11. Simon
Simon: Any news?
Emmett: She just texted me. She’s in. Needs the apartment upstairs though. I told her it was included.
Simon: Good. Get it ready. Spare no expense. And while you’re at it, upgrade all of the kitchen appliances. State of the art.
Emmett: You don’t think she’ll notice brand-new ovens and coolers?
Simon: I don’t care if she notices. Make up an excuse.
Emmett: I’m on my way over. You owe me answers.
Simon: Front door is unlocked. Let yourself in. And bring lunch.
Emmett: Anything else, Your Majesty?
Simon: Not that I can think of. And I like the Majesty thing.
Emmett: What the hell have I signed up for …
Ilean back into my desk chair and tilt my head to the ceiling. I let out a long, relieved breath as I realize my plan worked. Charlie is going to be here.
Now, what’s next?
Despite what Emmett might be thinking, I don’t have a grand plan. Hell, I didn’t even know I had this plan until I found out she was interested in Mona’s. I guess it’s time to come up with one.
Though in my defense, I didn’t have a plan with her all those years ago either. Yes, I thought she was smart. And pretty. And I wanted to get to know her. But there was no grand plan to courting her. There was no method to my madness. I was just an idiot kid who thought his shit didn’t stink, trying to get a date with the girl he couldn’t stop thinking about.
“What are you doing this weekend?”
Bug doesn’t even look up from her textbook. “Not going out with you.”
I dramatically throw my hand over my heart, which makes her look up from the textbook she’s studying from. “One, how dare you think that’s how I would ask you out. And two, how do you know that’s what I was asking?”
She slams her highlighter down and gives me a scathing look. “Because every time we study you ask me out. Sometimes it’s subtle. Sometimes it’s direct. Sometimes it’s vague, like today. But every time I say no, that does not change.”
“I’m hurt,” I say sarcastically. Though I kind of am, which of course I’ll never admit to anyone. “Why do you say no?”
She cocks an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yes, really. I think we’d have fun. I like you. I think you tolerate me, which means you actually love me.”
“I do NOT love you.”
“So you say.” I close her textbook and push it to the other side of the table we’re at in the library. “Come on, Bug. What would you like to do? Whatever you want. Nothing too big or small.”
This makes her pause, and I watch as her eyes light up in what I can only describe as mischief. “Whatever I want?”
Her smile makes me excited. And also slightly nervous. “Whatever you want.”
“Okay.” She inches a little closer. “Sunday night is WrestleMania.”
“WrestleMania?” I mean, I knew that, but I didn’t expect Bug to know.
“You heard me. My brother and I go watch it every year at a local sports bar. He’s on a class trip so he can’t make it. I don’t want to miss it, and if you really want to take me out, that’s what we’re doing. But it’s not a date. It’s two mutual acquaintances hanging out and one of them is paying. That’s you.”
I can’t help but smile as I realize this is actually going to happen. I never expected it to take months to get Bug to say yes, and honestly, after a while, asking her out just became part of our interactions. We study together at least once a week, and every day she’s working I go visit her at Perks.
Like her nickname, that girl has crawled under my skin. Except I like it, and I don’t want her to leave.
Which is strange on so many levels. I haven’t dated anyone seriously since I came to college, and I didn’t think I wanted to. Playing the field and doing my own thing suits me.
Then I met Bug and…I don’t know…something about her intrigued me. And the more I get to know her, the more intrigued I become.
Take today. I shouldn’t be shocked she is proposing something out of left field. In every way, shape, or form, she’s not like the other girls on campus I’ve gone out with. Those girls are the stereotypical sorority girls—decked from head to toe in designer clothing, worried that a salad will make them gain five pounds. Blonde hair so white it makes your eyes hurt.
Then there’s Bug. Her blonde hair is on the darker side, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it down. It’s always thrown on top of her head in an adorable, messy heap. I don’t think she owns a piece of clothing that’s name brand, but I know the T-shirts she wears hug her full chest and drive me insane. If I had told any other girl they could pick whatever and wherever for a date, they’d suggest a high-end restaurant that would make my dad give me a lecture when he saw the credit card bill. But Bug? No. She wants wings, beer, and grown men wrestling.
I think I love this woman, and I still don’t even know her name.
“It’s settled,” I say. “Sunday night. Date night.”
