One Golden Summer(20)

“Nonsense.”

“Please.” I feel Charlie watching us. I don’t want to fight in front of him, but Nan can’t go back and forth between the kitchen and the deck easily. Nor do I want her to attempt it with cups of tea balanced on her walker. “Just let me.”

“I’m more than capable, dear.” She’s being polite in front of company, but I know what it means when she says dear like that.

I open my mouth, but Charlie speaks up first. “My grandma fractured her hip a few years ago,” he tells Nan. “Slipped in the snow. How did you manage it?”

“I wore the wrong shoes to dance class. My foot went right out from under me doing kicks to some silly old song.”

“It was ‘Dancing Queen,’?” I say, sharing a look with Charlie that says, We’re not allowed to laugh at this.

“Apparently not,” Nan huffs.

Charlie’s eyes widen. But it’s so funny, they say.

“Why don’t we all go inside,” he offers, holding back a grin. “Alice needs to get out of the sun, and I wouldn’t mind a comfortable chair.”

Nan peers at me over her glasses. “She does look rather crisp, doesn’t she?”

We get her inside, Charlie moving a floor lamp closer to the wall to make more room for her walker. I head to the kitchen to put the kettle on, almost gasping at the photo of teenage Charlie on the fridge. I pull it down and hide it under a stack of paper napkins in a cupboard. What a day.

“I grew up on the lake, but I live in Toronto now,” Charlie is telling Nan when I return to the living room.

“What neighborhood? Alice is in the Junction.”

“I have a condo in Yorkville.”

Nan is in her armchair, with her pressed shirt and her pearls. Charlie is on the sofa, shirtless and barefoot. The contrast is just too good. I fetch my camera out of my bag.

Click.

Nan is used to my shooting and pays no attention, but Charlie’s head whips around, a questioning look on his face.

I offer no explanation. “I’ll find you something to wear.”

One of the drawers in my bedroom dresser is full of cozy socks and faded T-shirts. I dig out the largest one for Charlie and change into a pair of yellow linen shorts and a sleeveless white blouse, then lasso my curls into a bun at the nape of my neck.

“Very impressive,” Nan is saying to Charlie when I return. She’s not easily impressed, nor is she one to needlessly flatter. Somehow, in the span of a few minutes, Charlie has managed to win my grandmother over.

Her praise makes him glow. He’s shining like the sun, cheeks slightly flushed. He looks younger. He looks like the boy in my photo. “Thanks,” he says. “I’ve worked hard.”

I hand him the shirt, and he pulls it over his head. It’s sky blue with Barry’s Bay written across the chest beneath a loon, and it’s obscenely tight through the shoulders and arms. Does he fight fires for a living? Does he fight crime? I glance at Nan, and we share a conspiratorial look.

“Tea will be ready in a few minutes,” I say, taking a seat on the sofa next to him.

“Charlie was just telling me that he works on Bay Street as a trader.”

I look at Charlie, picturing him in a suit and tie. Post-work cocktail parties. Hot women.

“That makes sense.”

Charlie tilts his head. “Meaning?”

“You fit the bill.” Cavalier. Confident. I bet he’s competitive.

“That feels like an insult,” Charlie says.

“You’ll survive.” I reach over and pat his leg but am not prepared for the heat of his skin beneath my fingers, or the way they want to explore his thigh, find out whether he’s hot everywhere. I don’t think Charlie is prepared, either, because as soon as I touch him, his gaze rockets to my hand. I snatch it back just as fast.

“I doubt anyone survives you,” he says, lifting his eyes to me. They truly are magnificent, changeable in the light. A deeper bottle green than they were in the sun.

Nan sizes us up like we’re dessert. “Oh, this is too good. Charlie, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone ruffle Alice’s feathers the way you did with the letter. It was a riot.”

“The pleasure’s all mine.”

Nan hoots. Hoots. She’s as happy as a clam—I can’t believe it. I haven’t seen her like this since before her fall. “Oh, I like you far more than the last one.”

“Nan,” I say, hoping to sidestep the subject of my ex. “It’s not like that.”

Charlie grins at me like a jungle cat. “Not yet.”

Now she claps.

“Don’t encourage him,” I tell her, but I love seeing her happy. And I suspect Charlie’s leaning into it, flirting to put on a show. It’s a very believable act.

He tilts forward and whispers to Nan, “So what was wrong with the last one?”

“He was a real dud,” she says. “So serious and fussy. I never once saw Alice laugh when they were together.”

“Nan, please.”

“It’s true,” she says to Charlie. “Dull as a chalkboard. Alice helped him with his business, and he had the nerve to break up with her.” I shut my eyes for only a second, just long enough to keep it together in front of Charlie.