Chapter 14
With her heels still in her hand, Charlotte wanders across the beach to the shoreline. From the look of it, she’s alone. Good.
She hesitates for a second remembering her formal wear, but decides to sit down by the water anyway, placing her shoes next to her in the sand.
She stretches her feet out and lets the water come up to her ankles with every wave.
The moon’s reflection causes the surface to shimmer like tiny diamonds, but only minimally; it’s almost a new moon, Charlotte realizes when she looks up. New beginnings. Yeah right.
Just as she’s about to take a deep breath, she’s vaguely aware of a presence behind her.
“Don’t freak out!”
Which are, ironically, the words that make Charlotte jump and release a very uncharming shriek.
“Motherf—”
“I said don’t freak out!”
In the distance, she can vaguely make out the silhouette of Lou approaching her, shyly dragging her feet through the sand. She holds her shoes in her hand too; elegant light blue sandals that match the color of her suit.
With her hand still on her chest to recover from her almost-heart attack, Charlotte gives her friends’ fiancée a confused look.
“Lou? What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at your own party?”
Lou keeps walking, one corner of her mouth curved up, until she stands right next to Charlotte.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at the party you organized?” she fires back, but it’s clearly rhetorical. “Can I sit?”
Charlotte respects Lou too much to tell her to get lost, so she waves an approving hand. As Lou sits down with her legs crossed, Charlotte turns back to face the water, but side eyes her suspiciously after a few moments.
“Is this when you’re gonna ask me why I walked away and we bond over a few life lessons?”
Lou shrugs. “If you want to.”
“It can’t be a coincidence that you’re here, right?”
“Maybe I just needed some fresh air.”
“In the exact same spot as me, a full five minute walk from the hotel?”
Lou chuckles humorlessly. “Okay, so I did follow you.”
“There we go,” Charlotte says pointedly.
“Are you going to be mad at me for wanting to check up on you?”
Charlotte inhales, but isn’t sure how to answer that. She lifts her legs, digs her heels in the sand and rests her elbows on top of her knees, clasping her hands together in the center.
“I guess, if it had to be someone, I’m glad it’s you. But I already feel guilty about keeping you from your friends and family, so please—”
“You didn’t ask me to follow you, did you? It’s my choice to be here.”
Charlotte shrugs one shoulder and nods. She had really hoped to come here alone, and had definitely not expected Lou of all people to join her, but here they are. As long as she doesn’t ask difficult questions, she is gonna be fine.
“You said you’re glad it’s me,” Lou says, a careful tone in her voice. “Why wouldn’t you rather have Gabi check on—”
Charlotte interrupts her with a scoff. “I love her to death, but you of all people should know that she can be a little intense sometimes.”
“And Riley?”
At that, Charlotte tenses up. She purses her lips and tries to look casual, but under Lou’s prying eyes she knows she’s too late to hide her reaction.
With a sigh, she drops her head. She had already been on the brink of tears before she sat down, but hearing Riley’s name now makes it worse.
Trying to shield her emotion from Lou, she dips her head lower and covers her face with her shoulder.
She appreciates Lou not making any attempt to physically touch her for comfort.
When Lou doesn’t say anything, Charlotte peeks up at her. She then realizes that Lou hasn't looked away, so she quickly averts her gaze again.
“You look like you’re about to say ‘oh honey,’ and I do not like it,” Charlotte says, the sound muffled against her arm.
“Oh, honey,” Lou sighs right on cue, making the both of them smile weakly. “I don’t know, you tell me. Is this an ‘oh, honey’ kind of situation?”
“More like an ‘oh, I shouldn’t have mentioned her, here’s a drink’ kind of situation.”
“Yeah…” Lou drawls, and her feet shuffle in the sand. “She can be an intense woman to be the first to fall in love with,” she eventually continues, almost inaudibly.
Charlotte sharply whips her head up, the embarrassment of her watery eyes immediately forgotten.
“What?!”
Lou meets her gaze head on—her expression challenging, but not antagonizing. It’s more like an invitation to be honest.
When Lou doesn’t say anything, Charlotte snaps: “Care to explain?”
Lou smiles knowingly, and does break eye contact this time. Staring at the horizon, she calmly says: “I don’t think I need to. I’m not blind, Charlotte, nor am I an idiot.”
“Then I must be the idiot, because I have no idea what you’re—”
“Are you going to keep this up for another hour, or can you put your big girl pants on for me so we can skip this whole spiel?”
