“Forget all of that,” I say, rubbing my hand in reassuring circles over her back. “Fortune-telling, tarot readings…it’s ridiculous, Charlie.”
She pulls her face from my shirt and looks up at me. “Yeah. Ridiculous like the both of us waking up at school with no memory of who we are?”
I close my eyes and pull away from her. I run my hands through my hair, the frustration from the day catching up to me. I can make light of it all with my jokes. I can dismiss her theories—from tarot readings to fairy tales—simply because it doesn’t make sense to me. But she’s right. None of this makes sense. And the more we try to uncover the mystery, the more I feel like we’re wasting our damn time.
His lips fold in and he shakes his head. He wants out of here. I can feel his edginess.
“Maybe we should go back and ask her more detailed questions,” I suggest.
“No way,” he says. “I’m not entertaining that again.” He starts to walk away, and I consider going back in there myself. I’m just about to take my first step toward the shop when the “Open” sign in the window turns off. The shop is in sudden darkness. I chew on the inside of my cheek. I could come back when Silas isn’t around. Maybe she’d talk to me more.
“Charlie!” he calls.
I run after him until we’re walking side by side again. We can see our breath as we walk. When did it get this cold? I rub my hands together.
“I’m hungry,” I say.
“You’re always hungry. I’ve never seen someone so small eat so much.”
He doesn’t offer to feed me this time, so I continue to walk beside him. “What just happened back there?” I ask. I’m trying to make a joke of it, but my stomach feels funny.
“Someone tried to scare us. That’s it.”
I look up at Silas. Mostly everything together except those shoulders, which are tense. “But what if she’s right? What if there weren’t any blank cards in her tarot deck?”
“No,” he says. “Just no.”
I bite my lip and sidestep a man dancing backward down the sidewalk.
“I don’t understand how you can dismiss something so easily, considering our circumstances,” I say from between my teeth. “Don’t you think—”
“Why don’t we talk about something else,” Silas says.
“Right, like what we’re going to do next weekend? Or how about we talk about what we did last weekend? Or maybe we talk about…” I smack my hand against my forehead. “The Electric Crush Diner.” How could I forget about that?
“What?” Silas asks. “What’s that?”
“We were there. You and me, last weekend. I found a receipt in my jeans pocket.” Silas is watching me recount all of this with a look of mild annoyance on his face. “I took Janette there for dinner last night. A server recognized me.”
“Hey!” he yells over my shoulder. “If you touch her with that I’ll break you in half!”
I glance behind me and see a man pointing a foam finger at my butt. He backs off when he sees the look on Silas’s face.
“Why didn’t you tell me that?” Silas says under his breath, directing his attention back to me. “That’s not like tarot readers, that’s something important.”
“I really don’t know. I meant to…”
He grabs my hand, but this time it’s not for the pleasure of our palms pressing together. He drags me down the street with one hand while typing something into his phone with the other. I’m both impressed and mildly annoyed at being spoken to like that. We may have been something in our other life, but in this life I don’t even know his middle name.
“It’s on North Rampart Street,” I say, helpfully.
“Yeah.”
He’s pissed. I kind of like the emo-ness of it. We pass through a park with a fountain. Street vendors have set up their artwork along the fence; they stare at us as we pass by. Silas is taking one step to my three. I trot to keep up. We walk so far until my feet hurt and finally I yank my hand free of his.
He stops and turns around.
I don’t know what to say, or what I’m mad at, so I place my hands on my hips and glare at him.
“What’s wrong with you?” he says.
“I don’t know!” I shout. “But you can’t just drag me around the city! I can’t walk as fast as you and my feet hurt.”
This feels familiar. Why does this feel familiar?
