Flick, flick, flick, right in front of Dev, who blinked and pretended not to be bothered.
Dev’s hand had gone to his leg, though, where it tapped a jittery dance on the exact spot where Pamela had applied a fresh bandage that morning.
“What did you do?” Wren asked. “Did you turn them in?”
“No, Dev didn’t want me to.”
“So? I mean, I understand that Dev didn’t want to be a tattletale, but I’m sure you didn’t just …” Wren let her sentence trickle off. Her face fell. “Charlie, I am so sorry.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I know.”
She hesitated. “So what did you do?”
Charlie looked at her face. How much of this did he feel comfortable revealing? It was in the past. In some ways, he’d been a different person, because he hadn’t yet met her. But would he do the same thing now?
Yes, because he loved Dev, and when he loved someone, he protected that person. He loved Wren, and if he needed to, he would fight to protect her, too.
“I followed the two guys to a gaming café, and I, uh, stole their computers.”
“You did?”
Charlie nodded. While the two eighth graders were ordering their drinks, Charlie casually cruised by their table and swiped their laptops. He left the café and drove to the deserted middle school parking lot, where he worked quickly, dousing both laptops with kerosene and laying them on the concrete. Then—he wished he had that kid’s own lighter—he lit a match.
“I burned them,” he told Wren.
“You burned them?”
“Yeah. Where they would find them.”
When Charlie watched the plastic cases melt, he’d envisioned the clocks in a Dalí painting he’d learned about in his junior year classics class. Time was relative; maybe that was what Dalí had been trying to represent. Pain was relative, too, Charlie thought. Dev might not have felt the cigarette lighter’s flame eating through his jeans, but those kids had given him a third-degree burn, and Dev would have a scar for life.
“That’s pretty intense,” Wren said.
“Should I not have told you?”
“No. I asked. I wanted to know. And, Charlie, you can share anything with me. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said.
“You’re a good big brother.”
“I have to be. It’s my job.”
“To take care of him?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Is that why you have to stay?”
He didn’t answer, because he knew, again, what she was really saying. She was saying, Why Dev and not me? Don’t you want to/need to/have to take care of me?
She looked away from him. “It’s all right.”
Charlie was aware of everything about her: the warmth radiating from her skin and the citrusy smell of her hair. Her bare thighs. Her curves.
“I’m not choosing Dev over you,” he said.
“I know.”
“I just … I’ve never had a family before. I’ve had other foster parents, but none like Chris and Pamela.”
Wren faced him, and the look on her face almost killed him. He wanted her, not her pity. “Can we not talk about it?” he said.
“Okay. But … I’m so sorry. I never meant—”
“Don’t,” Charlie said curtly.
Wren blushed. She returned to staring out the window, and he let go of her hand and started the car. She buttoned her shirt as they pulled out of the secluded nook they’d found. They didn’t talk, which was fine, as the ride was loud on the bumpy dirt road.
When they reached the highway, Charlie rolled up his window and turned on the air-conditioning. Wren glanced at him, then rolled up her window as well.
“Charlie?” she said.
He pretended everything was normal. “Yeah?”
“Do you remember that day in my car? After the ditch?”
“I remember many days in your car after the ditch. Sometimes your car, sometimes mine.” He saw her naked in his mind, and his voice changed. “Sometimes, as I recall, we even went back to the ditch.”
Wren blushed. “Ha-ha. That was only once.”
“Twice.”
“Twice. Fine.” She whacked him, and he smiled, feeling more like himself. He steered with one hand and rubbed Wren’s neck with the other.
She scooched closer. She put her hand on his leg. They were connected again, the way they were meant to be.
“On the day I’m talking about, we talked about how a home was more than a house, more than a place, and you were, like, ‘Okay.’” She paused. “You might not remember, and that’s all right.”
“I remember.”
“Well, I heard a song recently, and I kind of love it. It’s about a guy and a girl who are in love. The guy tells the girl that she’s the apple of his eye, and the girl tells the guy that he’s her best friend.”
