not working.
An aggressive pounding on my front door surprises me. Who would possibly be here at this hour on a weeknight? God, I hope it’s not my dad.
I open the security app on my phone to check who’s there as I walk to the door. A feeling of dread creeps up my chest. Time to face the music.
I grip the door handle and pull it open.
Trina pushes past me and stomps through the mudroom and into my living room. So, I follow.
She whips around to face me. “Why is my sister sad and crying?” Her tone is demanding, and she softens it only slightly when she looks me up and down and adds, “And why do you look like shit?”
“Hello to you, too,” I answer in a sarcastic tone she doesn’t deserve.
She glares at me and the tiny spark of energy I got from her forcing herself into my house like a damn tornado dissipates.
My shoulders sag and I walk away from her to the refrigerator and grab a soda. I know she follows—I can sense her behind me. “What do you want to drink?”
“Grape soda, please.”
I grab a can of the sugary sweet drink that’s her weakness—I only buy it for her. I hand it to her and follow her out to the deck.
It’s always been easy with Trina and me. We’re opposite sides of the same coin and get how the other thinks. Once we sit down, the popping and fizzing that accompanies us opening our cans is the only sound for several minutes.
I know Emily and I are over, but I’d decided a few days ago that I still need to tell Trina about us. Not all the details, obviously, but if our friendship is going to survive the fact that I hurt her little sister, I have to come clean.
I swallow around the lump that has formed in my throat. “I need to talk to you about something.” She looks at me, waiting, but quiet. “Uh, when Em was here… uh, well, things, um?—”
“Do you two think I’m stupid? Or blind, for that matter?” Trina’s voice isn’t anger-filled, but there’s definitely a tension in it.
“What? No, of course not.”
“Look. You know I’m typically blunt, so I’m just gonna say it. Did you get involved with Emily when she lived here?”
I lean forward in my chair, forearms on my knees, and drop my head, staring at the ground. Here’s where I lose my best friend. Hell, really my first genuine friend.
I turn my gaze toward her, look her in the eyes, and say, “I swear I didn’t mean for it to happen. And we were going to tell you. It’s why we invited you over that night you showed up with Ben. But then it didn’t feel right to tack that on at the end of everything you shared with us.”
Trina stares at me for several uncomfortable seconds, her expression neutral but her eyes revealing that her brain is processing this. Just when I think I’ll have to look away because of the awkwardness, she sits back in her chair and stares straight ahead.
“I knew it. That night, I could see something was different between you two.” She pauses for a few seconds, and I sense she’s not done. “Really, I’ve known it for a while, I think. I just couldn’t put my finger on what had changed until I saw you two together that night. Saw how you looked at each other, reacted to each other.”
Worried that my time with her here might end at any moment, I have to ask the question that’s been on the tip of my tongue since she plowed past me into the house. I lean back in my chair and in a near whisper, I ask, “Is she okay?”
When Trina turns to look at me, her eyes are softer. “No, Charlie. She’s not. She’s really sad.” My stomach drops. “She’s apparently been staying in an Airbnb holed up crying whenever she’s not at work.”
“Fuck,” I mutter mostly to myself.
“You know, Emily has had a crush on you since she first met you. For the first few years, I didn’t realize there was something there on your end as well. It wasn’t until she and Teddy broke up that summer she graduated from college that I started seeing it. The way you watched her when she was in a room, how you smiled when she talked. How you were just as protective of her as I was. I thought maybe something would happen with you two, that maybe I should give you permission, but I opted to sit back and see how it unfolded. And then it all just got weird right after Thanksgiving that year. I could see your discomfort around each other, and I didn’t have to ask either of you to know something happened.”
“God, was it that obvious?”
She simply shrugs. “To me it was. But you and I have the kind of friendship that transcends words. And thank God for that because neither of us are big talkers. We just get each other.” She stops talking and raises a finger up to me, telling me to hold on.
When she pulls her phone out of her pocket, I realize the faint buzzing I keep hearing isn’t a bug, like I thought. It’s her phone blowing up. She stands and walks few feet away for some semblance of privacy, I assume.
She doesn’t even say hello when she answers. “Benjamin, quit calling me. I’m fine. No, I’m not out ‘making myself bait.’ I’m with Charlie.” I watch with interest as she listens to whatever he’s saying on the other end before speaking again. “I get it. I’m sorry. I’ll message you when I leave here.” Her tone is softer this time, and I’m quite surprised she apologized. That’s something I know isn’t easy for her to do. She ends the call, comes back over and sits down next to me.
“Anyway, to make a long story short. I thought maybe I’d misread that you felt something for her until…” She looks down at her hands.
“Until what?”
She looks back up at me with regret filled eyes. “Until I saw your face when Teddy proposed to her several years later. It was subtle, but I knew immediately whatever you had felt for her wasn’t gone like I thought. And shit, I should have said something before she got married. It all just happened so fast.”