He looks away and I can see the muscles working in his jaw. He turns back to me and everything happens quickly. He takes two steps and scoops me off my feet. Then he resumes his pace with my bouncing ever so slightly in his arms. After my initial squeal, I settle down and clasp my arms around his neck. I like it up here where I can smell his cologne and touch his skin. I don’t recall seeing perfume among Charlie’s things, and I doubt I would have thought to put any on. What does that say about Silas? That in the midst of all of this, he thought to pick up a bottle and spray cologne on his neck before he left the house this morning. Was he always the type of person who cared about the little things—like smelling good?
As I think these thoughts, Silas stops to ask a woman who has fallen in the street if she’s all right. She’s drunk and sloppy. When she tries to stand up, she steps on the hem of her dress and falls back down. Silas sets me down on the sidewalk and goes to help her.
“Are you bleeding? Did you hurt yourself?” he asks. He helps her stand, leads her back to where I’m waiting. She slurs her words and pats him on the cheek, and I wonder if he knew when he went to help her that she was homeless. I wouldn’t touch her. She smells. I step away from both of them, and watch him watch her. He’s concerned. He keeps his eyes on her until she’s stumbled off down the next street, and then he swings his head around to find me.
In this moment—right now—it’s so clear to me who Charlie is. She’s not as good as Silas. She loves him because he’s so different from her. Maybe that’s why she went to Brian, because she couldn’t live up to Silas.
Like I can’t.
He half smiles at me, and I think he’s embarrassed to be caught caring. “Ready?”
I want to tell him that what he did was nice, but nice is such a silly word for kindness. Anyone could pretend to be nice. What Silas did was innate. Boldfaced kindness. I haven’t had any thoughts like that. I think about the girl in class the first morning who dropped her books at my feet. She’d looked at me with fear. She expected me not to help. And more. What else?
Silas and I walk in silence. He checks his phone every few minutes to make sure we’re headed in the right direction and I check his face. I wonder if this is what a crush feels like. If watching a man help a woman is supposed to illicit these types of feelings. And then we’re here. He points across the street and I nod.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
But it’s almost not. The diner has transformed since I was here with Janette. It’s loud and pumping. There are men lined up on the sidewalk smoking; they part for us as we walk by. I can feel the bass in my ankles as we stand outside the doors. They open for us as a group leaves. A girl walks past me laughing, her pink fur jacket brushing against my face. Inside, people are defending their space with widened elbows and jutted hips. People glare at us as we walk by. This is my space, back off. I’m waiting for the rest of my group—keep moving. We bypass the few empty seats in favor of walking deeper into the building. We press through the crowd, walking sideways, and flinching when raucous laughter erupts next to us. A drink spills on my shoes, someone says sorry. I don’t even know who, because it’s so dark. And then someone calls our names.
“Silas! Charlie! Over here!”
A boy and…who was that girl who picked me up this morning? Annie…Amy?
“Hey,” she says, as we draw close. “I can’t believe you actually came back here after last weekend.”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Silas asks.
I take the seat I am offered and stare up at the three of them.
“You punch a guy, throw over a couple of tables and wond
er why you shouldn’t come back?” the boy says, along with a laugh. I think he’s Annie/Amy’s boyfriend by the way he looks at her—like they’re in on something together. Life, maybe.
It’s how Silas and I look at each other. Except we really are in on something together.
“You acted like an ass,” she says.
“Amy,” the spare boy says. “Don’t.”
Amy!
I want to know more about this person Silas punched.
“He deserved it,” I say. Amy raises her eyebrows and shakes her head. Whatever she’s thinking, she’s too afraid to say it, because she turns away. I try her boyfriend next. “Don’t you think so?” I ask innocent-like. He shrugs. Goes to sit next to Amy. They’re all scared of me, I think, but why?
I order a Coke. Amy’s head snaps around to look at me when she hears.
“Regular Coke? Not Diet?”
“Do I look like I need to drink diet?” I snap. She shrinks back. I don’t know where that came from—honest to god. I don’t even know how much I weigh. I decide to shut up and let Silas do the detective work before I offend someone again. He drops down next to Amy’s boyfriend and they begin to talk. The music makes it impossible to eavesdrop, and Amy is doing her best not to look at me, so I people-watch. People…they all have memories…know who they are. I’m jealous.
