Summer Fridays

Chapter 15

Charles spent forever picking out jeans and a black button-up.

It was too dressy, and wrong for where they were going. Sawyer knew it was wrong for where they were going because she had already been to where they were going. She remembered how hot the club could get. She put on a spaghetti-strap tank, a skirt, her Docs. She pulled her hair up, off her neck, brushed her dark bangs down so they neatly skimmed her eyebrows, and applied a bit of dark eyeliner.

“That’s what you’re wearing?” Charles asked.

“Yep.”

Charles insisted on a cab so they wouldn’t get sweaty after having just showered. The driver didn’t seem thrilled that they wanted him to take them from the Upper West Side to Alphabet City, traversing the whole of Manhattan diagonally, but he grumbled and put on the meter.

Sawyer simply sat quietly in the car, lost in her own thoughts.

The evening was bound to be bizarre to the point of awkward. It didn’t seem possible that Charles or Kendra knew anything about the time she’d been spending with Nick. Was she supposed to pretend that Nick was essentially a stranger to her? She was also acutely aware of the fact that the invitation had come via Kendra; Nick himself had not invited them. The last thing she wanted was to be an interloper, intruding on another couple’s date night. On Nick’s date night.

She fidgeted at the thought, uncomfortable in her seat. They had already crossed the park and now they were making record time to the opposite end of the city. Then, in what seemed like mere minutes later, they were abruptly there.

The sky was still light, but twilight was beginning to settle in. The exterior of the sushi restaurant sported peeling paint in baby pink and black. Alternating pink and green neon letters glowed over the entrance, spelling out “AVENUE A.” It had the air of a dive, just as Charles had predicted, but a popular one. A large group of people milled around out front, waiting. The prospective patrons looked very “East Village”—with piercings and colorfully dyed hair, and the stringy bodies of dancers. They wore funky secondhand-shop clothing, the majority of which was purposely ripped or tied or safety-pinned to achieve a kind of sexy nonchalance.

“Kendra said they would meet us in front of the restaurant,” Charles said, clearly a little uneasy and feeling out of place as he and Sawyer joined the milling group.

He turned and bummed a smoke and a light off of one of the kids waiting. It struck Sawyer as an obvious attempt to blend in better. The kid handed him a cigarette, but looked Charles over with a skeptical expression as Charles bent over the flame of the kid’s lighter.

A few minutes later, Nick’s tall shape and Kendra’s blond hair appeared, rounding the corner of Seventh Street. Kendra spotted Charles and waved.

As soon as Sawyer glimpsed the expression on Nick’s face, she knew: he was not happy. His jaw was clenched; his hands were shoved in his pockets. He glanced at Sawyer but did not make eye contact.

“This is Nick’s neighborhood,” Kendra said, after everyone had greeted one another.

I know, Sawyer thought silently. Then her stomach did a little flip and she felt her cheeks burning to recall: she’d been to Nick’s apartment.

“He’s a regular here and can get us a table quick,” Kendra promised. She turned to Nick and tugged on his arm, and he led the way.

The restaurant was packed inside. And dark. Everything was painted black—the walls, floors, and ceilings. The light fixtures had been swapped out for UV black lights, giving everything an eerie, bluish-purple glow and making the whites of people’s eyes and teeth look freakishly bright as they lifted succulent bites of sushi on chopsticks. A handful of giant goldfish swam lazily around in a big glass tank. Graffiti artwork in neon colors hung on the walls, and a live DJ spun from a booth crammed in beside the bar.

Near the service end of the bar, a middle-aged man in a porkpie hat sat on a stool reading a newspaper. Sawyer wondered how he could read in such low light, but he seemed to be doing just that, utterly unfazed. Nick made a hand gesture to get the man’s attention, and Sawyer realized the guy must be the owner. He nodded to Nick, and—without exchanging a word—got up and pushed two tables together in a far corner of the restaurant. He pointed for the four of them to sit, nodded again at Nick, then walked away, cool and indifferent.

“You wouldn’t think it, but the sushi’s really good here,” Kendra said over the DJ music pumping through the room.

“Why wouldn’t you think it?” Nick asked, frowning.

“Well, you know…” Kendra said, her voice wheedling. “Because it’s so gritty.”

