Dad. Walter. Even thinking it feels wrong. How can Dex just say “Walter” as if it’s a name from a baby book? How can he sit there and talk facts while my dad is dead?
I hiccup, pressing my hands to my chest to help me breathe. I don’t feel the pressure on my back, the door moving, until Dex has pushed my body forward and his head pokes through the gap, next to mine.
“What are you…” I say, clambering backwards on my knees.
Dex folds himself in through the door, closing it again with his weight, and taps the floor next to him. When I sit in my spot, shaking my head in confusion, he reaches out his hand. I take it because my mind can only take one order at the moment, and, yes, I suppose I can take his hand. Dex reels me into him, me sliding on my butt on the tiles.
“Here. You okay, Charz?”
“I’m good. What would make you think I’m not fine?”
“Well, Miss Robot Voice, that might be because you bolted out of your room zombie-style to hide behind your bathroom door.”
A hysterical snicker bursts out of me, which makes me ashamed. I try to hide it, cover my mouth with my hand, but it’s there, my laugh out in the world, and I can’t suck it back inside. Dex grins, looking at my face, pleased about something. God only knows what. Then his expression turns dreadfully serious.
“You were planning on bringing me water from the toilet. Weren’t you?”
“What? No!”
“Yes, I’d bet all my money—which is probably only a couple hundred so don’t get any stupid ideas—that you were going to sit back and enjoy me slurping from your toilet.” Dex gags and looks away horrified.
“God, I swear I didn’t—”
“Charz,” he says, picking my chin up with a finger, “I was kidding.”
“But…”
Okay, Charlee, if you didn’t see he was joking then you need a reality check.
“I have something for you.”
“I ain’t drinking that toilet water either, if you’re wondering.”
“Like hell you are.” Dex reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded paper, wiggling it in the air as if it’s a prized catch.
On my knees, I lean over Dex and snatch, but I snatch at the air, because Dex’s reflexes are inhuman.
“Give it.”
“You don’t know what it is. You can’t steal my property.”
“But you’re waving it at me. You’re offering it up.”
Getting used to his face being near mine, I close up the gap until our noses mush against each other’s. All the while trying my mighty best to look like I’m five again and he’s stolen my doll off me. He loves it. Things like these are the only ways to break through Dex’s poker face. It’s somewhat pleasing to know I’m his kryptonite. “What did you write on there?”
“Walter wrote it.”
Dex forces my shoulders back, and holds my face up so I slobber awful, embarrassing tears into his hand and to the world, when I’d rather be tucked in my bed again for days straight without contact. After a couple of minutes crying like that, the sadness recedes like a low tide, and I pick myself up onto my feet.
“For later, then,” Dex says, patting the letter away in my jeans pocket, his skin touching my bikini line albeit through the flimsy gauze lining inside of my pocket.
It’s when Dex’s finger lingers like that that Elliot shouts, “Dex.”
“Yep?” Dex says, swaggering through my door as if nothing happened.
Elliot pauses as he sees my eyes, no doubt obviously red and puffy from crying, then turns to Dex. “We have a problem. A few, actually.”
We sit down, and although it’s been a minute, the mechanical action of walking into my room, seeing Elliot at my desk, and being told to sit down, clears the sadness that had made it too hard to think just a moment ago.
“So I found this secret email account Mick has, right?” Elliot says, tapping the air in front of the email screen. “It was easy to find through a trail of linked IPs and whatnot. Anyway, I compared some emails to the papers Dex brought and I was getting a feeling that…” Elliot grabs the paper and simultaneously swaps screens, pointing. “Well, here, check this out, both of you,” he says handing over the paper.
Dex and I, still standing next to Elliot, grab the paper together, sharing a look. Dex lets go and reads over my shoulder. The paper is a bank statement with a bazillion debits and credit entries I should know something about as a twenty-year-old but still don’t get.
“Walter’s personal account,” Dex states.
So not what we’d expected. How could Mick think he could take money from my dad’s personal account without Dad or me knowing? Money comes in and out of our family’s accounts next to nothing compared to Roycroft’s. It just doesn’t make sense to take that risk.
