by KL Hughes
“Honestly, Charlee.” Cam drawls out the words. “I’m just stunned. I’m completely surprised by this shocking news that I never saw coming, not once.”
Charlee stares at her for one long moment before grabbing her pillow and whacking Cam in the face with it. When Cam cackles, Charlee’s throat bubbles up with laughter, and she wipes away her tears before tackling her best friend in a hug. She’s rewarded with a kiss planted to her hair, which is still slightly damp.
“It’s going to be okay, Charlee,” she says. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Chapter 7
“Mom?”
Charlee steps into the house, placing her spare key back into her pocket, and glances around the great room. She moves to the side as Cam comes in behind her, and they quickly remove their winter gear, hanging their coats, scarves, and gloves on the rack by the door.
“Mom?” she calls out again as Cam makes a beeline for the kitchen, grabs a soda from the refrigerator, and hops up to sit on the counter.
“Weird,” she says, popping open the tab on her soda can. “You think she’s still sleeping?”
Charlee checks her phone for the time. “It’s ten thirty. She’s always up by eight.”
“Well, maybe she had an errand to run. We weren’t supposed to be here for lunch ’til noon, so she probably figured she had time. It’s not your mom’s fault you woke us up at the ass crack of dawn.” Her stomach growls audibly, and she winces. “But seriously, she needs to come on, because I need something in my stomach circa yesterday.”
Charlee moves toward the hallway. “I’ll check her room, but yeah, she probably went out.”
“Hey, whose clothes are these?” Cam calls out before Charlee can make her way down the hall. She jumps off the counter to pick something up off the floor and pops up from the far side of the kitchen island a moment later, holding a dark green coat. “There’s a pile of clothes over here.”
“What the hell?” Charlee walks over to inspect them. It only takes a glance for her to know they’re not her mother’s. Something’s familiar about the coat, but Charlee can’t quite place it.
“Ugh, smells like a bar.” Gasping, Cam drops the coat a second later and says, “You don’t think Gabby has a, you know, lady friend, do you?”
Charlee wrinkles her nose. “Stop.”
“I’m just saying.” Cam puts her hands up in a show of surrender. “Tousled, abandoned lady clothes. Bar smell.” She grabs an empty glass from the island next to a plate of half-eaten toast. Her eyes widen as she sniffs the inside. “Vodka.” She holds the glass under Charlee’s nose. “All signs point to lady friend.”
“No way,” Charlee says, shaking her head. “Besides, there’s only one glass.”
“Oh, so you think she was just flying solo and got wild with it?” Cam’s voice strains from holding in laughter.
Charlee shudders at the thought and shoves Cam away from her. “I hate you.” She moves back toward the hall. “I’m going to check her room.”
Gabby’s bedroom is at the end of the hall on the right. The door is open when she gets there. The bed is made, and Gabby is nowhere to be found. Charlee glances around for anything unusual or out of place but finds nothing. She’s about to head back into the kitchen when she hears a quiet groan.
The sound draws her attention to the door across from her mother’s, the one to her own childhood bedroom. Charlee wraps her hand around the doorknob and sends up a silent prayer that she is not about to find her mother in her room with a drunken hookup. There are some things you just can’t come back from.
She pushes the door gently open and peeks inside. Instantly freezes. Her heart shoots up into her throat so fast and so hard that she nearly chokes. She barely has time to take in the sight before she is scrambling for the doorknob in a panic and closing the door again.
“What the hell?” she mutters under her breath. “What the hell? What the hell?”
Charlee smacks her cheeks a few times, convinced she’s seeing things or is possibly still drunk. She shakes her head hard enough to make herself dizzy and then dares to peek into the room again.
Her jaw drops when the sight is the same, and she can’t breathe. She barely has time to process the thought before she hears a door open down the hall, followed by the rustling of bags and a loud greeting from Cam. She closes the bedroom door, then darts down the hall into the great room.