Nick looked annoyed by her answer, but Kendra draped her arms around him flirtatiously, giving him a cross between a hug and a squeeze. In fact, Kendra had been touching or hanging on Nick in some way ever since they’d appeared on the street. Now, she hung on him as she read the menu. The music continued to thump loudly.

Sawyer tried not to stare as Kendra reached a hand up to ruffle Nick’s hair. But as she averted her eyes, Sawyer noticed Charles was staring. In fact, he seemed as though he couldn’t stop staring. She saw his eyebrows knit together in consternation as Kendra’s hand came to rest on Nick’s knee under the table.

“Hey man, so we’re going to get to hear your band play tonight, eh?” Charles shouted over the music to Nick.

Sawyer cringed. It was the style of speaking Charles often adopted when talking to a guy he didn’t know. It struck Sawyer as phony, a combination of fake friendliness and a hostile caveman beating his chest.

“Looks like it.” Nick’s voice was flat.

“I thought you were a junior ad exec over on Madison Ave. or something,” Charles continued.

“I am.”

“Oh—I see. Weekend warrior. That’s cool, man.”

Sawyer’s cringe deepened. She glanced at Charles, willing him to stop or at least change the subject, but he seemed utterly oblivious to her presence.

Nick didn’t reply. His expression had turned to stone. Charles rattled on.

“Yeah. My best friend in high school was in a band and they were always playing out of someone’s garage. They were pretty good, I think.”

Sawyer shouted gently to Charles. “Hey…” She tried to redirect his attention to the menu. “Are you going to get a beer, or would you like to split some sake with me?”

“I’m just saying, it’s cool to be musical,” Charles insisted. “I wish I had a hobby.”

At the word “hobby,” Sawyer saw Nick bristle ever so slightly.

Kendra, on the other hand, had now turned her attention to Charles. She swatted him on the shoulder. “What are you talking about? You are musical! You have an amazing singing voice!”

Charles waved off the flattery, but the corners of his mouth curled, secretly pleased. “Nah. Karaoke doesn’t count,” he insisted.

Kendra turned to Nick and Sawyer. “He’s downplaying it. Oh my God, you gotta hear this guy sing ‘Fly Me to the Moon’! I’m serious—he slays it! Gave me chills.”

Sawyer jolted to attention.

“When did you go to karaoke?” she asked Charles, quietly enough so the others couldn’t hear over the loud DJ music.

“It was just a quick work thing,” Charles reassured her. “Everybody on our team went to blow off steam for a few minutes.”

Charles patted her hand and turned back to Kendra.

Sawyer sat digesting this information, fuming.

Karaoke.

“Fly Me to the Moon.”

Fly. Me. To. The. Fucking. Moon.

She felt someone watching her and looked up to find Nick studying her face, deep in thought. They locked eyes and he looked away.

But a second later, she caught him looking again. But this time, Nick’s eyes had dropped to the table, to where Charles’s hand lay upon Sawyer’s. His jaw and temples flexed as if he was bothered. She felt her pulse speed up. She tried to gather herself and tune back in to the conversation.

“Karaoke hardly qualifies as a real hobby…” Charles was saying.

“That’s OK. It’s not like you’d have time for a ‘real’ hobby, anyway,” Kendra pointed out with a laugh. “Not with this case!”

“You’re right,” Charles agreed. He withdrew his hand from Sawyer’s and grinned. “I guess I don’t.”

Kendra addressed Sawyer. “It’s nuts how much they’re making us work.”

“Seems like it,” Sawyer agreed.

“Although, we do get a laugh in every so often,” Kendra continued. “We’ve got a funny team. They’re always coming up with new ways to prank one another.”

At this, she brightened and turned to Charles.

“Oh my God, that prank they pulled on Doug!” she exclaimed in delight.

Now she touched Charles’s arm much the same way she had squeezed Nick’s. Charles’s face picked up a hint of red, but he smiled and joined in Kendra’s laughter.

“The poor bastard,” Charles agreed. “That was epic.”

Sawyer and Nick sat silently as Kendra and Charles continued to seize up with fresh waves of laughter. Finally, Kendra explained: Doug had made the mistake of telling them he had something called “globophobia”—an acute fear of balloons. They’d filled the men’s room with balloons—really packed them in there like sardines.

“Both helium and regular balloons,” Kendra said. “So they were all over the ceiling and the floor. Everywhere. Every stall. He couldn’t even walk in without having to touch them all.”

And as a particularly devilish coup de grace, one of the guys had slipped a little bit of Ex-Lax into Doug’s coffee.