“Yep, now look at this,” Elliot says, pointing to a specific entry.
“FJH…$0.02,” I read out. “What does that even mean?”
“I’ve been thinking, while you were getting Dex and yourself that glass of water,” he says with as much inflicted hurt as he can muster, “that’s our guys.”
“Who?” I say.
“The gang,” Dex answers.
“Right,” Elliot growls at him. I don’t think he realizes he’s fuming when he glances between Dex and I. I really don’t, the poor boy. “Sit down.”
Dex takes his chair, and I curl my legs up on mine.
“Freddie Joe Hack,” Elliot says. “The initials are their names, and “H” the hacking, maybe, I don’t know.” He swivels around to point at the screen.
Elliot tells us to sit tight. He’s going to customize a Hawk Eye program to send to these Freddie and Joe guys. Although it’s now ten-thirty here in Melbourne, it’s early morning in Chicago just before everyone begins work. With any luck, Freddie or Joe will open the attachment.
“If they do,” Elliot says, “I’ll have access to their computer. Trust me, these guys are n00bs; they won’t know. I’m actually worried that this is too…never mind.”
I transfer to the bed and collapse there. I haven’t spent too much time out of my room lately, so I’m spent.
I find myself waking up to Elliot shaking my shoulder. Dex is beside me curled around my body, which is the reason why I jolt off the bed as if a spider has crawled on to my skin. I don’t remember falling asleep, much less being so intimate with Dex.
“Charlee, here,” Elliot says, pointing to the screen.
Dex mumbles “Charz.” A minute after shaking the grogginess of sleep away, he stumbles to the computer. He joins me hovering over the keyboard, peering through someone else’s mouse moving on my monitor.
The three of us watch the screen. The time in the corner says 9:34 am—two hours after Elliot began.
“What’s…” I whisper as if they can hear me.
“It’s their screen,” Elliot says. “He doesn’t know we’re watching his work computer.”
“He?” I say.
“Yes. This is good ol’ Freddie.”
We watch Freddie flip through his work email, through an Excel spreadsheet with data about sales figures for a company I don’t recognize, Facebook, pictures of girls.
As seconds turn to minutes, I see this moment unraveling on a movie screen. It’s the climactic moment when a husband arrives home early from work, taking his shoes off so as to not make any noise on the floorboards, his ears perked, listening for any unusual noises coming from his bedroom, turning the doorknob and sliding the door open to find…
To find his wife asleep with no other guy making love to her.
Perfectly anticlimactic.
We wait and watch some more, feeling neither like heroes for finding a clue nor failures for finding nothing. But we watch for another half hour, and next thing I know, someone is patting my shoulder.
“Charz,” the voice says again.
“Mmm, huh?” I mumble, wiping the edge of my mouth. Oh God, I fell asleep. Again?
“Elliot wants to say bye to you.”
<
br /> Dex leaves us in my room, and the silence is sharper than before.
“I suppose I’ll be going,” Elliot says, as if I hadn’t heard the first time.
“I know but, but why now? Aren’t we…”
“Dex and I have been waiting for an hour. We’ve run through this Freddie’s computer. He’s some sad, middle-aged guy addicted to naked photos of girls, slaving away at a desk job and there isn’t anything else to find.”
“So…?”
Elliot shrugs and shakes his head. It’s obvious at this point that the weight in his eyes weighing him down isn’t exhaustion. There is no evidence of a hack or illegal activity. It’s just Elliot third-wheeling Dex and I in my bedroom.
“I don’t know what to say, Elliot.”
“We tried,” he answers for me.
“We did,” I agree.
My mind stirs fast and alert, far from a minute or two ago when I’d been sleeping. I don’t want Elliot to leave me, because he’s such an awesome guy. Dexter is great, but, really, it’s too complicated between us, and I’m still figuring out if I can handle that.
Elliot turns to leave but I throw my arms around him, bear hugging him from behind.
