Page 7 of Ghost of Ex-mas Past
Bea didn’t enjoy it as much as I did. I don’t even remember anymore if she came—she had to have, right?—but she didn’t let me do it often, and maybe I wasn’t as good at it as I’d thought.
Back then.
Given the chance, I’d pull this car over and wear her thighs like earmuffs.
“Stop.” Bea’s voice is sharp and chiding, pulling me back into the present.
I grin, and Bea ignores me. She knows exactly what I was thinking about.
Ah, well. At least I have 283 pages of legalese to get rid of this boner.
5
Bea
Of course,Charlie would pull out his laptop. He’s the biggest workaholic I know, and heaven forbid anything stand in his way of getting work done.
Seems like nothing’s changed. Charlie’s still the supersmart, super-dedicated nerd, despite growing up to be superhot.
Living next door to each other meant that I’d seen Charlie nearly every day for years. We’re the same age, so it was no surprise when we were often in class together, and then we started walking to school together, playing together, studying together...
I knew Charlie was smarter than me from day one, when I was trying to figure out how to get my swing untangled and Charlie helped me. It was a convoluted twist for a six-year-old to manage, but Charlie could figure it out. I thought it was magic.
By the time I was fifteen, we’d grown so close. Looking back, it seemed inevitable that we’d get together. What better person to fall in love with than your best friend?
I would give my left boob to have a best friend to fall in love with now.
We had five years of being each other’s firsts—first kiss, first date, first boyfriend/girlfriend, and a bunch of naughty NSFW firsts that I amnotgoing to think about sitting in the car with Charlie. Even the summer he spent living with his grandma in Pithole, Pennsylvania (which, by the way, is named appropriately), wasn’t enough to tear us apart.
But Charlie’s education was.
By senior year, he hardly took any of the same classes I did. He was on the AP track and taking dual-credit courses at the local community college. I was a middling student who almost failed my tenth-grade science class.
I can admit my own faults, and I’m glad that at eighteen, I understood that my parents’ middle-class standing meant that they couldn’t afford to send four kids to college. Charlie understood it too, but he is so damn smart, he worked his ass off to get a full scholarship to Stanford.
Which left me behind in Mobile.
We’re driving along the Hudson and it’s full-on dark now. My grip on the steering wheel is tight, and I take a deep breath and loosen my fingers.
“Need me to take a turn driving?” Charlie asks.
“Nope.”
This is why I hate the holidays. Seeing Charlie for a week every December dregs up all kinds of memories that I spend the rest of the year blissfully ignoring.
Like the memories of constantly trying to coordinate schedules between the two of us just for a chance to talk on the phone Charlie’s freshman year of college, when we were trying to make the long-distance thing work.
Or the sheer frustration of not being able to catch up with bills and finding adulting to be so difficult, even though I had a full-time job as an office admin. I’d made the stupid mistake of buying a car that was too nice for me and then getting in a fender bender that ate up all of my savings when I’d almost had enough to fly out to California and see Charlie.
And now Charlie lives in the same city as I do. At least it’s a huge city, and the chances that I’ll run into him are slim. He might as well still live in San Francisco.
Next to me, Charlie closes his laptop and turns his face to the window. My phone tells me to exit and we pull away from the river and into the interior of the state.
I wonder what Charlie was working on. I asked Miles for an update about the sensor-data-targeting advertising issue that was brought up at the meeting, but they’re still experimenting.
Would Charlie do something unethical, maybe even illegal, to get ahead? I’m not sure. Ten years ago I would have said no. But what do I really know about Charlie now?
I startle a bit when Charlie speaks. “Are you glad we aren’t going to Pithole this year?”