I shake my head. “Don’t feel bad, Trina. He’s who she wanted to be with, or she wouldn’t have married him.”
Her voice is quiet when she says, “I’m not so sure of that.”
My eyes widen and my stomach drops. “What does that mean?” I ask in a hushed voice.
“I’m just not sure she would have gone through with it if she realized she had a chance at a love that could be… different. Emily loved him. She did. And he loved her. But I really think for Emily’s part, it was a love based largely on their friendship and her comfort level with him. It was easy. Well, it should have been, anyway.” She scoffs. “But it wasn’t that soul-stirring kind of love. The kind that wraps itself around your heart when it finds you and refuses to let go, no matter what happens or how much time passes. Or how much you tell yourself you don’t care about the person, dislike them, even.” Her voice is so quiet when she says the last sentence, I almost miss it.
I stare out into the dark night. “The kind that prevents you from being able to truly move on, to give yourself fully to someone new, even if you can’t be with the one who holds your heart in their grip.”
I feel Trina’s eyes boring into the side of my head and when I twist to look at her, her mouth is agape, her eyes wide as saucers.
“Holy. Hell. You don’t just care about her, you love her.”
I rub at my beard, anxiety causing my heart to race.
“How long?” she asks. “How long have you loved her?”
I turn and look in her eyes. “I think I’ve loved her from the start, Trina. Almost ten years.” No sense holding back any part of the truth now.
Trina practically leaps out of her chair and starts pacing back and forth across my deck, muttering under her breath. Agitation comes off of her in waves. I simply watch her, and after a minute or two, she says, “I get why you said nothing those first few years, when she and Teddy were together, but why didn’t you tell her after they broke up after college? It makes no sense.” She stops in front of me and stares down at me, waiting for an answer.
When I lift my eyes to meet hers, I can tell the exact moment it dawns on her.
“Because of our friendship,” she whispers. “You thought I’d be mad.”
“I couldn’t risk losing you. You’re my best friend, and I know how protective you are of her.”
She plops back down in her seat and looks drained. “You could have told me, Charlie. My God, next to Emily, you’re my favorite person. I’m not saying I might not have freaked out at first, but you’re one of the best guys I know.”
I scoff. “I don’t know about that.”
“Well, I do. Wait a minute, is that why she moved out? Why you two ended whatever you were doing? Were you afraid I wouldn’t be okay with it?”
I shrug. “That’s part of it.”
“Well, what’s the other part? Because I love you both and want you two to be happy. So, if being together makes you happy, then I’m okay with it. I just don’t want any… details , if you get my drift.”
Shame fills me, remembering Emily’s words. “Did she tell you about what happened at my parents?” Trina nods. “I lost it on my dad, Tri. Seeing my mom bleeding set me off. A few days later, I accidentally overheard Emily on the phone telling someone how afraid I made her feel, and that she couldn’t imagine what being with a man ‘like that’ would do to a woman long term or having a child with someone like me.”
The weight of her silence sits heavy in the air for several long seconds.
“Are you sure you heard her correctly? Because that doesn’t sound like something Emily would say about you, Charlie. And if she really felt that way about you, I don’t see how she’d be as brokenhearted as she is right now.”
My eyes dart up to hers and I grimace at her describing Emily as brokenhearted. “I heard her right. Besides, she’s not wrong. I’m not surprised she was scared. And I can’t be with her knowing I could end up like my dad and destroy her spirit like all the men in my family do to the women who love them.”
“You are an infinite dumbass.”
My mouth drops open in shock. “That was rude.”
“For God’s sake. You are nothing like your father. Not now and you won’t ever be.”
“You don’t know th?—”
She slams her hand down on the table between us. “Yes, I do. I’ve known you ten fucking years. You. Are. Not. Your. Father. That man took enough from you growing up. You have to stop letting him hold any power over you. He’s a weak, pathetic man who doesn’t deserve you as a son. And you aren’t him. So, get that through your thick skull and quit letting him affect your decisions, because that’s what you’re doing.”
After her impassioned speech, we sit in relative silence until her phone starts buzzing again. She glances down at her phone and huffs. “I’ve gotta get going or that maniac—not my stalker, the one I’m staying with—is going to make me nuts.”
I walk her to her car. “Text me when you get home safely, okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.” Much to my surprise, Trina wraps her arms around me and hugs me. It’s only the fourth time in a decade she’s done that. “Listen, I know I was a little harsh in there, but it’s time to see yourself for who you really are, not the way he made you think you are. Because, if you don’t, you’re not likely to get a third chance to let my sister know you love her, and you’ll lose her for good. And I don’t want that for either of you.”
When she gets in her car and drives off, I stand outside and stare after her for several minutes, her words playing on repeat in my head.