Disorderly Conduct

by Tessa Bailey

  “You did not just call my future wife hot right to my face.”

  “He did.” My father is laughing, his big chest shaking. “I heard him.”

  The mood between the three of us is the lightest I’ve ever felt it. Incredible. I thought my decision would drive a wedge between the already stilted relationship with my father and brother, but somehow it had the opposite effect.

  I can’t wait to tell Ever. I can’t wait to tell her everything in my head, for the rest of my life. Our life.

  With the promise of her warmth making my blood zing, I slap Greer on the back a little harder than warranted—after all, he just called Ever hot to my face—then, I head back out to the waiting room, Greer already beginning to drone about department business before the door closes behind me. When I walk into the beige purgatory, however, I find only Jack and Danika.

  “Hey.” I scratch my head and turn in a circle, as if Ever will appear out of thin air. “My father is fine. They’re going to keep him for a while, but he’s out of the woods.” They both visibly relax, Danika tossing her magazine onto the low, gray table. “Where’s Ever?”

  “Not sure.” Jack clears his throat. “Said she was running out for a little while.”

  “But she’ll be right back,” Danika added quickly, giving me a curious look.

  “Huh.” I pace to the window and look down at the rushing lights of the city. As if I could pick her out among thousands of people from this height. “Where would she . . .”

  Oh. Fuck.

  Chapter 25

  Ever

  Well. Joke is on me. I’m the one being stood up.

  At 8:01, I get a sympathetic look from the hostess and wave it off, smiling back. It doesn’t matter. I’m actually relieved I don’t have to explain to a virtual stranger that I’m in a relationship and I can’t stay for dinner. For once, getting stood up makes things a lot easier. Impatient to get back to Charlie and find out how his father is doing, I head for the door—

  Just as Charlie walks in, eyes wild. Sweat dots his upper lip and darkens the front of his T-shirt. His hands clench and loosen at his sides.

  Despite his disheveled appearance, however, a thrill squeals through my body at the sight of him. His blue eyes pan through the waiting area and land on me, his stomach hollowing on a deep breath when he sees me. I know the feeling. My tummy is bottoming out just knowing I’ll touch him soon. Talk to him.

  That’s my first reaction. It lasts a split second before dread settles in my chest.

  “You went on the date, Ever?” Charlie croaks the words. “You went?”

  “No.” His misconception must be the reason I’m nervous. But knowing I can clear it up with an easy explanation doesn’t make me feel any better. The lighthearted joy I was feeling earlier in the night is being chafed by splinters. “No, I’m only here to cancel, and I was coming right back to the hospital. It was the right thing to do on short notice and . . . Charlie, you know I was coming right back.” I go up on my toes and rub our noses together. “After all the dating nightmares over the last few weeks, I wanted to do someone else a solid. That’s all. Look at me.” More nose rubbing. “I love you.”

  His shoulders lose most of their tension, but the muscular lines of his body are still whip tight. “Yeah, I know. I know you were coming back to me.” His eyelids fall shut. “Of course you would do something like this. It’s why I love you, isn’t it?”

  Instead of being comforted by those words, words I’ll never get accustomed to hearing, my dread amplifies. A horn blares right against my ear. “How . . . how did you know I would be here?”

  When dudes in hazmat suits approach a suspicious package? That’s how Charlie is looking at me right now. Like there’s about to be a potential disaster. His Adam’s apple drags up and down, thoughts racing behind his blue eyes. “Remember back in the hospital when I asked you to be patient with me?” I don’t respond, but my heart does. It flies into a riot. “Is there any way that could take effect now?”

  “Spit it out.”

  A rickety inhale. “I’m Reve.” His lips barely move as he says the two words that make my skin burn. His must be burning, too, because it seems like he wants to crawl out of it. “Or there is no Reve. He’s just the name on the profile I created.”

  Ice replaces the burning sensation on my arms, my neck. “Why?”

