Sensing my confusion, Charlie asked, “Is that okay?”
“Yeah, it’s great. I love sushi.”
He turned his head and smiled at me. “I know.”
There were hole-in-the-wall sushi places that should be avoided at all costs unless food poisoning was on your bucket list. This place, which didn’t even have a sign or a name or any way to identify what was in it, was not that place. This was the kind of place with four tables, a master of sushi chef hand rolling fresh rolls from behind an open counter, a server happy to pour generous glasses of sake, and a meal so crisp and delicious you hoped nobody else found out about it so you could keep it all to yourself.
Charlie knew the menu backward and forward and ordered what seemed like one of everything.
We started with the most perfect bite of wagyu beef I’d ever had. It was slathered in uni butter and mint chutney. Then we had yellowtail on freshly baked sourdough with a tamari spread. There were hardboiled eggs with caviar and thinly sliced Thai peppers. There was spicy edamame. And so much sake.
And this was only the appetizer course.
After I raved about the food, I asked a question that had been bugging me for a couple of weeks. “Charlie, how come you didn’t take the loft? I mean, clearly, you knew Will was moving out. So why didn’t you grab it?”
He held my gaze from across the table, and I saw the indecision flicker in his eyes. And when he explained, I realized he was deciding how honest he should be.
“I was supposed to take it,” he said. “Will made it seem like the move happened all of a sudden, but we always knew they’d move out before the baby was born. Eliza didn’t want the apartment because she wants Jonah to buy a house too. So the loft went to me by default.”
I nearly choked on my sake. “Why didn’t you say that?”
“If you knew I was going to move in, would you have taken it?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “How close were you to moving in?”
He shrugged. “I would have moved in this weekend too.” Then he laughed at my outraged expression. “Ada, it’s not a big deal. My landlord wasn’t raising my rent and was happy to work with me when I said I wanted to renew. It all worked out.”
“Except that you could have been homeless because of me.”
He waved me off. “I would have found a different place. There’s no shortage of overpriced apartments in this section of town. Or I could have crashed with Eliza. It was more important that you had a place.”
“Charlie—”
He reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “I don’t need the loft, Ade. It was a thing for Will. Like a symbol of the bar and his life and this thing that we’re doing. But it’s not that for me. I want you happy. I want you... settled. That’s more important.” He shrugged. “Besides, like I said, it worked out.”
My gratitude for the loft and what it meant bubbled over. His generosity floored me. And his blasé attitude about his living arrangement. “Thank you,” I told him. I’d said it before, but this time it meant more; it meant everything I hadn’t known before.
His smile was tender, warm. Intimate. “See? Worth it.”
I tried not to swoon. Then I changed the subject so I could interrupt this whole falling for him thing in a way that would keep it from being hard and permanent. “So is the sushi because of gluten?”
His brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”
“Because you gave up gluten. Is that why we’re all protein tonight?”
He laughed, and it was all straight white teeth and laugh lines around his eyes. God, he was beautiful. “No, sorry. The whole gluten-free thing didn’t last very long. Do you know how much gluten there is in the world? Apparently, it’s in everything I like.”
I laughed, too, because, yes, I had known that. “Did you notice a difference at all? Like when you did give it up?”
His expression sobered, and I watched him grow more serious, more... honest. He was less charming facade and more open heart and soul pouring out than I knew what to do with. “Do you know how easy it is to try something because you want it to be true? Do you know what I mean? Like there’s this promise of losing weight or being in better shape or thinking clearly attached to a product or a diet or, I don’t know, whatever it is. And you want it to be true so badly you just reach for it and hope for the best. That was gluten-free for me. I’m not even sure I believed it would help. I just wanted a quick, easy solution to something I internally knew would take actual effort.” His eyes narrowed. “I was too afraid to do the real work, so I reached for the easiest snake salesman solution.” He tilted his head. “Not that it can’t work for some people, but at some point, we need to take stock of what’s happening and fix the problem. Not just treat the symptoms.”
Was this really Charlie English? Was this really coming out of his mouth? I hardly knew what to do with him. It wasn’t that he’d managed to totally surprise me with all these mature thoughts and the personal effort he was putting into himself. It was that he was making me rethink everything I thought. All the bad habits I’d allowed in my own life. All the wrong thought patterns I’d let exist for too long.
“So what did you do?” I was transfixed at this point. Totally enthralled.
He shrugged, embarrassed. “I reached for help again. Started working on myself. Changed up some eating and workout patterns. Nothing that was so overarching as gluten-free. But basically more organized habits. I was living in chaos, right? So then I shouldn’t have been surprised when my thought life or behavior patterns reflected chaos.” He laughed. “Basically, it came down to taking responsibility for myself. Things changed significantly once I learned that things didn’t just happen to me randomly, but I had control and authority over what I allowed.”
“When?” I felt breathless at this man I had never met before. “When did you start this?”
