“For sure,” I said, turning into her neighborhood. The sooner Charlie went away, the sooner I could stop wasting hours thinking about him.
Of course, that wasn’t really working for me so far.
“So do you want to hear about the fight?” she asked, turning in her seat and tucking her legs underneath her.
“Did they actually fight?” I glanced over at her, unable to imagine such an event since neither of them seemed like brawlers. “For real? Like a physical fight?”
I glanced over, and she was nodding emphatically. “The first time we all worked together after Applebee’s, those boys got heated. Charlie was quiet the entire shift—didn’t say a single word to either of us—and when Theo said something stupid like Smile, sunshine, Charlie went off.”
“Went off?” I looked over at her and asked, “What’d he say?”
As much as I detested him, I didn’t like the idea of him angry.
Ugh. What was wrong with me?
“Eyes on the road,” she said, and I obeyed. She continued with “I think he said, like, Can you not talk to me, you stupid fucking asshole, which made Theo get all puffed up and go What the fuck is your problem, man,” she said, doing voices as she spoke.
“No way,” I said, in utter disbelief. Charlie was a smart-ass, a chill-vibes kind of dick. He wasn’t a yelling-in-your-face type of dude.
Or was he? Did I even know what really went on inside of Charlie Sampson?
I sighed because in spite of everything, I still felt like I did know him.
“Yep,” she said, and I could see her nodding out of the corner of my eye. “Then Charlie was like Why did you have to open your huge fucking dipshit mouth to Bailey, you gossipy little bitch, which made Theo push him. Then Charlie pushed him harder and shoved him against the wall.”
That made me slam on the brake as we came to a red light, staring at Nekesa as shock and worry and stress hit me, all at once. My thoughts were riotous as I tried to make sense of everything.
“This can’t be true,” I said, putting my foot back on the gas and attempting to drive responsibly while dying of shock.
And also stressing about Charlie’s anxiety, wondering how many TUMS he was consuming on a daily basis, which pissed me off because he didn’t deserve my worry.
But dammit, I just missed him.
I missed my friend Charlie, even if he’d been a total lie. I missed the teasing and the way he knew what I was thinking all the time and how comfortable it felt to just be around him.
I’d never forgive him for taking away that comfort.
“I broke it up,” she said, “because I’m a peacemaker, but not before Theo said something like You did this to yourself, wagering on everyone like a fucking high-roller idiot.”
I shook my head. “Theo wasn’t wrong about that.”
“Yeah, but then Charlie almost twisted his nipple off.”
That… was not what I expected, and I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye.
“Theo screamed—like full-on screamed high-pitched bloody murder in pain—as Charlie just twisted as hard as he could, and Charlie goes, You’re lucky I’m not violent or that would’ve been a punch.”
When I pulled up in front of her house, I put my car in park and just sat there.
Nothing in the world made sense anymore.
She said, “Unbelievable, right?”
I nodded and asked, “So did they make up? Theo and Charlie?”
“Come in and stay over,” Nekesa said as she opened the door. “And no, they did not. Charlie quit.”
He quit? Charlie quit his job?
“Text your mom, and then I’ll tell you all about it.”
After I got my mom’s okay to sleep over, we went inside, and Nekesa told me about how Charlie gave his notice and they hadn’t heard from him since. It was ridiculous that I was concerned about him after what he’d done, but I was.
He didn’t need any more stress.
We went up to her room and watched old episodes of Project Runway, and I felt content for the first time in what seemed like too long. Nekesa was my second home, in a way—not her house but her—and things felt a lot closer to right with her beside me.
The third episode was starting when my phone buzzed.
It was Charlie.
I still want to take you to fall formal. Please go with me so I can fix this. I miss you.
“Oh my God—he is seriously killing me,” I moaned, hating that I could still hear every one of his texts perfectly narrated in his voice. Missing him was bad enough, but when he sent me messages that were exactly what I would’ve wished for before we fell apart, my heart ached.
Nekesa read the text and made a noise, always the defender. She picked up her phone and sent Charlie a message:
It’s Nekesa. Will you please leave Bay alone? You can’t fix this. You were right all along—you and Bailey CAN’T be friends. Also—she’s going to fall formal with ME. Bye.
I knew I should be laughing or cheering, because he deserved that and he needed to disappear from my life.
But there was still a part of me that didn’t want him to go.
Something inside of me wanted to stop her from sending that message, because what if it worked?
“Am I?” I asked about her fall formal comment, trying not to be sad over her words about Charlie and me never being friends.
“You already have a dress, right?” she said, setting down her phone and grabbing the bag of pretzels.
“Yeah.” I’d bought one on post-prom clearance last year.
“So why not?” Nekesa popped a pretzel into her mouth and said, “Who needs boys anyway?”
CHAPTER FIFTY Charlie
I sat back on the bed and stared at the phone in my hand, feeling gutted.
Hollow.
It felt like my stomach was made of lead and was slowly crushing everything else inside me, and no amount of TUMS was going to help.
Because it was finally over.
I’d always known it would happen, but it felt a thousand times worse than I’d imagined.
I was never going to get another text from Bay. I was never going to make her forehead crinkle with my words, or hear her laugh in that surprised way she had when she tried and failed to suppress it, never going to hear her quiet intake of breath when she realized we were about to kiss, and never going to hear her sleepily say G’night, Charlie on the other end of the phone.
A thousand tiny nothing moments that were collectively every fucking thing I’d ever wanted.
And I’d thrown it all away.
That old adage about it being better to have loved and lost was bullshit, in my opinion, because in no fucking way was it better to have and lose. Having and losing felt like slow, painful torture, and it was killing me.
God, how had I fucked it up so badly?
It had absolutely been my intention to blow her off and stop any romantic emotions, but I hadn’t meant to hurt her, even though I knew that made zero fucking sense. I’d wanted distance to figure everything out, but I hadn’t meant to make her feel like she wasn’t important to me.
Fuck, I definitely hadn’t meant for her to think that she and I were just the result of a fucking frat-boy moronic bet.
Yet here we were.
My phone buzzed in my hand, and my pulse skyrocketed, but disappointment pressed even harder on my solar plexus when I realized that it wasn’t Bailey or Nekesa.