Chapter 13
CHARLOTTE
Charlotte said yes to a date with Eric, in the faculty lounge, standing next to the microwave while her leftover soup rotated behind the greasy glass.
He'd asked casually, so casually she almost missed it. "There's this Thai place in Astoria. Really good pad see ew. You want to check it out Friday?"
She should've hesitated. Should've weighed it, turned it over, given herself time to examine why her first instinct was to glance toward the door as if someone might be standing there.
Nobody was standing there. The hallway was empty.
Dominic was in Manhattan, in his office, in his world, and she was here, in hers, being asked to dinner by a kind man.
"Sure," she said. "Friday works."
Eric's face brightened. A brief, barely suppressed burst of surprise and delight that he immediately tried to wrestle into something cooler. He failed. "Great. I'll pick you up at seven. Or — do you want to meet there? Whatever's comfortable."
"Meeting there is good."
"Perfect. It's on Steinway. I'll text you the address." He backed out of the lounge with his hands in his pockets, grinning, and bumped into the doorframe on his way out. "I'm fine. That was intentional."
She laughed. The microwave beeped. She took out her soup and stood there holding it. The laugh faded, and she thought about Dominic wiping tomato soup off her chin with his thumb, the roughness of his skin against her jaw, the diner going silent around them like the world was holding its breath.
Kate found out within the hour, because Kate had a sixth sense for romantic developments and a network of faculty informants that would've made the CIA jealous.
"You said yes." Kate was leaning against Charlotte's classroom door during afternoon prep, arms crossed, eyebrows at full elevation. "To Eric. You said yes."
"It's dinner. It's not a blood oath."
"It's a date, Charlie. Your first date since—" Kate caught herself. Redirected. "Since you started dating again."
"I haven't started dating again. I'm having pad see ew with a colleague."
"A colleague who has been visibly, embarrassingly interested in you for months and who you are now going to sit across from at a restaurant and eat noodles with on a Friday night. That's a date."
Charlotte straightened the papers on her desk. Aligned them. Tapped them against the surface until the edges were flush. "Maybe I need a date."
Kate was quiet for a beat. "Maybe you do."
"Don't say it."
"Say what?"
"Whatever you're about to say about Dominic."
"I wasn't going to say anything about Dominic." Kate pushed off the doorframe. "I was going to say you deserve someone who makes you feel good. And Eric makes you feel good." She paused. "Right?"
"Right."
"Okay then." Kate left. Charlotte sat at her desk and stared at Oliver's latest dragon drawing tacked to the bulletin board. This one was breathing bubbles instead of fire. Oliver had explained that it was a peaceful dragon, one that resolved conflicts through communication.
She could use a peaceful dragon right about now.
On Friday, she wore jeans and a casual blouse, wearing only a little makeup. She stared at herself in the bathroom mirror.
She'd wanted Dominic. That was the problem, the rot at the center of everything.
She'd wanted him with a ferocity that had rearranged her entire life, and the wanting had been so total, so consuming, that it had burned a groove into her nervous system.
A channel that other wanting couldn't flow through.
Eric was kind, Eric was funny, Eric was present.
Her body responded to him with the mild, pleasant warmth of standing near a space heater. Comfortable. Adequate. Fine.
Dominic was a bonfire. Dominic was standing too close to the sun and knowing it would burn you and leaning in anyway.
She turned off the bathroom light. Grabbed her keys. She was going to dinner with Eric, she was going to have a nice time, and she was going to stop comparing every man she met to someone who'd proven, publicly and catastrophically, that she wasn't the one he chose.
The restaurant had warm lighting, exposed brick, Thai pop playing from a speaker near the kitchen. Eric was already there, at a corner table, wearing a button-down she'd never seen before. He stood when she walked in.
"You look great," he said.
"Thanks. You too. Is that a new shirt?"
"I panicked at Target. This was the least terrible option." He pulled out her chair. She sat.
They ordered. Pad see ew for her, green curry for him, spring rolls to share. He poured her water from a carafe and told her about Mason's latest chess club coup — a devastating Sicilian Defense that had made his opponent, a sixth-grader twice Mason's size, put his head on the board in defeat.
