Page 30 of My Favorite Lost Cause
Idream that night about my wedding day. I’m at my mother’s house—still in a robe but with my hair and makeup done. All that’s left, really, is to put on the dress. My mother is doing her usual thing, panicking unnecessarily, flapping her hands and yelling at me to go upstairs and get ready just like she did on my real wedding day. I pass Charlie in the hallway on the way up—delicious in a tux, minus the jacket—and he must see something in my face. When I get to my room he’s there, behind me. “Let’s have a chat,” he says, following me inside. He shuts the door behind him and flips the lock.
I don’t think he’s ever been in here before. He’s certainly never been in here with me alone, behind a locked door.
I have a single, crazy thought:and now he never will be.
And that thought makes my throat tighten, as if I’m losing something that matters.
It’s just cold feet.It must be.
He puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes me to sit on the little ottoman beside my vanity, and then he crouches in front of me. “What’s wrong?” he demands.
I’m sad that the two of us will never be alone like this again, not in the way I suddenly want to be, and that’s way too crazy to ever give voice to.
“Nothing.” My voice is faint. I force a smile to make up for it. “Just pre-wedding jitters.”
A muscle flickers in his jaw. “You don’t have to do this, Maren. I can sneak you out the back. We can go anywhere you want.”
He doesn’t suggest he’d be doing this as anything but my stepbrother, as anything but my friend. But the possibility that we are something more is there, isn’t it? His eyes burn in a way that says more than a volume of poetry ever could.
I picture myself jumping onto a plane with Charlie, taking him to my favorite island in the Azores. I picture some brief debate about whether we’ll need one room or two, and we’ll end up in one. I picture his hands—still on my shoulders—pushing the robe off to reveal me.
Except I’m the daughter of two reckless people—a woman who has cycled through boyfriends and husbands, and a man who took off before I was born and later knocked up a student two decades his junior. I want a normal family, a normal life. Things I can have with Harvey. Leaving now—it’s the kind of shit my mother would do. But is making the mature choice supposed to feel like dying inside?
“Okay,” I tell Charlie, untying the robe. “Let’s go.”
I wake in the darkness, my heart hammering. It happened. Aside from that last bit, the part where I agreed to go, it happened just the way it did in my dream. How could I have forgotten?
Maybe I read too much into what he was saying. Maybe I read into that look on his face.
I must have. We’re family. There’s no way he wanted me to run away with him likethat, in a romantic sense.
Only now, in the dark, will I admit something to myself, something I’m never going to think about again: he might not have wanted it that way, but I did.
I’m makingbreakfast with my left hand and scrolling through tile samples with my right when Charlie calls my name from the foyer. He sounds amused. “You got a delivery,” he says, arching a brow and nodding toward the oak nearest the house, against which two bikes are leaning.
My stomach sinks. I’d pictured staying here longer. I’d pictured spending Sunday—the day Elijah and his guys aren’t working—exploring the area with him.
“I bought bikes.”
“Yes, I actually deduced that part myself.Whydid you buy bikes, Maren?”
Suddenly my reasoning sounds incredibly childlike.I thought it would be fun. I thought we could have a picnic.
“It’s a good form of exercise. And I thought I’d have more time here.”
“Since when do you care about exercise?”
“Fine. I thought it would be fun. Never mind! I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.”
A slow, sweet smile spreads across Charlie’s face. “You thought it would be fun. That’s all you had to say.”
A shiver races over my skin, and it’s both bad and good.
It’s a shiver that saysthis is what life could be like with someone who actually cares about you, someone who cares about your happiness. This is what you’re giving up, remaining with Harvey, and why would you ever be willing to live without it?
I walk away, pulling out my phone to text Harvey as I go.
Hey, I’m not coming home tomorrow after all, but I’ll be back on Saturday in time for your event.
