by KL Hughes
Charlee opens her eyes again, blurry and bright, and they’re so close. They hold each other’s gazes, and Alex’s heart thuds roughly against the walls of her chest. For a moment, they’re still, frozen just outside one another, and then Charlee closes the gap.
Their lips connect, gentle and wet, for the first time in nearly six years. That one soft touch shakes through every inch of Alex’s body, and she can breathe. God, she can breathe again.
The air stutters between her teeth. She takes it in, overwhelmed, before tilting her head and diving in again. A sob is muted against her lips as Charlee kisses her, as Charlee’s hands grip onto her, desperate and pleading. Alex can’t stop trembling.
When they separate, they barely part, foreheads still resting together, noses touching. Charlee’s pulse thuds rapidly under Alex’s fingertips where they rest at the side of her neck. “Please stay,” she says, her voice ragged and her cheeks tracked with all the ways they’ve loved and lost and suffered. “Please, Alex. Please come home.”
Alex feels the quiet words like thunder in her bones—echoing and rattling her insides. “That’s the thing,” she says, leaning in just enough to kiss the wet surface of Charlee’s cheek. “I never really had a home. Nothing permanent. Nothing precious. Not until you.” She nudges her nose against Charlee’s and kisses her other cheek. “I made my home in you. With you. And it was precious. It was the most precious thing I’d ever had, and it was—”
“Permanent?”
For the first time in years, hope curls around Alex’s heart and clings. She pushes every ounce of it into her trembling voice. “God, I hope so,” she says and lets Charlee lead her into the loft.
They stumble with every step, never letting each other go, and Charlee kicks the door closed. She plants gentle, unhurried kisses on Alex’s lips and cheeks and chin and neck as she leads her through the loft. Alex lets herself go to the feeling, to the leading. She lets herself be guided along through the space they once shared, through the home they built together, and it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Like it could never be anything but theirs.
When they reach the studio, the door is open. The room is lit by only a small lamp, and everything, from the smell of paint to the pile of freshly slept-in blankets on their old mattress on the floor, makes Alex feel dizzy. She is awash in both past and present. The little details jump out at her, tug at her heart. It’s Alex who covers the walls, but it’s Charlee who fills up the room. She’s the damp spot on the pillow and the splatter on the nearby canvas. She’s every stroke in every image. Every point of every tack pinning their memories to corkboards and plaster. She’s the perfume in the air and the fingertips tracing Alex’s jawline, rubbing over the metal line of the zipper on Alex’s coat.
“Can I take this off?”
“Yes,” Alex says, so quiet she barely even hears herself.
Charlee unzips and pushes the heavy material over and off Alex’s shoulders. The coat hits the floor, and Alex’s breath comes even easier.
“And this?”
Alex nods and lets Charlee pull her thermal up and over her head so she is down to her tank top. She shivers despite feeling flushed, and Charlee runs her hands down Alex’s arms.
“Is this okay?” Charlee asks, eyes wide and wanting, and Alex loves her. More and more and more, she loves her.
“Take everything.” She runs her fingers up the length of Charlee’s neck, swipes her thumb over Charlee’s bottom lip, and leans in, follows the motion with her mouth. She kisses Charlee on the corner of her lips, kisses the freckle just above, kisses her full and deep and breathless. “Take everything.”
Alex places Charlee’s hands at the bottom of her tank top. She sighs when Charlee pulls the material free and leaves her bare. No bra. No barriers.
Charlee maps Alex’s exposed flesh, her gaze as loving and reverent as it has always been. Her fingers caress the smooth skin between Alex’s breasts, draw an easy circle around a pebbled nipple, and trace a line down the plane of her stomach. Her hands drop to Alex’s jeans then. She toys with the smooth metal button before popping it open and wrestles the tight denim down Alex’s long legs, down to the boots out of which Alex wriggles her socked feet.