“Let’s go, Charlie.” Silas is standing above me, waiting. Amy and her boyfriend are watching us from across the table. It’s a big table, I wonder who else is coming to join them and how many of those people hate me.
Out of the restaurant and back onto the street. Silas clears his throat.
“I got into a fight.”
“I heard,” I say. “Did they tell you who it was?”
“Yeah.”
I wait and, when he doesn’t offer the information, I say, “Well…?”
“I punched the owner in the face. Brian’s father.”
My head snaps around. “What the hell?”
“Yeah,” he says. He rubs the scruff on his chin thoughtfully. “Because he said something about you…”
“Me?” I get a sick feeling in my stomach. I know what’s coming, but I don’t know what’s coming.
“He told me he was giving you a job as a waitress…”
Okay, that’s not so bad. We need the money.
“Because you were Brian’s girl. So I punched him, I guess.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. That kid—Eller—told me we needed to leave before Brian’s dad called the cops.”
“The cops?” I echo.
“I guess Brian’s dad and my dad have worked together on some stuff. He agreed not to press charges last week because of it, but I’m not supposed to go back there. Also, Landon has been calling around, looking for me. Apparently my dad is wondering why I left practice. Everyone’s pretty pissed about that.”
“Oops,” I say.
“Yeah, oops.” He says it like he doesn’t care.
We go back the way we came, both of us quiet. We pass a few street artists I didn’t notice before. Two of them look like a couple. The man is playing the bagpipes while the woman draws pictures in colored chalk on the sidewalk. We step over the drawings, both of our heads down, examining. Silas takes out his camera and snaps a few pictures while I watch her turn a few lines into a couple kissing.
A couple kissing. That reminds me.
“We need to kiss,” I say to him.
He almost drops his phone. His eyes are big when he looks at me.
“To see if something happens…like in the fairy tales we talked about.”
“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, sure. Okay. Where? Now?”
I roll my eyes and walk away from him, toward a fountain near a church. Silas follows behind. I want to see his face, but I don’t look. This is all business. I can’t make it into something else. It’s an experiment. That’s it.
When we reach the fountain, we both sit down on the rim of it. I don’t want to do it this way, so I stand up and face him.
“Okay,” I say, coming to stand in front of him. “Close your eyes.”
He does, but there’s a grin on his face.
“Keep them closed,” I instruct. I don’t want him to see me. I barely know what I look like; I don’t know if my face contorts under pressure.
His head is tilted up, and mine is tilted down. I put my hands on his shoulders and feel his hands lift to my waist as he pulls me closer, between his knees. His hands slide up without warning, his thumbs grazing my stomach and then making a quick swipe along the underside of my bra. My stomach clenches.
“Sorry,” he says. “I can’t see what I’m doing.”
I smirk this time and I’m glad he can’t see my reaction right now. “Put your hands back on my waist,” I command.
He puts them too low and now his palms are on my ass. He squeezes a little, and I smack his arm.
“What?” He laughs. “I can’t see!”
“Up,” I say. He slides them a little higher, but slowly. I tingle down to my toes. “Higher,” I say, again.
He takes them up a quarter of an inch. “Is this—”
Before he can finish his sentence, I lean my face down and kiss him. He’s smiling at first, still in the middle of his little game, but when he feels my lips, his smile dissolves.
His mouth is soft. I lift my hands to his face and cup it as he pulls me tighter, wrapping his arms around my backside. I’m kissing down and he’s kissing up. At first, I expect to just give him a peck. That’s all they ever show in the fairy tales—a quick peck and the curse is broken. We’d have gotten our memories back by now if this were going to work. The experiment should be over, but neither of us stops.
He kisses with soft lips and a firm tongue. It’s not sloppy or wet, it moves in and out of my mouth sensually as his lips suck softly on mine. I run my fingers up the back of his neck and into his hair, and that’s when he stands, forcing me to take a step back and change position. I do a good job of hiding my gasp.