“Oh, the poor bastard!” Charles repeated. “I felt so bad for him. The pure panic on his face! He looked like he was going to explode, one way or another.”

He and Kendra broke up into more laughter.

Sawyer gave a strained smile, feeling a sense of revulsion; she hated these kinds of cruel pranks on other people. And besides her lack of enthusiasm for the story itself, she was distracted by Kendra’s body language. Kendra had now shifted her full attention from Nick over to Charles, touching him playfully as they reminisced about the prank.

Sawyer was confused, until…

Suddenly, a light bulb blinked on. Sawyer recognized some primal trace of Kendra’s behavior from high school, when some of the popular girls used to do the thing where they used one boy’s attention to provoke the envy and attention of another.

She likes attention, Nick had said of Kendra, back at the Yale Club. She needs a lot of it from guys.

Sawyer couldn’t tell if Kendra ultimately wanted Charles’s or Nick’s attention more.

When the sushi came, everything was fresh and delicious; the salmon and avocado were buttery, the red maguro tuna velvety, and the sushi rice sticky and sweet, with just a hint of rice vinegar. Sawyer’s tongue tingled with the salt of the soy sauce and the sharpness of the wasabi that shot pleasantly up her nose. She sipped the floral, chilled sake out of a porcelain thimble of a cup that was faintly beaded with condensation from the muggy heat of the packed room.

The food made up for the group dynamic.

Charles and Kendra chattered away as if they were the only two people in the world. Sawyer managed to force an air of polite attentiveness. And Nick…Nick was so quiet, so sullen. She felt a strange sense of missing him, even though he was sitting right there, at the same table. The handful of times Sawyer and Nick had eaten a meal together, it had been a joke: how they both ate with such passionate gusto. But now he seemed to have lost his characteristic appetite.

Nick ate a few small pieces of sushi, then excused himself.

“I want to get there early to help get our stuff unloaded,” he said in a quiet voice to Kendra.

Sawyer watched as Nick made his exit. He didn’t look back at her, or anyone at the table. He stopped to shake hands with the owner, who was still sitting in the service section of the bar, reading a newspaper. Then he slipped through the restaurant’s front door and disappeared.

When the waiter came over at the end of the meal, he didn’t ask them if they wanted anything else. He only refilled their waters, glancing at his watch as he poured, as though impatient to turn the table over to a new set of paying customers.

“I guess we’ll take the check,” Charles said.

“Nick already took care of it,” the waiter mumbled.

“What?” Charles said, shouting over the booming music the DJ was spinning.

The waiter repeated himself, and turned on his heel without further comment.

“He shouldn’t have done that,” Charles said. “I would’ve taken care of it.”

“Get the next one.” Kendra shrugged. She gave him a smile.

The next one?Sawyer didn’t think she could handle another double date. And it was clear Nick hadn’t wanted to see her and Charles tonight. How much stranger and more uncomfortable could the evening get?

The three of them finished up and wandered leisurely over to the club. By then, it was dark outside, but the summer weather had trapped the warmth of the day in the city. The brisk night air mingled pleasantly with the heat still emanating from the sidewalk.

When they got there, there was a guy collecting cover charges and checking IDs at the door. Sawyer watched as Kendra strolled to the head of the line and insisted they were on a list. Soon enough, they were inside.

A band was playing, but Sawyer saw that it was not Nick’s. He had yet to go on.

“Drinks,” Kendra decreed, once they crossed through the door. She led the way to the bar. “FYI, it’s the kind of place where you should probably stick to beer or shots,” she advised Charles, as they shouldered their way closer to the front of the bar line.

When it was their turn, the bartender looked up and recognized Sawyer.

“Hey!” Jake or Blake said. He grinned. “I’ve got grapefruit tonight—you want a Sea Breeze?”

Charles and Kendra slowly turned to Sawyer, confused.

“Uh…sure,” Sawyer replied. She smiled. “That sounds great.”

Jake or Blake proceeded to make an enormous pint glass full of Sea Breeze. He waved her off when she tried to put a twenty on the bar. He pointed to Charles and Kendra. They ordered beers.

“What was that about?” Charles asked Sawyer in a low voice, as they bumped and shuffled their way through the sea of bodies, away from the bar and closer to the stage.

“I don’t know,” Sawyer said. “I guess I look like the kind of girl who could use a good Sea Breeze.”

