“You sure?”
“Yes, but can you turn the lights off so it’s darker?”
He flicked them off, allowing the stars to take center stage once more, punctuating the night like glimmers of hope in all this pain.
The window seat was huge, as was the window it sat under, meaning we could lie back and look directly out into the vastness of the expanse in front of us. Right now, the sea was reasonably calm, but we knew the storm was coming; you could feel it in the air and I couldn’t wait to be able to watch it crash around us from the safety of our tower.
“Wine?”
“What would Neo say?” I scoffed.
“I don’t think even I can get into trouble in the middle of nowhere and I think he’d tell us to have a glass after the last twenty-four hours.”
I grinned. “I agree. Fill it to the top.”
He poured it and handed it to me. I took a sip, groaning as the bitter liquid flooded my tastebuds. Charlie climbed under the blankets with me, both of us sitting back against the pillows. “How’s the cheek?”
I turned to face him. “Hurts like fuck.”
“And the rest of you.”
“Sore, aching, but it could have been so much worse. If you hadn’t—”
“I would do it again in a heartbeat.”
“Because you promised Neo you’d look after me?”
“Because I’m not the asshole everyone assumes I am, and you don’t deserve to be hurt. Not ever.”
I smiled because I was starting to see what a good guy Charlie was, despite how hard he tried to hide it.
We sat in silence, staring out of the window and drinking our wine. I liked the silence with Charlie. It was easy. I didn’t feel like I needed to fill it or try to fix it. It was just there.
“I can’t believe how many stars are up there,” Charlie murmured eventually.
“I know. I wish I could see a shooting one.”
“Why?”
“You know… make a wish and all that.”
“If the sky is full of stars that are light years away and might not even exist anymore, I think we can assume there are shooting stars out there right now. You don’t need to see one to make a wish. Make it anyway. What would you wish for?”
“That’s easy. For this week not have happened.”
“I get that, but then you wouldn’t have met Ari. You wouldn’t have got to spend time with me.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “You wouldn’t have got to see this place and make wishes right now. So it’s not all bad, is it?”
“No,” I whispered. “But—”
Charlie spoke over me before I could finish my sentence. “But you can’t invent a time machine and stop James doing what he did, so don’t waste your wishes on him. What else would you wish for?”
I took a large sip of my wine, letting out my biggest wish. “I wish there’d been someone else.”
My words were met by silence.
“I’ve only ever been with James. He was my first. Despite what he thinks about my behavior, I’ve never been with anyone else. Until you kissed me yesterday, I’d never even been kissed by another man.”
More silence.
