“Me personally? Uh, no,” I answered honestly. “I don’t think I can be housebroken. But it happens. My sister is head over heels for the guy she’s dating. They do this to me all the time.”
“So you believe in love, you just don’t think it’s for you?”
He finally had my attention. I looked up at him and blinked. “What’s with all the philosophical questions tonight, English? Are you trying to prove the Ice Queen is worthy of this raise?”
His cheeks heated with a rare blush. Shame, I realized. Charlie was embarrassed of what he’d said to me earlier. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Yeah, well it’s too late to take it back now.”
“Ada, I don’t think you’re an Ice Queen, I got frustrated. You’ve always been m—What I’m trying to say, is I realize our past has made it difficult for us to have a friendship these days. But sometimes I genuinely want to be friends. There’s no ulterior motive. Sometimes it’s just because you mean a lot to my family, and we care about you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, okay, whatever.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe your sister wrote that speech out for you to try to convince me to take the job. They were worried you’d be the thing keeping me away from it, and they might not be wrong. But honestly, you showing up with empathy is too little too late.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat. “Ada, this is enough. It’s been five years of punishing me. My sentence is fulfilled. Please, for the love, at least move me to probation.”
Was he serious? He wanted to make me the bad guy? Blame me for what happened? My feet dropped from the chair, and I sat up straight. “For fuck’s sake, not everything is about you. I’m not holding some insane grudge because we stopped sleeping together.” Small lie. “And that you think I’m punishing you because of something that happened a million years ago is... sad. I’m sorry you’ve been holding on to something I’ve basically forgotten about. And I’m really sorry that you feel like you’ve been wronged somehow. But maybe what you should do instead of making wrong assumptions about me and what I’m thinking is examine your own behavior. If you don’t like how I treat you, Charlie, maybe there are more recent reasons I might be a little standoffish.” I took a steadying breath to keep my voice from getting shrill. “Also, I wanted to point out that just because a girl, like myself, might respect herself and ask those around her to respect her too, doesn’t make her an Ice Queen.”
He cursed under his breath. I expected him to drop this because he didn’t usually stick around to fight. Hell, he didn’t usually stick around period. “I shouldn’t have said that earlier. But because I did, let’s talk about what I meant. I don’t think you’re an Ice Queen because of how you treat me. I think when other people try to get close to you, you push them away. You turn yourself into ice so nobody has access to you. Nobody can see what’s behind this fake-ass persona you feed to everyone.”
“I am not fake. I am always real.”
“You’re always this, Ada. And that’s not fucking real.” I sucked in a sharp, stinging breath. Those stupid tears pricked my eyes again, but I clenched my jaw and forced them back. “You want to talk about the past? Fine, let’s talk about how I saw the real version of you. And you’re not just feisty, you’re passionate, Ada. You’re fucking on fire with life. Or you used to be. You’re not just organized and good at your job, you’redriven. Which is so much more than clipboards and checklists. You’re not just sarcastic, you’re hilarious. But whoever this person is... this fake fucking facade you feel like people should see instead of the real you is burying you alive. You’re going to lose yourself trying to be someone you’re not, and I think it’s stupid.” He exhaled roughly and ran a hand through his hair in a way that made me feel like he’d rather rip it all out. “But sure, let’s keep blaming me for all your problems. That’s more convenient.”
He'd said so much.Too much. Honestly, I wondered if this day had been hired to assassinate me. Because honestly? How was I supposed to process all this nonsense? All this... my thought turned into an unintelligible scream inside my head.
I took that as a sign that I might not be winning this argument. But I wasn’t going to back down now.
So because I was exhausted and emotionally worn out and Charlie was the least of my problems, I grabbed at the lowest hanging fruit. “I don’t blame you for anything. We slept together a million years ago. And we both happen to be adults, so we moved on. I just said that.”
He rolled his eyes and looked away from me. His voice dropped, and his entire body seemed to sag. All of a sudden, the air around him was quiet and still. “I don’t think you blame me because you slept with me. I think you blame me because I walked away.”
The breath I sucked in scraped against my throat and rattled in my lungs. How dare he? How the fuck dare he? I jumped to my feet and prepared to run. “You’re mean, Charlie English. You’re fucking mean. And full of yourself. How—”
He whipped around the side of the bar and stalked toward me. “Ada, I’m not being mean. I’m being honest for once. The kid I was back then didn’t deserve you. You’re lucky I walked away. Five years ago, I was not a good person. I was lost. I had a grocery list of bad habits and coping mechanisms you wouldn’t have been able to tolerate. Or worse, would have gotten wrapped up in. You blame me for being a dickhead, and you are fully within your rights. But I did that shit on purpose. I burned that bridge on purpose. Because even back then, with all my fucking issues, I knew you were too good for a screwup like me.”
That was the closest thing I’d ever gotten to an apology from him. Honestly, as far as my battered ego went, it was better than an apology. We weren’t ever an official thing. We hooked up occasionally. We had fun. Charlie was... magic in the bedroom. And he was too charming to resist. I’d been a different person back then too.
He hadn’t owed me an apology then. And I genuinely hadn’t ever expected to get one. We had never put boundaries or labels on our relationship, and he knew I knew I had no right to say anything.
That was probably what hurt the most. That he knew what he was doing. That he did it on purpose. I’d been the foolish one wrapped up in the butterflies and fun of a blossoming something. I’d been all heart eyes and making sure I stayed late in case we got to be alone. And then he’d come into the bar with a date on a day he knew I’d be working. He let her hang all over him while they sat at a table in my section and made me wait on him. He’d acted like he only vaguely knew me. And then after that, it was as if there’d never been an us at all.
He was still playful and flirty and charming, but he made sure we were never alone. I never saw that girl again, but it didn’t matter. There were plenty after her.
The message had been clear. We weren’t a thing. We’d been temporary. We’d had our fun. We were over.I was replaceable. Someone easy to walk away from.
But by that time, I’d fallen in love with the bar, with his siblings, with my manager role. By that time, I was finally making enough to live a little better than paycheck to paycheck. Adleigh was going to graduate soon and my mom was making plans to leave for Florida, and I needed a steady, stable job to help my family pursue the things they loved and dreamed about.
He'd let me get established in his life and then showed me I could have everything I wanted except him.
Which was fine since, at the time, I didn’t even know if I wanted him. Like, I was having fun with what we were doing, but I wasn’t obsessed with him. I didn’t have real feelings for him. I just... I didn’t want to be tossed to the side the second he got distracted by another shiny thing.
I made a growly sound, frustrated that he’d actually convinced me to let go of some of my rage. Being angry felt good. Felt safe. I couldn’t afford to be soft or forgiving. “You could have said all that to me, Charlie. Didn’t you think I deserved an explanation?”
His cheeks heated with shame again. “Ada, I didn’t know how to say all that back then. I can make it sound noble now, but I had no idea what I was doing. I knew that you were the quality girl who deserved someone better than me. And I knew better than to mess around and wait until things got serious before I hurt you.”
