Chapter 32
W hat the hell,” I cried, staring out at the most beautiful view of bright blue ocean water from the terrace of the suite that Alex had booked in Montecito. “This is way too decadent. Take me to a normal hotel immediately.”
He burst out laughing.
“Relax,” he said, coming up behind me and placing his hands on my shoulders. He kissed the top of my head. “It was comped by my friend.”
I whipped around. “Are you hiding dead bodies for him or something? How is this room comped?”
“He did owe me a favor,” Alex explained. “But only because I catered a last-minute dinner party for him a few months back when he was in a tight spot and he demanded I let him know a way he could repay me.”
“Okay.”
“And I also hid a dead body for him,” Alex said, straight-faced.
I hit him on the shoulder, then turned back around to the view—gradients of blue with only a few white streaks of clouds in the sky. It was warm, the water was sparkling, and I had three days alone with Alex. How had I ended up here? The power of yes, indeed.
“This is perfect,” I said.
He came up behind me again, kissed the soft spot below my ear, and wrapped his arms around my middle.
“You like it?” he asked. “Because I could book us a motel if it’s too fancy for you...”
I watched him over my shoulder and saw his wry smile. “Honestly, I’d spend three days with you anywhere.”
“Just three?”
“How many do you want?”
“All of them,” he said. “But I’ll take the ten or so that we have left.”
I turned back toward the horizon trying to get the all of them out of my head and the melancholic way he said it. He worked as hard as I did, had a life to return to, and he was meeting a version of me that wasn’t real. If anything, he wanted to spend all his days with Charlize, not Charlie.
“So,” he said, sitting down on the outdoor couch and patting the space next to him. I sat down close, and he pulled me in, arm outstretched across my shoulders. “Are we going to be reclusive? Or should we hit the pool? The ocean? The restaurant?”
“Well, I am not against getting some salt water on my skin,” I said.
“So, we’re going to the beach.”
I smiled. “Do you mind?”
“Mind? Why would I mind?”
“Because, maybe you wanted to just... stay in bed.”
“We have plenty of time for that. I’ve spent so much time in the restaurant over the last year I’ve hardly enjoyed being back in LA at all.”
“So, we’re going to the beach,” I said, mimicking him.
“Let’s order some lunch first and then go.”
He brought out menus and we decided on a feast. He called the order in, and when he returned, he sat next to me, pulled me in again, and kissed me until everything faded away.
I was breathless when we stopped. My hand was under his shirt and at the cusp of his waistband.
“I’m going to need to do a lot of things to you tonight in that bed,” I said, nodding toward the open balcony doors. “Nobody around to disturb us for three days? I have a lot of ideas.”
“You say things like that,” he said, tracing across my collarbone, “and I lose my mind a little in a way I never have before.”
“That doesn’t sound good?”
“No, it is,” he said. “Very good. But it makes me nervous. You make me nervous.”
“Me? What? Why?”
“I am never a fool for anyone,” he said quietly. “But I am a fool for you, which I know sounds so cheesy. It’s sick.”
“You’re just swept up in the moment,” I said, pointing to the view. “Who wouldn’t be?”
He shook his head, like that wasn’t it, like it was something more.
“I never let my guard down, Charlie,” he revealed. “Ever. Not even for a day.”
“Neither do I.”
“All I’ve done for years is work. That’s all I’ve cared about. My last girlfriend broke up with me because I never had time for her. The one before that, too. I didn’t want to make time for them.”
“I get it,” I said. “If anyone truly gets it, it’s me.”
“That’s what makes me nervous, though. I want to make time for you. This feels too easy to fall into.”
“Alex, it’s only easy because we know it ends.”
“What if we find out it’s real?”
“It’s not. It won’t be. I don’t think I’m capable of real.”
“All these years, I thought I wasn’t, either,” he said. “But it’s different with you.”
“Only because there’s no pressure,” I told him, not sure who I was trying to convince more, him or myself. “I said it before and I’ll say it again—if this arrangement ever stops working for you, just tell me and I’m gone.”
He exhaled tightly. “You’d be able to end this just like that?”
No . “Yes,” I said, shaky.
There was a ding at the door for our room service, and he jumped up to answer it.
I was determined to steer us into other conversation topics when he returned, but then a scene started playing.
I thought this had stopped, thought I was done reliving this part of my life, thought maybe it was finally behind me.
But I guess the truth was, getting close to Alex, having fun, letting loose, it was making these memories more vivid, more present, more urgent like an incessant knocking in my mind, always calling me forth, always pulling me in.
And I couldn’t stop this scene from coming.
“I told my parents about traveling, you, our plans,” Noah said to her, in a hushed whisper, like he was trying not to be overheard.
“And?” she asked, a lump caught in her throat.
“They won’t budge,” he said. “It’s traveling or them. You or my inheritance. I stupidly thought I could talk to them and get them to see my side. I don’t know what to do.”
She could no longer hold herself up and fell back on the bed, the phone lost in the sheets for a moment as she tried to grab it.