“Not a date.”
“Fine, I won’t call it a date under one condition.”
She sighs. “I’ve backed myself into a corner, haven’t I?”
I flash her a smile and lean down on my elbows. “Yes, you have.”
“Fine. What is it?”
“I won’t call this a date. And in exchange, you finally tell me your name.”
She throws back her head in defeat as I snicker in my chair.
“Come on, Bug. Tell me. It’s only fair.”
“Fine,” she groans, tilting her head back up. “Charlie.”
I don’t know what name I was expecting, but it wasn’t that. But I love it. It’s perfect for her in so many ways.
“Charlie…”
“Yeah,” she says, almost as if she’s a little embarrassed. “It’s short for Charlene.”
“Well, it’s beautiful.” I say. “Unique. Just like you.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t have to lie, Simon.”
“Nope,” I say, taking her hand. As soon as I have my fingers wrapped around hers, I feel a heat between us that takes me off guard. But I push that down, because she needs to get one thing clear. “I’m not lying. I don’t lie. If I say it, then I mean it. Especially about people I care about.”
This seems to take her aback, and frankly, it does the same thing to me. I didn’t mean to lay all that out there. It’s not like I planned any of this. Yes, I’m impulsive and rarely have plans, but with Charlie, I’m completely winging it. She’s the treasure I’m searching for without a map.
“Well, thank you,” she says. A blush comes over her cheeks, and I have to hold myself back from leaning over the table and kissing her just to see what her warm skin would feel like.
“You’re welcome.” I reluctantly let go of her as we fall back into our studies. “You know I’m still going to call you Bug, right?”
She looks up, then back down again, and shrugs.
“I figured as much. Even though I hate that name.”
She doesn’t hate it. She doesn’t hate it at all.
“Here you go,” Emmett says, placing down two takeout bags of what smells like burgers and fries. “And in case you wondered, I put them on your credit card.”
I reach for the bag and pull out the foam container, but Emmett swipes it away from me. “Hey! What’s that for?”
“No food until you tell me why you had me do everything you just had me do.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Simon, I spent my drive over here calling in favors to fix up an apartment for a woman I barely know who is about to not pay rent on said apartment, which she doesn’t know. I need answers more than you need this burger.”
So he says. Little does he know I only had a smoothie for breakfast.
“Fine, what do you want to know?”
“How about everything?”
“Everything? That will take forever, and I’m really hungry.”
“Then quit stalling and start fucking talking.”
“Fine…”
I start at the beginning, all the way back to the days at UT. That yes, I was interested in her, and that it might have started with me asking her out incessantly, that we developed a genuine friendship.
“How did I never meet her?” Emmett asks as he slides me my burger. Thank God. My stomach was starting to growl.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, junior year we didn’t hang out a ton. And if you never went to the coffee shop, that could be why.”
“I guess,” he says. “And I don’t blame you for hanging out with her. She’s cool as hell. Cute too. And her sense of humor? Holy shit, I was cracking up.”
I try to hold it down, but I can feel jealousy creeping over my body as Emmett sings Charlie’s many virtues.
“Oh…I see,” Emmett drawls, abandoning his burger to send me a knowing look. “It finally became more than friends, didn’t it?”
My face doesn’t budge. If anything, I only get more angry.
“Goddamn it, Simon! When did you sleep with her?”
I drop my tasty burger. “About a month ago.”
“A month ago?” he squawks.
“That’s not the important part of this story,” I say.
“I think it is.”
I shake my head. “I’ll go back to it. But I need to finish the first part.”
Emmett sits up a little straighter. “Consider me intrigued.”
“Anyway. We hung out for months. For most of it, we were just friends, which I was okay with. I really was. Like you said, she’s cool as hell. And funny. And, I don’t know, I liked being with her.”
I swallow the frog in my throat as I transport myself back to that moment fifteen years ago. “It was the last night before move-out day. We were having a party at the house.”
“I remember that party,” he says. “Hell of a send-off. Cops showed up, didn’t they?”
“Yup,” I say. “I asked Charlie to come to our parties all semester, and she finally came. I was so excited. We laughed. We drank. It was probably the best night of my whole college experience. And then we kissed.”
I can still see everything so clearly. Us sneaking up to my roof to get away from the noise. Talking like I only could with her. Then the kiss. The one that is forever seared into my memory.
