“Let’s do some low-key drugs.”
“You want to get high?”
“Only if you do.” Charlie examines the package. “I don’t think a piece of this will have much of an impact on me. It’s a mild dose. Won’t kick in for a bit.”
“Sure,” I say. “I can’t let Nan have all the fun. But will you stay with me? I don’t want to go on some kind of trip alone.”
He laughs. “You’re not going to trip, but yeah, I was planning to stick around, if you’ll have me.”
If you’ll have me.
We each break off a piece, grinning, and cheers them together.
“I don’t know if I’m high yet,” I say to Charlie forty-five minutes later. We decided to start a puzzle—a unicorn drinking from a river that I found at Stedmans—and are working on it on the floor by the fire.
“No?” Charlie’s lying on his side, his head propped on his hand. “You’ve been staring at that piece in your hand for ages.”
“Oh my god, I hadn’t noticed.” I start giggling. “Charlie, I might be a little high.”
“You might be,” he says, dimples winking.
“But I don’t feelhighhigh.”
“How do you feel?”
I look into the flames.
“Alice?”
“Pardon?” I turn back to Charlie.
“You okay?”
“I’m just thinking. I think I feel…kind of light and floaty? And warm, which is probably because I’m sitting in front of an actual fire. But also, just like, less sharp, you know?”
He looks at me with a soft, melting gaze. “Yeah, I know.”
The firelight flickers over Charlie’s face, making his hair more golden. His smile is deep. I reach out and press my finger into one of his dimples, and he arches a brow.
“Sorry,” I say. “It was beckoning to me.”
He laughs. “Youarehigh.” I move my finger to the other one. He lifts his brows again, amused. He looks so young.
“You remind me of when you were a boy.”
“You didn’t know me when I was a boy.”
“But I can imagine it when you’re like this.”
“Like what?”
Sometimes I catch Charlie looking at me, or staring at the water, or studying his hands, and he seems so mournful, my entire body aches. He’s experienced such profound loss. But he brushes it off whenever I ask what’s bothering him.
“Happy,” I tell him. “You look happy.”
His grin falls. The dimples disappear.
“Don’t do that.” I move my fingers to either side of his mouth, trying to pull the edges back up. “Be happy.”
