Chapter 10
I meet Charlie back in the lobby wearing pair of nude flats.
He nods when he sees me. “Much better.”
We leave the hotel and swing right.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Dupont,” he says. “It’s my favorite neighborhood.”
He places his broad hand at my back, as seems to be his habit, and leads me along down the brick sidewalk. A pleasant shiver runs through me at the warmth through the silk of my camisole.
The city’s nightlife is out and in full swing. Girls walk in packs down the street clutching handbags at their sides, and preppy guys roam in khaki chinos and boat shoes. Even at night, when nightclubs open their doors and unfurl their awnings, the city’s character stays put. The young people—the ones going out at this hour—are wearing things that wouldn’t look out of place in closets full of business attire. It’s like a more relaxed version of a congressional hearing.
The streets have emptied out significantly, and we cross intersections even when the light is red. Charlie walks in long strides, and I struggle to keep pace without calling attention to how short my legs are. Eventually, we emerge on the expansive traffic circle. Dupont. In the center there’s a tall fountain, and couples sit chatting on the benches that line the perimeter. A scruffy man gives a paper cup a shake as we pass. Charlie drops a dollar bill in, and I scramble to follow suit, rifling through my little bag for loose change.
We pass through the circle, cross a street, and then arrive at a deep red awning with the words The Mad Hatter written in bold letters. A heavily built guy stands out front smoking a cigarette.
“ID,” he says in a monotone drawl, and we both produce our Colorado driver’s licenses.
I stop in my tracks when we step inside. The whole place is Alice in Wonderland -themed. The floor is black and white checks, and above the bar an enormous and somewhat disturbing Cheshire cat grins down at us with hypnotic eyes.
“There he is.” Charlie points through the dim, red light at a guy hanging on the end of the bar. As we approach, I gaze around myself, somewhat in awe, and notice a grouping of furniture—a long table with mismatched chairs around it—mounted upside down on the ceiling. The table is set for a tea party.
“This is amazing,” I say with a smile.
“It’s cool, right?” Charlie grins at me over his shoulder. “Good drinks too.”
“Hey, man!” his friend greets him. He’s a guy with dark blond hair that’s thinning on top, and he’s wearing a similar uniform to Charlie’s—white Oxford, dark slacks, polished shoes. His suit jacket is slung over the back of his bar chair. He and Charlie lean in for the handshake-hug-backslap that men always do, and then the guy looks at me, his eyes gliding up my body.
He turns back to Charlie with raised eyebrows. “Who’s your friend?”
“Mark, this is Daisy. Daisy, meet Mark. He used to work in the Denver office, but he couldn’t cut it and now he’s exiled here.”
Mark rolls his eyes and laughs. “It’s nice to meet you, Daisy.” He offers me his hand to shake.
“You too,” I say. “And I highly doubt this place is exile.”
“Nah, just a swamp full of sea monsters.” He gives me spooky eyes, and I do something between a chuckle and a snort, and my hand darts up to cover my nose.
“Cute,” Mark says, looking at Charlie, and I flush so hard I can feel it past my collarbone. “How’d you two meet?”
“Daisy gave me the finger on the way to the airport,” Charlie says happily with his hands in his pockets as he leans back on his heels.
“Charlie almost killed me with his douchey BMW,” I retort, and Mark looks like he’s not quite sure whether to believe us or not.
We both take bar stools. Charlie pulls the one out next to Mark for me, and then takes the one on the other side, so I’m between the two of them. The way he does that, placing me so that I won’t be pushed out of the conversation while he and Mark catch up, strikes me as exceptionally considerate.
“How did the meetings go?” Mark asks Charlie with a serious expression.
“Complete shit,” Charlie says, motioning to get the bartender’s attention. “McGovern won’t budge an inch.”
The bartender is pouring what looks like a thousand shots and nods impatiently at him, like, I see you, buddy, you don’t need to wave a flag.
“That guy’s a jackass,” Mark says, taking a sip from a sweaty glass of beer. Then he looks at me. “Charlie’s been working on this contract with—”
“Let’s not talk about work,” Charlie interrupts. “We all know it’s boring, and if Daisy falls asleep, I have to carry her all the way back to Georgetown over my shoulder.”
Mark laughs. “So, Daisy, what do you do?”
“I save bears,” I say with a straight face, because for some reason I think it sounds funny and I want to be the charming, witty Daisy right now.
“Are you a zookeeper?” Mark asks.
“She works for a conservation nonprofit,” Charlie clarifies.
Mark’s eyes widen, then dart between Charlie and me. “Ah. And you do know our friend here is a bloodsucking leech on humanity?”
“Aw, don’t be so hard on yourselves. You lawyers are vampires, at least.”
Mark points at me and looks at Charlie. “I like her.”
Charlie rolls his eyes with a chuckle, and the bartender finally comes over to take our drinks order, laying her hand on the bar top like she needs to catch her breath.
Charlie gets an IPA for himself, and I ask for a soda water and lime, because I can still feel the alcohol from dinner, and I don’t want to wake up with a crushing headache.
