Chapter 15
The following morning, I wake up after taking hours to fall asleep. I lay in bed, hyperaware of the fact that Charlie was just on the other side of the wall. It was midnight by the time we’d returned to the hotel, and at one o’clock, still awake, staring at the ceiling in the dark, I heard the hum of David Attenborough’s voice coming through the wall from his room. I turned on my own television and flipped through the channels until Attenborough’s voice synched up with its counterpart. At least we were doing the same thing, I thought, taking a tiny measure of solace. And finally, I fell asleep.
My room’s phone ringing is what brings me to consciousness. I grope around on my nightstand feebly, struggling through the morning haze. I feel through the pile of yarn and Cara’s baby blanket. I knock my book onto the floor, and my bottle of eye drops goes too, until I finally reach the phone. There’s no caller ID, but I hold it up to my ear, my face still smashed into the pillow.
“Hello?” It comes out as a croak.
I clear my throat to try again. “Hello?” I say, sounding fully human this time.
“Good morning, Daisy.” The smile in Charlie’s voice is audible through the phone. I smile into my pillow as my stomach tightens with zippy tingles, and now I’m fully awake. Charlie should hire himself out as a wakeup call service. No one would ever be late again.
“Hi,” I say, smiling back and snuggling into my blanket with giddy delight.
“Did I wake you up?” His voice is tentative.
“Sort of, but I don’t mind.”
“Are you in the mood for breakfast?”
I’m in the mood for anything with Charlie Bond.
“Sure,” I say, and the line goes silent. “Hello?” I say. “ Hellooo ?”
The line must have cut out, so I set about trying to figure out how to call him back, but there’s a knock on my door before I get there.
I stumble out of bed, and walk on tiptoes because my feet are still tender from the shoe abuse I put them through last night, and open the door to find Charlie standing on the other side, showered with rumpled wet hair still sticking up all over the place, wearing dark jeans and a white t-shirt.
His eyes rove up my body. My oversized sleep shirt comes down to the tops of my thighs.
“Donald Duck, huh?” he says as he steps past me. I look down at the cartoon duck on the front of my shirt and then blush as I follow him into the room, grinning like a golden retriever.
“Just give me a minute to get dressed and we can go,” I say.
But Charlie is kicking off his shoes and clearing the clothes spread on the other half of my bed.
“Go where?” he asks, looking over at me from where he’s bent over, holding an armful of cardigans.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Getting ready for breakfast. What are you doing?” He starts fluffing up the pillows against the headboard.
I pause and stare at him in confusion.
“We’re in a hotel, Daisy,” he says slowly, since I haven’t gotten the picture yet. “Let’s get room service together.”
Something in my chest unfurls, like a flower opening for the sun.
“We can charge it to my room.” He grins at me as he settles on the bed and pats the spot next to him.
I dive with a running leap onto the bed, and land with a whump into the fluffy blankets and pillows and warm, firm Charlie.
He wraps an arm around me as I tilt my head up to him. His lips come down, and I yelp, “Wait!”
“What?” He sits up and feels around himself frantically like there might be a landmine embedded someplace.
“I just… hang on.” I dart from the bed, and scamper into the bathroom where I frantically grab my toothbrush and toothpaste and begin brushing my teeth at breakneck speed.
“You don’t have to do that!” he yells from the other room.
Yes, I absolutely do. I just found Charlie. There’s no way I’m scaring him off with my morning dragon breath.
I scrub my tongue, and then rinse and spit and rinse and spit again and splash some water on my face and sniff my armpits and wonder if I have time to just take a quick shower.
“Daisy, come back to bed!”
The sweetest words I’ve ever heard.
I walk back into the bedroom and climb onto the bed, crawling towards Charlie like a toddler. He smiles playfully and grabs my wrists when I get close and hauls me up to him. I squeal as he drags me, stretching my body out until it’s next to and flush with his.
“No running this time,” he says with a playful smile, and then lands a kiss on my mouth. He folds me into his body, wrapping around me like an envelope and turning me so that I’m on my back, sinking into the down, and he pulls a blanket up over us so that we are completely hidden.
