“I’m sure he’s grateful you’re here,” I say. “They both must be.”
He uses the back of his hand to catch the sweat on his brow. “When I told him I was staying for a while, his exact words were, Son, just what do you think you can do? The emphasis on you was his, not mine.”
I sit on the deck in front of him, cross-legged. “But aren’t you two close?”
“We were,” he says. “We are. He’s the best person I know. And he’s right, there’s not a lot I can do to help him. I mean, Shepherd’s the one keeping the business going, keeping up with the work their house always needs. All I can do is run the bookstore.”
My heart stings. I remember that feeling, of not being enough. Of wanting so badly to be what Libby needed after we lost Mom and failing, over and over again. I couldn’t be tender for her. I couldn’t bring the magic back into our life. All I had on my side was brute force and desperation.
But I was trying to live up to a memory, the phantom of someone we’d both loved.
Now I see what I missed before. Not just that Charlie never felt like he fit, but that he saw what it would’ve looked like if he did. I didn’t make much of it at the time, but seeing Shepherd standing with Clint at the salon—it isn’t just that they are comparable heights and builds, or the same trope. They look alike. The green eyes, the blond hair, the beard.
I climb into the tent beside him, the mattress dipping under my weight. “You’re his son, Charlie.”
He runs his hands down his thighs, sighing. “I’m not good at this shit.” He kneads his eyebrow, then leans back on the mattress, staring up through the mosquito-netted roof, a Charlie-suggested compromise that still counts as Libby and me sleeping under the stars. “I’ve never felt so useless in my life. Things are falling apart for them, and the best I can do is open the store every day at the same time.”
“Which, from what you’ve told me, is a vast improvement.” I move closer, his warm smell curling around me, the sun coaxing it from his skin. Overhead, spun-sugar clouds drift across the cornflower blue sky. “You’re not useless, Charlie. I mean, look at all this.”
He gives me a look. “I know how to set up a tent, Nora. It’s not Nobel-worthy.”
I shake my head. “Not that. You’re . . .” I search for the right word. It’s rare that my vocabulary fails me like this. “Organized.”
His eyes crackle with light as he laughs. “Organized?”
“Extremely,” I deadpan. “Not to mention thorough.”
“You make me sound like a contract,” he says, amused.
“And you know how I feel about a good contract,” I say.
His smirk pulls higher. “Actually, I only know how you feel about a bad one, written on a damp napkin.” He lies back fully on the mattress, and I do too, leaving a healthy gap between us.
“A good contract is . . .” I think for a moment.
“Adorable?” Charlie supplies, teasing.
“No.”
“Comely?”
“At bare minimum,” I say.
“Charming?”
“Sexy as hell,” I reply. “Irresistible. It’s a list of great traits and working compromises that watch out for all parties involved. It’s . . . satisfying, even when it’s not what you expected, because you work for it. You go back and forth until every detail is just how it needs to be.”
I look sidelong at Charlie. He’s already looking at me. The healthy gap has developed a fever. “What’s the deal with Amaya?” It’s out before I can second-guess it.
The corners of his mouth turn downward. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I say, “you almost married her. What went wrong?”
“A lot of things,” he says.
“Oh, like you were too forthcoming?” I tease.
His lips draw into their smirk-pout. “Or maybe she just wasn’t enough of a smart-ass for my taste.”
After a beat, we turn our gazes back to the cotton-candy-soft clouds and he says, “We started dating in high school. And then she went to NYU, and after some time at community college, I followed her.”
“Your first love?” I guess.
He nods. “When we finished school, she wanted to look at places back in Asheville. It had never occurred to me that she’d want to move back, and it had never occurred to her that I wouldn’t, and we were so bad at communicating that it didn’t come up much.”