15
Charm
By nine that night, I had already broken one of Ryan’s rules, although it was one he had created solely because he enjoyed giving me assignments and watching me pretend I hated them.
I was curled sideways on the couch with Klein’s comments open across my laptop, my feet tucked beneath one of Aura’s blankets while she talked shit to her friend Liv about her latest fight with Easton at Hockey House.
Bliss had gone home an hour earlier with Cade, and the apartment had finally settled into the sort of background noise I could work through without wanting to crawl out of my skin.
Ryan’s three Spanish lines remained open in the notes app on my phone.
Estoy pensando en ti.
Te extrano.
Vuelve a mí.
I knew all three now. I also knew he had told me to send the first one tonight and save the others until I needed them.
That instruction had lasted approximately thirty minutes.
I opened our messages.
Charm: I cheated.
His response came almost immediately.
Ryan: Shocking.
Charm: I translated all three.
The typing dots appeared.
Ryan: That wasn’t the assignment.
Charm: I’m an overachiever.
Ryan: You’re impatient.
Charm: Also true.
Smiling, I typed the words carefully.
Charm: Estoy pensando en ti. Te extrano. Vuelve a mí.
I watched the message deliver and became far more aware of what I had told him than I had been while sitting alone with a translator.
I’m thinking about you. I miss you. Come back to me.
His response took longer this time.
Ryan: All three?
I bit the inside of my cheek.
Charm: All three.
The phone rang before I could put it down. I answered with a smile already pulling at my mouth.
“You were supposed to be busy.”
“I am busy.”
“You called me.”
“You told me to come back to you.”
My chest tightened. “That wasn’t technically a command.”
“It sounded like one.”
“You’re very obedient for someone who argues constantly.”
Ryan laughed softly through the phone. “How was Klein?”
I sat straighter. “You’re going to hate this.”
“Why?”
“She liked the revision.”
“Obviously.”
“No, wait. It gets worse.”
“What?”
“She asked who had been helping me.”
Ryan went quiet for half a beat.
“I told her,” I continued.
“You told Klein I’ve been tutoring you?”
“I did.”
“And?”
I smiled because I had been waiting hours to give him this part. “She said Ryan was one of her favorite students.”
Silence filled the line, and I could practically see his face.
“You’re lying.”
“I am not.”
“Charm.”
“She specifically said, and I quote, ‘He was one of my favorites, but don’t you dare tell him I said that because his ego requires no additional assistance.’”
Ryan started laughing, and I laughed with him.
“She said that?”
“Exactly that.”
“Smart woman.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“I was one of her favorites.”
“She told me not to tell you.”
“And you lasted how long?”
“Four hours.”
“Terrible secret keeper.”
The teasing made everything feel normal enough that I didn’t think about Wednesday for the rest of the night.
That changed the second Wednesday arrived.
By six fifteen, the navy dress was on my body, and I hated every fucking inch of it.
It fit, which somehow made everything worse.
The fabric hugged my waist, fell cleanly over my hips, and stopped just above my knees exactly where my mother believed it should.
The neckline was conservative enough for my father’s birthday dinner, the cut expensive enough to appear effortless, and the entire thing made me feel sixteen again, terrified that one wrong breath might wrinkle something.
My heels sat beside the bed. My hair was curled, my makeup was finished, and my pulse refused to slow.
Ryan called at six twenty-three. I stared at his name on the screen for two rings before answering.
“Hey.”
“You sound weird.”
There was no hello or buildup. I closed my eyes.
“Hi to you too.”
“Charm.”
“I’m getting ready.”
“For dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
His voice sounded different tonight, more focused. Movement and distant voices filled the background, along with the hollow acoustics of somewhere near a locker room.
“You have a game.”
“In forty minutes.”
“You shouldn’t be worrying about me.”
“That ship sailed.”
I looked at myself in the mirror across the room. The navy dress was beautiful, and I looked like someone my parents would approve of. The thought made my stomach twist.
Ryan heard the silence. “You still there?”
“Yes.”
“You spiraling?”
“No.”
“Bullshit.”
I pressed my lips together.
“Talk to me.”
“I want it over.”
“Then tell them and leave.”
“You make everything sound easy.”
“It is easy.”
“No, Ryan. It isn’t.”
“I didn’t say it wouldn’t suck. I said it’s simple. You tell them who you’re with, and they can like it or choke on it.”
My jaw tightened. “That’s not how families work.”
“That’s exactly how people work when they think they own your choices.”