A moment later we have drinks in front of us, and Charlie takes a swig from his dark bottle and lays his hand across the back of my chair. He doesn’t touch me, but the awareness that his hand is there is like a magnet pulling at me. He slides it back and forth slowly, across the wood of the backrest, and goosebumps raise across my skin. The hair at the back of my neck rises up like it’s reaching for him.
Mark asks what I’m in town for, and I tell him about my mom’s wedding, and Charlie nods along, without giving any hint of the complete clusterfuck the whole thing is.
“And did you really flip him off at the airport?”
“I did.” I laugh. “But he flipped me off too.”
“Only after!” Charlie protests, and then looks back to Mark. “And I did not mean to cut her off, and I gave her the courtesy wave, so retaliation felt warranted.”
“You didn’t accept the courtesy wave?” Mark says in mock astonishment. “That’s like, a law, isn’t it? You have to accept the courtesy wave.”
“It is.” Charlie nods and then looks to me. “We’re lawyers. We know these things.”
“How could you not have seen me?” I say pointedly as I swivel in my seat to face him. Thus far, it’s been me talking to Mark, with Charlie leaning forward, his hand on the back of my chair, just inches from my bare skin, almost like he has his arm around me. Almost, but not quite.
“Because,” he says. Our faces are close. Closer than necessary. “You drive a go-kart. And it was in my blind spot.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s not that small.”
“It shouldn’t be street legal.” He shakes his head, leaning back determinedly. “But it is just the right size for you.”
“And then you just… became friends?” Mark looks suspiciously between us.
“More or less,” Charlie says, spinning his beer on the bar. “She was so feisty I just couldn’t resist.”
What is this version of me that Charlie sees? It’s like being with him, who I don’t know at all and who has no context in my real life, is making it possible for me to explore different versions of myself. In Charlie’s company, I feel like my whole personality is allowed to exist freely, without being encumbered by my own anxiety.
Mark nods slowly at us, like we’re both lunatics. And he then challenges me to a game of pool.
“Let’s see what you got,” he goads me.
“I don’t think you know what you’re in for.” I raise a sassy eyebrow at him. “I happen to be an expert at pool.” I hop off my seat and cock a hip. I’m lying. I couldn’t hit a cue ball with a tennis racket. But I let Mark think that I’m about to shark him off the table anyways.
We head across the crowded bar, through an arched doorway, into a back room where two tables are lined up and we grab one.
Mark lines the balls up in that triangle thing I don’t know the name of. Maybe it doesn’t even have a name. Maybe it's just “the triangle.” Charlie leans back against the wall with his legs crossed and a small smile playing across his lips as I grab a stick from the wall and rub blue chalk on the end of it like I've seen my friends do. I line up in front of the white ball and prop the stick in one hand. I have to stand up on my toes to reach as I bend over. I close one eye in a dramatic squint.
“Alright, boys, get ready to be impressed.” And I haul back and then let the stick shoot forward, slamming into the white ball, which veers off at a steep angle and bounces lamely off the felt.
Mark’s head falls back in a roar of laughter, and Charlie is looking at me, chuckling helplessly, holding his arms out like, what?
“So, you don’t play pool then,” Mark says, and saunters over to me. “Want to learn?”
Tonight, I decide I’m up for anything.
We start over.
He stands behind me and positions my arm on the lawn of the table, showing me how to properly hold a pool cue, and his other hand is over mine as he shows me how to slide the cue forward. His shoulders envelop me, and as I look forward, to where I’m meant to be aiming, I catch Charlie’s expression. He’s still leaning casually against the wall, but his eyes are dark, almost angry. It’s the expression he wore when he was focusing on his phone in the airport, and I assumed he must be an asshole. He holds my gaze for a moment, as Mark talks into my ear about angles and technique, but all I hear is a buzzing sound when Charlie’s tongue glides over his bottom lip.
When I release the cue this time I miss entirely, but it has nothing to do with Mark’s lesson.
“Aw, you’ll get the hang of it.” Mark laughs, blithely unaware that I’m dizzy with lust over his friend, and he goes ahead and shoots first.
I stand, looking at Charlie, whose eyes now sweep my body, and my stomach fizzes like I just drank an entire bottle of champagne.
“I’m gonna get a drink,” I say vacantly and walk past him.
My breath is coming in quick, shallow clips, and my knees feel week. The rush of attraction that just passed through me was nearly enough to knock me unconscious, right on top of the pool table. The way Charlie’s eyes had gone all dark and hooded when he looked at me, studied me, almost predatory, calls to every female part of my body. I need to get away. It’s bad enough that I'm already wildly attracted to him. He made it pretty clear that he’s not interested in going there. I cannot develop a raging, full-blown crush on a guy I’m going to know for a few days and then likely never see again.
I push myself into the crush of people, winding through, towards the bar. The place was full when we came in, but now it’s packed. However, one of the few perks of being fun-sized is that I’m able to sneak through crowds with the stealth of a spy.