Alex closes her eyes as Charlee peels her socks off, one by one, then presses her lips to Alex’s shins. To her knees. To her thighs. When Alex opens her eyes again, Charlee is on her knees in front of her, fingers tucking under the band of Alex’s underwear. She stares up at Alex, vulnerable, and Alex runs her hand over the top of Charlee’s head, down a strand of blonde hair. She nods, and Charlee slides the final barrier down and away.
Alex is entirely bare. Charlee leans in to her and rests her forehead against her lower abdomen. Warm breath skitters over the sensitive skin between her legs, and Alex’s throat tightens. Her eyes burn with new tears as Charlee’s hands rub down her thighs, and her lips plant a whisper of a kiss at the top of Alex’s slit.
“Charlee.” It’s hardly more than a breath. Charlee nods against Alex’s stomach.
She stands and makes quick work of her own tank top. It drops to the floor, followed by her pajama pants, and Alex’s breath catches in her throat as she takes in the sight of Charlee in only her striped panties. A second later, they, too, fall to the floor.
“I missed you,” Alex says, fingers tracing over Charlee’s chest and stomach and hips. She dips along the curves of Charlee’s sides before sliding around to her back and bringing them flush together. She kisses Charlee’s shoulder. Her neck. Her ear. “I miss you.”
Charlee backs them toward the bed. They crawl in side by side, facing one another, and she leans over Alex to switch off the lamp. The room goes dark, plunged into shades of black and white but for a yellow glow flooding into the open doorway from the paneled windows of the great room.
They stare at each other in the dark, as they have done countless times before, with fingers tangling together in the slim space between their bodies. Neither breathes a word. Alex smells Charlee on the pillow under her cheek, feels the heat of her body only inches away, and is overwhelmed. Dizzy with it all.
Every step she had taken to get herself here had been hazy, a blur. But now, lying across from Charlee… “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more clearly in my life than I see you,” Alex says, and her voice is a mess from crying—rough and gritty like gravel.
Charlee takes a deep breath. Her lips draw up at the corners as she shakes her head slowly against the pillow. “I’m going to love you so hard, Alexandra Woodson.”
They inch across the minute space between them and wrap their arms fully around one another.
“And so soft,” Charlee says against Alex’s neck.
Alex shivers, clings to her. She buries her face in Charlee’s hair and wonders if this will ever stop feeling like a dream. Moisture dots her vision when Charlee’s fingertips skate up and down her back in soothing strokes that lull her toward sleep. It’s the best she has felt in longer than she can remember.
“Sleep,” Charlee says, still stroking along the length of Alex’s bare back. “I’ll still be here when you wake.”
Alex closes her eyes at Charlee’s gentle urging, and sleep comes free and easy, as it hasn’t in so terribly long.
With their bodies tangled together, they hold each other in the dark, and there’s no need to pretend. Some things do last forever.
“You look beautiful.”
Alex turned at the sound of Charlee’s raspy voice, found her leaning against the open door of their bedroom. “You should be sleeping.”
“You’re crying.”
“I’m leaving.”
Charlee crossed her arms over her naked chest, shivering a bit, and walked to the windows. “I know.”
Alex opened her arms, and Charlee burrowed in against her chest. “Are we sure this is what we want to do?”
&n
bsp; “I think it’s what we have to do,” Charlee said against the warm swell of Alex’s breast. “It makes the most sense, doesn’t it?”
Alex’s arms tightened around her, and her heartbeat thudded beneath Charlee’s ear. Slow and steady. “Nothing ever made sense until you.”
Tears pricked in Charlee’s eyes, but she blinked them away, cleared her throat, and poked Alex’s side. “You had a valedictorian medal hanging from your rearview mirror and a scholarship when you met me. So some things must have made sense.”
“I’m trying to express my feelings.” Alex’s nose nuzzled against the top of Charlee’s head.
Charlee closed her eyes, breathed in the comforting scent of Alex’s skin. “I’m trying not to fall apart.”