  “Because I missed you. I needed to see your face. That was all it was supposed to be, but you messaged me and . . . cutie, then I was talking to you. And it felt like you were there with me. You were always supposed to be there with me.” He drags a hand down his face. “I shouldn’t have made this date, but you have to believe me. I was going to show up as Charlie and come clean. Unless . . .”

  I’m afraid to ask. I’ve already been buried under an avalanche, but I need to know. I need to hear everything. “Unless what?”

  Misery slashes across his face. “Unless I could convince you to come back to me before tonight ever happened.”

  “Come back to you?” My voice is high-pitched and unnatural, but I can’t help it. There’s an earthquake taking place inside me. “We weren’t even together until tonight.”

  His eyelids lift and all I see is shame. Shame. And it terrifies me. “When I created Reve, I still wanted things to go back to how they were. When we were just . . .”

  “Hooking up,” I whisper through numb lips.

  The blood drains from my face, scenes beginning to play on a screen inside my head. The speed dating fiasco, the fire alarm going off in the restaurant. And then the scenes that made tears burn in my eyes. Charlie showing up after speed dating and taking me for a drink, opening up to me about pressure at the academy, listening to me speak about my mother. Charlie showing up with the notecard tree, taking me to the farmer’s market. Taking me to the memorial after my disastrous date. “Oh God, Charlie, what did you do?” I clutch my throat, preventing it from ripping open. “Don’t tell me you’ve been sabotaging me. Not after I told you how important it was to try for my mother.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

  He’s trying to yank me into his arms, but I’d rather die. At this point, I would rather dive out of an airplane than let him comfort me. He’s the reason I need comfort in the first place, and I’m reeling. I’m reeling so hard I’m dizzy, the room twisting around me. “You wanted to go back to just hooking up,” I state. “When did that change? Did you ever really want to be my friend? Or was that all bullshit?”

  “Ever.” There’s a tremor in his voice. Like he already knows I won’t appreciate his answer. “I fooled myself into thinking it was bullshit, but cutie, you have to believe me. I was in love with you the whole time. I was running all over town trying to make sure someone didn’t steal you away from me.” His fingers rake through his hair. “I was a goddamn idiot for believing I would do that unless there was something real here. And we’re the realest thing out there, Ever. You know we are.”

  “How can you say that when you’ve been lying to me? Disregarding something you knew was important to me.” My voice has been reduced to a whisper. All I can see is Charlie’s earnest face, acting surprised to see me after I’d been humiliated at speed dating. The firmness of his handshake when we decided to be friends. The words he’d said when we had sex on the couch. No one moves like us, Ever. No one talks to each other without words like us. Don’t you know that? “All you wanted was to get me back into bed.”

  “No.” His face is white as a sheet. “No, I thought that’s all I wanted. Ever—”

  “I have to get away from you.” And I really do. I’ve dropped from the highest high into a lake of razors. I need to go somewhere dark and sort through what I know. To judge the extent of the damage. There’s one fact that is unshakeable, though, and it’s that Charlie has made me a complete fool. “Who do you think you are? Messing with my life like that? How dare you, Charlie? How dare you?” Tears roll down my cheeks and he sucks in a breath, watching them travel down, down. “Did
you think it was funny? Ruining my dates so I would come running back for the no-strings sex?”

  “It was never funny being without you. Not for a second.” He’s talking very slowly, very quietly, as if he’s mere seconds from losing his sanity. “Ever, please don’t leave me. You can’t leave me when I love you so much. Please. I’m begging you to comb through this with me, second by second, so I can tell you what I was thinking. I need to make you understand.”

  “I don’t trust you to be honest. I don’t think I’ll ever believe you again.”

  The words burst out of me and pop in the air. Bright red fireworks. Charlie falls back and bumps into someone, but doesn’t seem aware of it. And I take that opportunity to push out of the restaurant and run for the train, my heart dragging behind me on the filthy sidewalk.

