“I already told you. You don’t count.”
“The words every man dreams of hearing.”
“Consider yourself the grape juice of dates.”
“So number five is go on two shitty dates with men you could never be into, in a town you couldn’t stand to live in,” Charlie says. “What’s number six again? Voluntary lobotomy?”
I slide his mostly full wineglass toward him. “I’m still waiting on your secrets, Lastra.”
He pushes the glass back toward the middle of the table. “You already know mine. I’m the uninvited prodigal son, here to run a rapidly dying bookstore while my dad’s busy with physical therapy and my mom’s trying to keep him from climbing on the roof to clean the gutters.”
“That’s . . . a lot,” I say.
“It’s fine.” His tone makes it clear that sentence ends with a period.
“And Loggia’s been good with letting you work remotely,” I say.
“For now.” When his gaze meets mine, it’s startlingly dark. It feels like I’ve stumbled toward the edge of something dangerous. And worse, like I’m trapped there in viscous honey, incapable of stepping back from the ledge.
“Now, what does Libby have on you that you went out with Blake?” Charlie asks. “Did you sell state secrets? Commit a murder?”
“And here I thought you had a younger sister.”
He relaxes back in his chair. “Carina. She’s twenty-two.”
Even though I’ve met his mother, it’s hard to imagine Charlie with a family. He seems so . . . self-contained. Then again, that’s probably what people say about me.
“And Carina can’t compel you to do something simply by asking?” I say. Or by dodging you for months, keeping secrets, and consistently looking like she just got unhitched from being dragged behind a train.
Charlie hesitates. “Carina’s why I’m here.”
I lean into the table, its edge digging into my ribs. I’ve got that feeling of reading a mystery novel, knowing a reveal is coming up, and fighting the urge to skip ahead.
“She was planning to come back and run the bookstore after college,” he says. “Then she decided last minute to just stay in Italy for a while. Florence. She’s a painter.”
“Wow,” I say. “People really just do that? Move to Italy to paint?”
Charlie frowns, turns his water glass in place, then readjusts his silverware into a tidy row. It’s satisfying to watch; feels like having someone scratch the spot right between my shoulder blades. “The women in my family do. My mom also went there to paint for a couple weeks when she was twenty and ended up staying for a year.”
“The whimsical free spirit bringing magic into everyone’s lives,” I say. “I’m familiar with that trope.”
“Some people call it magic,” he says. “I prefer to think of it as ‘raging stress hives.’ Carina was living in an Airbnb owned by a literal drug dealer until I booked her another place.”
I shudder. “That is exactly Libby in a parallel universe.”
“Little sisters,” he says, the twist of his mouth deepening the crease beneath his bottom lip.
I stare at it for a beat too long. My brain scrambles for purchase in the conversation. “What about your dad? What’s he like?”
He tips his head back. “Quiet. Strong. A small-town contractor who swept my mom so thoroughly off her feet that she decided to put down roots.”
At my self-satisfied look, he leans forward, matching my posture. “Fine, yes, they are the quintessential small-town love story,” he admits, eyes sparking as our knees press together. Under the table we’re playing a game of chicken: who will pull away first?
The seconds stretch on, thick and heavy as molasses, but we stay where we are, locked together by the challenge.
“All right, Stephens,” he says finally. “Let’s hear about your family. Where exactly do they fall in your catalogue of two-dimensional caricatures?”
“Easy,” I say. “Libby’s the chaotic, charming nineties rom-com heroine who’s always running late and is windblown in a cute and sexy way. My dad’s the deadbeat, absent father who ‘wasn’t ready to have kids’ but now, according to a paid PI, takes his three sons and wife out in their boat on Lake Erie every weekend.”
“What about your mom?” he asks.
“My mom . . .” I rearrange my own silverware, like they’re words in my next sentence. “She was magic.” I meet his eyes, expecting a sneer or a smirk or a storm cloud, but instead finding only a small crease inside his brows. “She was the struggling actress who chased her dreams to New York. We never had any money, but somehow, she made everything fun. She was my best friend. I mean, not just when we got older. As long as I can remember, she’d take us with her everywhere. And you know, for a lot of people who move to the city, it loses its glow in a couple years? But with Mom, it was like every single day was the first one.