“What happened next?” Emmett asks.
“I was going back to Rolling Hills for the summer. But I wanted to see her before I left,” I say. “Except when I tried to call her the next day, she never answered. I texted. I called. I even drove back to Knoxville to the coffee shop to see if she was working. They said she’d quit. It’s like she had just vanished.”
“Like vanished as in gone?”
“Poof. Like a ghost.”
“Wow,” he says. “She never told you what happened?”
“Nope. I never saw her again. Until I went to a wedding last spring. And then a month ago.”
I fill Emmett in on the gaps between April and now. And the bare minimum details of our night together. Motherfucker doesn’t need to know that Charlie’s naked body still keeps me up at night and has been the vision of multiple individual sessions.
“Okay, let me see if I can get this all straight,” Emmett says. “A girl you had a thing for fifteen years ago, who ghosted you after one kiss?—”
“One epic kiss.”
“Apologies. A girl who ghosted you after one epic kiss?—”
“Thank you.”
“Quit interrupting. She’s back in your life. And you’ve had sex with her. Yet, after all of that, you still don’t know the answer to the biggest unknown of your life: why she left. So instead of trying to have a nice and normal conversation with her, you go and pull strings like a puppet master to make sure she gets a restaurant in your town so you can have her close, therefore allowing to you to get the answer to a question that’s been digging in your craw for more than a decade.”
“Yes.” I say with a firm nod. “But in my defense, she won’t talk to me. The first time she ran away. The second I made her cry. The next time we had sex.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
Emmett shakes his head in clear frustration. “Do you have a plan? What happens when she finds out you’re the landlord? What happens when she finds out about any of this?”
“She won’t,” I say with mock confidence. “You’re now sworn to secrecy. No one in town knows that I bought Mona’s. And when they find out which company bought it, they are going to see Magnolia Properties. The only people who know I own that are my best friends. This is going to be fine. I’ve got this under control.”
“But do you?” Emmett says with a head tilt. “Because I don’t think you do.”
I shrug. “I’m really just winging it. But it will be fine. It always is.”
“Simon,” Emmett says, shaking his head as he bows it and clasps his hands together. Why do I feel like I’m about to get a lecture? “What is your intention in all this? What’s the end game?”
That’s the easiest question I’ve been asked all day. “To get my answer.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” I say. “Yes, I know sleeping with her complicates things, but that was a one and done. She wants nothing to do with me, and after I know my answer, I likely won’t want anything to do with her.”
“I don’t really believe that, but okay…”
“Emmett. It’s fine. I know what I’m doing. Mostly. If she sees me every day, I’m going to wear her down. It worked before; it will work again. And then, once I get my answer, I’ll tell her I own the place. She’ll probably be mad at me, but she’s been mad at me for years, so I don’t see it being a big deal. And at that point I’ll have my answer. That’s all I need, and we can move on with our lives.”
Emmett leans back in the chair and starts rubbing his fingers against his temples. “This is going to blow up in your face. And I’m going to be caught in the damn middle. All because you can’t have a damn conversation without you or your dick getting in the way.”
“Have a little faith.”
“That’s the thing I have the least of.” Emmett sits back up and locks eyes with me. “Just promise me one thing.”
“Yes, I’ll give you a raise after this is over.”
“Not that, but I am going to hold you to it,” Emmett says. “Charlie’s a good girl. She wants this restaurant. I can tell. She’s exactly the kind of person Mona wants to take over. Do not, and I repeat, do not sabotage this for her. Don’t fuck with her in any way. If I get the feeling for one second you are, I don’t care that you’re my boss and my friend, I will blow your shit up on the spot, no questions asked.”
I hold my hand up in an oath. “I promise I won’t. I don’t want her to fail. Not in the littlest bit. I just want answers. I swear.”
Emmett stares me down, assessing if I’m telling the truth. But I am. Yes, I might be a little devious with this plan, but I don’t want Charlie to fail. I want her to thrive. I’ll give her whatever she wants.
And all I want in return are my answers.
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart,” I say. “Once we finally talk, I’ll drop everything and move on. She’ll just be a tenant, and I’ll just be her landlord.”
Emmett gives me a skeptical look. “Will you, though?”
I shrug and take a big bite of my burger. “Debatable.”