16
Ryan
By late October, Charm had gotten so good at looking fine that somebody who didn’t know her might have believed it.
She was killing Klein’s class. She wasn’t barely surviving or fighting to keep her head above water anymore.
She sat near the top of the class and got comments back on papers that made her send me screenshots covered in smug little hearts.
Klein continued denying she had ever called me one of her favorite students, which Charm took great pleasure in reminding me about every chance she got.
Her design work was caught up. She made it to class, showed up for her friends, answered my calls, and sent Spanish voice notes that were getting good enough that I had to find harder shit to give her.
From the outside, Charm looked like she had finally taken control of every part of her life that used to control her.
She played the part beautifully.
The problem was that I knew her too fucking well now.
I knew she had stopped answering most of her mother’s calls because I watched her screen light up with Mom when we were together or on FaceTime. Charm would ignore the call without glancing at it, as though refusing to look made it less important.
I knew her father texted because she would read something, lose the smile she had been wearing a second earlier, and insist it was nothing when I asked.
She hadn’t seen either parent since the birthday dinner.
Every time I asked what happened that night, she gave me some edited version about them being surprised, needing time, and eventually coming around.
She lied through her fucking teeth.
Charm had gotten better about telling me other things.
She admitted when Klein was riding her ass, when Aura and Easton were driving her insane, or when the pressure became too much for her to concentrate.
Sometimes she asked me to stay on FaceTime while she worked because hearing me in the background helped quiet her head.
When it came to her parents, she gave me nothing.
It was starting to grate on me.
I had let it go because things between us had been good. Really fucking good.
My schedule was brutal. Six days gone, one day home whenever the rotation allowed it, four games most weeks, along with practices, film, travel, and every other obligation Flint could cram between puck drops.
I kept the promise I had made her anyway.
If I had enough time to get back to Kimball Falls, I came.
Sometimes that meant driving in late, sleeping five hours with Charm wrapped around me, and leaving again before lunch. Sometimes all I got was breakfast and an hour with her on my couch before I had to head back.
I never regretted the drive.
For the first time in my life, coming home meant somebody.
For three weeks, every visit had been fucked by whatever disaster Easton and Aura created next.
A late-night call would come in before I got Charm alone, or one of them would show up furious and drag the entire group into their relationship.
Aura needed Charm, Easton called me, Bliss tried to referee, and Cade pretended he wasn’t helping while quietly doing exactly that.
Apparently, everyone in Kimball Falls had collectively decided boundaries were decorative.
This four-day break had been circled on both our calendars for weeks.
Four fucking days with no bus waiting at the curb, no hotel room, and no alarm telling me I had forty minutes before I needed to disappear again.
I had spent half the last road trip thinking about what I wanted to do with Charm when I finally had her alone long enough to remember what normal people did together.
The universe found that idea hilarious.
The first night I got back, Easton got into it with somebody tied to shit from Aura’s past, and the entire group combusted.
Before I could get Charm back to my apartment, Aura called her.
Then Easton called me. One of them was pissed, the other was even more pissed, and Charm eventually asked me to drop her at Easton’s apartment because Aura needed her.
Now I sat alone on my couch, staring at a television I hadn’t watched in twenty minutes and getting progressively more irritated.
Most of it wasn’t aimed at Charm. I was mad as fuck at Aura and Easton for flinging their lack of communication and desperate need to draw blood onto everybody around them. Underneath that irritation lived something quieter and a hell of a lot more personal.
Her parents.
I was also pissed at myself for waiting this long to force a conversation I knew we needed. The time I got with Charm was so limited that I hadn’t wanted to ruin any of it by dragging Lance and Crystal into the room with us.
Something had changed in her after the dinner.
Charm would tell me she was fine, smile like she meant it, and then spend the next hour wound so fucking tight that I could feel her anxiety from across the room. She had gotten quieter about her parents and far too careful whenever I asked what her mother said or whether Lance had called.
