Chapter 14
SLACK MESSAGE FROM ROGER LUDERMORE TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 5:18 AM:penn station is disgusting
Consciousness broke through slowly. She was wedged between the wall and the burning heat of a man’s sticky arms, her neck stiff and her back sore. Charlotte and Reece were a pile of awkwardly bent limbs. Her hair had gotten caught under his shoulder and he’d drooled on their shared pillow. Neither of them had slept deeply, wriggling in the stiff sheets and chasing each other’s heat like lizards on a sunlit rock.
But miraculously, she felt fantastic. Exhausted, hungry, and somewhat hungover, but fantastic.
Damn. She felt happy. Dewy grass green and daisy yellow.
Gentle sunlight bathed the room; she guessed it was around eight in the morning. That meant they’d gotten roughly three hours of sleep? Maybe?
The memory of last night’s whirlwind returned as she noticed Reece still held her hand. She squeezed it and smiled, even as the uncomfortable truth arrived: It was Sunday. They had run out of borrowed moments in the time warp.
Her lungs tightened. This precious escape from New York was over. She’d have to get a new storage box for this weekend and all its soaring, fleeting rightness. Within their magical window of honesty last night, there’d been no discussion of their impeding after.
And yet…
You have me.
Lips found her neck, soft and delicious. Reece’s arm tightened around her waist. An adventurous hand found her breast. Charlotte settled back into his embrace. She could binge on his touch all night and still not have enough.
“Good morning,” she said.
Reece hummed against her shoulder, not awake enough for words. He pressed his erection against her ass. She chuckled as he buried his nose in her hair.
Charlotte rolled over in the cradle of his arms. Reece in the morning belonged on a subway ad for memory foam mattresses. His eyes were puffy, his hair a mad scientist’s tangle. He looked beautiful. She wanted to kiss his bee-stung lips and feed him pancakes over the Sunday crossword.
He squinted at her, his face half-smushed into the pillow. “G’mornin.” He cupped her cheek in his hand and rubbed some sleep gunk from the corner of her eye with his thumb. For some reason, the gesture was terribly romantic.
“How did you sleep?” She kissed his wrist before snuggling closer. He lay on his back, and she nuzzled her head under his chin, draping herself over his chest.
“Good.” He kissed her hair. “Terrible, but good.” His fingers snuck under the bottom of her top to tap a pattern against her spine. She’d slept in his shirt, the white fabric a little worse for wear with their mingled sweat. They made a cursory attempt to make themselves respectable in case Garrett returned, but judging by his empty bed, they had the room to themselves all night.
“We’ve never done this before,” Reece observed. He kept his tone light, an open-ended remark instead of a question. He could have been referring to anything, and she realized he was testing her, trying to feel her out without putting pressure on her.
Sweet little cautious muffin.
“I like it.” Charlotte splayed her hand across his chest, a finger tweaking his nipple. He shuddered before closing his arms around her again, secure and soft. “You’re warm.”
“Is that all I’m good for? A space heater?” Teasing her again.
“A human-shaped furnace.”
Reece pulled on a stray curl of her hair. “Happy to serve, Charlie.”
She ran her fingers across the prickly growth on his jaw. Reece stayed still as she traced his face, his eyes tracking the movements of her hand. He was so willing to be vulnerable with her, to let her touch and look and explore his body. Affection spread through her gut and up her chest like a blush.
But…it was Sunday. In a matter of hours, he’d get on the highway and head west while she boarded a train.
Did Reece want to take this with them when they left campus? Surely he did, right? What else could you have me mean?
“Hey.” Reece tapped her on the forehead. “What’s happening up there?”
He read her panic better than she could. Charlotte thought longingly of the Feelings Chart. She wanted to point at her emotions instead of articulating them.
Unsure. Afraid. Needy.
She rested her chin on his sternum. She just had to be honest. It wasn’t that hard.
