One Golden Summer(82)

I push him away. “Gross.”

He turns to me, resting his chin on his hand and trailing a finger over the inside of my upper arm. “Nothing about you is gross.”

I shiver, and despite the headache, despite good sense, my body sparks to life.

Charlie’s finger drags back and forth across the sensitive skin, down toward my armpit and back up to my elbow. His mouth follows a minute later, leaving kisses behind. While his lips caress my arm, then my ear, his fingers journey south, along my side, over my stomach, slipping beneath the waistband of my pajama shorts.

“I don’t think we should do that,” I say.

His fingers still. “I want to make you feel good. After today, I owe you that at the very least.”

I shake my head. “It’s too dangerous. Nan, Bennett…” But it’s also me. I need to make sure I’ve got any squishy feelings in check.

Charlie pulls his hand away. “I don’t have anything else to give you, any other way to say I’m sorry.”

I frown. “Sex isn’t the only thing you have to offer.”

He turns back to face the ceiling. “I know a lot of women who would disagree with you.”

I don’t have patience tonight. “That’s because you purposely seek out partners you know won’t ask anything more of you.”

“What do you really think, Alice?” His tone is light, but I feel him looking at me intently.

“I think that one day, when I don’t feel like my head is being crushed under a giant’s foot, we’re going to have a real conversation about your relationship baggage.”

He knows mine. I’ve told him about Oz and Trevor, and the boyfriends in between. I shared my theory that lifelong love is mostly a scam. He didn’t agree.

Charlie doesn’t speak for a long moment. “One day,” he says eventually. “But not right now.”

He extends an arm around my shoulders, giving me a nudge. I relent, settling my head on his chest, and he rubs his hand over my back.

“Alice, I don’t know what I would have done if you’d been badly hurt…or worse.”

I shush him. “Don’t think like that.”

“I feel better now that I can touch you,” he says. “I think it helps get the message to my brain that you’re okay.”

“I am okay,” I whisper, shutting my eyes. My body is leaden. “But let’s rest now.”

I fall asleep to the beat of Charlie’s heart and even breaths. A lullaby that’s specific to him, to this night.





43


Sunday, August 17

15 Days Left at the Lake

I sleep a long, dreamless sleep, and when I open my eyes, I’m lying in the same spot on Charlie’s chest. I have fuzzy memories of him trying to rouse me throughout the night, checking to make sure I was okay, and me telling him off.

“I’ve learned a lot about you in the past nine hours,” I hear him say now. His voice has been sanded down from sleep. I feel his fingers playing with strands of my hair. I’m only half awake, and I make a grunting sort of noise by way of reply.

“You told me you hated me no less than four times,” he says.

“I regret nothing,” I mumble.

“You’re impossible to move. I tried to roll you off me once I lost feeling in my arm, but you kept rolling back.”

“You’re the one who put me here.”

“And.” I can hear him smiling. “You drool.”

I sit up straight, and stare at the damp spot on Charlie’s gray shirt where my mouth had been. He laughs. I meet his eyes for the first time this morning. He’s wearing a lazy smile, and his cheek is lined with pillow creases.

“Good morning, Alice.”

There are a few glorious seconds where I stare at Charlie, when all that matters is how handsome and cozy he looks. But then what he said in the car yesterday comes reeling back.

We wouldn’t be good together.

It’s like being dropped into glacial waters.

“It’s not a big deal,” Charlie says, mistaking my expression for embarrassment. He tugs me toward him. “Come back. Is it always this chilly in here in the morning?”

I shake my head. “We should get up,” I say, climbing out of bed. “I’ll make breakfast for everyone.”

Charlie sits as I rush to pull on a sweatshirt and a pair of thick socks.

“No one’s awake yet. What’s wrong?”

I pause to look at him. “Nothing. I’m sorry I drooled on your shirt.”

“I don’t give a shit about the shirt. What’s going on right now?”

I close my eyes briefly. I don’t want to admit what’s wrong, not to Charlie, not even to myself. We agreed on an easy, breezy summer fling. On friendship. I went into it with eyes wide open. He made no promises. But his comment hurt. Even in the light of a new day, it hurts. Because I think in some other world, if we decided to be together, we might be better than good. We might be great.

“I need some alone time,” I say. I’m not going to dump everything that’s running through my mind on him before I’ve had a chance to figure it out for myself.

Charlie’s gone still the way he does when he’s trying to contain himself, when he’s not sure how to act on whatever is happening in his body and mind. “You’re angry with me,” he says. “About the accident.”