“He asked me to tell you to call him. He asked me to tell you that he misses you.”
Nan’s eyes are becoming glassy, and I don’t know whether to ask what in the world Charlie is talking about or bonk him on the shoulder for upsetting my grandmother.
“We’ll see,” she says.
I clear my throat, needing to put an end to this. “Charlie, is now a good time for glitter?”
I squeeze a dab of silvery gel into my palm and examine Charlie’s face, carefully avoiding eye contact. I’m on the couch facing him, legs folded beneath me, but even with Nan across from us, it feels intimate being this close.
“Something wrong?”
I meet his gaze then. “I’m not sure it’ll suit you.”
Flecks of gilt in pools of green shimmer back at me. “Everything suits me. Quit stalling, Alice.”
I tap my index finger in the gel and raise my hand to Charlie’s face, trying to figure out which part of it is safest to touch. It’s not the hard lines of his jaw or the laser focus of his stare that has me suddenly rattled; it’s the fact that he’s here, on my birthday, with a homemade cake and a gift that’s now an inside joke.
Charlie’s brows lift, and I realize I’ve been studying him for a preposterous length of time. I hear Nan shift and turn to see her reaching for her cane.
I immediately jump to my feet. “Do you need help?”
“I’m all right. Just need the ladies’ room.”
I face Charlie, alone. The quiet is too much.
“Music?”
I crouch beside John’s very out-of-date CD collection. Yikes. I go withThe Definitive Rod Stewart, and “Maggie May” begins to play.
“Rod Stewart?” he asks.
“Yup. Huge fan.”
I sit beside Charlie again and hover a finger over his cheekbone.
“You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
“I’m afraid of getting glitter on your jacket.”
Charlie laughs like he knows I’m full of crap and then shrugs off his jacket. He unbuttons his cuffs and rolls the sleeves of his shirt past his forearms.
“Better?” His gaze is a game of truth or dare.
“Uh-huh.”
I press my finger lightly to the upper edge of his right cheekbone and slide it up toward his temple. I feel his eyes on me, but I repeat the stripe on his left side without meeting them. If he sees my hand shaking, he doesn’t mention it.
“How do I look?”
I lean back to inspect my handiwork. Of course he can pull off glitter. “Pretty ridiculous.”
He smiles. “I doubt that.”
I leave Nan and Charlie to make the salad, and when I return to the living room, he’s sitting on a dining chair in front of her, painting her nails with the purple polish. He’s doing a terrible job, the tiny bottle cap ill fitted to his hands. I sneak past to get my camera. I take one shot of Charlie concentrating on Nan’s manicure, her fingers in his, and another when they both look up at me.
“Has Alice told you that this isn’t her first trip to the lake?” Nan asks when we’re all seated around the table with plates of lasagna. Charlie’s gaze shoots to me. “I brought her and her younger siblings for the entire summer when John and Joyce were traveling.”
“She didn’t mention that,” he replies, eyes on mine.
