24. Charly
— ? —
Charly
The thing nobody tells you about being safe is how much it freaks you out.
I’m barefoot in Clarence’s kitchen in one of his shirts, making coffee. Sun everywhere. He’s at the island pretending to read the news on his phone. It’s the most boring, normal Saturday morning, and honestly it’s freaking me out a little.
The last few months of my life have been one bad thing after another, back to back, without any breaks. So even now, with nothing actually wrong, part of me keeps waiting for the phone to ring with some new disaster. Old habits die hard.
“You good over there?” He doesn’t look up from his phone, just keeps scrolling.
“Yeah. Fine. Why?”
“You’ve just been standing there staring at the coffee maker for like a minute. It’s done. It beeped and everything.”
“I heard it.”
“You clearly didn’t hear it.” He puts the phone down and looks at me. “Hey. You want creamer? Did we get creamer?”
And that’s what gets me. Not some big romantic speech. Not him almost dying. Just him asking about creamer on a normal Saturday, like we’re going to have a million more of these. I turn back to the coffee so he won’t see my eyes get all wet over nothing.
He sees anyway. Of course he does. He’s off the stool and across the kitchen before I can pull it together, and then his arms come around me from behind, both of them, and he tucks his chin into the crook of my neck and just holds me there against his chest.
He’s breathing slow and steady against my back, in no rush to be anywhere else, and I feel myself start to settle. It keeps happening lately, this thing where my whole body just lets go a little. The tight feeling in my chest eases up.
My brain stops scanning for the next bad thing. I’m warm and he’s got me and nothing’s wrong, and I still have no idea what to do with that.
“I forgot the creamer,” I tell the cabinet.
“Devastating. Guess we have to drink it like sad little adults.” He doesn’t let go. “You want to tell me where your head went just now, or are we pretending?”
“We’re pretending. I’m being weird, ignore me.”
“You’re allowed to be weird.” He pulls me in a little tighter, his mouth right against my ear now. “You spent a whole year waiting to get hurt. Your body just hasn’t caught up to the part where I’m not going anywhere. Give it time.”
“How are you this annoyingly sweet before nine in the morning?”
“It’s a gift. I have many.” He turns me around in his arms so I’m facing him, both hands sliding up to cradle my face, thumbs brushing my cheeks. “Hi, you.”
“Hi yourself.”
“There she is.” And then he kisses me, slow and soft, the kind of kiss that has nowhere to be and no point to prove, just his lips moving against mine and his hands warm on my jaw, and my stomach does that flip it’s been doing since the very first time, the one I keep waiting to get used to and never do.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, our noses still touching. “Better?”
“Maybe. A little. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late.” He grins, kisses the tip of my nose, and then, the second I let my guard down, he reaches around me and lifts my coffee right off the counter and takes a long, smug sip.
“That’s my coffee. You have your own mug. It’s literally right there.”
“Yours is closer. And warmer. And you already put the right amount of sugar in it.” He takes another sip just to make a point, watching me over the rim. “Honestly you should just make mine from now on. Forever. You’re better at it.”
Forever. The word catches me sideways, the way it always does when one of us says it without thinking.
Because on paper we’re still the fake thing.
Still the arrangement. There’s a ring on my hand that started as a prop and a story we sold everyone, and neither of us has ever actually said out loud what we are now, what this becomes, where the pretend stops and the real part is supposed to take over.
He just tossed forever onto the counter like it was nothing, like it was already decided, and I don’t know if he meant it or if it slipped out.
“Forever’s a long time,” I say, lighter than I feel.
“Is it?” He doesn’t even blink. “Didn’t feel that long to me.”
I open my mouth and nothing useful comes out, so I close it again.
“So this is a long con,” I manage finally. “You pretend you can’t work the machine so I make your coffee for the rest of our lives.”
“It’s not a con if I’m upfront about it.
” He’s backing away with the mug now, grinning, and I grab the dish towel off the oven handle and snap it at him.
He yelps and nearly goes down over a stool, catches himself on the island, and holds the coffee up over his head like a trophy he fought for.
“You almost made me spill the coffee I stole, fair and square.”
“Give it back.”
“Come get it.” He’s still grinning, daring me, and I cross the kitchen and reach for the mug, and he just loops his free arm around my waist and pulls me in instead, kisses me quick, smiling against my mouth.