“I don’t know how to pretend this didn’t happen.” It wasn’t exactly what she meant, but she didn’t know how to explain the dread she felt when she imagined saying good-bye.
She never got over Reece the first time round, she just pushed her feelings way down deep until he returned to jar them loose. Leaving campus today would be eons worse. This time she knew what she wasn’t taking with her.
Reece frowned as he studied her face. He pushed himself up to brace his weight on his elbows. “Charlie, I…I can’t pretend.” His voice darkened, taking on new urgency. “I won’t.”
She didn’t need to ask what he meant.
“What do we do?” Charlotte asked.
Reece tucked her hair behind her ears. His thumb lingered at her jaw, sweeping across the sensitive skin there. “What do you want to do?”
She wanted to stay right here. She wanted to live in this hideous dorm and survive on vending machine snacks and have sex all night long. She wanted another day, another week, another month of reunion.
What would this look like in the real world? They couldn’t afford to fly back and forth to visit each other. She didn’t have a car, and she couldn’t ask him to drive from Missouri to New York. It wasn’t like she could relocate after one weekend together. Even if all of a sudden she wanted to.
She had a life in New York. She had a job, at least.
Reece waited for her to say something. Charlotte waited to know what to say.
She wanted to be with him, she just didn’t know how. It was like trying to solve a puzzle when critical pieces were missing.
Her phone twitched on the windowsill, a Slack notification chirping dimly. She ignored it, only for the phone to start vibrating on a continuous loop. Reece frowned as she stretched her arm out to retrieve it.
INCOMING CALL: ROGER LUDERMORE
Her heart climbed up her throat. “It’s my boss.” Charlotte dismissed the call before pulling up the sea of new notifications waiting for her.
SLACK MESSAGE FROM ROGER LUDERMORE TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 8:17 AM:why are there no fucking ubers here
“Oh shit.” The blood drained from her face.
“What is it?” Reece asked.
She sat up and frantically typed a reply, her hands shaking.
SLACK MESSAGE FROM CHARLOTTE THORNE TO ROGER LUDERMORE, 8:18 AM:Aubrey was supposed to book a cab for you. I reminded her on Friday. The town doesn’t allow ride-sharing apps.
“Shit.” Charlotte scrambled over Reece’s legs and wobbled as her feet hit the floor. She yanked her shorts up her legs. “Shit, fuck, fuck.”
Reece scooted up to sit against the wall and watch as she dashed around the room. “Charlie, what’s wrong?”
SLACK MESSAGE FROM ROGER LUDERMORE TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 8:20 AM:get me to campus
She hammered out a text on her phone.
TEXT MESSAGE FROM CHARLOTTE THORNE TO JACKIE SLAUGHTER, 8:20 AM:SOS are you awake?? Need to pick up Roger!!
“Charlie?” Reece prodded her again.
She huffed as she scrolled through her email inbox. There. She really had forwarded Aubrey the email about travel logistics. She’d told her assistant to book the cab, she just didn’t have confirmation that Aubrey did it. Charlotte never double-checked because she shouldn’t have had to.
“Roger is stranded at the train station.” Charlotte waited for Jackie to reply, but her text message hadn’t even delivered. Her best friend’s cell phone must be dead again.
Reece winced as his feet met the cold linoleum floor. “Can’t he find his own way here? He’s an adult.”
She laughed sharply. “You would think so, but no.” Charlotte raced to the mirror to check her hair. She frowned at the ratty mess around her shoulders. “Do you have a rubber band or anything?”
Reece pointed to his desk, where a band held a bag of potato chips closed. “Thank you!” She pulled it off and forced her curls into a bun at the back of her neck. “God, I’m a mess.”
“You look gorgeous,” he said, but her face was buried in her phone again.
SLACK MESSAGE FROM ROGER LUDERMORE TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 8:25 AM:this is unacceptable
Charlotte barely had fingernails left to chew on. “Hey, Reece?”
He raised an eyebrow at her plaintive tone. “Yes?”