He kept rubbing her neck. “You’ll have to play it for me.”
“Uh-huh, I will. But the part I love most is the chorus, which the guy and the girl sing together. It goes, ‘Home is wherever I’m with you.’”
Her voice, as she sang, was a patter of rain on a dusty road.
She leaned over—it was awkward with the gearshift between them, but doable—and rested her head on his shoulder. He moved his hand from her neck and slipped his arm around her.
“Anyway, that’s what it’s like for me,” she said. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You’re my home, Charlie. Thanks for finding me.”
Charlie stroked her hair. He was the one who’d been lost, but now he was found.
Atlanta was almost unbearably hot. Wren knew it would be hot in Guatemala, too—hotter, possibly—but she didn’t want to think about that.
She drifted nowhere in P.G.’s pool on a ridiculously comfortable, extra-thick float. Tessa, on her own float, was a few feet away. They didn’t even have to be inflated, these pool floats. They were made of foam and molded into the shape of chairs. They had armrests. They had drink holders. In the drink holders were fancy plastic cups of lemonade, and if the girls got hungry, they could paddle themselves over to a floating foam square with several indentions carved into it. The indentions held bowls, and the bowls held a variety of snacks: cashews, grapes, pretzels. Oreos.
P.G. had fixed them up with everything they needed, and then he’d left to play golf with his buddies. Not Charlie, because Charlie had to work, and anyway, he didn’t play golf.
Wren couldn’t imagine Charlie playing golf. She could imagine him doing other things, though. She could imagine him kissing her, laughing with her, getting on a plane with her.
Except he wouldn’t, not that last one. She was wrong to want him to, and selfish, and yet she did want him to, because she wanted him. She wanted to be with him, always.
“Ugh,” she said to Tessa. “Why is love so hard?”
“Huh?” Tessa said.
Wren groaned, not wanting to voice her thoughts.
But this was Tessa, she reminded herself. Tessa wouldn’t judge her—or if she did, she’d tell Wren why, and ultimately Wren would feel better. She came clean, saying, “Ugh! I am having feelings, bad feelings, and I don’t like them!”
“Bad feelings about what? Love? Charlie?”
“Why won’t he go with me?”
“To Guatemala?”
“Yes, to Guatemala. Duh!”
Tessa’s head lolled toward Wren. “Did you just say ‘duh’?”
“Maybe.”
“And you’re how old? Eighteen?”
Wren splashed her. “Duh.”
“Well, that’s embarrassing. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want to go—because you say ‘duh.’”
“Oh, please.”
Tessa tilted her face to the sun and didn’t reply.
“What?” Wren said. “Am I being selfish? I’m being selfish, aren’t I?”
“Probably.”
Wren sighed. “I love Charl
ie for being so loyal to his family. I do. I just don’t love the fact that he’s choosing them over me.”
“That’s what he said?” Tessa said. “‘I pick them over you’?”
“No, never.” Wren hit her float with her fist. “And I know I’m not being fair. Charlie helps Chris with the shop, and he helps with Dev, and he loves them all, and they’re a good family. God, maybe I want that. Maybe I want that with Charlie? I do want that with Charlie!”
“Well, here’s a crazy idea: Instead of wishing Charlie would go with you, why don’t you stay here?”
Hopelessness welled within Wren, because what seemed so simple in words didn’t feel so simple in action. “Because I can’t, Tessa. I already said yes. I already sent in my forms.”
“And that stopped you from withdrawing from Emory, too, huh?”
“Forget it,” Wren said.
“No, tell me.”
“Ugh. Withdrawing from Emory was different from withdrawing from Project Unity because … because … I don’t know. Because of my parents, because of Atlanta, because of everything! I don’t know!”
She fought back tears. Why in the world was she fighting back tears?
“Hey,” Tessa said gently. “Wren. Shhh.”
“Everything sucks,” Wren said.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes, it does, and I’m such a jerk. I’m such a selfish jerk.”
