The Rom-Commers(46)

“This whole thing is weird!”

Charlie capitulated and reached into his pocket for his phone. But after digging around a minute, he shook his head.

“What?”

“I don’t have it with me.”

That’s when we heard the ex coming back. “He’s definitely avoiding me,” she was saying. Then, a pause. “But it’s strange. The place is a disaster. There’s stuff all over the dining table—like maybe he’s writing again. And dishes in the sink. And—ugh—a box of Twinkies. How’s he supposed to stay healthy if he eats like a middle schooler?” Another pause. Then, “This doesn’t even look like his stuff, honestly. There’s a bouquet of flowers on the kitchen table.”

Charlie and I held each other’s gazes, and our breath—united in the act of hiding—as we listened to the sound of her gathering her keys off the counter, and then her footsteps walking away.

The second we heard the front door slam behind her, we burst out of the pantry at the same time like bucking broncos out of the gate, moving too fast for anyone’s good, and I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but somehow I managed to get caught in an overturned grocery sack on the floor just outside the door—one foot entangled in it, I think, and the other stepping on it?—just as Charlie turned back to ask me some question that will now be forever lost to history.

That’s what I remember: Charlie turning around, just as I felt a sensation like someone had tied my shoelaces together—and I went jolting forward into his chest, knocking him backward.

And then we hit the ground.

Pretty hard, too.

I felt my knee knock the slate tiles like a hammer just as Charlie landed with a series of oofs and smacks.

And then he was rolling onto his side and pressing his hand on his tailbone, growling in misery.

I’d landed with my face in his armpit, so I hoisted up and over to get a look at his face.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Charlie’s face was red now, and his jugular was kind of pooching out, and all he could say was “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that hurts.”

“Oh, god. I’m so sorry! Did you land on your tailbone? I did that once in Girl Scouts. This floor is not soft, either, by the way. No give there at all.” I smacked the floor for confirmation. “Do you think you broke it?”

“The floor?” Charlie croaked, like I was crazy.

“Your tailbone!” I said, like he was crazier. “Should I take you to the hospital? What do they even do for a broken tailbone—right? They can’t exactly put it in a cast.”

Charlie had gone back to growling.

“Ice,” I decided then, and I scrambled over to the freezer, returning with a bag of frozen veggies and pressing it to Charlie’s butt.

“What are you doing?” Charlie asked.

“Just—move your hand,” I said.

“Are you trying to put frozen peas on my ass?”

“It’s julienned mixed vegetables,” I said, like I beg your pardon.

“Get them off,” he said, grabbing at the bag.

“We have to ice the area!” I insisted.

“Emma—cut it out. I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

By that point, we were basically wrestling for access to Charlie’s butt, and I tried to snatch the bag away just as he got the bright idea to roll over to block me. The next thing I knew, we managed to rip the bag, scatter julienned vegetables across the kitchen floor, and, in the scuffle, I guess my elbow gave way because I collapsed on top of him—again.

In the wake of it, we waited a second—face-to-face, gazes locked, breaths intermingling, and expressions perfectly matched, like Did that just happen—again?

Then Charlie broke the silence. “You did all this on purpose, didn’t you?”

On purpose? “No, I—” I looked around. “I tripped on a grocery bag.”

I pointed at it, for evidence, but Charlie didn’t even look.

I was still square on top of him, my arm pinned under his side. Charlie closed his eyes. Then he opened them and looked straight into mine. “Or maybe you just wanted to prove that there’s nothing romantic about people falling on top of each other.”

I blinked. “I don’t have to prove that. It’s just empirically true. It doesn’t need proving.”

But as soon as I said it, in that instant, I became aware of all the physical contact we’d just muddled through with each other—and how I was still lying flat on top of him. And then I suddenly thought about what my body must feel like to him, draped over his own like that. And how, other than maybe games of Twister or freak skiing accidents, there weren’t too many situations in day-to-day life where people just lay on top of each other for no reason.

In any other situation, it would be a very different situation.

And once I’d thought that, I couldn’t unthink it.

And if I was reading the room right—Charlie, suddenly, wasn’t not thinking about that, either.

Questions started twinkling in my brain like stars. Did the room just go very still? Did my scraped knee just stop stinging? Was having our faces this close together causing some kind of chemical reaction in my body? And, maybe most important: Did Charlie Yates have the thickest, lushest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a man?