“Can you give a girl a ride?”
As Reece sped down Route One, Charlotte grabbed empty Gatorade bottles from the back seat and dumped them into a plastic bag. The train station wasn’t far from Hein’s campus. She had maybe ten minutes to make the car presentable before Roger ruined her weekend. Not to mention the longer they left her boss waiting, the ruder he would be.
“I owe you big-time,” she yelled over the wind roaring through the open windows. Roger had a thing about smells, and the odor of Misty’s wet fur clung to the fabric seats.
“You owe me breakfast.” Bulky sunglasses hid Reece’s bloodshot eyes. “I’m talking large coffee, waffles, bacon, everything.”
“Whatever you want.” She climbed over the console and into the front seat. “He’s going to talk shit about my outfit.” She folded down the mirror and smoothed some flyaway strands back from her face. Charlotte didn’t have anything to hide her exhaustion, but Roger would just have to deal with her lackluster appearance. “He won’t be able to help himself.”
“It’s your college reunion,” Reece said. “Does he really expect you to be dressed up?”
She licked her thumb and ran it under her eyes to catch last night’s mascara. “To him it’s a business trip, not a reunion.”
“I can’t wait to meet this charmer,” Reece continued. Even running on three hours of sleep, he still radiated cheerfulness. “Should I call him Roger?”
“No. Call him Mr. Ludermore.” She winced. “Actually, better to ignore him.”
“Fine. I’ll be the silent chauffeur.” Reece nodded at the road, a serious look on his face.
Charlotte bit her lip. “Have I thanked you already?”
“Yes, you have.” Reece rested his hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze. “It’s seriously no big deal. And I get to meet your boss!” He said it like picking up Roger from the train station was an exciting relationship milestone and not a huge imposition.
She tried to channel his enthusiasm. “Welcome to my glamorous life,” she said. “Catering to the whims of a wealthy man-child.”
SLACK MESSAGE FROM RODER LUDERMORE TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 8:54 AM:need a charger
Charlotte wilted. “Do you have an iPhone charger?”
“Back at the dorm.”
“Damn.”
“I’m sure he’ll understand,” Reece assured her. “You’re doing him a favor.”
Sweet, na?ve Reece. She almost felt guilty subjecting him to what was coming.
When they pulled up in front of the station, Roger stood on the curb with a huge energy drink. He wore an impeccable suit, but his hair shone with grease, a telltale sign he’d also been up all night. Charlotte held her breath as he took in the beat-up Jeep. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep her mouth shut if he insulted Reece directly.
She rolled down the window. “Good morning, Mr. Ludermore,” she said in her inflectionless work voice.
Roger gave her a once-over. “You look like shit.”
Reece’s eyebrows rocketed up his face. She willed him to stay quiet, for his sake as well as her own.
Her boss opened the back door and threw himself into the car. He didn’t bother to buckle his seat belt.
“We’ll have you on campus in ten minutes,” Charlotte said. She watched in the rearview mirror as he plucked a dog hair from the seat and examined it, his lip curling. He dropped it outside the open window.
“Hello, sir,” Reece said, politely ignoring the dog hair fiasco.
Roger slurped from his Red Bull. After swallowing, he asked, “Who are you?”
“I’m Reece. It’s an honor to meet you.” Thankfully Reece was too busy navigating traffic to extend his hand for a shake—Charlotte suspected Roger would turn his nose up.
Roger nodded once before turning his attention back to her. “This is a massive fuckup, Charlotte.”
Her heart seemed determined to wedge itself up her throat. She’d hoped he wouldn’t berate her in front of a total stranger, but that had been na?ve.
You have to pay your credit card bill.
“I’m sorry for the confusion.” The apology assembled itself instantly, as if she’d never left the office. “Aubrey and I discussed your logistics, but something must have gone haywire.”
“It’s unprofessional to blame someone else for your mistakes,” Roger said. “Charger?”