Gabby turns when she enters the room, eyes wide and face ashen. “Charlee,” she says, setting her grocery bags on the floor. “You’re early.”
“What the hell, Mom?” Her heart is racing. “What’s going on?”
“Dude, she just went for groceries.” Cam laughs. “Calm down. I was obviously wrong about, you know, that other thing.”
Gabby glances behind her toward the hallway and then locks eyes with her again. “Charlee, listen. I need to explain.”
“Yeah,” Charlee says. “You do need to explain. You need to explain to me why the hell Alexandra Woodson is asleep in my bed.”
A choking sound splits the air as soon as the words are out. Charlee turns and sees Cam gagging and sputtering, having accidentally snorted soda mid-drink. She coughs until her throat is clear and wipes at the liquid dripping from her nose. “Alex is here?”
“She showed up in the middle of the night,” Gabby says. “Drunk.”
“She drunkenly decided that my mom’s house was where she needed to be?”
“Well, she was upset.”
“Okay, but that still doesn’t make any sense,” Charlee says, confused. “She just showed up here? She hasn’t talked to you in years, so wh—”
“That’s not actually true. It hasn’t been years since we’ve talked.” She lets out a heavy breath. “It hasn’t even been a week.”
Charlee’s eyebrows shoot toward her hairline, and her throat goes dry. “What?”
“This just got too real.” Cam slinks around the kitchen island.
“I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“It’s easy, Mom. It goes something like this: ‘Charlee, I’ve been talking to Alex behind your back!’”
“Honey, please.”
“How long?” Charlee snaps. “How long has this been going on?”
“I thought it would be better if you didn’t know,” Gabby says. “At least, not for a while. But then I kept putting it off. It just took such a long time for you to start living your life again, honey. I didn’t want to risk upsetting you.”
“Spit it out, Mom! How long?”
“I never stopped.”
Charlee feels breathless with the revelation, and Cam pops her lips and shuffles toward the door.
“Okay, then,” Cam says, clapping her hands gently together. “I’m just gonna go pick us up a pizza and take the longest route possible to give you guys some time to, you know, kill each other or whatever.” She puts on her coat and gloves, then grabs Charlee’s keys from her coat pocket. “Back in ten years.”
The door is barely closed before Gabby starts in again. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t want you to find out this way.”
“All this time?” Charlee drops down to sit on the floor. Her legs feel like jelly. “Why?”
Gabby crosses the room in three long strides and settles onto the floor in front of Charlee, her voice low and sad. “Because you couldn’t.”
Charlee rubs at her temples, then covers her face with her hands. “I’m too hungover for this.”
“I should’ve told you.”
“Yeah, you should have.” She shakes her head against her palms. “I can’t believe you’ve been talking to her all these years.”
“I’m not going to apologize for that. I am sorry I didn’t tell you, but I’m not sorry for keeping in touch with Alex.”
“She’s not yours, Mom. I’m your kid.”
“And I’
ve always taken care of you,” Gabby says. “Alex may not actually be my child, but she is family, and she was over there. Alone.”
“She chose to be over there.”
“And you chose to be here.” Gabby squeezes Charlee’s knee. “You had all of us here to help you through everything, honey. You had all your pictures and belongings. The loft. Everything you two made together and were together. And you had us here to help you. Alex didn’t have anyone.”
Charlee’s chest feels constricted, like her heart doesn’t have enough room to move. Like her body might just cave in on itself.
“You know how much of a mess you were when things fell apart. She was the same way, but she was alone. She had to go through that alone.”
“So you called her?” Charlee’s voice strains. Her eyes feel like fire.
“I called her, and so did Vinny, of course. I talked to her every week, every day in the beginning. I made sure she was sleeping and eating. I sent her money when she needed it. I took care of her.” She runs her thumb back and forth over Charlee’s knee, soothing. “Because she’s family and because you love her. And I love her. And your father never would’ve forgiven me if I didn’t look after her. You know that.”
