“So,” he said. “Chicken salad. Not a fan?”
She attempted to giggle. “Not a fan.”
“Is it the mayonnaise?”
“Yep. I hate mayonnaise. My mom doesn’t understand that, but I do. I like mustard, but only honey mustard or spicy mustard. Not yellow mustard.”
“So you don’t have a strong opinion about it,” Charlie said. “That’s what I hear you saying.”
“Exactly. And you?”
“Are you kidding? Mayonnaise all the way. I live for mayonnaise. Bread is just a vehicle.”
“So you don’t have a strong opinion, either.”
“The hell I don’t.”
Her laughter came more easily.
They chatted for a few more minutes about other this-or-thats: dogs versus cats (Charlie liked both, Wren preferred cats), mornings versus nights (Charlie was a night person, Wren liked getting up early), and snooze versus no snooze (they both chose no snooze, agreeing that they got more real sleep that way).
“I should let you go,” Charlie said reluctantly. “You probably need to go to bed, huh? Given that you’re a mustardeating morning person?”
“I guess,” Wren said.
“All right. But I miss you.”
“Me, too,” Wren said. And all at once the thought of not missing him—and not knowing him, since she had to know him in order to miss him—seemed impossible.
They breathed together for several long moments.
“I wish I could kiss you good night,” Charlie said.
“I wish that, too.”
“Imagine I am,” he said.
Her breath hitched. “Okay.”
“I’m sending you kisses, baby.”
Her skin tingled. He called her baby, and he sent her kisses, and everything hard turned good.
Everything good was new.
love. He walked hand in hand with Wren along trails by the river in the Chattahoochee Nature Center. Sometimes they returned to the railroad bridge, but they explored new trails, too. Or they sat on the floor of Chris and Pamela’s house and leaned against each other as they watched movies on Wren’s iPad. Once, Charlie had dinner with Wren and Wren’s parents, who were nice, if overbearing. Wren’s dad told Wren to lower her voice when she was talking—not the volume of her voice, but the pitch—because apparently Wren’s dad thought women shouldn’t be shrill.
Wren wasn’t shrill. Wren was perfect. Charlie put his hand on her thigh under the table. Wren slipped her hand under the table, too, and squeezed his fingers.
Sometimes Wren packed a lunch and brought it to Chris’s shop so that she and Charlie could eat and talk and laugh before Charlie returned to work. Sometimes she baked cookies, and she always left him with a Ziploc bag of extras for later. Always he walked her to her car. Always he kissed her before she left, slipping his hand to the small of her back and pulling her closer.
When Charlie couldn’t be with her, he ached from missing her. When he was with her, he felt as if all was well with the world. He smiled without meaning to. Stroked her hair. Talked with her about friends and movies and books, and talked about how lucky they felt to have found each other.
He told her, when she asked, that, yes, he’d felt something pass between them on the last day of school. She’d brought it up shyly, as if worried he might think she was being silly, but he never thought the things she had to say were silly.
“It was before first period,” he said. “We were outside the main building. You had on a blue shirt, and you looked beautiful, as always.”
She blushed and nuzzled his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head, which was warm from the sun.
“You were with Tessa,” he continued. “I was with Ammon. He was telling me about a new computer game he’d bought, but I wasn’t paying attention. A breeze made your skirt fly up—did you know that?”
“Are you saying I flashed you?” She hid by pressing her cheek against his collarbone. “Great.”
“It was great. Yes. And then I waved at you, because you were staring at me.”
“Oh my gosh.”
“But you didn’t wave back. You were kind of in a fog or something. Finally you snapped out of it, and you did wave, and everything got—I don’t know—sharper. Because—”
A lump rose in his throat. Because she’d seen him, he’d almost said. Really seen him.
Wren pulled back and searched his face. “Charlie?”
“Sorry. Don’t know what happened there.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
He gave himself a shake. “So, yeah, you came out of your fog and waved at me, and everything else fell away.”
She took his hand and squeezed it. “I think our souls touched,” she said.
He squeezed back. “I felt it.”
He loved talking to Wren. He also loved touching her. The back of her neck. The skin of her wrist, so pale that he could trace the blue veins beneath. Her lower lip. Once, he ran his finger over the swell of her lower lip, and she surprised him by parting her lips and capturing his finger between her top and bottom teeth. She sucked on him, circling the tip of his finger with her tongue, and he got hard. She had no idea. At least, he thought she had no idea, although when she let his finger go, she smiled impishly.
At moments like those, she could have asked him to do anything—scale a mountain, push down trees, bring her a single wild strawberry from a secret patch—and he would have done it.
But what they were doing, and what was happening between them, was all new for Wren, and Charlie needed to remember that. Well, it was new for Charlie, too, though. If not physically, then emotionally. One day, when Charlie was worn out after hours of work, Wren told him to stretch out on their blanket. She lay behind him, hiked up his T-shirt, and scratched his back, using her fingernails to draw loops and spirals on his skin. It brought tears to his eyes. He didn’t know why.