  Chapter 26

  Ever

  I’m sitting in the living room with Nina and my mother watching The Dog Whisperer, eating cheese Danishes. Perhaps not conventional break-up remedies, but we’re working with what we’ve got. Nina apparently retrieved my mother’s phone number from my cell while I was indulging myself in a crying jag under my pillow, because she arrived in a perfumed flurry an hour ago, bakery box in hand. My hair is wet from the shower they forced me to take against my will, and I’m letting it drip all over the couch cushions in protest. Weirdly, that tiny rebellion is making me feel less shitty. But I’m nowhere near better.

  It’s Tuesday afternoon, and I’m still in this weird bubble. A bubble filled with fog. After the scene with Charlie, I dived into a yellow cab, floated up the stairs to my apartment in a blur and crawled under my comforter. My cell phone went absolutely bonkers at first—guess who—so I shut it off. An hour later, my apartment buzzer started going off nonstop, so I did the mature thing and disconnected it from the wall with a butter knife and scissors. Really short sighted, considering my super will probably take six months to repair it. Something tells me he won’t be thrilled with the excuse, “I needed to have a think-cry and the noise was distracting.”

  Charlie could have easily gotten into the building—by charming a female neighbor or flat out breaking the door down—but I think he knows I would deck him if he didn’t respect my free will, while I’m contemplating murdering him over that very same thing.

  Here’s the thing. I know Charlie meant it when he said he loves me. I sure as shooting meant it, too. My dilemma is whether or not I’m still willing to form a relationship with someone who acted so selfishly. Someone who hurt me, whether or not it was intentional. After my mother’s revelation about loneliness, I was scared. I confided in Charlie the importance of following through on my promise to my mother, and he still tried to ruin my chance at a committed relationship.

  On top of everything, I’m embarrassed. So very embarrassed. I cringe every time I think of my wide-eyed optimism the night he saved the catering event. Or how I shook his hand after the speed dating debacle and agreed to try to be buddies. Maybe he really does want to be my friend, I’d thought both times. Was I really so stupid and naïve?

  I fooled myself into thinking it was bullshit, but cutie, you have to believe me. I was in love with you the whole time.

  My heart lurches and tears spring to my eyes. Dammit, I miss him so much my bones ache. Can I believe him when he says he loved me the whole time? After all the lies of omission and letting me think he was someone else?

  Every time I think about him pretending to be Reve, I growl. And right now is no exception. Nina’s and my mother’s gazes bounce between me and the television, obviously not sure if the sound came from me or one of Cesar Millan’s dogs.

  “Is that a sign you’re ready to talk, dear?” My mother nibbles at her Danish. “I could be doing something productive, you know. Like watching this exact same program in the break room at work.”

  My mom makes jokes now. Bad timing, though, because I don’t feel much like laughing. However, she did make the effort to leave her job and come see me, an effort that would have shocked me a month ago, so I attempt wordage. “Charlie . . . pulled the fire alarm while I was on a date.” My tone is bemused because it’s one of the four emotions inside my bubble. Anger, humiliation, sadness and bemusement. “Like, he’s going to be a police officer and he pulled an illegal stunt, soaked at least a hundred people . . . and then he called me on my phone to go meet up.” I shove a bite of Danish into my mouth. “I’m trying to decide if that makes him deranged or—”

  “Desperately in love?”

  I’m left sputtering over my mother’s comment, which gives Nina the unfortunate opportunity to jump in. “You should see the way he looks at her. All big, blue puppy dog eyes. Like he just wants to flop down in front of Ever and have his belly scratched.”

  My mother turns to me. “Why didn’t you tell me about him?”

  It’s meant as a reproof, but I can hear the hurt in her tone and it makes me feel guilty. “He didn’t want anything serious. It’s why we started . . . hanging out—”

  “Fucking? You can say the word in front of me, Ever, I’m an ex-mistress.”

  Nina buries her face in a pillow, her sides shaking with laughter.

  “Okay, yeah. What you said. The F-word.” I’m not ready to drop bad language in front of my mother yet. Maybe someday. “You asked me to try dating seriously, so I broke it off with Charlie.”

