“Cool,” Charlie says.
“Yeah.”
Awkwardness pulses through the air.
“Could you grab me a vape refill from back there?” he asks, eyes trained beyond Charlie.
Charlie moves on autopilot, pulling down the pink lemonade flavor. He recalls Max downing icy cups full of the sugary drink during summer months as they loitered at the old quarry. Funny how a decade can pass, your attitude can change, and yet a single person can still fling you back like a computer retrograding through old operating systems.
The pinch of Charlie’s shoulders and the sting in his sinuses makes him wonder if he ever quite shed the feeling ofbeing eighteen alone on a porch hoping his best friend/secret boyfriend would tell him it’s all been a big misunderstanding. Max standing here now is a symbol of everything Charlie couldn’t move past while stuck in this one-horse town.
“Haven’t had this flavor in a while,” Max says, mouth curving up. Charlie wonders what else Maxhasn’t had in a while. His cheeks heat with the memory of school nights in the shed behind his house. What it felt like to finally kiss and connect with a boy.
For a few years after, Charlie convinced himself he imagined everything between them. That Freida had been right. That’s how he sort of felt about his time in Italy, too. But that was easier to prove. All he needed to do was lift his shirtsleeve and see the tattoo there to know someone on the other side of the world was thinking of him and holding him in his heart.
“Your arm okay?” Max asks.
Charlie had not realized he was rubbing the spot where the eye candy tattoo is. “Yeah, all good. Cash or card?”
Max taps his credit card to the reader while Charlie bags up the beer and the vape juice. Questions swirl through his mind then disintegrate to mental dust. It is not his business if Max is living an authentic life married to Freida. It is not his concern if Max is happy.
In his head, he had imagined this moment countless times in those years following high school graduation. There were so many colorful and creative ways he could tell Max off for hurting him.
But he looks at Max now, shaky fingers punching in his pin number on the keypad, and all he sees is a scared boy in the body of a man. Saying any of those things, dredging up the junk from the basement, would only clutter Charlie’s own mental space again.
He will not let the bank take his house, he will not let his dad take his happily-ever-after, and he will not let Max take his peace of mind.
“Take care of yourself,” Charlie says, pushing the goods back through the window.
In a neater version of this situation, Max might have reached for the bag and then stopped himself, taken a breath, and acknowledged how he acted all those years ago. But not all love interests are heroes. Not all relationships get happy endings.
Charlie doesn’t even get a “You, too.”
All he receives is a head nod and a receipt with Max’s signature on it.
For a moment, he stares at the still-childish scrawl of Max’s script and wonders if like Slatington, Max has stilled in time.
The beating of Charlie’s heart reminds him that he is anything but frozen. He is hot-blooded and running toward a brighter future with Dario Cotogna.
TWENTY-FIVE
DARIO
The Cotogna family private jet sits fueled up on a tarmac ready to ferry Dario to America and into the waiting arms of Charlie Moore.
Dario Cotogna sits in the back of the idling town car with cement bricks for feet. He has made no move to exit the vehicle, even as Fabrizio shoots him questioning looks through the rearview mirror.
In his hand, he clutches his phone. On the screen, a text from Charlie reads: I can’t wait to kiss you <3
Earlier, he received a text from his mom:Have a safe trip. Text me when you land. Give my love to Charlie and our soon-to-be family-in-law.
He counts his inhales but every one of them gets caught up in his throat. Every signal his brain sends his muscles to move is counteracted on by a second contradictory signal of DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!
He did everything his therapist told him to. He rehearsed. Every night before bed he meditated on the ideal outcome. He even dry-swallowed one of his as-needed anxiety pills.
He’d run through the same steps to attend the blues festival with Charlie.
Maybe therein lies the issue.