She laughed. Eric was a wonderful storyteller.
Animated, self-deprecating, generous with the punchlines.
He didn't hoard the funny parts the way some people did, saving them for his own setup.
He let the kids be the heroes of every story, and she liked that about him. She liked a lot of things about him.
She wanted to like more.
"So," he said, after the spring rolls arrived and they'd established that the peanut sauce was transcendent. "Can I ask you something?"
"Depends on the question."
"The donor meetings. The Weston Group guy." Eric dipped a spring roll, took a bite, chewed. The casualness was studied. He was nervous. "Is there a story there?"
Charlotte should've expected this. She'd been stupid not to expect it.
Eric was observant — you didn't coach ten-year-olds through competitive chess without learning to read people — and she hadn't been subtle.
The way she disappeared every Thursday afternoon.
The way she came back from those meetings flushed and distracted.
The way she'd stiffened last week when Linda mentioned Dominic's name in the faculty lounge.
"There's a history," she said carefully. "A personal one. It's over."
"Over-over? Or over-but-still-complicated?"
She was silent. Unable to respond.
"Charlie." Eric's voice was gentle. Just opening a door she could walk through or not.
"You don't have to tell me anything. But I like you.
I think that's obvious — Kate told me it was obvious, and then she told me that if I hurt you she'd key my car, so, you know, the stakes are clear.
" He smiled. "I just want to know if I'm — if this is—"
"He's my ex," Charlotte said. "We were engaged. It ended badly."
Eric went still. The spring roll paused midway to his mouth. She watched him put the pieces together: the billionaire family, the donor meetings.
"And now he's funding your school," Eric said.
"It's more complicated than that."
"It usually is." He set the spring roll down. Looked at her across the table with an expression that was neither jealous nor angry. It was understanding. "Are you here because you want to be here, or because you're trying to prove you're over him?"
The question was so direct, so well aimed, that it knocked the air out of her. She opened her mouth to say of course I want to be here, and the lie wouldn't come. It stuck in her throat like a bone.
Eric watched her struggle. Then he nodded, slowly. She saw the disappointment move through him.
"It's okay," he said. "You don't have to answer. That was the answer."
"Eric—"
"I'm not upset." He picked up his water and drank.
"I'm bummed, but I'm not upset. You can't force this stuff, right?
I spent two years trying to force it with my college girlfriend and we ended up in couples therapy at twenty-four.
Twenty-four, Charlie. The therapist was older than us by, like, ten years. "
She laughed.
"You're a good guy," she said. "You're such a good guy, and I wanted to try and—”
"Please don't say you wanted to try. That's the saddest sentence in the English language.
" He leaned back in his chair. "Look. I'd rather be your friend than your experiment in moving on. And let’s face it, I can’t compete with a good-looking billionaire.” He raised his water glass.
"To friendship. And to Mason, who would beat Dominic Weston at chess in four moves. "
She clinked her glass against his, grinning.
They finished dinner and he walked her to her car. The night was warm, the sidewalk busy with Friday foot traffic: families, couples, a group of teenagers arguing about something on someone's phone. Eric stopped at her car door and put his hands in his pockets.
"Friends?" he said.
"Friends."
He nodded. Didn't try to hug her, didn't lean in, didn't make it awkward. He just said, "See you Monday," and walked away, hands still in his pockets, whistling something she couldn't identify.
She sat in her car. The guilt sat with her, heavy in her lap. Eric deserved better than a woman who'd spent their entire date thinking about someone else. He deserved someone who'd look at him and feel the bonfire.
Back at her apartment, it was dark. She kicked off her shoes, dropped her keys on the kitchen counter, and headed to her bedroom, where she stared at the ceiling crack that ran from the window to the light fixture.
She was angry. At Dominic, for existing, for showing up every Thursday, for wiping soup off her face with a tenderness that made her want to scream.
At herself, for letting him. For looking forward to Thursdays.
For comparing Eric's easy warmth to Dominic's careful, agonizing attention and finding Eric's wanting, even though Eric was the one who made sense, the one who was safe, the one who hadn't shattered her in front of the whole world.
Charlotte was angry because she still belonged to Dominic. After everything. She was still his.