by Noir, Roxie
“Fine,” I admit, uncrossing my arms, sitting in the chair opposite him.
He leans forward, both elbows on his desk, satisfaction written across his face.
“I lied to a judge,” I start.
* * *
“All right, kid,” I say into the rear-view mirror. “You got any questions?”
Rusty kicks her booster seat a few times, like she always does when she’s thinking.
“Can I tell people I’m the flower girl?” she asks.
“Sure.”
“What if a police officer asks me whether you’re really engaged?”
I put my car into park, sigh internally, and turn around to face her. It’s the next day, Saturday, and we’re picking Charlie up before we go to RiverFest.
Everyone I know will be at RiverFest. Everyone. It’s the event of the year in Sprucevale.
I’m somewhat apprehensive about it, but it is what it is and there’s no going back now.
“If a police officer asks, tell them the truth,” I say, as seriously as I can muster. I wonder if I’m going to regret telling her that, but on the other hand, I don’t want to be the dad who asks his kid to lie to the police.
Just everyone else she knows, that’s all.
“What about a fire fighter? Or a doctor? Or my principal? Or—”
“Do you think any of them are going to ask you?” I say.
I thought we’d covered this, since I took her out to lunch for burgers and fries today and had a long talk about the fake engagement. She’s surprisingly excited about getting to play pretend for an extended period of time, but she made me promise again and again that Charlie would still like her afterwards, and that we wouldn’t really break up.
As usual, I felt awful. Rusty adores Charlie, and even though I reassured her a thousand times that Charlie’s not going anywhere, I think she’s still a little worried.
“Probably not,” she admits.
“Then how about we talk about that if it happens?” I ask, and she nods.
It’s Saturday afternoon, and we’re parked outside Charlie’s apartment, here to pick her up for our first date.
Sort of. It’s our first public appearance, so I offered to pick her up and she said yes. I’m not sure if it’s a date if my entire family, her family, and my kid are all going to be there with us, but it’ll sure be something.
I get out, get Rusty out of her booster seat, and head up Charlie’s stairs. She shouts to come on in when I knock, so we do.
Rusty goes instantly to her corner of Charlie’s living room that Charlie set up for her and regularly stocks with cool new stuff. I don’t think there’s anything new over there today, but within seconds Rusty is wearing enormous purple sunglasses, sitting on a fuzzy blue pillow, and reading a chapter book with a mermaid on the front.
“Sorry, give me a few,” Charlie calls. “I was about to get into the shower but then my mom called, and she wanted to know what our plans were for tonight, and then she started grilling me again about…”
She keeps explaining herself, but Charlie’s running late because that’s what Charlie does. It’s annoying sometimes, but I learned to deal with it long ago, so I lean to one side and glance at her bedroom door, wondering if it’s okay for me to go in.
It’s open about six inches. I lean more, and then I see her.
It’s not okay for me to go in, because Charlie’s not dressed yet.
Her back is to me. She’s wearing a bra and panties, and I should definitely turn around and look at something else, but I don’t.
In fact, I do absolutely nothing besides stand perfectly still. My mouth might fall open.
Charlie looks good almost naked. Even with her back to me, her body’s feminine and powerful all at once, a combination of curves and muscle that appeals directly to my lizard brain and shuts any higher functioning down completely.
Half a second later she slides something over her head, and then all of a sudden she’s decent, wearing a sleeveless mint-green dress that comes down to her knees, but the image of her undressed is already burned into my mind: the way her muscles flex lightly under her skin as she arranged her dress over her head, the gentle curve of her waist, the way she cocked one hip and then the other.
Furthermore?
The bra and panties matched. They were both black, but even in the half-second I saw them, I could tell they both had the same lace around the edges, and that simple fact makes my heart race like nothing else.
“Hey, Daniel?” she calls.
I take a quick step to the side and jam my hands into my pockets, glancing over at Rusty. She’s completely absorbed in her mermaid book.
“Yeah?” I ask, pretending I’m Mister Casual as Fuck.
“Can you come tie this for me? I’m completely incapable of tying bows behind myself,” she says.
“Sure,” I say, and walk into her bedroom. It’s controlled chaos as usual: laundry in big piles, but only in one corner. A precarious stack of books on her bedside table. Her bedside light sitting atop another, smaller, stack of books, also precarious. Her bed unmade, but cozy-looking.
“Thanks,” she says as I take one end of her sash in each hand. “Whenever I do it myself, I wind up looking like a Christmas present wrapped by a blind toddler.”
I focused every ounce of concentration I can muster on tying the mint green sash, because otherwise I might think more thoughts about unwrapping Charlie, and my daughter’s in the other room so I will not be thinking those thoughts today.
Not even some.
Her hair smells tropical, like coconut and pineapple.
None of those thoughts, I remind myself.
I finish the bow, adjust it, and step back. Charlie looks over her shoulder at herself in a full-length mirror.
“Holy shit,” she says.
“She’s right outside,” I remind her.
Charlie wrinkles her nose in apology.
“Sorry,” she says. “But every time I need a bow tied, I’m coming to you from now on.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” I say, nodding my head toward the seven-year-old in her living room, and Charlie just laughs.