Charlotte opens and closes her mouth, unintentionally mimicking a fish. Between her and Gabi, Lou has always been the softer person. The good cop. So witnessing her break character and use tough love on her, is throwing Charlotte off guard.
“Gabi has rubbed off on you,” she points out.
“I’m sorry Charlotte. But someone has to help you with this, because whatever’s going on between you and Riley almost set the hotel on fire and I would still like to get married here,” Lou says, her words still harsh but her voice friendlier this time.
“So why don’t you talk to her?” Charlotte deflects swiftly, but Lou doesn’t let up.
“Oh, I am going to. And she will be quaking in her flip flops when I’m done with her. You, unfortunately, peeled yourself off of her first, so here we are.”
Charlotte grumbles low in her throat. She doesn’t like how cornered she feels, right by the vast ocean. After a few seconds of silence, she reluctantly asks: “Does Gabi know?”
Lou laughs. “Does Gabi know?” she repeats, and laughs again, louder this time. “Gabi has been bugging me about the 20 bucks I owe her for weeks. Months.”
“Months? What the hell did you bet on?” Charlotte wants to know, half offended and half intrigued.
“On you and Riley having feelings for each other.”
Charlotte lets out a dismissive, disgusted sound, a little too loudly to be taken seriously. “Even if that were true, which it isn’t… How could you even prove that?”
“Because,” a loud voice behind them says. “Gabi is also not blind, not an idiot, and unfortunately, most certainly not deaf.”
Lou and Charlotte quickly turn around, both surprised to see Gabi herself leaning against a rock, taking them in from a distance, her demeanor more determined than Lou’s. The moment they notice her, she pads closer.
“And I’m going to be honest. Going off of the sound, it makes me wonder what Riley is capable of in bed. Lou just won’t agree to putting her on my hall pass.”
Shit.
It’s clearly meant to be a joke, but neither Lou nor Charlotte laugh due to Gabi’s intense energy. She walks up to them and hikes up her dress to sit down next to Charlotte on the other side.
Gabi and Lou look at her expectantly, waiting for a mortified Charlotte to say something.
“So if you’re here,” Charlotte croaks, looking at Lou. “And you’re here now too,” a nod to Gabi. “Then whose dinner party is everyone attending?”
It’s an attempt to lighten the mood and distract them from Gabi bringing up her nightly activities, but it doesn’t erase the awkward tension between the three of them.
A couple of thoughts settle in Charlotte’s brain.
One: Lou and Gabi know about her and Riley but never said anything.
Two: they apparently had discussed it with each other.
“If you two already know everything, why are you trying to torture it out of me?” she spits, hurt creeping into her chest.
“Obviously, if it was something you wanted to share, we would be happy to listen and support you,” Lou answers. “But you were clearly trying to hide it, so we didn’t want to confront you. Until—”
“You made it everybody’s problem. Again,” Gabi finishes her fiancée’s sentence. “Just now by making the most dramatic exit ever, which I have to give you massive lesbian points for…”
Charlotte rolls her eyes. “...and the last few days by fucking each other stupid. Or I sincerely hope that’s what it was, because if not, I’ll have Riley arrested for tearing you apart and pulling you inside out. My dear god.”
If the beach could split open beneath her and swallow her whole, Charlotte would be eternally grateful.
Her cheeks burn so hot it almost hurts; this might be the most embarrassed she’s ever felt.
The only light on the horizon is the fact that, despite Gabi’s cross way of expressing her annoyance, she can still sense that she sees the humor in the situation.
Which she actually prefers over anger, or so she thinks at first, but starts second guessing soon.
“Initially we thought the fire alarm was going off,” Gabi continues, unperturbed. “Then we figured it was probably coming from our upstairs neighbors, and you know what, that could’ve been it! You could’ve gotten away with it, until—”
“She’s been holding this up for ages, I’m so sorry,” Lou mumbles under her breath.
“Until someone shrieked a name, which Lou then had the presence of mind about to point out so I couldn’t unhear it—”
“Sweetie, I think that’s—”
“And if only it had been an ordinary name, like Lisa or Emma, but no, you left nothing to the imagination as there happen to be very few people here with the name Riley—”
Charlotte, who has already buried her face in her hands, slumps even further down. Could she bury herself here? No, scratch that. She’d prefer to roll into the sea like a washed up whale.
“I would’ve been perfectly happy to spend the duration of your sexcapade deciding whether you sounded more like a howling monkey or one of those screaming goats, but no! You made sure to give us an extremely detailed description of where, when, how, and how long you needed Riley to—”