Now I’m kissing up and he’s kissing down. Except he’s holding me to him, his arm wrapped around my waist, his free hand curled around the back of my neck. I cling to his shirt, dizzy. Soft lips, dragging…tongue between my lips…pressure on my back…something pressing between us that makes me feel a riot of heat. I push away, gasping.
I stand there looking at him, and he looking at me.
Something has happened. It’s not our memories that have awoken, but something else that makes us feel drunk.
And it occurs to me as I stand here, wanting him to kiss me again, that this is exactly what doesn’t need to happen. We’re going to want more of the new us and we’ll lose focus.
He slides a hand down his face as if to sober himself up. He smiles. “I don’t care what our real first kiss was,” he says. “That’s the one I want to remember.”
I stare at his smile long enough to remember it, and then I turn and walk away.
“Charlie!” he yells.
I ignore him and keep walking. That was stupid. What was I thinking? A kiss isn’t going to bring our memories back. This isn’t a fairy tale.
He grabs my arm. “Hey. Slow down.” And then, “What are you thinking?”
I keep walking in the direction I’m certain we came from. “I’m thinking I need to get home. I have to make sure Janette has eaten dinner…and…”
“About us, Charlie.”
I can feel him staring at me. “There is no us,” I say. I bring my eyes back to his. “Haven’t you heard? We were obviously broken up and I was dating Brian. His dad was giving me a job. I…”
“We were an us, Charlie. And holy shit, I can see why.”
I shake my head. We can’t lose focus. “That was your first kiss,” I say. “It could feel like that with anyone.”
“So it felt that way for you too?” he asks, running around to stand in front of me.
I consider telling him the truth. That if I were dead like Snow White and he kissed me like that,
surely my heart would kick back to life. That I’d be the one to slay dragons for that kiss.
But we don’t have time to kiss like that. We need to find out what’s happened and how to reverse it.
“I didn’t feel anything,” I say. “It was just a kiss and it didn’t work.” A lie that burns my insides it’s so foul. “I have to go.”
“Charlie…”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I lift a hand over my head and wave because I don’t want to turn around and look at him. I’m afraid. I want to be with him, but it’s not a good idea. Not until we figure more of this out. I think he’s going to follow me, so I wave over a cab. I open the door and look back at Silas to show him that I’m fine. He nods, and then lifts his phone to snap a picture of me. The first time she left me, he’s probably thinking. He then buries his hands in his pockets and turns in the direction of his car.
I wait until he’s past the fountain before I lean down to speak to the driver. “Sorry, I changed my mind.” I slam the door and step back to the curb. I don’t have money for a cab anyway. I’ll go back to the diner and ask Amy for a ride.
The cabbie peels off and I duck down a different street so Silas won’t see me. I need to be alone. I need to think.
Another night of shitty sleep. Only this time, my lack of sleep wasn’t because I was worried about myself, or even worried about what made Charlie and me lose our memories. My lack of sleep was strictly because I had two things on my mind: our kiss, and Charlie’s reaction to our kiss.
I don’t know why she walked away, or why she preferred to take a cab over riding with me. I could tell by the way she responded during the kiss that she felt what I was feeling. Of course it wasn’t like the kisses in fairy tales that could end a curse, but I don’t think either of us really expected it to. I’m not sure we really had any expectations for the kiss at all—just a little bit of hope.
What I certainly didn’t expect was for everything else to take a backseat once her lips pressed against mine, but that’s exactly what happened. I stopped thinking about the reason we were kissing and everything we had been through all day. All I could think about was how she was clenching my shirt in her fists, pulling me closer, wanting more. I could hear the small gasps of air she was sucking in between kisses, because as soon as our mouths met, we were both breathless. And even though she stopped the kiss and stepped away, I could still see the dazed look on her face and the way her eyes lingered on my mouth.
Never Never: The Complete Series Page 12