Tessa propped herself up on her forearm. She gave Wren a hard look. “Wren. Stop beating yourself up. I didn’t mean to make you flip out, and I’m glad you’re taking care of your own needs for once. I just …” She exhaled. “It’s not as complicated as you think, that’s all.”
“It is,” Wren said.
Tessa was quiet. She flopped back onto her float.
Wren looked at the tops of the trees bordering P.G.’s yard. Atlanta was a city within a forest; there was green everywhere. When she was younger, her parents had taken her to Aspen one winter break, and on the drive from the airport to the ski lodge, Wren was struck by the lack of trees. She felt unhinged, as if she, her parents, and the rental car could fly off the road at any moment, sucked into the vast gray sky.
She wondered what Guatemala would be like. She’d seen pictures of the youth hostel and spoken to the regional director on the phone. The hostel looked an awful lot like the YMCA here in Atlanta. She’d have Internet access, which was good. She’d have hot water. She’d be sharing a room with three other girls, and she’d be sharing a communal living area and kitchen with about a dozen other kids, guys and girls. It seemed real and not real at the same time.
Then again, the cotton-candy world of P.G.’s backyard seemed real and not real, too. Lazy pool days. Foam lounge chairs and floating snack tables stocked with Oreos.
“Starrla threw a naked Barbie onto my lawn,” she told the clouds.
“O-o-o-okay, that’s creepy and stalkerish,” Tessa said. She paused. “Why naked, d’you suppose?”
Wren trailed her fingers in the water. She had no clue, although, in her experience, most Barbies ended up naked over time. She didn’t want one of Starrla’s old Barbies in her yard, that’s all.
“Do you want me to tell her to knock it off?” Tessa asked. “Do you want me to wave my new gun around and be scary?”
“You’re not capable of being scary, and you don’t have a new gun,” Wren said.
“I might.”
“You don’t.”
“But P.G.’s taken me shooting five times so far. I’m getting really good.”
“You almost hit the target?”
“I almost hit the target! Yes! And P.G.’s cousin is twenty-one, which means he could legally buy that cute pink Glock. Remember that cute pink Glock? He could give it as a gift to P.G.—you can own a gun when you’re eighteen, but you have to be twenty-one to buy one—and P.G. could give it as a gift to me. I could wave it in Starrla’s face and say, ‘Hey! You! Enough with the naked Barbies, you!’”
“You’re not taking this seriously,” Wren said.
“Well, neither are you,” Tessa pointed out. “Unless—did you tell Charlie this time?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why would I?”
“God, you’re hopeless.”
“I know.”
“And Starrla is a nutcase. She is a loose cannon just waiting to go off.”
“I know, which is why Charlie should say Adios, amigo and come with me.” Wren said it without any conviction, knowing she was going down a dead end but stuck nonetheless with her melancholy. “He’d be rid of her forever. Just kidding—I know it’ll never happen.”
“Which brings me again to my brilliant idea,” Tessa said. “Which is—just brainstorming—you stay here.”
Wren closed her eyes.
“Wren, tell me one thing,” Tessa said.
“What?”
“Did you ever say to Charlie, using real words, ‘I feel like you’re choosing your family over me, and it makes me really sad’?”
“No. I would never.”
“Well, Charlie isn’t a mind reader, you know.”
“I know.” Hopeless, hopeless. It was totally hopeless.
She lifted her hand from the pool, sprinkling water onto her tummy. She did it again, sprinkling water on her chest, and she made a conscious effort to think about the good things she had with Charlie.
Cool water. Warm skin. The time Charlie pressed the chilled champagne flute to her breasts.
Keeping her movements slight, she bent one knee to allow her legs to splay open. She skimmed her hand through the pool. She closed her eyes and let droplets fall from her fingers onto the tender stretch of her thigh. Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.
Often, after making love with Charlie, she could smell his scent on her skin. And there was a particular spot on the innermost part of her leg—soft and pale—for Charlie only. He stroked that spot with a downward motion, and the pleasure drew heat to the most private parts of her. When her breathing quickened, he noticed, because he always noticed.