He’s over me. The light of morning filters through the blanket and turns everything a dark golden color. He brushes the hair away from my face. “I couldn’t sleep last night, could you?”
I shake my head. “David Attenborough.”
“Thank goodness for good old David,” he replies and then kisses me again, deep this time, and slow, so slow. He takes his time working over my lips. My hands run up his back, feeling the ripple of muscle there, and then down to get a squeeze of his ass. It’s a very nice ass. It’s a very nice everything.
He pulls back and looks at me, and then kisses the tip of my nose.
“The cutest nose,” he says.
And then he kisses my cheek. “The cutest cheeks.”
It turns out my ears are also the cutest, and my forehead. He peppers me with kisses, telling me how much he adores each part. “The most gorgeous shoulder.” “The best throat.” “The most perfect chin.”
Each sentence makes me feel a little lighter, a little higher. If Charlie were to pull the blanket off us, I would drift away as a pink cloud of cotton candy in the wind. I’m dreaming. And any moment I’ll wake up.
But I’m not dreaming, and when Charlie pulls the blanket back I don’t drift away. I’m snug and warm and unbelievably turned on with my head tucked into his neck.
“What should we order?” he asks, as though he didn’t just give me the hottest foreplay of all time.
“Not hungry,” I say as I nuzzle his throat and kiss him and smell him and try to burrow in like a rabbit. Exactly like a rabbit, actually. I feel very much like a rabbit right now.
“You ate green beans and cake for dinner last night. I’m feeding you,” he says. “Or the hotel kitchen is feeding you. It’s the best I can do under the circumstances.” He picks up the phone.
Thirty minutes later, I open the door to my room to sign for the food with bruised lips and hair that says I’ve been having sex all night, although I haven’t. I haven’t had any sex. Charlie is all mouth and tongue and hands, but it’s all over the clothes and my body is throbbing in frustration. Very, very good frustration. I don’t remember ever being this turned on. I’ve been grinding myself against his thigh while he tickles me just above my panties and grips my ass to get me closer to him. We’ve been making out like teenagers in the back seat of their parents’ Ford.
The bellman wheels the cart of food into the room, navigating around my detritus, and begins to set things up, but I usher him out in a hurry.
“That’s alright, we’ve got it from here!” I shoot him a crazed smile.
“Aw, Daisy, you should have let him set it up,” Charlie says, sitting up in bed when the bellman is gone. “That’s half of what you pay for.”
I pounce on him, straddling him and wrapping my arms around his head.
“ Prffct brrsts ,” he muffles through my T-shirt before he nips at a tight nipple, and I squeal.
I lean back and pull his T-shirt from the waist of his jeans, but he grasps my hands. “Daisy,” he says reluctantly, stopping me in my very determined tracks. “Let’s take our time. Okay?”
I give him sad puppy eyes, but he’s not caving, so I sit down next to him. We lift the trays off the food and pour coffee.
Since I was refusing to give Charlie my food order, due to acting like a petulant child, he was forced to guess at what I wanted. But he nailed it anyways. A yogurt parfait with berries and granola is waiting for me, as well as the heavenly avocado toast of my dreams that I had yesterday. He’s eating an eggs Benedict, and when he pierces the egg, the yolk runs perfect and creamy out onto his plate and blends with his potatoes. He watches it like he’s fascinated.
As we eat, Charlie continues interviewing me about my life. What do I like best about my work? What is Cara like? Her husband? Where did my mom take me traveling when I was a kid?
He’s attentive. An active listener. Interjecting questions here and there, and waiting when I ramble. This is so easy. Talking to Charlie is like talking to someone I’ve known forever.
He tells me that his sister is worried about her youngest daughter—she’s two and still not talking. His dad’s arthritis in his back is getting so bad he’s starting to need a walker, and Charlie is wondering if he should broach the subject of assisted living. His last girlfriend, Sarah, broke up with him after they’d been together for three years, and only a month later she was seriously dating his best friend. Two weeks after that she’d moved from her sister’s place, where she’d been camping out, and into his apartment.