“Charlee?” he says in a high, surprised tone.
“We’ll chat soon,” I say, pecking him on the cheek. “Promise.”
“It’s fine,” he says, peeling off my hands. I think he knows I said goodbye to the idea of him and I together a while ago though I haven’t so much as said, “this non-existent thing between us is over.”
He lets our twined hands drop to hang between us. “It’s just—fine. I can see there wasn’t a chance in the world here anyway.”
25. Romeo and Juliet
Dexter
“No? No?” I growl at Elliot. As if it weren’t enough I walked in here a minute ago with him holding Charz’s hands.
“Man. Shit.” He taps my shoulder, which is pointless, so he presses down on me harder until I shake him off with my shoulder. “You don’t get it.”
“I get that these lowlife pieces of crap are planning to steal Walter’s money. Then what? Who’s to say they don’t have a scheme to rip off more from Charz?” My eyes dart to her when I say her name. My tongue is pierced at that front middle spot where I make that “ch” sound. Her name is fuel. Something I need to protect from scum like my Dad who’ll set her alight.
“This’ll ruin me, Dexter,” Elliot says.
I can’t believe that is what he’s thinking.
“Look,” Elliot starts. He rolls his eyes like he’s fed up and has to say what’s on his mind. “You usually trust what I say and think, so I’ve realized tonight’s been less about this hacking shit and more about you not pulling your thumb out of your butt and getting it on with Charlee already. Personally. We’re not here for heartfelt stories. You’re just a wimp.”
Actually, I do feel like a wimp. I need to stop feeling guilty for the accident since Charlee won’t even hate me for it, and I need to grab onto Charlee—my personal lotto win—before it’s too late and I make the biggest fuck up of my life.
Why does the most important shit in life have to take the longest to work out? Relationships. Education. Career.
“That shit I pulled?” Elliot stabs a finger in the air back toward the monitor. “Well, it’s illegal if you didn’t notice. If caught, I’ll never get to finish my IT degree and if I do, I won’t be employed for well over a decade, if ever.”
“It’s back to you, huh?” I step in to him challenging him to come closer. I fucking dare him to.
But inside, I have to wonder why I’m so defensive when Elliot’s right.
“Screw your head on, bro. We just spent an hour watching a guy pretending to fill out a spreadsheet full of data, while shamelessly searching through hundreds of photos of naked chicks. It’s hardly a national crime. What do you think the cops will do? They’re going to open up a pretty pink file for you and your girlfriend and hire twenty of their men from the top division to work on this case?”
“Yes, my girl,” I hiss, pushing into his chest with the heels of my palm.
“And what have you been doing with her, then?” Elliot says, challenging.
Little shit can’t fight me with anything but words. He’s putting up a good argument, but if I stop defending my case, I have to consider the alternative and that confuses me more.
“You knew,” I say, ramming the heels of my hands into his chest. He wobbles, and grabs at the desk chair to keep from toppling over. “You knew I’ve had a crush on her,” I repeat, heaving at him again.
He pushes back but I duck to the side. I pull my hand into a fist and jab a low, quick blow into his gut. Like I practice at the gym. He tries to do the same back. Fed up with his efforts, I grab his wrist and twist it one-hundred-and-eighty degrees and the law of physics works. He collapses under me hunched over.
“Enough!” A voice—broken like glass on the verge of shattering into a million pieces.
We both turn, my grip on Elliot loosened, but we’re both too shocked to move, really.
Charz is between us, holding us apart. One of her hands is pressed to the middle of my chest, the other holding onto Elliot’s bicep. I can feel the pressure from her palm through my shirt.
But on Elliot…her hand is on his skin, her fingertips disappearing under the edge of his T-shirt sleeve.
I wince and push away like I’ve just realized I’m holding something disgusting. I pace the room with my fingers laced at the back of my head.
“Please,” she whispers.
I stop and see Elliot standing, holding her to him with that arm she touched. Her hand’s there, curved up around his bicep in a way that flashes red anger through to my knuckles.