Reece threw her a concerned glance. Charlotte’s cheeks flushed. “I don’t have one, sir. We were in a rush to come get you.”
Roger sniffed. “All you had to do was get me from point A to point B and you can’t even get that right.” She bit the inside of her cheek, knowing better than to defend herself.
Reece cleared his throat and took a turn hard, knocking Roger into the door. “Sorry about that!” he chirped unconvincingly.
Roger glared at him and put on his seat belt. “I hope you’re enjoying your vacation,” he said petulantly. “You really left us in the lurch at the office.”
Charlotte fought the urge to ask what she had messed up, considering she had answered his emails all weekend. And written his stupid commencement address at the expense of spending time with her best friend. For that matter, what vacation?
“But we got on all right without you,” he added.
We.Who was we?
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said smoothly. “I’m ready to hit the ground running tomorrow morning to make sure you’re prepped for the week ahead.”
“Good.” Roger’s attention drifted from her as he stared out the window. “It wasn’t a total loss. Aubrey and I had some time to get to know each other.” He dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped at his mouth. “Fun girl.”
Charlotte gnawed at her tongue. “Quite.”
“She brought me a smoothie from some place on Bleecker. It’s part of this new fasting trend all the NYU students are doing.”
Was Aubrey the we Roger spoke of? Since when did he describe himself and an assistant as part of a unit? Charlotte couldn’t think of a single occasion Roger referred to her as anything other than the girl. “Aubrey certainly has her thumb on the pulse of things,” she said.
“Yes, well.” Roger sniffed again. He stretched his arm across the back of the seat, his manicured fingers scratching the pilled fabric. “We had an interesting conversation about you.”
Charlotte did not like the sound of that. Aubrey was hardly her number one fan, mostly because Charlotte expected her to do her job. “Oh?”
“It sounds like her talent’s being wasted,” Roger drawled. “A vivacious girl like that.”
What talent? Her talent recommending smoothie places and swanning around the office in Manolo Blahniks like she had no work to do?
“I see,” Charlotte said. She pursed her lips and exhaled slowly, willing herself to keep it together. It was hard to get into character as a toady with Reece sitting right next to her, hearing every word of the conversation. “Aubrey is smart. But I’ve worked closely with her as her manager, and I—”
“About that,” Roger interrupted. “We may have rushed you becoming a manager. Aubrey expressed some frustration with your style.” He laughed, a pugnacious little snarl.
Charlotte’s throat tightened. The moment she left town, Aubrey took advantage of the opening and knifed her in the back.
Dental insurance. Isn’t it nice to have dental?
She pictured the glassy surface of Cobalt Pond, impenetrable and still. She was Charlotte Thorne, an integral Front End employee. She felt nothing.
Goddamn it, she would feel nothing.
The self-soothing mechanism didn’t work. She struggled to keep sarcasm out of her voice. “I’m sorry to hear that Aubrey has issues with the way I manage her.” Getting defensive wouldn’t undo whatever damage Aubrey had done, but she had to speak up for herself. She couldn’t just eat shit for the rest of her life, not when she knew she was right. “I met with Pauline last month for management training. She helped me set performance goals for Aubrey to meet—”
“Goals like perfect emails and fetching lunch?” He snorted. “Seems a bit trivial to me.”
“Sure,” Charlotte said dryly. “But assistants need to care about the details, and she doesn’t.”
“It’s not her fault that the work is below her, Charlotte,” Roger chided. “Her father’s on the board, you know.”
The insult smarted more than she expected it to. If he thought the work was below Aubrey, what did he think of her? Charlotte poured her heart into her work. Roger could at least pretend to respect it.
You don’t do this job for respect, you do it to pay the electric bill and the heating bill and the internet bill.
“Working for you isn’t menial labor, Roger.” The blatant ass-kissing rotted in her mouth. Reece’s eyebrows rose next to her, but still he kept quiet. She dug her nails into her palm as she debased herself. “I’m surprised Aubrey doesn’t see the value of learning from you.”