“I love it when you squirm,” he would murmur, perhaps putting his mouth to her breast. Sucking. Nibbling. Tugging.
There had been times, afterward, when she felt embarrassed by how she twisted and turned, how she arched her spine, imploring him wordlessly to have his way with her because there was nothing she wanted more.
On the pool float, she shifted positions, curling her toes. You are at P.G.’s house, she reminded herself. You are outside! In the open air!
She felt better, though. And being outside in the open air hadn’t stopped her before. Not when she was with Charlie.
“Hey, I am sorry you’re sad,” Tessa said.
“I’m all right,” Wren said. “But thanks.”
“Well, if it helps, P.G. doesn’t do everything I want him to, either.”
“Tessa, I do not want Charlie to do everything I want him to. God.” She gazed at her friend. “What does P.G. not do?”
“He hasn’t bought me that sweet pink Glock, for one.”
“Ha.”
“He went to play golf with his buds instead of hanging with us. He’s claiming he’s not going to go through Rush. And he refuses to unfriend Colleen even though I’ve told him specifically that it makes me sad. He really should unfriend her, right?”
“Yes,” Wren said. “Absolutely.” Colleen was a girl P.G. had slept with multiple times before he and Tessa became a couple. P.G. insisted that he and Colleen had never “dated,” that Colleen meant nothing to him, and that it didn’t feel right to him to unfriend her out of the blue for no good reason.
“Whatever,” Tessa said. “But do you know what I think we should do?”
“Wait a sec,” Wren said. “You’re up to something, aren’t you?”
Tessa smiled. “My mom’s going to Santa Fe this weekend. She’s going to a yoga retreat and won’t be back till late Sunday night, which means … drumroll, please … I’ll have the house to myself.”
&
nbsp; “And?”
“And I think we should have a dinner party.” She paddled to Wren and reached over awkwardly, taking Wren’s hand and linking their floats together. “It’ll cheer us up. It’ll be awesome. It can be a farewell party for you!”
“I don’t want a farewell party,” Wren said.
“Then we won’t call it that,” Tessa said, squeezing Wren’s hand. “Guest list of four: you, me, P.G., and Charlie. You and I will make a wonderful meal, and maybe we’ll have wine, maybe a little bubbly. Ooh, we could watch Wizard of Oz!”
“The Wizard of Oz?”
“Well, yeah, because there’s no place like home, silly. But we don’t have to. We could just talk and laugh and just … not worry about what happens next.”
“That sounds nice,” Wren admitted.
“And since my mom will be gone”—Tessa waggled her eyebrows—“the guys could sleep over. P.G. and I would sleep in my room, and you and Charlie could have one of my brothers’ rooms since they’re both out of town. We deserve a night like that, don’t you think?”
A dinner party did sound fun. A whole night with Charlie sounded even more fun. And a whole night that ended with the two of them in a bed together, followed by a morning when they’d wake up—assuming they got any sleep—and still be in bed together?
They’d be like … well, they would be like a husband and wife, as dumb as that sounded.
“You can lie there like a lump, or you can say, ‘Yes, Tessa, let’s throw a dinner party,’” Tessa said. “Your call.”
Wren rolled off her pool float and into the cool water, which felt marvelous on her sunbaked skin. With cupped hands and strong legs, she swam the length of the pool and back. She emerged mermaid-style, tilting her face toward the sky so that her wet hair hung heavily down her back.
She only had four days before she left for her new life. She should enjoy the time she had left.
She rested her arms on Tessa’s float and said, “Yes, Tessa, let’s throw a dinner party.”
“Hmm,” Tessa said, tapping her nose. “I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.” She grinned and tapped Wren’s nose. “I’m in.”
the first thing Charlie noticed when he arrived for the “verrrrrry fancy, grown-up-style dinner party,” as Wren had put it. She’d winked to detract from the implied formality, but Charlie could tell that the evening, with all the planning Wren and Tessa had put into it, meant something to Wren.
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