At the bar I ask for a light beer, and then change it to a gin and tonic. The drinks from dinner have burned off, and I’m in need of something to blunt my overstimulated senses.
“Are you okay, Daisy?” Charlie’s voice is behind me, close enough that I feel his breath against the back of my neck. The crowd pushes him forward, jostling him into me, until he’s touching me, my back pressed to his chest. I feel the hard edge of his belt buckle through the fabric of my top. I flinch, and he presses his hands firmly on the bar on either side of me, so that his body fully ensconces mine, and he pushes off, back against the crowd, creating space between us, and forming a sort of protective circle around me with his arms.
I turn on my heel to face him. “I’m fine,” I say. I have to tilt my head back to see his eyes. “I just realized my buzz is gone, and the Cheshire Cat and upside-down furniture is starting to freak me out.”
One side of his beautiful mouth lifts into a smile, and he studies my face with his intense, dark eyes. The spotlights over the bar highlight a dimple. An extremely cute, sweet, kissable dimple. The dimple, and the urge to brush my lips against it, sends a surge of alarm through me, and I turn back to the bartender and slide my credit card across the wood. Charlie stops me and puts his own card down instead.
“You don’t have to do that,” I protest over my shoulder. “You already got the cab today.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to,” he says into my ear. He’s so close that his warmth is sinking into me. Drowning me. I take a shaky inhalation and fill my lungs with air, trying to steady myself.
My drink arrives, and I grasp on to it like a life raft. Charlie’s arm is around my shoulders, leading me back towards the pool table, but as we approach he steers me left, and my traitorous legs with their Jell-O knees obey him rather than me, and he takes me through a doorway, into a dark hall with a concrete floor and painted black walls. The overhead lights are sharp and cast his face into shadow, and a thin dagger of fear slices through me.
What if I’ve misread him entirely? What if he really is a serial killer and he’s been grooming me? The intensity in his face makes me take a step back, until I’m against the cold cinderblocks. He places his hands on my shoulders, his touch so light it’s like the brush of a moth’s wing.
“Daisy.” He lowers his head until he’s at eye level with me. “Are you okay? Do you want me to take you home? I mean, back to the hotel?”
I exhale relief as the moment of panic vanishes, but that just leaves more room in my chest for a flood of tenderness. I don’t know why he’s doing this. Why are we friends? Why does he even care?
“I’m fine,” I say, and it comes out defensively.
His brow creases in reaction. “Okay.” He nods. “It’s just that you left all of a sudden, and with the night you’ve had, I was worried that maybe it was all a bit much.”
“Playing pool?” I say, as though I don’t know what he’s talking about.
“No, I mean…” He pushes a hand through his hair. “Just maybe you’re tired or you were thinking about your whole”—he waves a hand in the air in a vague gesture, and I can tell he’s searching for a word besides dumpster fire— “your whole situation,” he finishes.
I shake my head again. “Really, I’m fine. I’m having fun.”
I am having fun. I’m having more fun right now than I’ve had in months. I haven’t even thought about Rob, or my mom, or Gabby, or anyone else since we walked in here. I’ve been too busy enjoying myself being fun, sassy Daisy, who makes snarky remarks and pretends to be a pool shark.
“You’re sure?” he asks. “Just let me know, and we’ll go.”
I bite my bottom lip, and his eyes dart there, and then back up to mine. Heat pools deep in my belly. He brushes his bottom lip with his tongue, and I fight back the urge to lean up and bite him there, to feel that tender flesh against my own mouth. We look at each other for a moment that stretches, longer and longer, like the hallway is expanding indefinitely. We’re alone. And he’s here, taking care of me, when he could be partying with his buddy and picking up girls.
“You’d really take me back? If I wanted to leave?”
His brow furrows like it’s obvious. “Of course I would.”
I swallow a lump like a billiard ball at the emotion that wells up inside of me. The feeling of being cared for is so comforting that I could curl up against his chest and live there forever.
“I don’t want to go back,” I say. “I want to stay.”
The corners of his mouth lift, his eyes lighten from concern to pleasure, and he takes me by the hand to lead me back out into the crowd. His long fingers twist with mine, and it feels so natural that I might not have noticed except the place where his skin touches mine sears me like a branding iron, sending heat shooting up my arm and into my chest cavity.
Charlie clears a path for us, and I follow, walking in a dream, being led by a handsome man through a surreal bar in a surreal city. I’m so outside of myself I feel like I could float up to the ceiling and have tea with Alice. He leads us back to the pool table that Mark has given up to another group.
“Sorry, guys.” Mark says. “I couldn’t really hold it when you both just disappeared. ” But his annoyance is all show, and his eyebrows bounce suggestively as he looks between the two of us.
Charlie releases my hand and I grip my purse awkwardly, ignoring the little pang of disappointment that he wasn’t really holding my hand. Not in the way I’d want him to hold my hand.
“The bar was crowded,” Charlie says. “Getting Daisy’s drink took a while.”