I flex my hands by my sides instead. “Let her go.”
“What the—?” Elliot gives me a “get real” look.
Useless. That’s what I am. Elliot’s her savior, of course. He’s the one who saved this joyous day, proving to her that her daddy’s fortune is fine, and it’s all ‘cause he found the answers I’ve been trying to find out for weeks.
I haven’t spent every moment burning over Dad’s plans to steal Walter’s money to do the “right” thing. That much is clear from the endless pit in my stomach folding me inside out, so full of pain that I wonder how much a person can take until body parts start cracking.
I’ve done this for her. Because I’ve watched her grow from a gangly girl into this woman I secretly love. Because I’m doing this to spare her any more pain. My Charz is drowning in hurt, and no amount of swimming records or money will save her. And I’ll do anything to stop her from hurting.
Maybe that’s what I’m doing, trying to save her from drowning in her misplaced guilt and feelings. I killed her family, after all. Not her.
“Dex?”
Elliot’s voice. But when I open my eyes, it’s Charz’s eyes—deer in a spotlight—that catch me.
I take her face, grabbing two of her fingers in mine, and pressing our foreheads together, noses touching. I take in a rough breath, not able to do much in my own state, but I have some sort of effect on her because she gasps in air more slowly, followed by even slower breaths. Her sweet candy smell is my drug. Sometimes when Dad gets into me with his fists, or I’m writing lyrics, it’s what calms me. She’s what calms me.
“How’d you do that?”
Elliot’s wide-eyed and goggling at us. Looking down, I realize I have one hand cupping her neck, and a finger dipping her chin to me, where our foreheads and nose were once touching.
“Do you have a code to get in my father’s computer or files?” I reply.
“Sure,” Elliot shrugs, confused. “I got it all.”
“Show me,” I say, I’ll do it myself, is how I finish the thought.
Elliot exhales loudly and then lets out a quiet chuckle. “Dex, come on.”
“Notes,” I say, flat and emotionless.
He sighs and points to a square that looks like a notepad, but it�
��s almost unrecognizable, graffitied in scrawls and messes of jotted notes and markings.
Elliot leaves, and I know it the moment he’s gone—because Charz’s glare becomes full of tension.
* * *
Charz says she’s going for a swim. Only she knows why. I don’t say it out loud, but I wonder how many times she’s had middle-of-the-night training sessions.
It’s when she’s downstairs that I flick through the papers once more. They haven’t changed, though, there’s nothing new here, and again I ask myself why I’m wasting my time doing this, when I probably won’t find anything.
I have to stop proving myself to Charz. I can’t make her hate Elliot and I can’t make up my mind if I’m willing to make her suffer through the public hate that will ruin her relationships with friends and family—since they must be part of the ninety-five per cent of people who have it out for me.
But then I see it. It’s an email that looks like all the rest, but still I don’t know how I missed it.
Walter has emailed Dad. It’s two words sent from an iPhone, saying:
Thank you.
Confused, I skim down the page, to where Dad has sent Walter the first email, which says:
You did it for us, old man.
Wait. Walter’s planned this? So all this time we’ve been seeing it the wrong way?
Like any rational guy, I run down the stairs and to the pool house, maniacally calling Charz’s name.
She hasn’t heard me at all, that I’m sure of, as she emerges from the water, and flicks back her long hair, wiping down her face.
“Dex!” she squeals, spotting me. “Come here.”
“Hey, can you c’mere. Need to chat about something.”
She tucks her hair behind her ear, water glistening against her skin and the pool lights highlighting her like the star of a show.
“I got it,” Charz says, gleaming. “You Americans sound so weird because you accentuate your vowels!”
Charz wades up to the shallow end, hips swinging in a way that almost makes me forget why I am here. (If it weren’t for the issue of my father, criminal turned old pal.) She giggles behind her hand—so unlike her. Her face is glowing strangely from the artificial light. It’s crazy that she can be so happy when she’d been crying into my chest in that bathroom upstairs only a few hours ago. Girls.
Drowning in You Page 19