Every answer came polished and reasonable, as though she had gone through it ten times before giving it to me and removed anything that might make me worry.
I knew that version of her.
Charm had spent most of her life learning how to bury whatever hurt until nobody could see it. Lately, she had been doing it right in front of me.
She was thinner. I noticed every time I returned from Flint after being gone several days. Her eyes looked dark and exhausted even beneath makeup, and I had caught her hands shaking more than once before she tucked them beneath a table or found something to do with them.
She blamed school, stress, too much coffee, and not enough sleep. Charm always had an answer, and each one sounded reasonable by itself.
Together, the excuses were starting to piss me off.
I had already pushed her about eating. I understood how quickly concern could turn into another voice inside her head judging her body, so I tried not to watch every bite or turn food into another fucking test she could fail.
I knew anxiety could tear through her until something small became catastrophic. I knew she looked at herself and saw things I would never understand because whatever mirror she used showed her a completely different woman from the one standing in front of me.
What I couldn’t figure out was why all of it had suddenly gotten worse.
Whenever I came close enough to ask, Charm smiled, kissed me, changed the subject, or found somebody else who needed her more.
She made herself useful, pretty, agreeable, and whatever else the room required until nobody thought to ask whether she was okay underneath any of it.
Apparently, I had let her do it to me too.
My immediate problem was that I had four days in town and still sat in my apartment without my girlfriend.
Girlfriend.
Charm had called me that in bed. She had said it again in front of her parents, or at least she claimed she had. The entire Frost team had watched her straighten my cap and kiss me beside the bus.
I knew Mateo understood. Half the fucking team probably knew after he spent the ride making fairy jokes at my expense.
I didn’t know whether Bliss and Aura knew Charm had officially called me her boyfriend.
They knew we were involved. Bliss had known Charm wanted me years before Charm admitted it to herself.
Aura had eyes and no respect for privacy.
Neither woman could have missed the sex, the sleepovers, the key to my apartment, or the fact that half of Charm’s school shit now lived on my kitchen table.
Knowing we were together wasn’t the same as hearing Charm claim me.
I didn’t know if she had told them.
I couldn’t ask without sounding like I needed her friends’ approval, and that wasn’t the point. I needed to know whether boyfriend was a word Charm used only in my bed, on my sidewalk, and during one confrontation with her parents.
She had a key to my apartment. Three bottles of wine I would never drink sat in my refrigerator. A pink toothbrush stood beside mine in the bathroom, and one of my hoodies had apparently become permanent property of the ABC apartment.
I was in every corner of her private life, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that outside the small circle where she felt safe, I remained a secret with better access.
The thought had been easier to ignore when everything between us was new. By late October, it was starting to piss me off.
At some point during this break, I was taking my girlfriend back. If I had to tell Aura to deal with her own relationship and Easton to get his head out of his ass long enough to stop making everybody else referee it, I would.
I had my own shit to deal with. Charm’s behavior, her parents, Thanksgiving, and the Saturday game afterward had all been sitting in the back of my head for weeks.
Scouts were coming.
This wasn’t one organization sending some regional guy with a clipboard. People who mattered were going to be inside that arena, and everybody in Flint knew it.
I wanted my people there. I wanted the guys from KFU and everybody else who could make the drive. I wanted Charm in the stands where nobody had to guess what she was to me.
I wanted to walk into that game knowing she had chosen me before I stepped onto the ice and tried to make the biggest case of my career for why somebody at the next level should choose me too.
I had been waiting to tell her. Waiting for this break. Waiting for one fucking stretch of time when our relationship wasn’t happening between bus schedules and everybody else’s emergencies.
My phone lit up on the coffee table, and I grabbed it.
Charm: Easton just showed up at the ABC apartment.
Another message followed almost immediately.
Charm: I think they’re finally making up.
I stared at the screen until the third message came through.
Charm: Can you come get me?
Every bit of irritation aimed at the universe disappeared.
Rain hammered against the windows hard enough to blur the parking lot below, but I was already standing.