I stood and crossed toward my dresser because sitting still was making the anxiety worse. “You don’t know them.”
“I know what you’ve told me.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“It’s enough to know you’re shaking before you’ve even left your fucking bedroom.”
His anger had started edging into his voice. It wasn’t aimed at me, which almost made it harder.
My fingers moved to the side of the dress, pressing into the fabric at my waist. My mother’s message had lived inside my head for two days.
If it still fits properly.
I couldn’t tell whether the dress felt tighter because my body had changed or because panic made every seam feel restrictive. I turned sideways in front of the mirror, searching for proof that something was wrong.
“Charm?”
“I’m here.”
“You went quiet.”
“I’m looking at the dress.”
“What about it?”
I pulled the fabric away from my stomach and watched it settle back into place. “Nothing.”
“That doesn’t sound like nothing.”
“It fits.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
The answer pressed against my teeth, but admitting that I had measured myself three times since his bus left felt humiliating. I couldn’t tell Ryan that I had skipped lunch and spent the drive home calculating whether the wine at dinner would make my stomach look different beneath the fabric.
“It doesn’t look right.”
“According to who?”
I stared at the woman in the mirror. “Me.”
“Take a picture.”
“What?”
“Send me a picture of the dress.”
“I’m not sending you a full-body picture before your game so you can evaluate whether I look acceptable.”
“Good, because that isn’t what I’m doing.”
“Then why do you want one?”
“Because I want to see my girlfriend before she walks into that restaurant and burns her father’s birthday dinner to the ground.”
Despite everything, my mouth twitched.
“I’m not burning anything down.”
“You’re telling them about me. Same difference.”
The teasing should have helped, but the pressure beneath my ribs kept climbing. I muted the call and opened the top drawer of my dresser. The measuring tape sat beneath my underwear where I had hidden it after returning from Ryan’s apartment.
My hands moved faster than my thoughts.
I wrapped the tape around my waist and pulled it until the numbers aligned. The measurement was the same as it had been that morning. I tightened the tape anyway, watching the number drop when it bit into my skin.
For several seconds, relief softened the panic.
Then the relief disappeared because I knew I had cheated the measurement.
I checked again, first around my waist and then my hips. Ryan’s name remained bright on the phone screen beside the muted symbol while I stood in the dress he wanted to see, measuring whether my body deserved to be inside it.
When I unmuted the call, my breathing was steadier.
“Sorry.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Charm.”
“I dropped something.”
He didn’t answer immediately, and I hated how suspicious silence sounded when it came from him.
Then he said, “Fuck this.”
I froze. “What?”
“Fuck this dinner. Fuck the dress. Fuck whatever performance you’re about to go put on because your father decided your life belongs to him.”
My temper sparked instantly. “Ryan.”
“No, I’m serious.”
“You don’t get to talk about my family like that.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re my family.”
“And?”
I stared at the wall as his voice hardened.
“It sucks that your brother died, mi hada. It fucking sucks, and I mean that. But you aren’t required to live Charles’s life for him at the expense of your own.”
The words struck exactly where I didn’t want them. “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
“I can’t explain twenty-three years to you before a hockey game.”
“You don’t have to. I understand enough to know they turned his death into a reason you’re supposed to be perfect forever.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is what they do to you.”
My breathing changed. “They love me.”
“I didn’t say they don’t.”
“You sound like you hate them.”
Ryan gave a humorless laugh. “They sound like pendejos.”
“Don’t.”
“Charm.”
“You don’t get to hate them without knowing them.”
The silence on the other end sharpened. When Ryan spoke, his voice had dropped into something far more dangerous than yelling.
“But it’s okay for them to hate and judge me without knowing me?”
I stopped.
“That’s different.”
The words escaped before I could fix them. Ryan went completely quiet, and my stomach dropped.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it?”
“They’re going to react because they’re protective.”
“Of you.”
“Yes.”
“And that gives them permission to decide I’m trash before I ever walk into the room?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You just told me I don’t get to judge them based on what they’ve done to you, while they’re apparently allowed to judge me based on what? Tattoos? Hockey? Where I grew up?”
My throat tightened. “Ryan.”
“No, mi hada. You don’t get both.”
His anger was controlled, which felt worse than if he had yelled.
“I have spent years being looked at like I should apologize for surviving where I came from. I’m not doing it for your parents.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“You’re defending their right to do it before they’ve even done it to my face.”
“That isn’t what I’m doing.”
“I have a game.”
The abrupt shift sent panic slicing through me. “Wait.”