Chapter Twenty #2
“Another O’Malley?” Zach asked as he approached with his hand out while cradling an old brass lamp with his other arm.
“My brother, Charlie, and his friend Julian,” I confirmed.
I took a minute to introduce them to the rest of the neighbors.
I watched Charlie closely. He nodded and smiled and shook hands, leaving the small talk to Julian.
He looked shy and a bit nervous, so different from the boisterous charmer he once was.
Our neighbors had only nice things to say about Gramps but they didn’t mention the nature of his relationship with Pops, for which I was grateful.
If Charlie happened to talk to our father, I didn’t want him to mention Hannah as anything more than my friend or that our grandfathers shared the cottage.
It would invite too much trouble if my father decided he deserved a cut of the cottage and took me and Hannah to court.
“Come on.” I parked the bike and led Charlie and Julian around the side of the house to the back. “I’ll show you Gramps’s fishing dock.”
“I’ll wait up here and give you brothers some time to yourselves.” Julian sat on the steps of the back porch and took out his phone.
“Thanks.” I appreciated the gesture. We crossed the lawn, which still looked untamed despite being freshly mowed. Charlie’s face lit up at the sight of the dock and the boathouse.
Frank and Dude stretched out in a patch of sun in the middle of the lawn, panting, obviously recovering from playing so hard. We left them to it. Out on the dock the channel was calm with only a slight breeze stirring the marsh grass by the bank.
“Can’t you see Gramps, sitting here in his broken old folding chair, puffing his cigar and drinking his whiskey, while fishing?
” I glanced at Charlie. I had no idea what he remembered about Gramps.
Sometimes it was everything and other times not.
I felt a pain in my chest for all that my brother had lost.
“Hey, Simon, watch this!” Charlie yelled. Before I could process what he was doing, Charlie broke into a run and jumped high into the air, tightening himself into a ball before plunging into the water and sending up a huge wave.
It was a direct hit and I was drenched. Not a bad thing since it got a lot of the dried mud off me. I shook my head to get my sodden hair out of my eyes and stared at the water where Charlie had gone down. Oh, shit! Had he forgotten how to swim?
I kicked off my shoes while I pulled my shirt over my head.
I emptied my pockets, dropping my phone and wallet as I ran to the edge.
I jumped into the water just as I saw my brother hunkered by the edge of the dock—hiding!
—while I sailed past him and hit the water in a belly flop that was definitely going to sting.
I could hear Charlie laughing as I went under and I felt myself smile as the water closed over my head.
When I surfaced, I shot an arc of water at my brother and he dodged, still laughing. For a second it felt as if we were who we’d always been and my heart swelled.
“That cannonball was not funny, Charlie,” I groused.
“Oh, yes, it was,” Charlie argued. “You should have expected it.”
“You’re right. I should have.” I swam back toward the dock. “But it’s been a long time since we got up to no good together.”
There was a cheerfulness in Charlie’s gaze that caught me off guard.
I narrowed my eyes at him, seeing him, really seeing him for the first time in a long while.
His dark hair, so like mine, was longer and curlier.
The lines that had bracketed his mouth and the beer gut he’d been rocking before his accident were gone.
Clean living and a lot of physical therapy under Julian’s care had erased years off him, so much so that I wondered which of us looked like the older brother now. I suspected it was me.
Before I reached him, Charlie let out a yelp and disappeared under the surface.
“Charlie!” I shouted. I swam faster. When I got to the dock there was no sign of him. I dove deep, checking under the dock. The water was muddy and weedy and I couldn’t see a thing. Panic started to thump hard in my chest. I needed help. I powered to the surface to call Julian.
When I broke the surface, Charlie was sitting on the dock laughing so hard he was holding his sides. I didn’t think, I reacted, slapping the surface of the water and sending a spray over Charlie, which only made him laugh harder.
“Damn it, Charlie, you scared the shit out of me!” I grabbed the side of the dock and put my hand on my chest where my heart was still racing.
Charlie popped to his feet and did another cannonball. He looked so carefree and full of life that I couldn’t be mad, not really. I treaded water, watching the surface for him.
Of course, Charlie came up out of the water like a shark on the Discovery channel and leapt on top of me, sending us both under the surface. I pulled away, putting some distance between us. When I broke the surface, he hit me full in the face with a wave of water.
