Settled in the car, I put on Calvin Harris and rolled down the windows. It was a gorgeous day—no smog, clear blue sky, crisp air. Charli looked like a movie star meets an angel or something like that in her big shades and her hair whipping around her face, sticking to her lip gloss.
I already wanted to beg her to stay. Not to leave. We would send someone to her apartment to pack her stuff and ship it out.
“How about breakfast food?” I asked her. “I’m sure you have to be hungry.”
“Sounds good.”
I shifted gears and willed my hand not to run along her thigh, but it did anyway. Her warmth burned through her leggings, and all of a sudden they were too thick. I wanted them off.
“You look great,” I told her.
“I finally cut my hair. I had to compromise somewhere between theI go to the office every daylookand theI’m a homeless freelancer.”
“Pretty sure you could never bethatlook.”
“I know. Actually, the weekend my mom came to visit, she dragged me to a salon.”
“Ha! That’s sort of funny.”
“You weren’t there. She has this thing now with me being a professional. It’s so crazy because she was a groupie, wandering all over the country when she was in her early twenties. If she hadn’t met my dad and fell in love, she’d have gone on being a hippie, I’m sure.”
“Maybe she wants something different for you. Parents can be weird.”
“Eh, I don’t know. She’s sort of making me nuts. All of a sudden, she’s not supporting my wants.”
“I can’t say I have experience with it. Mine only wanted to see me grow up. Once I graduated college, they both went downhill so quickly.”
Her fingers laced through mine. I had told her during one of our late-night phone calls about my parents. My dad, no memory. My mom, no mobility. Together, they were a whole, but only half a person on their own.
Charli had said, “I wish we were chatting in person so I could run my hand up and down your back rather than compete with the static on the line.”She’d actually said that.
She was beautiful inside and out, and again the nerves were back. Not nerves about being with her, but fear of her leaving. I couldn’t let her slip away. Not this time.
Our fingers were still twined together, but I had to downshift and turn into the diner. It was one of those classic LA institutions with jukeboxes on the tables and a black-and-white checkerboard floor.
“Oh, wow, I just realized how much I want a cup of coffee,” she said when I came around to get her car door.
“It was a long flight. You left New York at five.”
She grabbed her tote from the floor and shrugged out of her sweater coat, leaving it on the seat.
We walked into the diner, my arm around her, my heart in her hands.
“Two,” I said as I flicked up two fingers to the hostess.
We were seated in a booth, and I let her slide in first. I sat across from her and our hands met over the table.
“This is sort of odd. It feels so comfortable, like we’ve done this before and it’s part of our routine.” She smiled as she spoke, her hair falling over her right eye.
I used my free hand to swipe it back and said, “I know. It’s all the e-mailing and talking. I feel like I know you better than I know myself. By the way, how’s the book?”
“It’s coming. I still can’t believe I sold the short stories, let alone signed a deal for three books.”
I’d read her stories, against her protests. She’d sent them to me after I begged, and those suckers were good. Not at all sappy like you’d think. Real, poignant, and full of pressure or something. I didn’t know the right word.
“What did they say your stories are full of?”
She laughed. “Angst.”