Tears build quickly, and Charlee lets them fall. Wipes them away as they come. “We were together last night,” she says. “All of us—me, Cam, Vinny, and Alex.”
“Oh, so I have you to blame for Alex’s drunken visit?” Gabby chuckles as she shifts over on the floor to wrap her arm around Charlee’s back. “I suppose that would also explain your hangover.”
Charlee leans into her mother’s embrace. “I almost kissed her. I thought we could… I wanted to.” Sniffling, she wipes at her nose. “I miss her.”
“I know.”
“I miss her, Mom.”
Gabby nods against the top of her head. “Me too.”
“When I’m with her, it feels like we could just pick up where we left off, but it’s not that easy.”
“Nothing ever is, honey.”
“I never really got over her.”
“I know.”
They sit in silence for a long time, Charlee doing her best to breathe through the tightness in her chest, and Gabby rubbing small circles into her back. The floor starts to feel cold after a while, seeping in through Charlee’s pants. She shifts, runs her hands up and down her thighs to warm them. “I guess we should call Cam and tell her she can come back now.”
“I can’t believe she went to get pizza after I bought all these groceries to cook for you two.”
“Cam’s always up for seconds.”
“Good point.”
Charlee climbs to her feet, then reaches out to help her mother up as well. They stand awkwardly together, unmoving, as Charlee glances toward the hallway. “I guess I’ll go wake her up,” she says. “See if she wants some pizza.”
“I can wake her up, honey. She’ll probably be too embarrassed to stay anyway.”
“She shouldn’t be embarrassed.”
“I know, but that won’t matter and you know it.”
“I’ll wake her,” Charlee says, still holding Gabby’s hands. “I need—I should apologize for last night anyway. I kind of crossed the line with the almost-kiss and everything.”
“Okay.”
Charlee doesn’t shift from her spot.
“Charlee?”
With a sigh, Charlee steps in to embrace her. She grips her tightly and rests her chin on her shoulder. “Thank you.” She burrows her face into her mother’s neck to breathe in the familiar, comforting scent of her. “For taking care of her.”
The car’s air conditioning offered little relief from the sweltering heat of a mid-July afternoon. Charlee’s palm was slick and sweaty against hers, but Alex didn’t let go. Their fingers remained tightly together as they sat in the backseat of Gabby’s SUV, the cemetery disappearing behind them in the glare of the sun.
Charlee trembled beside her, fighting to hold herself together. On her other side, Cam silently cried, little hiccups escaping every few seconds, and Gabby’s soft shuddering breaths sounded from the passenger seat. Vinny tried to subtly wipe her eyes under her aviators as she drove them back to Gabby’s house. Every quiet little detail jumped out at her, screamed in her blood and bones, and Alex had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep her own tears at bay.
Everyone else was falling apart, and someone would have to pick up the pieces.
No one said a word throughout the entire fifty-minute drive back to Gabby’s house, and little was said when they finally arrived. Vinny and Cam switched over to Vinny’s new motorcycle, claiming they wanted to give Gabby and Charlee some time alone but promised to check in later. Alex offered to go as well, but Charlee’s grip on her hand was painful, and Gabby urged them both toward the house, so she stayed. She never wanted to leave anyway.
It was her home too.
He was her loved one too.
It was cool inside the house but not relieving. The space felt suffocating, filled with a silence that seemed to suck the oxygen out of the air and leave her lungs burning. Alex couldn’t bring herself to look at the walls. The various photos hung about like haunting reminders of everything they’d lost.
Gabby only took a few steps inside before turning to pull Charlee and Alex into her arms. She held them close, a quiet sob escaping her. When she collected herself, she planted a kiss first to Charlee’s temple and then Alex’s. “I’m going to lie down for a while,” she said, her voice tired and her eyes drooping. She’d barely been holding herself together since the car accident.