“Right,” she says. “Maybe you can teach me how to French braid, too.”
“You might be surprised.”
“You guys ready?” she asks, dropping to her hands and knees.
“Yep,” I confirm. I don’t point out that yes, we’re ready, of course we’re ready, we showed up to her apartment exactly when we said she would and she was the one still getting dressed. Pointing that sort of thing out to Charlie doesn’t make any kind of long-term difference, and mostly just makes her feel worse.
“All right,” she says, lowering her head to the floor. “Let me grab my shoes and we can head out.”
I look away.
It takes all my willpower, but Charlie’s clearly not used to wearing a dress — I didn’t even know she owned one — and so instead of memorizing the way she looks with her ass in the air while she searches for her shoes under her bed, I look away.
I deserve a medal.
“I’ll let Rusty know,” I say, and saunter out of the room. She’s still sitting on the pillow, wearing huge purple sunglasses and reading her book. I don’t know how she can see to read, but it’s not my problem.
“You ready to hit the road again, kiddo?” I ask.
“Can I take the book with me?”
“Sure,” calls Charlie from her room.
“Thank you!” Rusty calls back.
A few seconds later, Charlie comes out. She’s wearing sandals, her hair down and cascading around her neck and shoulders. I think she’s got lip gloss or something on, and my great-grandmother’s ring is sparkling away on her finger.
And her bra and panties match.
I wish I didn’t know that last part. It’s not helping anything.
“You’re wearing a dress?” Rusty says. She sits up, cross-legged, and lifts her giant sunglasses up to get a better look at Charlie, w
ho grins at the gesture.
“Yup,” says Charlie. “You’re wearing shorts.”
“Yeah, that’s normal,” Rusty says. “I didn’t know you had a dress.”
“I didn’t know that either,” I say, casually.
So, so casually.
I also didn’t know that she had matching—
Jesus, stop it.
“Betsy took me shopping yesterday after work,” she admits.
Then she twirls once. The skirt flares out briefly, then swishes around her legs when she stops.
I’ve never seen Charlie look like this. I’ve seen her in coveralls and jeans and cutoffs and cargo pants and swimsuits and dressed as the planet Saturn, once, but never in a sundress that nips in at the waist and flares at the hips, that accentuates her breasts like this or that shows off her upper back—
“You look pretty,” Rusty says.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah, you look nice,” I offer.
“Thanks,” she says, one eyebrow raised, and I regret it immediately. Is there a lamer compliment than you look nice?
Fuck no, there is not.
“It’s a good dress,” I try again. “It’s got. You know. It twirls, and it’s good on your skin.”
Good on your skin. I sound like a serial killer.
What I’m really thinking is that she looks beautiful, breathtaking, that she’s always been pretty but there’s something about this simple summer dress that’s knocked me on my ass and all I can think of is the word nice.
I want to touch her. The feeling isn’t new but it’s surprisingly intense right now, the urge to brush my fingers along her arm, slide my hand around her waist, plant my lips on one sun-kissed shoulder.
“We should go,” I say, before I can accidentally say something like your eyeballs look delicious. “Ladies first.”
Rusty gets off the floor, puts the sunglasses back where she got them, and heads for the door in front of Charlie.
“Do I look okay?” Charlie asks under her breath when Rusty’s out of earshot. “I feel kind of weird—”
“You look incredible,” I say, the truth rolling off my tongue before I can think it through.
“Oh,” she says.
“I meant it. You look really nice,” I say, using that awful word nice again.
She looks down at herself, like she’s forgotten what she was wearing, and when she looks up, her cheeks are faintly pink.
“Thanks,” she says. “But you have to promise me that you’ll tell me if I come out of the bathroom with my skirt tucked into my underpants or something.”
It takes a heroic effort, but I don’t visualize Charlie, her skirt tucked up inappropriately, black panties with lace edge on partial display.
Nope. Not at all, and definitely not while my seven-year-old daughter is impatiently waiting for us on Charlie’s steps.
“As long as you tell me if Rusty dumps glitter in my hair again,” I say, and Charlie laughs.
“Deal,” she says, just as Rusty’s face pops back around the door frame.
“Are you coming?” she asks, and I hold the door for Charlie as we leave her apartment.
Chapter Nine
Charlie
According to town legend, Sprucevale was founded in 1775 by Heath McCoy, a highwayman, brigand, rapscallion, and all-around guy of questionable-yet-rakish character. He’d either stolen several chests of gold coins from the British or absconded with the Governor’s daughter — maybe both — and after being on the run for a few weeks, he found himself holed up in this holler when the first snow fell.
Apparently, Heath was also a strapping Daniel Boone-slash-Johnny Appleseed type, because he made friends with the local natives, built himself and his possible paramour some shelter, found food, and made it through the winter.
Spring came, everything thawed, and in the meantime the British became fairly preoccupied with that whole ‘the colonies are fomenting revolution’ thing, forgot about Heath, and thus, Sprucevale was born.
There’s a statue of him in front of the library, standing heroically in some old-fashioned clothes, looking off at the horizon with a rifle in one hand, its butt resting on the ground.