“Hey, now,” Roger cooed, mollified by her shameless manipulation. “Don’t go getting your feelings hurt. You know how much I appreciate you.”
Charlotte clenched her hands together in her lap, fighting the urge to gnaw at her thumb. Her feelings. If she were a man, Roger wouldn’t reduce this conversation to feelings. They were talking about her management style, her job. Three years of her professional life without a meaningful raise or a step toward a promotion.
“You’ll have more time to focus on your responsibilities without Aubrey underfoot,” he continued. “I transferred her to the art department.”
Wait, what?
Charlotte blinked at the road as the Jeep barreled toward campus. Shock spread through her body in waves of orange static.
Roger gave Aubrey the promotion. Roger gave her unreliable, disrespectful, product-of-blatant-nepotism assistant the job she’d been strategizing for.
Her exit strategy, yanked away and gifted to someone’s spoiled daughter.
It made no sense. Aubrey never expressed interest in the magazine’s visuals. She wanted to be an influencer. Her highest ambition in life was to get paid to endorse diet gummies.
Even if she did want to be a project manager, Aubrey wasn’t qualified. She had no patience for details. She missed the first five minutes of every meeting.
Charlotte wasn’t biased, she was the girl’s boss! Aubrey once asked her if Elizabeth Holmes was a SoulCycle instructor.
“I didn’t know Aubrey wanted to project manage,” she forced out.
Her shock must have been obvious because Roger stilled his fidgeting in the back seat. He returned her stare in the rearview mirror, his eyes narrowed. “Do we have a problem?”
She pursed her lips, willing herself to keep it together. Her temper bubbled and spat, brimming with righteous indignation and slowly mounting panic. She couldn’t lose her escape route into the art department, not like this. Not to Audrey. “I’m just surprised to learn about this after the fact,” she said. “As her manager—”
“I’m Aubrey’s boss,” Roger interrupted. “It’s my decision to make, not yours.”
“I just thought—”
“You thought what?” His tone brooked no disagreement. “That you’d get the job?”
Yes, she did, because he had given her every reason to think he’d give her the job as long as she did everything asked of her, as long as she sacrificed endlessly, as long as she behaved. Not that he ever put it in writing, no, of course not. Better to keep her unstable and dependent, unable to refuse.
Charlotte closed her eyes. She was the calm, smooth water of the quarry. Beautiful and unmoved, disguising her vicious chill underneath. She would not tear Roger’s sweaty head from his body. She would not scream.
“Is being my assistant not good enough for you anymore?” Roger pressed on through her silence.
“That’s not what I meant,” Charlotte said through gritted teeth. She searched for a professional way to push back against his slippery manipulation. “I just want to make sure I have…room to grow at Front End.”
Roger scoffed. “Room to grow? There won’t be another position opening up at the company for quite some time.”
Charlotte couldn’t help herself. “That’s why I’m surprised you gave that position to Aubrey.”
“Aubrey made herself essential,” Roger snapped. “You have not done the same.”
All illusion of self-control evaporated as Charlotte reached the end of her patience. She’d already used most of it up with the last-minute speechwriting and the fight with Jackie it had caused. She could only withstand so much. This wasn’t just a bad job, it was a toxic joke.
Jackie was right. Jackie was always right. No one deserved to be treated like this. This wasn’t the person Charlotte wanted to be.
She snuck a glance at Reece. He was watching her in his peripheral vision, his mouth closed so tight it almost disappeared into his face. When he saw her looking, he raised his head a fraction of an inch.
Chin up.
Charlotte twisted in her seat to face Roger head-on. “In the last three days I got sixty-eight Slack messages from you and two hundred emails from the company,” she said. “I think that qualifies as essential.”
For a moment it seemed like she’d won. Roger fell silent, gobsmacked by her back talk. Reece tried to hide his smirk with his right hand. Victory felt like pistachio green.
