Day Thirteen Sober #2
Charlie and I headed down the steep steps in the rock.
We hadn’t said a word to each other since leaving the Rue.
By the end it was a scramble, but then we were on the sand, and it was sinking beneath my heels.
Someone was playing a guitar, just riffing quietly.
A few people raised their heads as we went by, but nobody spoke to us.
“This is…” Charlie began, then trailed off.
I didn’t know what to call it, either. It reminded me, oddly, of walking into a church.
Charlie asked if we should sit. I hadn’t planned to spend the evening with her, but what else was there to do, now that we were both here?
She loosed her hair from its ponytail, looking out at the sea as we sat down together. I wished I had a bottle of something—a crisp, cold lager; a hoppy IPA. I don’t think I really know how to do moments like that without a drink.
“I assume you’re keeping everyone at a distance because Rosie’s right,” Charlie said eventually. “That you’re heartbroken. Grieving, maybe. She said we both have ‘bruised souls,’ but I sense you’re not into the woo-woo stuff, so I’m paraphrasing.”
“I’m not into the woo-woo stuff, you’re right.”
“Much too manly for that.”
I frowned and protested, then stopped—Charlie was biting back a smile.
She brushed the sand from her palms and reached to tug off her trainers and socks so she could sink her toes in.
I copied her. The sand was cold. The need for a drink became a little quieter, so I buried my feet deeper. Beside me, Charlie did the same.
“You should know,” Charlie went on, “you don’t get the monopoly on miserable.”
I looked sideways at her. She was drawing Xs in the sand with her finger. Whenever I look at Charlie, I think it’ll make the need go away—the urge to take her in, see a little more of her. But it doesn’t. Looking away is even harder than not looking at all.
“Heartbroken and grieving, too?” I said.
“Rosie’s a great reader of people.”
“And you’re telling me this because…”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Because you could really screw up my life, and I’d rather you didn’t?”
“You want me to like you.”
She flinched.
“I want you to remember I’m a person,” she said. “Maybe you do deserve this beautiful opportunity, after whatever it is you’ve been through. But maybe I do, too.”
I thought of the moment I’d had her quivering in my arms, up against the wall. Not just how good it had felt—though that came to my mind, too—but the way she’d suddenly seemed real.
It’s a problem that comes with sadness, I think—you lose the ability to see someone else’s pain through the haze of your own. She’s right: I’ve not let myself believe that she really might need this opportunity in the same way I do.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
She looked at me in surprise.
“Before,” I clarified. “What brought you here? What’s got you so bruised, as Rosie would say?”
“That’s a very personal question from a man determined not to get to know anybody. What are you asking for—want to compare traumas? See who needs this fresh start the most?”
I guess I deserved that. The guitar player had shifted to a song I recognized—it took me a minute to realize it was Noah Kahan’s “Call Your Mom.” The music caught the bittersweet feeling in my chest and seemed to make it bigger, the way a great song can.
“I actually just thought you might want to talk,” I said.
She’d been leading me there, hadn’t she? That maybe I do, too was surely an invitation to ask, even if she didn’t know it. And for all my resolutions, I couldn’t resist. I used to live for moments like these. Proper deep chats, genuine connections…
She swiped a hand through the Xs she’d been drawing in the sand.
“I lost someone. But I think I lost myself long before that, really. I’ve spent a great deal of my life waiting for people to give me the life I want, but I realize now that I need to be the one to take it, actually. By myself, for myself.”
“You’ve not given me many specifics there,” I said, though actually what she’d said had hit me in the chest the same way the guitar music had—I understood the desire to look after yourself more than I’d like her to know.
“You think you deserve them?”
There was a sharpness to that sentence that felt more honest than anything Charlie had said to me so far.
“I guess I’ve not given you much reason to trust me.”
“No.”
“Well. All right. What would you like to know?”
I figured there was no reason I couldn’t give her a few specifics.
“What was your last job, before you came here?” she asked after a moment.
I told her about the pub and gave her a sense of how miserable I’d been there.
“The only upside was my dad was proud,” I said. “My parents drank too much, too. I never saw so much of him as when I could get him a free beer.”
Her expression was serious. She has such an expressive face, all nuance.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right. My parents aren’t bad people or anything, they’re just…complicated. We aren’t close anymore. I’m not sure my mum even knows I’m here.”
“Mine doesn’t, either.” She tilted her head as she looked at me. “So we have that in common.”
“And I lost someone,” I said softly. “So, yeah. Rosie got the grieving part right. There’s that, too.”
“That and the bruised soul,” she said.
It was all a bit woo-woo for me. But actually, it was a pretty perfect phrase for how I felt. Bruised right down to the core.
Anyway, I’m home now, and tired tonight. I can hear Charlie’s asleep on the other side of the door. I relaxed once I felt her breathing settle. She’s so often awake. I don’t know how she survives the days.
I keep thinking of her saying, By myself, for myself. I told her a little about my past to help her trust me, but it’s made me see her in a new way, too. Between that and the strange moment in the shop this morning, she’s thrown me completely off-balance.
I should be focused on my future—who is this new Charlie Jones, this me I’m building here?—but I can’t be. I’m too busy wondering who the other Charlie Jones is.
Good night,
Charlie Jones