He’s pretty dashing for a statue. If I were a British governor’s daughter in 1775, I’d probably let him abscond with me.
Anyway, Riverfest celebrates the date of Sprucevale’s supposed founding, on that day in 1776 when McCoy first broke ground on the farmhouse that would grow into his homestead, and later, this town. The whole story of the founding might be apocryphal, but if it is, I don’t want to know that he was actually just some surveyor sent out to map the wilderness who decided to stay and blah blah blah.
Riverfest is your standard small-town carnival. There are stands serving food on sticks. There’s cotton candy. There are not one but two bouncy houses. There are tchotchke booths. There are two stages set up, one at either end of the several-blocks-long festival area, that feature local performances.
It is, fittingly, next to the Chillacouth River that runs through town.
Right now, we’re watching a stage full of pre-teens in leotards, pointe shoes, and long, floaty skirts do some sort of ballet. They all look deadly serious, and, bless their hearts, they’re not that good.
“She doesn’t know the steps,” Rusty mutters critically, her eyes trained on one ballerina in particular. “She keeps messing up.”
“Maybe she’s got stage fright,” Daniel says. “It’s scary to perform in front of people.”
“No it’s not,” says Rusty. “It’s no big deal if you practice.”
“Some people find it really hard,” Daniel says, ruffling her hair slightly and shooting me an amused look over her head.
You can’t say that Rusty’s not confident, that’s for sure. She’s got all the self-assured, cocky swagger of a Loveless in a pint-sized package.
“I get stage fright sometimes,” I tell her.
“You do?” she asks, still watching the dancers.
“Sure,” I say. “When I was in high school, my softball team won the regional championships, and they voted on me to accept the award at this banquet in front of all the other teams. I had this whole speech ready, but when I got up there, I totally froze, so I just said ‘thank you’ and pretty much ran back to my seat.”
“Did you practice?” Rusty asks.
She’s currently in ballet and piano lessons, and I know Daniel’s been emphasizing practice over talent a lot with her. He read it in some parenting book.
“Probably not as much as I should have,” I say, and Rusty just nods.
The dance ends. The dancers flit offstage. Someone gets on the microphone to tell us that in fifteen minutes, the elementary school clogging team will be gracing the stage, so we drift off toward the rest of Riverfest.
It’s a beautiful spring day. It’s sunny and warm, but not too warm. There’s a pleasant breeze and plenty of shade from the trees growing along Sofia Street, where this is taking place.
And my stomach is in knots. For starters, I’m wearing a dress and I think I regret it. Daniel keeps giving me weird looks, and I think maybe I’m overplaying this whole ‘engagement’ thing. I should have stuck to shorts and not made a big deal of it, but I let Betsy talk me into dressing up for our first date, and now I’m pretty sure that everyone is town is staring at me behind my back.
Surreptitiously, I smooth the back of one hand over my butt, just double-checking that my skirt’s covering it. The dress is a little longer than knee-length, but I’m still paranoid that somehow, I’m showing someone the goods by accident.
I’m not.
I’m also nervous because everyone I’ve ever met in my life is probably here, and I have to convince all of them that Daniel and I are so in love that we’re going to get married. No matter how many times Betsy told me to chill, and that engaged people pretty much just act like regular people, I’m anxious.
As if on cue, a shrill whistle cuts through the noise of the crowd. Dani
el and I both stiffen and turn our heads at the exact same time, and even though it’s a small town I’m ready to flip someone off when I see Silas waving his arms in the air at us.
“Oh,” I say, and Daniel laughs.
“That was rude,” Rusty points out, but we make our way through the crowd and toward Silas.
Along the way, Daniel takes my hand in his, and instantly I step on the back of my own shoe, stumbling for half a second. He just holds my hand a little tighter and looks over.
“You okay?”
“Fine, just clumsy,” I tell him, fighting the redness I can feel creeping into my cheeks.
Bang up job so far, I think.
“I’m not eating all the powdered sugar parts,” Silas is saying when we make our way over to him. “It’s funnel cake. It’s all powdered sugar parts.”
“Yes, you are, and stop it,” the woman next to him says, taking a forkful of fried dough and tugging it off the plate they’re sharing. “I swear I’ll tell Mom and Dad.”
“What, that I offered to share my funnel cake with you, and you complained? Hi,” Silas says, that last part to us. “You know June, right?”
June waves her fork in greeting, her mouth full of funnel cake.
“You visiting for Riverfest?” I ask.
Silas is Levi’s best friend, three years older than Daniel and me, but his younger sister June was in our class. We were friendly in high school, though she went to college and then moved to Raleigh, so we haven’t talked much since then.
She shakes her head, still chewing.
“June moved back to town,” Silas says. “She’s exploring some promising opportunities in Sprucevale, considering a few other options, and taking some downtime to weigh her next career move.”
June raises both her eyebrows at Silas and swallows.
“Can you write my resumé for me?” she asks. “That sounds way better than ‘I got fired so I moved back home.’”
“You got laid off,” Silas protests, tugging more funnel cake off the plate. “It’s completely different.”
“Still unemployed,” she says, then turns her attention to us. “Hey, guys. How are you? Engaged, right? Congrats!”