Then he realized it was because she was taking care of him, because she wanted to take care of him. It was a gesture more tender than sexual, and yet it felt more intimate than sex ever had.
More intimate than sex with Starrla, he meant. Starrla was the only girl he’d slept with.
He wanted to have sex with Wren. God, he wanted to, and he hoped she eventually would, too.
As for Starrla, she had a new boyfriend herself, but her having a boyfriend in no way made it okay for Charlie to have a girlfriend. Starrla had strong opinions about Wren, and she shared them frequently and creatively.
One afternoon, after a picnic with Wren in what they now called “their ditch,” Charlie’s beat-up flip phone chirped as he and Wren were walking back to their cars. Sometimes when they got together—which was most days—Wren asked Charlie to pick her up in his Volvo. More often, she drove herself. It made more sense, she said. Charlie put in so many hours at Chris’s shop, and she had her volunteer work at Grady. Also, even though Wren’s parents continued to lay a guilt trip about having bought her a car she never asked for, Wren seemed to think it helped her case, a little, to drive it as often as she could before fall.
Charlie’s phone chirped again. When he didn’t answer it, Wren cocked her head.
“Your ghetto phone is calling you,” she said. She called it that because it was old. No apps, no voice activation, no Internet access.
It chirped again.
“Aren’t you going to answer?”
“If it’s important, they’ll leave a message,” he said, slipping his arm around her waist. He slipped his other hand into his pocket and switched off his phone’s ringer. “Right now I’m with you.”
She liked that answer, he could tell, because when they reached her Prius, she leaned back against the front door and put both arms around him, pulling him in for a long, slow kiss. He felt the length of her against him as she rose onto her tiptoes.
He couldn’t believe she’d never had a boyfriend, but damn, he was glad she hadn’t. He was her boyfriend now. “My Charlie,” she whispered once when they lay, entwined, on
the blanket in their ditch. He hadn’t replied, because he sensed he wasn’t supposed to have heard. He just held her tighter.
In the parking lot, still leaning against her Prius, Wren pulled out of their kiss. “Wait,” she said. “What if it was Dev? If it was Dev calling you …”
If it was Dev calling, or Chris or Pamela calling about Dev, then Charlie would go to him. Wren knew this because more than once he’d had to push back their date or even cancel on her—which killed him—due to a minor Dev emergency. A urinary tract infection. A pressure sore on Dev’s leg that Pamela feared might be a blood clot. Joint problems that Dev couldn’t feel but that couldn’t be ignored.
It wasn’t always Dev or Chris or Pamela, though.
“I’ll check,” Charlie said. He pulled out his phone, flipped it open, and flipped it shut again. He shoved it back into his pocket.
Wren lifted her eyebrows.
“Ammon,” Charlie said. “I’ll call him later.”
“Okay,” Wren said. “Tell him hi from me.”
“He still can’t believe we’re going out,” Charlie said. “Wait, let me rephrase. He can’t believe a girl like you would be willing to go out with a guy like me.”
“Well, he’s nuts,” Wren said.
“I can’t believe it, either.”
Wren groaned. She didn’t like it when Charlie made comments like that. “Well, I can’t believe you’d be willing to go out with me,” she said, “except yes I can, because here we are. I think we’re both lucky to have found each other. I think we’re equally lucky. All right?”
“You’re right. I agree.”
“Thank you. That’s better.” She reached up and tugged on the hairs at the nape of his neck. Charlie loved how she did that, twining her fingers and locking on. “I guess I should go home, but I don’t want to.”
The tiniest furrow formed in her brow, and Charlie suspected she was thinking about her parents. They’d accepted her choice to put off college, but in a pursed-lipped, disapproving way that forbade Wren from feeling good about it, or so it seemed.
“I suppose we don’t need to buy anything for your dorm room after all,” her mother might say while Charlie was standing by. “I was so looking forward to helping you decorate it. Well, next year.”
Or, from her father: “You realize this means an additional year before you can practice medicine.” And then, like from his wife, a sigh.
Charlie wanted to like Wren’s parents, but he wanted to jump in and protect her from them, too.
Last week, Wren had hooked her computer up to the TV and used the TV as a monitor so that she could show Charlie and her parents a slide show she’d put together. It was about Project Unity. It was a peace offering, to try and help her parents understand.
“Why Guatemala?” they said. “Why now?”
Wren didn’t bring up that neighbor she’d told Charlie about, Sarah something. Instead, she knelt on the rug by her computer and clicked through pictures of young adults wearing T-shirts, shorts, and ball caps posing with brown-eyed, brown-skinned people from Guatemala. Blue skies, lush green forests, explosions of colorful flowers. Lots of white teeth. Lots of smiles.
“I’ll probably travel between three or four towns,” Wren told them. “I’ll spend the mornings working at summer camps—”
“Summer camps?” her dad said.
“Not summer camps. Um, summer schools. Summer language schools. And in the afternoons, all the volunteers do other service projects, like help repair houses and stuff.”