“I was a fucking wreck,” he tells me. “He swore to me that nothing happened until she’d ended things, but I honestly don’t believe either of them, and I haven’t talked to him since.”
“How long were you two friends?” I ask.
“Since we were in sixth grade. He was one of the kids who didn’t pick on me for being poor.”
Suddenly his hesitance about falling into bed with me makes more sense. He’s vulnerable. Realizing that makes me want to kiss him right over his heart.
I grip his wrist, looking at him with a direct, sincere gaze. “I’m so sorry, Charlie. Losing all that at once. I can’t imagine.”
He gives his head a little shake, with a small, careful smile. “You can imagine, Daisy. You’re going through it.”
And then he pushes me back on the bed and climbs over me, playfully pinning my wrists above my head with his strong hands. From this angle the curve of his bicep is right in my face, and I salivate. He comes down and pecks me on the lips. “So,” he says casually, and kisses me again. “What do you want to do today?” Another kiss.
“Stay here? Undress you? Watch you work naked?”
“It’s Sunday, Mini.”
“Is that an ice cream joke?”
He chuckles. “No work on Sundays. No meetings. No email. My boss can go fuck himself.”
I decide to take him seriously and don’t make a joke about fucking, because that would be crass, so instead I say, “You willing to spend some time out in the heat?”
“I’m willing to go wherever you want,” he replies and kisses me on the forehead. “What were you thinking?”
I know the answer right away. “The National Zoo.”
“Good choice,” he says. “That sounds like fun.”
He climbs off me and I give myself a second to pout at the loss of him before I gather up some clothes and go to the bathroom to change. The temptation to strip in front of him and continue my attempts at seduction are strong, but Charlie seems to want to take things slow, and I understand that I need to respect that.
I comb my hair and pull it up off my neck, and then change into a pair of comfortable, slouchy jean shorts and a loose tank top. When I’ve gathered the various artifacts that I need before I go out into the world, and stuff them into my purse, I throw it over my shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
Charlie has been lounging in the bed, eating leftover scoops of yogurt from my parfait and watching a Bob Ross rerun on the TV.
“Alright,” he says and hops up.
We cab it to a neighborhood called Woodley Park where we enter the zoo. Charlie holds the door of the taxi open for me, and when I step out into the heat he takes my hand in his, entwining our fingers like it’s the most natural thing. We wander down paths between exhibits, moving from one patch of shade to the next, escaping the heat as much as possible. I attempt to focus on what we’re seeing, despite Charlie’s hands on me, the dimple that appears when he smiles at river otters flipping about, or a cheeky lemur stealing a snack from its friend.
He seems to sense that this is important to me, because he says nothing when I spend a long time reading about the Conservation Biology Institute. So many of these animals are endangered, and the zookeepers here act as conservationists, tracking the genetic history of each animal to ensure that, should it ever be necessary, all of these creatures could be used to save their species.
Finally, we arrive at the pandas, and I’m excited enough to bounce a little bit on my toes when a large, content looking black and white bear loafs across a stretch of shaded grass and flops down on its backside and then rolls over as though preparing for a well-earned nap.
“Is this, like, the ultimate bear sighting for you?” Charlie asks.
I laugh, “It’s definitely up there.”
We watch the panda making itself comfortable for a while. Charlie stands just behind me, running his fingertips down the length of my arms, so that goosebumps raise across my skin and I shiver, even in the heat. I turn to look at him, my eyes heavy lidded and lips slightly parted. Charlie grips my hand and pulls me behind a tree next to the path, out of sight of the families pushing strollers and children attempting to climb the exhibit fence.
“I just need to get this out of my system.” His voice is low, and I raise my head so that his lips graze mine. His body is pressed against me, and I run my hands over his shoulders as I kiss him with increasing intensity. It’s almost too much. My desire for him is overwhelming and urgent. When we break apart, with swollen lips and short breaths, we decide it’s time to go.