“Do you even like Sea Breezes?”

“I do, actually. It’s a good summer drink.”

“Huh. OK,” Charles said with a grunt. “I’m just saying, it was kinda ballsy of him to give you a drink on the house with your boyfriend standing right there.”

“Maybe he thought you were with Kendra,” Sawyer said.

“Hmm, maybe,” he mused, oblivious to the barbed tone of her comment.

By then, they were following Kendra deeper into the club, over to the foot of the stage, carefully holding their drinks high over their heads as they made their way through the crowd of bodies.

They stood and listened as the band onstage wrapped up their last song, which sounded a little too derivative of Green Day.

Then, Nick’s band took the stage.

They quickly set about readjusting and plugging in and unplugging things. Well, unplugging, mostly. It looked like the only thing getting plugged in was a keyboard; Sawyer realized most of their instruments were acoustic, with lots of guitars of different sizes, even what looked like a mandolin of some sort. One of Nick’s bandmates carried on a French horn and a harmonica.

“What does Nick play?” Sawyer overheard Charles ask Kendra.

“Oh my God—everything,” she replied. “He, like, plays every instrument under the sun.”

“Wow,” Charles said, but stiffly, as though he begrudged Nick the compliment.

“But I guess tonight he’ll mainly play lead guitar?” Kendra said. “That’s usually how it goes on gig nights.”

“Why did he learn to play so many things?”

“I don’t know,” Kendra replied. “He just, like, got really into music when he was little. He always says ‘the children of immigrants never do anything half-assed.’?”

“He’s an immigrant?” Charles asked, eyebrows raised.

Sawyer didn’t like his tone; it was as if Charles had just discovered that Nick had a weakness, instead of a strength.

“His mom.” Kendra nodded. “Russian. Or Soviet, or whatever.”

Charles’s eyes widened. “No kidding?”

He and Kendra kidded around, making jokes and talking with accents à la Bullwinkle’s Boris and Natasha.

Annoyed, Sawyer ignored them and trained her focus on Nick instead. She watched him moving around the stage, getting everything ready. His band tuned up for a couple of minutes. Sawyer felt her heart pounding, inexplicably nervous to hear him play.

Finally, Nick stepped up to the mic for their first song. Sawyer was immediately blown away. They were…whatever is utterly the opposite of a Green Day tribute band. Each musician was plainly very, very skilled. Their influences seemed older—retro, vintage—a hint of sixties folk mixed with the Rolling Stones, the Beatles…and a touch of Bob Dylan in the lyrics. Yet, they also had a sound all their own, one that was vintage with an updated edge, full of intelligently calculated compositions that still somehow cut loose with heart.

They finished their first song and played another, and another after that. Then, they launched into what was clearly a love song, a song about longing and desire. Sawyer was drawn in; it had such an urgent yet muted undertow to it.

Nick looked handsome, charismatically comfortable, and confident in his mastery of his surroundings. His voice was low but surprisingly melodious. Listening to him, it was like he was singing directly into her ear. Sawyer was riveted—so riveted that she felt self-conscious and embarrassed; it was as if, if someone were to look over at her, they’d be able to see a kind of naked intimacy on her face and in her eyes.

And she couldn’t shake the feeling that Nick was looking at her, singing to her.

But wasn’t that common? Sawyer was pretty sure she was just experiencing the phenomenon that informed the all-too-familiar lore of musicians and groupies, of women moved to throw their panties onto the stage.

And besides—she reminded herself—she was standing next to Kendra. If Nick was singing to anyone, it was Kendra.

Nevertheless, as the song finished, Nick’s eyes flicked in their direction one last time, and Sawyer could have sworn he was looking at her with that intense gaze he had, the one she’d come to know during the time they’d spent together. She felt her throat constrict and a shiver trip lightly down the back of her neck.

It was time for the band to take a break.

Nick leaned close to the mic, thanked the audience, and promised they’d be back to play another set in ten minutes. He exited the stage. Sawyer wondered if he would come over to say hi, but someone came up to talk to him. Sawyer watched from across the room.

“I’m going to grab another drink while they’re on break,” Kendra said.

“I’ll go with you,” Charles agreed. He glanced back. “Sawyer?”

“I’m going to run to the ladies’ room.”