Our gazes met, his grin was full of mischief, and his eyes twinkled like the Charlie of old.
It was as if we were rambunctious teens again.
I wished Lor was here to see this. Still, I was just so fucking grateful to have my big brother back even if it was just for a little while.
Naturally, I sent a wave crashing over his head.
The battle continued as we maneuvered around each other.
I dove under and tried to pull him down.
He countered by diving deeper. We both came up for air and the splash battle commenced until we were both winded.
I floated on my back while my lungs heaved.
I felt duly schooled, given that Charlie was not breathing anywhere near as hard as I was.
“Are you two finished?” I turned to face the dock to see Hannah standing there, holding towels and shaking her head.
“Yes!” Charlie said. He turned to me. “Truce?”
We shook hands but it turned into another grappling match as we each tried to get the upper hand. We landed on the dock in an awkward splat.
“Lovely.” Hannah dropped our towels on the dock and turned to go back to the house. Dude and Frank flanked her and she glanced down at them and said, “Thank you two for being such well-behaved boys.”
“Was that directed at us?” Charlie asked. “I feel like it was.”
“Yup, it was,” I confirmed. “Hannah says what she means and means what she says.” I watched her go, admiring the swing in her hips and the sway of her ponytail and felt the unfinished business between us stir to life.
I turned away to find Charlie watching me. The glint was still in his eye when he said in a singsong voice, “You like her.”
Inexplicably, I felt my face get hot. I hoisted myself up onto the dock, trying to avoid his gaze.
“Is she your girlfriend?” Charlie asked.
In a flash, I felt exactly like I did when I was in middle school and he was in high school and he was teasing me about my biology lab partner, Priya Patel, who was a stone-cold fox by seventh-grade standards.
I’d been so embarrassed I’d skipped biology for a week until my mother got a call from my science teacher wanting to know why I was at the nurse every fifth period.
With her extraordinary mother’s intuition, Mom had parsed out what had happened and read Charlie the riot act. To his credit, Charlie felt bad about it and apologized. But my former friendship with Priya was ruined forever.
I glanced at Charlie and said, “Remember what happened the last time you teased me about a girl?”
Charlie’s brow scrunched up in concentration. His eyes were worried when he said, “Don’t tell Mom, okay?”
I stared at him for a beat. Did I remind him that Mom was gone? That we weren’t kids anymore? I couldn’t do it. Instead, I punched him in the shoulder like we used to and said, “Of course not. I’ll always have your back, Charlie.”
“And I’ll have yours,” he said.
It was a long-held promise among Charlie, me, and Lor. Out of the few things he remembered from our childhood, I was glad he remembered that.
Charlie climbed onto the dock and I handed him a towel.
“Are you dating her?” He rubbed his hair with the towel.
What to say…what to say. I decided on the truth without the full disclosure. “I’m hoping to.”
“Only hoping?” Charlie’s eyebrows shot up. “She seems nice. You should ask her out.”
I bent over and dried my legs. I didn’t want to think about how a real relationship with Hannah would be. She’d been very clear that she didn’t do long-term and, truthfully, if I took away this cottage as a connection, I wasn’t certain she would want to have anything to do with me.
“We’ll see,” I said. “I haven’t known her very long.”
Charlie nodded. “I met a woman at the library the other day. She had a cool tattoo of books going up her arm.”
I studied Charlie’s face. There was a faint pink tinge in his cheeks as if he was embarrassed, and I realized he’d been teasing me about Hannah because he had a crush of his own.
He hadn’t shown any interest in women at all since his accident and I felt a hopeful little flutter in my chest that this woman might see all the good in Charlie and maybe…
then the panic set in. What if she didn’t like Charlie?
What if he pestered her and got into trouble?
I took a slow breath, forcing myself to be steady.
“Does she work at the library?” I asked.
“She volunteers. Her name is Diana and she lives in a group home like mine.”
Okay, then. “Are you going to ask her out?”
Charlie grinned, looking pleased with himself. “I already did and she said yes.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Good for you. What does Julian think?”
“He likes her.” Charlie glanced up to where Julian was throwing the ball for Dude and Frank. He waved at Julian, who waved back. “He said he’d drive us.”
“Well, that’s great, Charlie,” I said. “Just…um…take it slow, you know?”