Betting on You(39)

“Nope.” Charlie jumped off the porch and landed in front of her. He bent his knees, so his face was at her level (he was like a foot taller than her), and he said, “I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight if I let one of my favorite humans get behind the wheel when she’s clearly buzzed. Please let me drive you, because I need my fucking beauty sleep.”

The way she beamed at him made me smile, because what else was there to do?

The jerk from the airport was ridiculously charming.

Actually—that wasn’t it.

It wasn’t charm that was melting Clio and me, it was kindness. The jerk from the airport clearly cared about his friend and was committed to taking care of her.

Dear God, it was almost too nice, like sunshine on a spring day. So completely wonderful that you want to stare and soak it up, but that only results in burned corneas and impaired vision.

We got Clio loaded into the back seat, and when we were buckling our seat belts and he started the car, Charlie said, “By the way. My friend Eli asked me if he can ask you out.”

What? I knew to be cool and act like I’d been there before, but what I really wanted to do was say Are you sure? and Did he get me confused with someone else?

Not that I didn’t think I was worthy of interest, but I hadn’t really engaged with Eli, aside from a few random sentences.

“Why would he ask you?” I said, mainly to sound cool as I worked through my shock that he’d noticed me at all. “What are you—my dad?”

Charlie put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. “I’m his friend, and he just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t care. Settle your ass down.”

I peeked back at Clio, who looked like she was asleep sitting up, and tried to determine how I felt about this turn of events. Charlie’s friend was cute and seemed nice enough, but he also wasn’t Zack.

“What’s Eli like?” I asked Charlie, deciding not to shut it down entirely before I had all the facts.

“Oh my God, I love Eli,” Clio said with her eyes closed. “He’s hot and super nice.”

That made me grin at Charlie.

“I think you’d like him,” Charlie said, looking into the mirror before switching lanes.

“You do?” I looked over, for some reason surprised, and his face was unreadable in the dashboard lights. “Really?”

“Sure,” he said, his wrist casually draped over the steering wheel. “I mean, I like him, he’s a handsome guy, and you’re not into anyone else, right?”

“Right,” I said, looking out the windshield into the darkness and picturing Zack.

But I must’ve made a face, because his eyes got big and he said, “Holy shit—who? Who are you into?”

“No one,” I lied, but Charlie wasn’t buying it.

“Oh, come on, Glasses,” he said, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “I don’t know any of your dude friends, so you can tell me. Is there some new guy that makes your little heart go pitter-patter?”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” I said dismissively, so far away from pitter-patter that it wasn’t even funny.

“Wait,” he said, shooting me a quick glance before returning his eyes to the road. “Are you still hung up on your ex?”

“No!” I said, way too defensively. I glanced into the back seat and then repeated in a much quieter voice, “No.”

“Holy shit, you are,” Charlie said, his eyebrows rising all the way up his forehead. “I can tell.”

“How can you tell? That’s ridiculous,” I said around a little fake laugh, trying to play it off.

“I just know.” Charlie glanced at me for a split second, and his face went kind of serious, the curve of his mouth flattening, and he gave a shrug as if to accentuate that he couldn’t explain it.

“Because you’re still hung up on Becca,” I said, in almost a whisper.

He didn’t agree, but he didn’t deny it either as he stopped for a red light. Charlie held my gaze before asking, “So do you guys talk? What’s the deal?”

For the most part, I didn’t discuss Zack and me.

For multiple reasons.

I didn’t want to hear opinions on how I needed to move on or opinions on Zack’s character, and I definitely didn’t want to be judged as a clinger because I couldn’t let him go.

I would probably say those things to someone else in the same situation, to be honest.

But the thing about relationships was that no one else knew the quiet, tiny moments that belonged exclusively to you two. Those were the things that made you hold tight because you were the only one he’d shown that side of himself to.

No one else knew.

The time we goofily whisper-sang all the words to “A Groovy Kind of Love” together when he snuck me up to his bedroom and then I was stuck because his mom wouldn’t go downstairs; the way he got actual tears in his eyes when I told him about the way my parents used to fight all the time; his propensity for kissing me when I was midsentence because he said he couldn’t bear to wait another second; and U2’s Rattle and Hum album—which he bought when we went to Homer’s together, and said that Bono surely wrote “All I Want Is You” for us.

A thousand inside jokes stood between my heart and closure.