Charlee jerks awake. She’d rolled over to wrap around Alex and found only cold, empty sheets. Her stomach drops when her vision focuses. Alex is gone.
“No,” she says, heart stuttering beneath her ribs. “No, no.”
Charlee scrambles out of bed, nearly toppling herself in tangled sheets, and crosses to the opened sliding door. She stumbles, a half step out the door, and sees Alex just outside their bedroom. With a deep breath, she forces her heart to calm as she takes in the sight of her standing by the paneled windows of the far wall.
Her naked body is washed partly in shadow and partly in yellow light from the streetlight glow coming through the glass. Her sleep-mussed hair hangs down her back. She stands with one hand pressed to a square pane—an image from a dream. Charlee’s mouth goes dry.
Tingles ripple down her back as she takes a quiet step forward and says, “You look beautiful.” Alex turns to face her, a smile forming on her lips. “What are you doing out here?”
“I was just thinking.”
“What about?”
“You,” Alex says and then waves a hand to indicate the space around them. “All of this. Your art.”
“My art?”
“Mm,” Alex hums. “I was wondering what it must be like to see the world through an artist’s lens.”
“What do you mean?”
“You never doubt what you feel, Charlee. You never look at a situation and see all the ways you’re boxed in. You see all the ways you can set yourself free. You see possibilities.” Alex turns back toward the window and stares out at the city for a moment. “You look at a raindrop, and you see an entire universe.” She turns back to her with a shrug. “All I see is rain.”
“Alex.”
“And if I could see the world the way you do, maybe I wouldn’t have waited so long. Maybe I would’ve followed my heart sooner. Maybe we wouldn’t be so broken.”
“What happened wasn’t your fault.”
“I spent a long time blaming myself, though.”
“I know.”
They stare at one another in the dim wash of the streetlight. Even slouched and cold and teary-eyed, Alex is the most beautiful thing Charlee has ever seen. “Are you okay?”
“Are you?”
“I will be.” Charlee licks her dry lips. “We will be.”
Alex crosses her arms over her bare chest and sighs. “We hurt people.”
“Yeah,” Charlee says, wiping a hand down her face and rubbing at her tired eyes. “We did.” She walks over to the futon couch and motions Alex over. They sit down together, and Charlee grabs a blanket from the back of the couch. She wraps it around their shoulders and rests her head against Alex’s. “We hurt each other.”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll be okay.”
“Yeah.”
“Alex?”
“Charlee.”
“What are you thinking about now?”
“You,” Alex says again. “And me.” Her voice wavers. “All I want in the world is for us to be us again.”
“Even if it hurts sometimes?”
“That’s the only way it would be real,” Alex says with a wet, breathy laugh. “So yes.” She shifts to lie down, pulling Charlee with her so they are squished together on the couch, facing each other. “I want to work at it.”
“Me too.”
“I want to find us again, you know? Learn what it means to love each other again.”
Charlee’s insides stir with the words. Her breath stalls at the hitch in Alex’s, at the strained nature of her voice.
“I want to know we didn’t tear ourselves and everyone else apart for nothing, that we did it because we know we’re going to trust each other, take care of each other, hold on to each other.” Alex kisses Charlee’s nose. “Because we know that being together, no matter the obstacles, is worth it, and because we know that what happened before—”
“—isn’t going to happen again,” Charlee says, and Alex closes her eyes. Releases a slow breath, a confirmation.
Charlee lifts a hand, wipes it through the wet tracks still lingering on Alex’s cheeks. “Alex,” she says and waits for those green eyes to open again. When they do, Charlee cups her cheek and kisses her lips. “You want to know why you only see rain?”
Alex’s brow wrinkles for a moment, but then she squeezes Charlee’s side in answer, and Charlee smiles. She runs her thumb along Alex’s bottom lip.