His indecision was enough for her. She knew he didn’t want to alienate himself from his family, or let go of the money that was owed to him.
Somehow, she knew this was coming. That’s why she’d been secretly making plans of her own. Plans that hadn’t included him.
“Noah, it’s okay,” she said. “We haven’t been together that long. Don’t risk everything for me.” She wanted to give him permission to make the choice she knew he wanted to make. She wanted him to do it guilt-free, to let her go. “I can get a job. You don’t have to choose.”
She’d been applying, just in case. Her mom had never had a plan B, but Charlie wasn’t her mom.
She had contingency plans for her contingency plans, even when she was desperately in love.
Actually, that’s when she needed the plans the most. She’d be catatonic right now, knowing he wasn’t going to choose her, if she didn’t have backups.
She always had to control the fallout.
“Is that what you really want? To get a job?” Noah asked. “We had a plan.”
She didn’t want to force him. The last thing she could live with was Noah detaching from his family all because he felt guilty for making a promise to her when everything felt possible.
She knew what she was saying. She knew what she was implying.
She knew she was going to lose him. But what was the alternative?
Beg him to choose her when she knew he’d end up resenting her for it?
Noah did not want to be disowned from his family. In their most intimate moments, he had revealed his hope that he could turn his relationship with his parents around. He wanted that. She couldn’t ask him to leave them behind forever, even if his parents would be the ones making that choice.
“I want you to do what’s best for you,” she said.
“I don’t know what’s best for me,” he admitted.
“That’s your answer,” she said. “I love you, but I’m setting you free. Let’s go our separate ways, Noah. It’s okay. It’s really okay. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Charlie, stop—”
She hung up before she lost her nerve or before he could say anything more and it was the last time she ever spoke to him.
Taking a deep breath, I clenched my fists and shook my head like maybe it could shake the memories away.
I wish the story of Noah and me had ended there.
Fade to black, credits rolling, Charlie Quinn triumphant and safe.
If I had left on my own terms, if it was just a bad breakup with a disappointing guy who made promises he couldn’t keep—I may have survived it all better.
That is the kind of man I could have hated, could have left behind.
But that’s not how we ended.
Alex returned with a room service attendant and I pretended like nothing had just seized me while he was gone.
The attendant set up our lunch on the terrace and I plastered a smile on my face and tried to come back to the moment. We’d ordered a plethora of sushi so fresh it melted on my tongue. The sensation of the sweet ponzu with seared albacore belly brought me back straight into the present.
I had a little more than a week left until I could descend back to who I used to be, impenetrable. This month of yes had been a much-needed vacation, but that’s all it was. A departure. Soon enough, there would need to be an arrival, a return.
But today, there was this delicious salmon nigiri and there was Alex.
“You okay?” Alex asked, perhaps sensing my distance. I’d chosen to sit across from him, on a chair, while we ate.
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“Sometimes, you go somewhere else,” he said. “Do you know that? Sometimes you just leave the moment.”
“I know.”
“It happened at Disneyland,” he said.
It had. I’d been assaulted by memories. I’d remembered a perfect day at Disneyland when I was only four years old.
I couldn’t believe those scenes returned to me, but when I walked past the Dumbo ride, I could see Mom and me inside it, waving down to my dad, who was watching us with a big smile on his face.
That was his cliché pattern—when he came into town, it was time to have fun.
He wanted to leave me with memories. But what he didn’t know was that when he left forever, those memories, no matter how golden, turned to ash.
Dad had weaponized fun against me for the first ten years of my life.
I always let him back in, always lowered my walls, got swept up in his energy, in the whirlwind he’d create when he deemed me important enough to return to for a weekend.
He thought if he distracted me, plied me with sugar, and gave me anything I could ever want for those few days, all sins would be forgiven.
And they were, over and over. I always believed I could be enough to make him stay.
Fun enough, good enough, exciting enough. But he always left.
“I know,” I said again. “I know I do that, Alex.”
“I recognize it,” he said. “Because I used to do it, too.”
I nodded, not wanting to say more. Not wanting to reveal more.
“Do they have beach chairs down there or do we need towels?” I asked. It was a blatant need to change the subject, but Alex didn’t flinch.
“They have everything,” he said.
“Then let’s go,” I told him, shaking off my disassociation.
I changed into my swimsuit in the bathroom and when I came out, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, shirtless, with a pair of navy blue bathing suit shorts on. They were cut above the knee and he looked ridiculously sexy.
When I climbed on top of him, his back fell to the bed. I palmed my way across his torso, grabbed his face, and kissed him while my hips dipped. The kiss didn’t last nearly as long as I wanted it to, because Alex stopped me and stood me upright.
“We need to get some salt water on that skin,” he said, biting my shoulder. “If we don’t leave now, I fear I will not be able to let you leave.”
I laughed. “Okay.”
He put on a T-shirt and we exited the room, flip-flops smacking on the wood walkway, Alex’s arm slung around me like it was meant to be there.