What He Doesn't Know(29)

Charlie clasped her hand over mine.

"I was waiting for them to come home for dinner that night. I didn't  even know they'd been in the park, or that Mallory had been with them." I  choked out a laugh. "And I was just sitting there, smoking a cigarette  and playing that song. I don't even know why I was playing it. I was  bored, it was the first thing that came to me. I think I heard it the  first time at some point when I was at Juilliard, but I don't even  remember. I was just smoking and playing, waiting for them to come  home." I paused. "I was there to ask them for money."

Charlie didn't speak, just kept her hand over mine, letting me work  through the thoughts in my head. I didn't squeeze her hand in mine or  meet her eyes. I just stared at where her fingers overlapped mine.

"I didn't even know the shooting had happened. I was so immersed in  myself, in my own selfish wants. It was three years ago. I mean, I was  thirty-two. It's not like I was a child or like I was young. I was just  immature. I treated my girlfriend like a substitute for my mother, and I  blew my paychecks on gambling and partying because I knew my parents  would always be there. They'd always give me whatever I needed. They  never even asked why."

I blinked, and a flash of the television sparked behind my lids.

"The hospital called me. That's how I found out. They called my cell  phone, told me they believed they'd identified my sister as one of the  shooting victims." I sniffed. "I just said, ‘What shooting?'"

Charlie did squeeze my hand then, and I covered her thumb with my own, but I still couldn't look at her.

"I was such a piece of shit," I whispered, shaking my head. "It should have been me who died that day. Not them."

"Don't say that."

"Why not?" I challenged, looking at where our hands touched. "It's how I feel."

Charlie was quiet, but her fingers ran over the back of my hand in a  soothing line before she squeezed gently again. "I know how it feels,"  she said. "That loss, that unfillable void left behind when someone you  love is inexplicably ripped from the earth."

A burst of air swept through the veranda then, brushing her hair back as if it'd heard her.

"It never gets easier, no matter how many days or months or years pass.  Some days are quieter than others, but on the loud days, on the days  when everything you see and hear and do and feel reminds you of their  absence … " She squeezed my hand once more before tucking her arms tight  over her middle. "Those days are brutal."

Charlie used to be the unbroken one.

She used to be the positive voice of optimism to balance out my angsty  teenage depression. So many nights she had brought me some kind of hope,  even if I'd laughed at it in the moment she'd given it to me. But  tonight, she didn't attempt to fix the splitting of my soul. She only  crawled into the fault line with me, giving me company in the hollow  loneliness of it all.

"I know you hate your stretch marks, but I'm jealous of them."

Charlie frowned. "I don't understand."

"They're a memory forever etched into your body," I explained. "They're  proof of existence, proof that those boys lived inside you, that they  were a part of you and, even if only briefly, a part of this world. A  part of your life."

She touched her stomach carefully, her hands disappearing under  Cameron's jacket as her eyes lost focus somewhere off in the distance.

"I don't have that," I confessed. "Sure, I've got pictures. And I've got  an old house that someone else lives in now. I've got three small  things I kept from each of them, little tokens I hoped would bring me  comfort down the line. But they don't, you know? Nothing ever does. And  really, all I have is music. I have songs that bring me back to holidays  spent in our living rooms and road trips in Mom's van." I swallowed.  "And some that bring me back to that day, to that immediate emptiness  that seeped into my bones like a cold flood the moment I realized they  were gone."                       
       
           


///
       

Charlie let out a long exhale, closing the small bit of space between  us. "You have years and years of memories with your family, Reese. I  only have nine days." Her eyes glossed. "And that's only with Jeremiah.  With Derrick, I have nothing."

I blew out a frustrated breath. "God, I'm sorry. You're right. I should  be thankful, and I am. I didn't mean that I was jealous of your scars, I  guess I just meant that I think they're beautiful."

"It's okay," she assured me quickly with a smile, her hand rubbing over  her belly again. "I think I'm starting to see the beauty in them, too."

We were both silent for a moment, eyes balanced in the distance.

"Not that I think there should be any comparison," she said after a  while. "Or that one loss is more than the other, or that we can measure a  loss in the scars and memories left behind - but you have them, too.  You have scars." She pressed a cold, tiny hand over my heart, and I felt  the beat of it through her palm. "They're just not where you can see  them. But you can feel them." She shrugged. "You always will."

"It hurts," I admitted, voice breaking, and Charlie hugged me in an  instant, wrapping her petite arms around me. It took every ounce of  manhood I had left not to give into the urge to cry in that instant. I  hadn't cried since the day my family died, and I'd never cried in front  of Charlie. I didn't want to break that streak now.

But she felt like home. That hug, it felt like the only thing I had left  in the world, like the missing piece to a puzzle I didn't know was  incomplete.

"I know. I'm sorry." Her voice was just a whisper. "I wish I could say  that hurt goes away, but I know you know as much as I do that it  doesn't. And I know it's hard to hear, that it's easier to just put the  blame on yourself and wish it was you in their shoes, but there's a  reason you're still living, Reese. And they would want you to live  happily."

I didn't dare say another word, not when I had her in my arms like that.  The comfort I felt just from her being there, from her warmth pressed  against mine, from her being tucked into my chest like that - it was  more than I deserved. It was more than I knew I was allowed to have from  a woman who wasn't mine, but I took it greedily, like a hot meal  offered to a starving man.

"And you?" I asked after a moment, pulling back only enough to capture her gaze with my own. "Are you living happily?"

"I am."

"Don't lie."

She blinked, taking another step back - enough to break our hug. She  crossed her arms again. "I didn't come out here to talk about me, Reese.  Tonight isn't about me."

"It could be," I countered. "You made me feel better, maybe I could do the same."

"I feel great," she said with a smile that was almost convincing. To  anyone else, it would have sealed her lie with a perfect little bow -  but it didn't fool me.

The doors flew open then, and Mr. Reid's voice bellowed my name. He had  his arm around a guy my age, and he immediately launched into his name  and role at Westchester and why I needed to know him.

I barely registered any of it, because my eyes were still locked on Charlie.

She kissed her dad's cheek, clueing into the conversation well before I  did, then she offered me one last smile and flash of those doe eyes  before she slipped back inside.

The rest of the night was a blur of handshakes and dances, of stories  shared over dinner and jokes shared over bourbon. Charlie and I did a  sort of dance around each other, never existing within the same space  for long before one of us was swept off somewhere else. But I was aware  of her, and she of me, just like we always had been.

I wondered, distantly, if I would ever find a woman to make me feel the  way Charlie made me feel. Would my future wife know what to say on the  hard nights, how to bring me comfort only by existing. Charlie didn't  even have to have the right words that night - she just needed to be  there. To exist.

With her, with the way I felt for her - that was enough.

She'd always been enough for me, even when I'd had to sit on my hands to  keep from touching her when we were younger. Five years had separated  us then - five long, cruel, forbidden years. I didn't have the power to  change those years, to warp time, to make it okay for a  twenty-one-year-old to fall for a girl still in high school.

But as Charlie and Cameron said goodnight to everyone, I realized those  years weren't what separated us any longer. I held her a beat longer  than normal when she leaned in for a hug, thanking her for what she'd  given me that night, and then I shook Cameron's hand, all the while  wondering if what I'd heard about him was true.