Charlotte knew she would pay dearly for pointing out how much Roger relied on her. She made him look so good, made his life so easy and seamless, that he couldn’t see her value at all. If he did, it would mean coming face-to-face with how much he depended on her.
She understood it now: That was why he would never promote her, never support her growth, never let her go. He relied on her, his lowly assistant who kept his life together thanklessly, day in and day out.
It felt good to say it. Just once.
Then Roger leaned forward. His frame filled the gap between her seat and Reece’s. When he wove his hand around her headrest, the heat from his fingers sent goose bumps along her neck.
All of Charlotte’s confidence dissolved as he invaded her space. This close, she could smell his breath, rank with Red Bull and vodka. She shrank back into her seat but there was nowhere to go, no room to get away from him. The full force of his glare cornered her between the edge of her seat and the car door.
“I could hire a new assistant within the hour, Charlotte. Remember that.” Behind Roger, Reece sat ramrod straight in the driver’s seat. Anger rioted under the surface of his blank expression as he pulled the car into a campus parking lot.
Shame pooled with the fright in her stomach. She felt like she had failed both of them.
“Yes, sir,” she said meekly.
“If you want to keep your job, reconsider your attitude. Stop thinking about yourself. Focus on helping Front End succeed. Then we can talk about your future.” A speck of spittle flew from his mouth and hit her on the cheek.
Charlotte barely felt it. There was an odd disconnect, a familiar sensation of stepping backward and away. It was as if she watched the confrontation from outside her body. She saw the three of them stuffed in the narrow space of the front seat: Charlotte cowering, Reece agonizing, Roger seething. His words washed over and around her as he continued. “Aubrey got that promotion because she earned it. You haven’t shown your dedication to this company. You haven’t proven yourself to me. You are nothing.”
The car came to a lurching stop. “We’re here!” Reece interrupted.
Charlotte blinked, unable to move. Roger gave her a venomous look before disappearing into the back seat. “Beautiful campus. So nice to be back,” he said as he opened the door and stepped into the parking lot. He slammed it shut behind him.
“What the hell was that?” Reece breathed. He hadn’t taken his hands off the steering wheel, unable to move. His knuckles had turned an ugly gray from his death grip on the vinyl. A hard, frightened pounding echoed in her ears. Her heartbeat.
Nothing.
I feel nothing.
Charlotte flinched as Roger rapped his knuckles on the window. She rolled it down, her movements jerky and mechanical.
“Are you coming?” he asked.
Her voice shook. “Right behind you, sir.”
Roger gave her his empty can. “You need to live-tweet from the audience,” he prattled on as if their vicious conversation hadn’t happened. “I wrote a new speech on the train. Your version was too soft. These kids won’t know what hit them.”
Her boss patted the roof of the car and stalked away. His shadow followed him across the pavement.
Charlotte closed her eyes.
My name is—
I am—
Nothing.
“Are you okay?”
Charlotte blinked. She looked at the empty Red Bull in her hand. He must have started drinking early today. Or he never stopped last night.
She dropped the can in the garbage bag at her feet. “You’re going to be late for the picnic.”
Reece twisted in the driver’s seat to face her. “The picnic can wait. Is he like that all the time? That was insane.”
My name is Charlotte Thorne. I feel nothing.
“Uh…” She coughed, still struggling to find words. A fog as thick as cotton had wrapped itself around her brain. “I guess. Do you have more trash?” She popped open the glove compartment and stared unseeing at the heap of documents and cheap sunglasses.
“Leave it on the floor, I’ll get it later. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
She had to be fine. She couldn’t be anything other than fine right now. She needed to get it together and go live-tweet his commencement address. Then she had to pack up her dorm room and get on the train. She had to go back to New York. She had to make it work. She had to be fine.
Reece wouldn’t leave it alone. He leaned forward to catch her eye. She dug her phone out of her pocket just to have something to look at. “I’m not gonna tell you how to live your life,” he said urgently, “And I know that was one conversation out of context for me. But that was awful, Charlie.”