“Because you are the universe,” she says, and every bit of her heart spills up into the words, the truth she has carried inside her since the day she followed a strange, beautiful girl into a private study room and kissed her like she was her soul mate. She was. She is. “And I see you.”
Alex draws in a ragged breath and clamps her eyes closed again. “I’m so sorry for everything, Charlee.”
Charlee kisses her again. Again and again. “So am I.”
When Alex urges her closer, she tucks farther in, and they hold each other so tightly that it borders on pain, but Charlee doesn’t care. It’s the best kind of pain. She yawns against Alex’s neck and feels her do the same.
“You should be sleeping,” Alex says, and Charlee eases back to look at her. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“You were crying.”
“Do you want to go back to bed?”
Charlee hesitates as Alex blows a gust of air up toward her cheeks and eyes and blinks away leftover tears. Her stomach lurches as she nibbles her bottom lip. When she doesn’t say anything, Alex looks at her. Her eyes soften, then Charlee is being embraced again.
“I’m staying, Charlee.”
Her chest expands, and Charlee feels her heart steady and then bloom.
“I’m staying.”
Chapter 14
As she waits, Charlee’s feet kick out back and forth over the edge of the table she’s sitting on. Her bottom lip is raw from chewing on it, and her stomach hasn’t stopped clenching since she arrived.
When the door opens, she stills.
“He’ll be with you in a moment,” a voice says from behind the doorway, at an angle where Charlee can’t see.
“Thanks.” Cam limps through the door a second later. She only manages a few steps into the room, the door closing behind her, before she looks up and freezes in place. One brow ticks up as she glances around the room and then back to Charlee.
“Hi.”
“Hey.” Cam’s voice is a bit rough, guarded. “What are you doing here?”
“Being a better friend,” Charlee says, and Cam’s shoulders lower just a touch. Her expression softens, just enough for Charlee to know that her being here isn’t as unwelcome as she feared it might be.
Cam glances down to the floor and scratches at the back of her head. “I guess Gabby told you about my appointment?”
“Yeah.” Charlee crosses the room to stand in front of her. “She told me last week that you asked her to lunch today, since you’d be at the hospital. I put the two together.”
“And then you got your mom to break the rules to find out when my appointment was.”
“No
.”
Cam narrows her eyes.
“Maybe.”
When Cam’s expression doesn’t change, Charlee huffs.
“Yes. My mom is friends with Aaron. I’m awful.”
Cam doesn’t say anything for several painfully long moments, but then she shrugs. Her lips lift at one corner. “Yeah,” she says. “But you’re kind of great too.”
A wide, unfettered smile breaks over Charlee’s face, a breath of relief rushing free.
“If you think this means you’re invited to lunch, though—”
Charlee launches forward, cutting Cam off with an embrace so tight it makes her wheeze. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too,” Cam says, returning the embrace.
“Don’t.” Charlee shakes her head, chin brushing atop Cam’s shoulder. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’ve been in my head and completely tuned out, and I’m glad you called me out on it.”
They hold each other for one long, silent moment before Cam mumbles into Charlee’s hair. “How are things with you and Alex?”
“Today isn’t about me and Alex. Today is about you.”
“My shit?”
“Yup,” Charlee says. “Your shit. Not mine.”
“Okay, I might consider letting you come to lunch if you’re paying.”
Charlee laughs. “I can do better than that, actually.”
Pulling back, Cam looks at her with narrowed eyes. “What’s better than free food?”
Before Charlee can answer, the door opens again and the prosthetist enters, a middle-aged man with a toothy smile and more hair on his face than on his head. He wears a white lab coat over jeans and a navy tie over his light-blue button-up.
“Camila,” he says. “I thought I wouldn’t be seeing you again until your biannual in March.”
“Yeah, well, remember in September when you said it was time for a new leg and so we did the fitting but I was like, ‘Nah, I’m cheap. It can wait a little longer’?”
Aaron laughs. “Can’t wait any longer, I’m guessing?”
