He didn’t need to be told twice.
twenty
I ranmy fingers through Charlie’s wet hair as I rested my head against his big pillows. Somehow, he’d moved in his sleep and was now using my stomach as his pillow, but I didn’t push him away. I would take any excuse I had to be closer to this boy.
I looked around his room, taking in all the decorations. This was one of the few times I’d ever actually been in here and, until now, I’d never really appreciated what it told me about Charlie. His blue comforter and overflowing bookshelves and strangely organized desk… all little pieces of the boy I loved. Moving as gently as I could to avoid jostling him too much, I grabbed my phone from where it had been discarded on the nightstand earlier. I used my free hand to pop the case off and pull the note out, looking at it again for the first time since I’d shown it to him at the lake.
“What are you doing?” Charlie asked sleepily.
“Shhh,” I whispered. I brushed a thumb across his cheek. “Go to sleep.”
We’d come up here to nap after going for a swim but that plan hadn’t gone perfectly. He shook his head and moved so his chin was against my stomach and he was looking up at me.
“Did you really carry that paper around for two years?”
I giggled a little. From embarrassment or not, I wasn’t sure. “Yeah. I did.”
“Did you look at it a lot?” he asked.
“Almost every day.” My chest tightened as I thought about the pain I’d felt over the past two years, re-reading that note and wondering whether what I’d written on the back would be true. In the end, it wasn’t... but could Charlie and I survive that? Charlie gently pulled the paper from my hand so he could read over it himself, a smile growing on his face as he did so.
“My turn for a question,” I said. His gaze flew back to mine.
“What do you want to know?”
“Was I really the best kiss of your life?”
He smirked. “You really think I would lie to you?”
“Well, you didn’t know it was me,” I said. “So I couldn’t say for certain.”
“Well, I wasn’t lying,” he said. He kissed my thumb. “I promise.”
“Did you ever suspect it was me?”
“At the time? The thought never even crossed my mind. I couldn’t think about you that way... if Matt even suspected I was thinking about you that way, then, well...” He brushed a hand across his face, which was still healing from the fight.
“But?”
“But when I kissed you at the lake—for what I thought was the first time—it felt familiar. And I knew it couldn’t be, not really, because we’d never... When you told me, everything just fell into place. Like my world somehow righted itself.”
I took a deep breath. The scent of his cologne overwhelmed me, taking me back to the night in the closet. So long ago, yet it felt like it could have been yesterday.
“And now?” I asked. “Am I still the best kiss of your life?”
Charlie shifted, moving his way up until his head was beside mine on the pillow. He tucked a hair behind my ear, then leanedforward and pressed a gentle kiss to my mouth. Such a soft, sweet gesture... yet one that meant so much.
“Oh, Mads...” he whispered. “Every time I get to kiss you is the best moment of my life.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Charlie asked as we walked into the house. “I don’t think Matthew wants anything to do with me right now.”
“This isn’t going to be solved by you two just avoiding each other,” I said. “You need to sit down. Talk. Forgive.”
“Might I remind you that I’m not the one you need to be saying this to,” Charlie said. “I don’t have a problem with him.”
“Sit,” I said, gesturing to the kitchen table. “And wait here.”
I walked to the bottom of the stairs and cupped my hands around my mouth. “Matthew, can you come down here for a sec?”