  My mother frowns. “Did you want to break it off?”

  “No,” I say honestly, remembering how hard it had been to watch him go. How I’d lived in a black cloud until I’d seen him again. “We’d been seeing each other for thirty-one days when I ended things.”

  Nina doesn’t pick up on the importance of the number, because she doesn’t know the rules my mother and I lived by for so long. My mother, however, knows what it means. I broke the rules for Charlie. In our world, it might as well be an admission of love. Nina seems to sense the need for the two of us to be alone, because she hops up from the couch, snagging her keys off the coffee table. “I’m going to go grab the mail. Be back in a while.”

  As soon as the door closes behind my roommate, my mother gracefully turns, pointing her pressed-together knees in my direction. “Ever, I wanted you to find someone so you could be happy.” She wets her lips. “It sounds like you were doing it for me.”

  “I was.” My voice cracks, but I don’t feel like I need to appear strong in front of my mother anymore, when I’m on shaky ground. I can just be honest. “I was, and it worked and you’re here now. I’ve seen you more in the last couple weeks than I have in years. The dating gave us something to . . .”

  “Have in common?” Her eyes are troubled. “I think what we have in common is the desire to see you happy. And if this Charlie made you happy, I’m sorry I steered you away from him.”

  “Don’t be. Things between us weren’t right back then.” An image of him dancing at Webster Hall flies through my head. Followed by him kneeling at the police memorial, hugging me in the bar, guarding my door from Nina’s ex-boyfriend. “I didn’t even know him until I broke it off,” I murmur. “Until we became friends.”

  “And you are friends, aren’t you?”

  I nod, because I’m finding it hard to speak around the lump in my throat. Whatever ill-conceived notions were behind Charlie becoming my friend in the first place, the truth is, we got there. We got there and it was glorious. Would he go to such extremes to be around me if he only wanted sex? No. No, that’s not Charlie. He might have made some huge mistakes, but he’s gold on the inside. I think of him watching my cab drive away after our talk at the memorial and it hits me, it hits me so hard that he was dying in that moment. He was considering chasing the cab, wasn’t he?

  “Yeah.” I swallow hard. “We’re friends.”

  Will we end up more, though?

  Nina walks back into the apartment, and I do a double take when I see the stack of identical envelopes she’s holding. “Uh.” She drops them beside me on the couch. “You’ve got mail.”

  There are at le
ast a dozen letters . . . and they’re all from Charlie.

  Trading a surprised glance with my mother—who is literally bouncing with excitement—I open the letter marked “READ ME FIRST” in all caps.

  Reve = Ever spelled backward

  Reve S. Guy = Ever’s Guy

  Always have been. Always will be.

  I love you so much. I’m sorry. Take me back.

  With tears in my eyes, I do some quick math. He called himself my guy right at the beginning of our friendship. That had to mean he felt more for me than attraction, even then. Didn’t it? Swiping at the moisture on my cheeks, I open the next letter. And the next . . . and the next . . .

  Chapter 27

  Charlie

  Sleep is for the weak. Or for better men than me. Men who don’t make the love of their life cry. Men who don’t dig themselves into such an awful, disgusting hole that experts haven’t even invented a tool yet for digging them out.

  You can bet your ass I’m going to try, though. I’m going to claw my way toward the sunlight, because I’ve felt it on my face. And I don’t know how to live any other way now. Give me Ever, or give me death.

  Death, coincidentally, is pretty much synonymous with my condition.

  When it became obvious I wouldn’t be reaching Ever with modern technology or face-to-face, I started writing the letters. A week ago. I haven’t seen or touched or smelled my girl in a fucking week. After what happened with my father, the academy gave me time off and it’s a good thing, too, because maintaining my usual sparkling hygiene has been a challenge. Also eating. I don’t eat anymore. Flat out cut it from my daily schedule, and apart from visiting my father in the hospital, I’ve been doing nothing but writing letters. And mailing them to Ever.