Page 9 of Charlie
“Yes.” Right then a set of tics underlined it.
“But I thought Tourette’s was people swearing and cursing at random times.”
“It can be, but that’s rare.”
“Liv, are you coming?” One of her friends popped her head out the door and called for her. “Oh, and bring tall and handsome with you. We’ll grind up against his sober ass and bring out the Christmas spirit.”
That comment made me smile a little.
“I’ll be right there, Sydney.” Charlie turned her attention back to me. “You were saying?”
I told her about my involuntary tics. “That’s why I was blinking that day in the coffee shop.”
“Huh. And here I hoped that you were flirting with me.” She winked and gave a tipsy grin and even now that I’m writing this, just thinking back to how gorgeous she looked at that moment, red nose and all, I get hard.
I wish I could write that I went inside and danced all night with Charlie, but the shameful truth is that I blew it once again when my shyness spoke for me. “No, I didn’t. I don’t. I mean I didn’t flirt with you.”
She made a mock face of disappointment and opened her mouth to speak, and just then we were interrupted by a group of five drunken guys who came singing down the street.
“Hey, Charlie,” one of them yelled and came over to plant sloppy kisses all over her face. I was trying to remember if he was the same one who had wanted a bite of her cinnamon bun the first time that I met her.
I stepped back and watched her try and push him away, laughing. To my relief he stopped and moved back to his group, who were trying to bribe the doorman to let them in to the bar.
“One of your girlfriends called you Liv. Which do you prefer more? Charlie or Liv?”
She was rubbing her pretty cheeks from all the sloppy kissing before. “I go by my middle name Liv or Charlie. As long as you don’t call me Charlotte it’s fine. I never liked that name.”
“Your last name was Christensen, wasn’t it?”
“Wow, you remember? Do you have an exceptional memory or something?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t tell her that I’m bad with names in general. Her name had just been branded in my mind since I first met her.
The sloppy kisser came back and pulled her with him, insisting that she owed him a dance. It was my cue to walk on, so I raised my hand and told her that I’d see her around.
The first thing I did when I got back home was look her up on social media. Charlotte is twenty-one and from Chicago like me. What are the odds?
I was pumping myself up to write her a message but as I looked over her pictures, the same guy kept popping up and her relationship status said, “it’s complicated.”
Maybe if I wait another few weeks it’ll have changed to single. I hope it does.
Lowering his diary, I felt weird for having read Charles’ private thoughts about me.
That night, I’d been convinced that he was out of my league, but felt honored that he took time to talk to me. How in the world had I misinterpreted his shyness for disinterest when I considered myself a people person? I moaned a little thinking about my conversation this morning with Sydney, who had worried about me coming here alone. I had told her that I was blessed with a gift of reading people.
Apparently not!
I looked down at the box, where a few items lay at the bottom. A pair of white lace panties, a few folded handwritten notes, a tie, and a black lid to a coffee cup.
I stared.
A lid to a coffee cup.
Is that…?
Picking up the small lid, I felt goosebumps rise on my arms.
He saved it.
