Chapter Four: Cards and Gifts. If one has not dallied with the mourner in the time span of two years, it is generally considered unsuitable to bestow a large, glittery card bearing dueling proclamations of sympathy and abiding love. Glitter, in general, is in poor taste. Proclamations of love may substantially impair the mourner’s fragile mindset, causing her heart to pound with something other than grief. I tuck Royce’s card back in its giant envelope and tap it against my teeth.
The door opens and Charlotte comes out. She sits beside me and her skirt blows around her knees in the breeze. “How is it we’re not nineteen anymore?” Charlotte asks. She tucks her skirt under her legs.
“How is it we’re not nine?” Charlotte puts her arms around me and I breathe in her vanilla-Charlotte scent. “I think I might have sex with Royce tonight,” I say.
“Royce, the sequel?” Charlotte asks. She sits back in the swing but keeps one arm around me.
I play with a strand of my hair. It’s getting long. “I can’t stand this.”
Charlotte’s quiet for a while, but not in a judge-y way. We rock on the swing.
“If I sleep with anyone else, it’ll up my numbers,” I say.
“That’s not really fair to Royce,” Charlotte says.
I don’t know how to explain it to her, how to say I need something, anything, to make me feel like me again. “Could you please not be so mature right now?”
Charlotte pinches my arm. I poke her in the side.
“You’ll regret it if you hurt him,” Charlotte says. “Trust me.”
Nate pokes his head out the door. He’s wind-tousled in two seconds.
Charlotte stands. “Round two?”
Nate nods. “Time to go sit in that room and cry some more,” he says.