A man had fallen asleep at the wheel during morning rush hour. Swerved into the wrong lane. And that was that. One mistake and everything changed. The man had died in the crash, along with Charlee’s father, and had injured two others. Alex liked to think Drew was killed instantly, that he felt no pain, even if it wasn’t true. She didn’t know. Only that he was dead by the time the police arrived. Still, the thought gave her a little comfort.
Gabby kissed Charlee’s temple again, then her forehead. “I love you,” she said, briefly cupping Charlee’s cheek. She didn’t wait for a reply before turning and disappearing down the hall.
Charlee turned to look at Alex. Her makeup was streaked and smudged, the foundation tracked with tears, and her eyes were bluer than Alex had ever seen them—sapphire and sad and lovely. She held Alex’s hand with slick fingers and tilted her head toward the hall.
When they crawled into Charlee’s childhood bed together, still in their black clothes, Alex curled around Charlee from behind.
“Alex?”
Alex nuzzled the back of Charlee’s neck in answer and waited.
“My dad’s dead.”
The words hit hard, like a storm in the middle of the night—a fast, quiet kind of destruction. She closed her eyes and forced in a breath, the scents of sweat and Charlee’s perfume filtering in with it. She did her best to keep steadily-building tears at bay, because every second was testing her resolve, tempting her to break. She had to stay strong. She gripped Charlee’s hand where their fingers remained tangled over Charlee’s stomach. “I know he is.”
“My dad,” Charlee said, tremulous. “My dad. My dad’s dead. He’s dead. He’s—my—he’s—” Her voice cracked open, earthquakes between her teeth.
“Okay,” Alex said. “Okay, come here.” She tugged at Charlee’s side to get her to turn. “Come here.”
Charlee buried herself against her chest and gripped the front of Alex’s shirt like she intended to shred it. She muttered the same words over and over between great, groaning sobs, and Alex held her as tightly as possible.
“Breathe, Charlee.” She was far too close to making herself sick. “You have to try to calm down so you can breathe, like your mom said. Remember?”
Just the day before, Charlee had had the first anxiety
attack Alex had ever known her to have. It scared them both, Charlee gasping for air between forceful sobs and choking on her words. Alex had screamed Gabby’s name hard enough to make her throat hurt, then sat by and watched as Gabby calmed Charlee down with counting and breathing.
Alex rubbed Charlee’s back, thankful when she felt her breathing begin to even out. Each breath came slower and steadier than the one before, separated by little hiccups, and Alex kissed the top of Charlee’s head. “That’s good,” she said, and Charlee nodded against her chest.
They lay together in silence for what felt like hours—years—before Charlee shifted back to rest her head on their shared pillow. Their faces were only inches apart. “I hate this.”
“Me too.”
“This is wrong.” The pillowcase absorbed Charlee’s tears as she wiped her face on it, a ring of moisture forming just under her cheek and nose. “This is—”
“Wrong,” Alex said with a sigh, brushing away a strand of hair stuck to Charlee’s wet cheek. “I know.”
“I feel like I’m living someone else’s shitty life.” Charlee closed her eyes at Alex’s touch. “Like this can’t possibly be real. I just want to wake up and realize this isn’t my life. It’s just a bad dream. I just want it to be a bad dream, Alex, so I can wake up and you can hold me and all of this can go away.”
Alex scooted closer until their noses bumped together. She released Charlee’s hand to wrap her arm around her waist instead. Rubbed circles into the small of her back. “I can’t wake you up from this, Charlee, but I can still hold you.”
Charlee placed her hand just above Alex’s heart. “I don’t want to go home tonight. Can we stay here?”
“Whatever you need.”
“I just need to be here.”
“Okay.”
“And you,” Charlee said, tapping her index finger over the small swell of Alex’s breast. “I need you.”
Alex took in Charlee’s closed eyes, the skin around them raw and red. Her face was puffy and tired, streaked with tear tracks and makeup, and Alex found the sight heartbreaking and terribly beautiful. “You have me.”