We wander out of the zoo, holding hands, in search of lunch. Every now and then Charlie tugs me into him so he can land a kiss on my head. When we take our chairs at a table under an umbrella on the sidewalk, pedestrians pass in both directions, getting on with their lives, while I sit, enraptured by Charlie’s eyes on me. A waitress comes and sets down large bottles of cold water. Charlie orders a veggie wrap.
My heart must be in my eyes because he shrugs at me, “I thought I’d give your way a try.”
We both dig into our food, and drink large gulps of water. I’m not sure if it’s this heat or just the potently drugging effect that Charlie’s presence has on me, but my limbs feel limp.
“Did you get to see everything you wanted?” he asks.
I nod happily. “Yeah. Thank you so much for going with me. I really wanted to see the pandas, obviously, but it was also just so amazing to learn about all the conservation work they do here.”
He swallows a bite and takes a drink of water. “It was my pleasure. I liked seeing it too.”
He sets his wrap down then, as though he has something important to say. “Speaking of educating oneself, I’m considering a job change.”
I put my half-eaten wrap down as my brows go up. “Are you?”
He nods. “I’m not contributing a damn thing to the world. All I do is work for rich assholes to make them richer.” The words come out rather more forcefully than perhaps he was intending, because a passing woman looks over her shoulder at him and hustles herself down the sidewalk, and I suppress a smile at the passion in his voice. “I’m envious of you, Daisy,” he finishes.
“Of me? My life is so fucked up, though.”
He shakes his head. “Everyone’s lives are fucked up to some extent. The people around you might be fucked up, but y ou are perfectly fine. You’re better than fine. You have beliefs and convictions, and you really care about the world around you.” He lifts his veggie wrap as though it’s proof.
I raise an eyebrow. “Being a vegetarian doesn’t make me a saint, Charlie.”
“I know that,” he says with a smile. “I was actually thinking more about your family. Your mom is…” He trails off, not wanting to finish the sentence.
I cut him a look. “It’s okay. I can handle it.”
“She’s taking advantage of you,” he says frankly. “I don’t know a single person who would have gotten up and given a toast like you did last night. That guy Walter kept talking about class in the limo. What you did, that was class. And I’m worried that your mom doesn’t deserve it. Doesn’t deserve everything you're putting yourself through just for her . I don’t think your mom even came up to thank you. Am I wrong? Has she acknowledged what a huge gesture that was?”
I bite my lip and look at my plate, fidgeting with my napkin. “You’re not wrong. She hasn’t,” I say.
“Why do you put yourself through so much trouble for her? After what she did?” He’s leaning forward, looking at my face even as I try to hide it.
“I don’t know,” I say to him, “I just feel so guilty . She needs me, and I already left her and went to Colorado, and she just… I just can’t stand it when I let her down.”
“Let her down? How have you let her down?” Charlie’s brow is creased, and he twists and untwists the cap to his water.
I’m getting frustrated. Irritated, not at Charlie, but at the conversation. That I’m in this situation. That I can’t ever seem to stand up for myself, even when I want to. That my mom doesn’t appreciate me, or approve of me, and I know it, and yet somehow, I still let her get away with everything. That I live a strange sort of double life—the person I am when I am in Denver is not the same person my mother sees. All these things—my personal beliefs, my mother’s value system, the way she treats me, the way I can’t seem to extricate myself from her expectations—they are all somehow bound together, and I haven’t been able to parse them out. Whenever I try, all I feel is guilt.
You’re a doormat, a little voice in my head says. But she needs you, says another. My eyes well with tears and I fight them, but one escapes and glides down and dangles from my chin. I dab at it impatiently with my napkin and attempt to explain what I’m feeling.
