Chapter 23
My mother invites me to dinner that evening, just her and me, and I accept gratefully. She takes me to the restaurant she mentioned, the one with the Michelin star, and I enjoy a seventy-dollar plate of sea scallops and drink a thirty-dollar glass of wine and remember to thank my mother for treating us when she picks up the check.
Mom tiptoes around the Charlie subject, and I’m grateful to not have to discuss it. But when she asks me about work, I can’t tell her about it without bringing up the Matchless defeat, and when I do that, I crack. My mom listens like I don’t remember her listening to me since I was just a little girl. I tell her everything—that Charlie was never my boyfriend. That he was just some guy I met on the airplane on the way over, and he offered to stand in as my date, and we hit it off, and then something more began to grow. Something beautiful and unbelievable. And then in a fit of hurt and anger, I ruined it.
“Well,” Mom says as I finish, “I have to say, that until the end there, that is one of the most romantic stories I’ve ever heard. He’s either out of his mind, or he’s absolutely crazy about you.”
I sniffle back a tear attempting to escape.
“Oh, honey.” Mom lays her hand over mine. “Can’t you just call him?”
“That’s the worst part,” I moan. “I don’t even have his contact information. I forgot to get it, because his room was right next to mine.”
She’s shaking her head. “He’s going to reach out to you, Daisy,” she says with complete certainty. “This sort of thing doesn’t just happen. There is absolutely no way that he isn’t, right now, thinking of a way to get in touch with you. Just be patient, darling. It’ll work out.”
I want to ask her to promise. The way I did when I was a child and I had a cold.
You’ll feel better in the morning, Buttercup.
Do you promise?
But she can’t promise. All she can do is hope on my behalf. And she does. Her compassion and love for me radiates, and now that I know it’s always been there, I’m able to really bask in it. It’s like the storm cloud that she and I passed through together has lifted away all the haze we’d been living in, and we see each other clearly for the first time in years.
That night, I barely sleep. Every time I wake up, I open Instagram, just in case he’s messaged me. It’s empty. My Facebook also shows no signs of life. I have my bags packed and ready to go.
At the airport, I open and close my social media apps compulsively. When the airplane boards, I hang back at the gate until the very last minute so I can keep an eye out for a message. I’ll be in the air for three and a half hours, during which time I’ll be out of touch with the world.
I’m squished between a middle-aged man named Bob, who has the aisle seat, and who can’t seem to stop himself from talking about his upcoming fishing trip, and a stressed-out father who keeps getting up to reprimand his two children who are sitting with their mother in the row in front of us.
“Have you ever tried fly fishing? It’s fantastic. The way you lure the fish up to the surface. You should try it,” Bob says to me.
“Abbie, your mother said cut it out,” says the man on my other side.
Bob didn’t get the memo that someone with their nose in a book isn’t up for conversation.
“The first time I went fly fishing was with my uncle,” Bob says dreamily, directly into my ear.
I smile and nod at him and turn back to the page I’m staring at and not reading.
“Owen, stop trying to take Abbie’s pretzels,” the father says.
“I love that moment when you get a bite.” Bob sighs.
“Mm-hmm,” I say.
“Owen, you have to sit in your seat. No, you can’t go in the aisle. It’s not allowed. Honey, grab his arm. I know, but I can’t buckle the belt if you don’t get him to hold still.” The dad leans over the seat in front of him so that he’s curled over the headrest and his butt is in the air.
“Sir, you need to return to your seat please,” a flight attendant scolds him.
This continues for the duration of the trip. The outbound flight was like being on a cruise compared to this.
By the time we land I know the makeup of Bob’s entire family tree and how his wife prepares their Thanksgiving turkey.
When we touch down, I turn into one of the passengers I loathe, and I catapult myself from my seat, standing awkwardly as I wait for the door of the plane to be opened.
I switch my phone out of airplane mode and open Instagram again and close my eyes as the disappointment washes over me.
Once I’m in my car I call Cara over Bluetooth on the drive back to my apartment, and when I arrive, she’s used her spare key to let herself in. She wraps her arms around me in a crushing hug and squeezes the air out of me. I bury my face in her mass of curls.
“So, there’s more to the story, huh?”
We sit down on my tufted blue sofa and wrap ourselves in quilts like we always do when we settle in for a chat, or a movie marathon, or really anything. We both prefer to live as human burritos.
I explain my revelations to her, and she listens as attentively as she always does. She’s delighted when I tell her about my mother’s apology, and surprised when I tell her about my mother’s background. When I get to the part with the realizations I had afterwards, falling like dominoes, one pushing on the other, until the entire, carefully constructed picture changed into something else, she smiles.
“That’s a lot of learning in a short span of time, Daisy.”
I nod. “I know.”
When I first encountered Charlie—on the road when we were both stressed out and pissed off—I’d mentally decided that he was suffering from affluenza. I think, maybe, that I’ve been the one suffering from it all along. That I’ve just taken so much for granted.
Cara and I set to work on our laptops, scrolling through friends’ Facebook pages, looking for some connection. I google and search the white pages, to no avail. I search for University of Colorado alumni listings with no luck. I didn’t get Mark’s last name when we were at the bar, so I can’t try to look him up, either.
Finally, I look at Cara, and say, “I could call his office?”
My hands are clammy with nerves. I really don’t want to do this. Charlie clearly doesn’t want to be found, and there have been no overtures on his end. If he really wanted to reach me, he could have by now. I think I’ve already blown it. But I have to try. I won’t ever sleep again if I don’t try. I’ll always be wondering, what if?
I get my phone and open the web page again and look at his bio. The only email that’s listed is the generic one to his office at large. I click the link to the number at the top of the screen.
The phone rings, once, twice, and then a woman answers, “Bikram, Jones, and Cummings.”
“Hi,” I say hesitantly, “I’m calling to speak with Charles Bond?”
“I’m afraid he’s out of the office today. Can I direct you to his voicemail?” the woman asks politely.
“Oh…” I think about it long enough that the receptionist thinks the line has gone dead.
“Ma’am?” she asks. “Are you still there?”
“I’m sorry, I’m here. No, I don’t need his voicemail. Thank you.”
Cara looks at me with pain in her brown eyes. She loves me, and my angst is making her hurt.
“It’s okay.” I give her a feeble smile. “I’ll figure it out.”
Days pass, and I go back to work. I bury myself in work, using it as a tool not to think about anything else. My own social media remains inactive. The silence is deafening.
Donna compliments me on a brief I write about the endangered red wolves of the Southeastern United States. I sit through conference calls and staff meetings. My colleagues crack jokes, and I laugh. And through it all, I’m hollow. I’ve now spent as much time without Charlie as I spent with him, and yet I ache. I return to the home-work-gym routine that got me through the first months after my break with Rob. Cara and I eat lunch, and she chooses not to raise the subject.
The following Wednesday—officially one week since I left DC—I decide to try his office again. I’m desperate.
When I call, the same voice greets me, but when I ask for Charlie, she says only, “I’m afraid he’s no longer with this firm.”
I hang up, utterly defeated. I should have left a voicemail last time. I missed my last chance to reach him.
Charlie is gone.