I’m laughing before I can help it. The waiting part of my brain shuts all the way up for once.
***
We go grocery shopping, because that’s a thing we do now apparently. A normal couple thing. And somehow it’s the best part of my week, which is honestly a little sad if you think about it.
He loses a standoff with a tiny old lady over the last good avocado and somehow makes losing look graceful. Then I catch him trying to slip a family-size bag of those nuclear-orange cheese puffs into the cart while I’m reading the back of a cereal box.
“Nope. Put those back.”
“Hey. I’m a grown man. I can buy a snack.”
“You’re a grown man five weeks out of a hospital bed, and that bag is basically food coloring and sadness. Put it back.”
“You’re so bossy. It’s becoming a real problem.” But he’s smiling, and he doesn’t put it back. He just steps in closer, backing me up against the cart, the cheese puffs still in one hand. “You know what your problem is?”
“Please. Enlighten me.”
“You think you’re in charge.” He leans down, his mouth right at my ear, voice dropping low enough that the woman comparing yogurts two feet away definitely can’t hear. “We both know who folds first, and it’s not me.”
My face goes hot. We are in a grocery store. There are children somewhere in this building.
“That’s not fair,” I tell him. “I can’t argue with you when you do the voice.”
“I know. That works on you every time and I’m not even sorry.” He drops the cheese puffs in the cart, grinning. “There. Done. Moving on.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“You like it.”
“I tolerate it.” But I’m fighting a smile and he knows it, and he steps in again, hand sliding to my hip.
“You more than tolerate it.” He says it low, close, and I have to look away before my face gives me up completely.
“Okay, you know what, fine. One bag.” I duck under his arm and grab the cart before he can pin me against it again, because two can play. “But that’s it. Everything else we put in here is healthy, and you don’t get to whine about it. Promise me.”
“I promise nothing.”
“Clarence, I will absolutely put it back.”
“Okay, okay. I promise.” He catches up, hooks his pinky around mine like a child, and kisses the side of my head. “Happy? You drive a hard bargain in a grocery store, you know that?”
I let the cheese puffs stay. Of course I do. We keep walking, his hand finding the small of my back, and the whole day feels like the first real breath I’ve taken in a year.
***
That night we’re wrecked on the couch after dinner, me tucked into his side, some movie on that neither of us is watching. His fingers trace slow circles on my arm. I’m warm and full and half asleep when the movie hits some big dramatic music moment and Clarence reaches over and mutes it.
My eyes open. “Why’d you mute it?”
“Because you were asleep.”
“I was not asleep.”
“You were drooling on my arm. For like ten minutes.”
“I was resting my eyes.” I dig a finger gently into his side, careful of the ribs. “And I do not drool.”
“You drool a little. It’s cute. I’ve made my peace with it.” He’s grinning down at me, and I point a finger up at his face.
“Don’t you dare finish that thought.” I press my hand flat over his mouth, and he laughs against my palm.
His mouth twitches like he’s about to lose it. And then he just doesn’t. The grin slides off his face, and his fingers go still on my arm, and he gets this look, this quiet, careful look, like he’s trying to memorize me.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing. I just...” He shakes his head a little. “Look at you. Sitting here. On my couch, in my house, drooling on my arm during a movie neither of us watched.”
“This is a weird compliment.” I shift up onto my elbow so I can actually see his face, because the look he’s giving me is making my stomach flip.
“I’m being serious for a second, let me.” His thumb starts moving on my arm again, slow. “You know we used to be strangers? A year ago I didn’t know you this extensively. You were just my brother’s fiancée, some name at a wedding I didn’t want to go to.”
“You’re really selling the romance here.” I keep my voice light, but my heart’s started doing this slow, hard thing in my chest.
“Shut up, I’m getting there.” He laughs, but it’s soft, and his eyes don’t leave my face.
“My point is, a year ago you weren’t anyone important in my life.
And now I can’t picture living a single day without you.
I try and it just doesn’t work. It feels weird how much my life has changed since you came.
Now, there’s no version of my life that’s any good without you in it.
” He swallows. “After everything that happened. All the ugly stuff, my brother, the wedding, the hospital, all of it. Somehow we still ended up here. You and me. I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but I’m not stupid enough to waste it. ”
I can’t say anything. My throat’s too tight.