My name is Charlotte Thorne. I work atThe Front End Review. I am an executive assistant. I live in Brooklyn and I have to save up in case of an emergency.
She tore at a cuticle, blood smearing on her palm. “No one likes their boss.”
“He’s not just some asshole,” Reece ground out. “The way he talked to you is not normal. Jesus, he was threatening you! The way he invaded your space? I wanted to pull over and tell him to get the fuck out.”
Charlotte opened the door and threw herself out of the car. Reece did the same. “I can’t talk about this right now.” She started across the pavement to the steps.
Reece followed her. “Any company would be lucky to hire you. You know that, right?”
She scoffed. “That’s not true.”
“Who says? That guy?” Reece gestured up the steps to where Roger had disappeared. “That’s what he needs you to think. He has to justify treating you like shit, and make you feel like you can’t leave.”
Leave.
The loaded word broke through her disconnect. She felt it in her body like a violent strike of lightning. Charlotte whirled around. “Do you know how much rent costs in New York?” she demanded. His eyes widened as she got in his face, but she couldn’t stop herself. She was so tired of being told what to do, of being told to quit her job like it was just that easy. “What about a MetroCard? Or a cell phone bill when you’re not on a family plan?”
Reece backed up a step, raising his hands with his palms facing out. “Charlie, that’s not—”
“No, please! Tell me! What am I supposed to do?” Her eyes were wet. She wanted to stop but the words kept coming, spilling out of her like vomit. She was so tired of having the same conversation again and again. “I keep waiting for you and Jackie to tell me, because I sure as hell don’t know. I’m not going to win the lottery,” she blurted out. “I can’t leave when I have nowhere to go.”
It broke something in her to say that. That smarting wound in her chest gaped, open and bloody like a fresh injury. Pain screamed in her throat, and she couldn’t swallow it down, couldn’t press it back, couldn’t—
She didn’t want to look at Reece and yet she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the agony on his face. His hands twitched at his sides like he wanted to reach for her. He knew better than to try. It took everything in her not to bolt away from him, not to run up the steps and hide from this conversation in an empty dorm room.
Reece’s horrified expression told her he could see all of it: everything she felt, everything she feared. She shuddered with shame and anger, resenting him for being right there all weekend, stubbornly present during the worst moments of her life.
She couldn’t feel nothing when he looked at her like that.
He just stood there, frustrated and sad with his hands loose at his sides.
“There are so many people who love you, Charlie,” he said. “We would do anything for you. You just have to ask us, remember? You have to let us help you.”
She goggled at him, her mouth falling open as she tried to hear his words. No, they were her words thrown back at her in the bright light of day. Her brain whirred with panic and suspicion and worthlessness, and Roger’s sneer and Ben’s cologne and the empty space in her life where family was supposed to be.
She thought Reece understood that people left. They walked out or moved away or decided you weren’t good enough. She could only depend on herself. She thought he knew that.
He kept looking at her with those big green eyes full of want and affection and, fuck, all the love that she never asked for and didn’t deserve. She wanted it, all of it, but what if she asked and he said no? What if she asked and asked and asked and it was too much for him, what if she was too much for him, what if he decided he couldn’t handle her and left her alone with all this agony and grief and—
Her iPhone shuddered in her hand. It began to wail her custom ringtone for Roger. She silenced it.
Commencement would start any minute now. She needed to find a spot on the President’s Lawn to watch the ceremony and live-tweet from Roger’s account. She didn’t have a choice. She was here to work.
“I have to go. This is my job.” She pressed her fingertips to the shattered glass of her iPhone, desperate to feel a pain separate from the collapsing black hole in her chest. “This is all I have.”
He gaped at her, and then the disappointment she’d braced for all weekend made its appearance.
“So what, then?” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “I’ll see you at the next reunion?”
She didn’t have a comeback for that. Reece didn’t follow her as she climbed the steps back to campus.