Charles nodded, already moving to follow Kendra through the crowd and over to the bar. Sawyer crossed the club in the direction of the hall that led to the bathrooms, then turned back to look for Nick. He had vanished.

She had a feeling she knew where she could find him.

Sawyer cracked the door marked “DO NOT OPEN—ALARM WILL SOUND” and slipped outside quickly, before anyone in the club could really take notice of her. She stepped into the familiar ramshackle courtyard where she’d sat with Nick only a few Fridays earlier.

The cool night air surprised her. The only light in the courtyard came from a few yellow squares of windows from a neighboring building. It took her eyes a minute to adjust after having stared at the bright, colorful stage lights for so long.

Finally, she saw him. Sitting in one of the plastic patio chairs they’d sat in during the sunset magic hour, that night they’d come to the club together to hear his friend play.

“Hey,” she called softly.

Nick didn’t answer. Sawyer felt her throat tighten with nerves.

She approached.

“Can I sit?” she asked.

He nodded at the chair opposite him.

Sawyer sat. As her eyes adjusted further to the darkness of the courtyard, she began to make out the features of his face. She wanted to talk to him the way they had the last time they’d sat together in the courtyard…or the way they’d talked aboard the ferry—or even just the way they talked to each other online.

But for the hundredth time that evening, Sawyer couldn’t help but wonder if she and Charles had crashed Nick’s night; she flashed to the way Kendra had been openly flirting with Charles right in front of Nick’s face.

“Hey, I’m sorry, Nick…” she began, but faltered for a second. She regained herself. “I’m sorry we came out tonight. I can tell you weren’t expecting us.”

Nick didn’t reply.

“I hope we didn’t ruin your night,” she said, feeling genuinely sorry. “When Charles brought it up, when he said Kendra had invited us…I should have found some way to say no, some way to talk him out of it. I didn’t think it through, Nick.”

He remained quiet.

“I didn’t think,” she repeated. “And, well, part of me got really excited by the idea that I might get to hear you play.”

She paused, then added, “I am glad I got to hear you play. You’re really talented. I’m sure you know that already. But I still want to tell you…I don’t know…just how much it moved me to hear you, to watch you up there. You’re good. Really good.”

Nick remained quiet.

A sense of anguish gripped Sawyer. She wished he would say something—anything.

The club door abruptly banged open and a rectangle of light flooded the courtyard. One of Nick’s bandmates poked his head out.

“Hey, Nick—we need to get back onstage for the next set.”

“OK. Be right there,” Nick replied, finally speaking.

The door banged shut, leaving them in the relative urban darkness again.

Sawyer made out the shape of Nick, standing up from the plastic chair to go. She jumped to her feet.

“Wait—Nick…” she said, gripped by the sense of anguish again. “I mean it—I am really sorry. And…well, I can see that Kendra is driving you crazy.”

“Kendra?”

“Yes. You know—all that stuff with Charles. I think she’s probably doing it to make you jealous. Again, I’m sorry. I hope we didn’t ruin your night.”

He started to speak, but his voice seemed to catch in his throat. Finally, he said, “I gotta go.”

He turned to head back inside the club.

“Look, Nick—I can tell you’re bothered,” Sawyer insisted. “Please just let me apologize.”

He froze and looked down at the ground. It was too dark for Sawyer to make out his expression, but he shook his head.

“Kendra isn’t driving me crazy,” he said in a low, quiet voice.

Sawyer frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s not Kendra. She isn’t driving me crazy,” he repeated.

“Nick—” she started to say, but in the next moment, he had taken a sudden step toward her. His arms pulled Sawyer’s body against his own, urgently.

She was kissing him back, a split second before his lips even met hers. She realized they had already been rushing at each other for some time now, before they gave this feeling a physical shape. When she breathed in, she was filled with a sense of desire mingled with a sense of coming home.

Sawyer felt the kiss go all the way down to the marrow of her bones.

Then, he released her.

There was something intimidating in his movements, a kind of frustration or anger. He turned and stormed through the club door without another word.

She stood there, blinking after him in the dark, dizzy and stupefied.

What the hell had just happened?

Sawyer had no idea how long she stood there by herself in the courtyard, holding a surprised hand to her tingling lips, stunned by what had just happened, thinking. At least ten minutes must have passed by the time she finally gathered herself and went back inside the club.