“It’s kind of like, as I grew up, I became the parent. My mom takes fine care of herself, and she has all the resources in the world to do it, but emotionally, she’s just… off. When I went to college and decided to stay out in Colorado she was devastated, like I was leaving her. And she’s so incredibly worried about how people see her, and she wants me to fit this mold that I just can’t fit and that I don’t want to fit. And I know it bothers her. She wishes I were different. So, I try to make it up to her in other ways, but it never seems to work. Or at least, it never seems to be enough.”
My mom has been pushing and pushing for years, expecting me to be there for her, expecting things from me that aren’t really fair to expect from another person, worrying about the impression my life will make on her friends. It doesn’t make any sense, and yet, I don’t know how to stop it.
Cara sees it and has told me a thousand times to just put my foot down, but it’s not that simple. You don’t just abandon people you love because they don’t turn out to be the sort of person you think they ought to be. My mom took good care of me as a child, and maybe it’s just my turn to take care of her.
“I just think…” I start. “Maybe she just needs some looking after now, and I need to be tolerant and patient, the way parents are tolerant and patient with their children.”
But the toll that tolerance and patience has taken on my life is adding up, and it’s reaching a point where I don’t know if there even is a line that can be crossed that will make me stand up for myself.
There has to be a point, right? Where you realize you need to put yourself first and you stop compromising who you are to suit other people? I don’t want to live in the state of willful ignorance that my mother and her friends choose. I don’t want to enjoy money if it means exploiting people more vulnerable than myself. I want to feel like I’m doing something worthwhile with my life, and I don’t want to be looked down on for it.
I rub at a little spot of rust on the table in front of me, “Maybe that’s what unconditional love is all about, though. Giving that person what they need to be happy, even if it comes at the expense of your own self?”
That’s how it feels right now, at least. It feels like my mom expects me to bend and bend, and contort myself into the daughter she wishes she had. And then, when I finally began to figure things out for myself, to build my own life and my own future, she tried it on for size and decided that she liked it. It feels like I had something good, and she wanted it for herself, regardless of what it might cost me. And yet, I’m still here. Giving her my blessing to marry Rob’s dad. Giving her my blessing to continue living her life the way she always has.
Where is the line?
Charlie’s lips are pressed tightly together, and he scratches his chin. “I’m not an expert on love. But I don’t think unconditional love means sacrificing yourself. And I’m not sure it’s fair for you to take all of that on your shoulders, Daisy. Your mom is an adult, and you are her child,” he repeats himself from last night, but I don’t mind. “Those roles shouldn’t be reversed. And it’s not fair of her to expect you to live your life to suit her demands.”
I nod sadly. “I know. I just need to figure out how to get myself out of this guilt, and then maybe I’ll be able to start setting some boundaries for myself.”
Boundaries . It’s Cara’s siren song. She is very into boundaries, and she wishes that I was very into boundaries. But I’m terrible at them. Once someone, or something, is in my heart, it’s all the way in. No half-measures.
“Are you alright?” Charlie asks, reaching for my hand and lacing our fingers together. “Can I do anything?”
“You’ve already done so much, Charlie.” I give him a feeble smile, and his eyes warm.
“I’m just going to say this,” he says, and he looks very intense. Perhaps a little bit nervous. His fingers keep working the cap of his water bottle. “You don’t need to be any different from who you already are. You’re pretty spectacular.” I snort, and he ignores me. “If she can’t see that, then it’s her failing. Not yours.”
The words are simple, but they floor me nonetheless. For a brief stretch of time, I allow myself to sink into his gaze. I study his soft eyes and mouth, his lovely nose and jaw. He’s beautiful and thoughtful and he’s filling up my heart which has been so empty, broken to pieces and put back together again like an urn that will never quite be the same. Somehow, with Charlie here, everything has felt, if not great, then at least okay. Survivable. And there’s something else too. With Charlie standing next to me, the idea of just being who I am doesn’t seem nearly so frightening.
Charlie suggests that we go back to the hotel. It’s nearing three o’clock, and the wedding starts at six.
“I know you need a lot of time.” He grins at me. “But I have to admit, if an hour and a half is what it takes you to look the way you did last night, I’d wait every night, forever, just to get to see you in that dress again.”