Nick’s band was already onstage, playing another song. Charles and Kendra had returned to their previous spots in the audience, standing near the foot of the stage. Sawyer made her way through the crowd, back over to them, and stood there, still in a daze. She felt Nick’s eyes on her and knew he had been watching for her return. She dared herself to meet his gaze, and when she did, the tension between them caused the little hairs on the back of her neck to prickle.

After a while, the band finished the song they were playing, and a small pause ensued as Nick turned to each of his bandmates, conferring about what to play next. Finally, he leaned close to the microphone. “We’re gonna play a little cover.”

The crowd waited to hear what it would be.

“That’s weird,” Kendra said to Charles. “They never play cover songs.”

The band began to play.

Sawyer immediately recognized “Sweet Thing.” It sounded like Nick had written a special arrangement of it specifically to suit his band’s instruments and musical style.

Which meant he’d been thinking about playing this cover for a while.

It was a gentle song: simple and sweet, true to its name.

This time, as Nick sang, Sawyer didn’t just think he was looking at her; she knew he was looking at her. She knew in the marrow of her bones, that same unnerving place where she’d felt every second of their kiss. She tried to keep her composure as she listened, but Sawyer could feel something fluttering inside her chest and stomach every time she willed herself to look in Nick’s direction onstage and meet his intense stare.

She suddenly felt a rush of self-consciousness, wondering if others were witnessing their exchange. She glanced at Kendra. She glanced at Charles. She looked to the stage and locked eyes with Nick again…and suddenly felt a rush of emotion that gave her a thoroughly disorienting wave of vertigo.

The entire night made no sense.

Or her entire life made no sense.

Or both.

“Charles,” she begged softly. “I’m not feeling good.”

“The Sea Breeze?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just…I feel dizzy. I need to go home.”

Charles looked reluctant to leave. But after a few minutes of apologizing to Kendra and saying goodbye, he redeemed himself by helping Sawyer through the club and out the front door.

It took everything she had in her to resist looking back to where Nick stood playing and singing onstage.

It took a while to find a cab on the Alphabet avenues, but Charles managed to flag one down.

Soon, they were speeding back uptown, the cab driver’s easy-jazz station playing on the speakers.

“Ugh—what a night, eh?” Charles said. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize what I was getting us into. That club, having to listen to that guy’s band…Whine, whine, whine. And not to sound like an old person, but my ears are still ringing. Maybe that’s what got you dizzy and made you feel so unwell, you think?”

“I don’t know,” Sawyer lied.

She’d desperately wanted to leave the club, but now all she wanted was to tell the driver to stop, to turn around and go back…back to Nick.

She squirmed in her seat.

“Things getting worse?” Charles asked, his voice full of kind concern. “Is it your head? Or your stomach, too?”

At this, the cab driver threw a wary glance over his shoulder to where Sawyer sat in the back seat. She read his mind perfectly: Don’t even think about throwing up in my cab, lady.

“I’m fine,” she snapped, suddenly gripped by a wave of irritation—not directed at the driver, but rather, at Charles. “I just needed to get out of there; too many people.”

Charles accepted this. He nodded and looked out the window at the lights shimmering on the surface of the otherwise unromantic East River, suddenly lost in his own thoughts.

“Yeah, I get it,” he said. “Not our scene.”

He sank deeper into his own thoughts, and almost seemed to forget Sawyer was there.

“I’ll tell you one thing: that guy’s all wrong for her. Kendra can do better. Way better.”

Sawyer didn’t reply.

Charles shook his head and repeated, “He’s all wrong for her. What the hell is she thinking?” He was getting worked up.

Sawyer glared at Charles, but he was oblivious. She felt a sense of irritation building all around her; it buzzed around her like a cloud of gnats.

The problem was—she wanted to be angrier with Charles than she actually was. He deserved it—karaoke, “Fly Me to the Moon,” the way he’d behaved with Kendra all night, the receipt…

“I just don’t see why this is what you wanted to do today,” she complained, spoiling for a fight. “I don’t see why we couldn’t have spent your first summer Friday off together, just the two of us.”

This seemed to snap Charles out of his reverie. He turned from staring out the window, back to Sawyer, chastened. He reached for her hand.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “You’re right; I’m sorry. We should have spent today together, just the two of us.”

He squeezed her hand, and they rode the rest of the way home in silence.

Sawyer would have preferred the fight. She was terrified, because all the wisest parts of her knew what she was feeling toward Charles wasn’t anger.

It was guilt.