“So you’ll be doing construction,” her dad said.
“John,” Wren’s mom said.
“Dad, listen,” Wren said earnestly. “I want to be part of something bigger. I just … I want … it doesn’t have to be Guatemala, but—”
“If it doesn’t have to be Guatemala, then why not Atlanta?” her dad interrupted.
“John!” Wren’s mom said, but then she turned to Wren and added, “Yes, Wren. Why?”
Wren grew flustered. “Because I know Spanish. Because the people are supposedly really nice, and they need our help, and it’s warm, and the food’s good—”
“The food’s good?” her dad said.
“Dad,” Wren said, her breath hitching. “Please.”
Charlie wanted to go to her and put his arm around her. The only reason he didn’t was because he sensed that Wren needed to plow through this on her own.
“I want to make a difference in the world, and change people’s lives, and … yeah,” she said.
“Becoming a doctor will change people’s lives,” her dad said. “Your volunteer work at Grady changes lives. If you can’t explain why this grand plan of yours has to happen in a foreign country, then I don’t see how you have much of a leg to stand on.”
She doesn’t have a leg to stand on because you keep knocking her down, Charlie thought. She wants to go to a foreign country because maybe, if she’s a thousand miles away, you won’t be able to.
“Dad, I already signed the Project Unity acceptance letter—”
“Just like you signed your acceptance letter to Emory,” her dad said. He snorted. “How do you expect that to convince me?”
Her tone was imploring. “I’ve been given so much—by y’all, by my teachers, by my friends. I want to give something back. Does that make sense?”
“No, Wren, it doesn’t,” her father said. “This plan of yours, though I can hardly call it a plan, is foolish and fanciful, and I’m sorry to disappoint you, but nothing you’ve told us has changed my mind.” He splayed his fingers and exhaled, his nostrils flaring. “Do you want to know why your mother and I are letting you follow through with it?”
Wren’s lips parted.
“We decided to let you fail,” he said, clipping his words. “If you won’t listen to reason, what other choice do we have?”
Wren’s cheeks went blotchy, and Charlie tightened his jaw. He’d tried to give Wren’s dad the benefit of the doubt, but he was a bastard. Couldn’t he see that he was hurting his daughter? Making her want to run farther and faster?
Charlie didn’t want Wren to go to Guatemala any more than her parents did, but it was her decision, and he wasn’t about to tell her what to do. He hugged her instead, leaping up and joining her the minute her parents left the room.
“It’s okay,” he told her when she clutched him. “You’re okay. And you’re not going to fail.”
“I might,” she said dismally.
He kissed her forehead. “Never.”
Now, in the parking lot, Charlie kissed her forehead again. “Hey. If you don’t want to leave yet, don’t. Let’s hang out a little longer.”
“I thought you needed to get to the shop,” Wren said.
He did, but he said, “Not yet. We’re good. Want to sit in the back of your car?”
A particular smile lit up Wren’s face, one Charlie knew and adored.
“Yes, please!” she said. She unlocked her car, climbed into the backseat, and pulled him in behind her. The back of her Prius was another of their favorite spots, and their backseat activities had a rhythm all their own.
First she locked the doors and tossed the keys into the driver’s seat. Next she kicked off her flip-flops. Then, utilizing the full length of the backseat, she scooched down and stretched out as best she could. He propped his weight on his elbows and stretched out on top of her. He bore part of his weight with one foot, which he wedged against the car’s floor, and kissed her nose.
“Mmm,” she said, and she arched her back. In some ways they’d moved fast physically, which Charlie was 100 percent fine with, although there were certain things they hadn’t done that he wished they would. She’d touched his arms, his abs, his chest—she seemed to adore running her hands over his chest, which made him happy—but she had yet to touch his dick, for example.
Was she shy? Nervous? Worried he wouldn’t like it?
He would love it. Christ.
He kissed her for real, and she looped her arms arou
nd his neck and her legs around his hips. Skin. Warmth. Sweat and breath and Wren’s perfume, all of it intoxicating.
“God, you drive me crazy,” he said. He kissed her neck. Ran his hand over the curve of her breast, and then down along her side. Down farther, pulling her close. She was wearing a skirt today, and he found the hem and slipped his hand underneath. Her thigh, her ass. Silk panties with soft lace around the edges.
He ran his fingers below the lace, and Wren made a small sound. Wren tried to be quiet when they were together like this. It embarrassed her, she said, that she made noises. But Charlie loved it. His cock strained against his jeans. He pulled back slightly and used his forearm to push her legs apart. He slid his hand beneath her panties again and found the spot he was looking for—heat and wetness and skin softer than any silk or lace—and slipped two fingers inside her.
“Oh,” Wren said. She was breathing hard. Charlie drew away from their kiss, but kept on with his fingers, watching her. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were parted. She lifted her hips, and when Charlie leaned in and kissed her again, the universe opened up and swallowed him whole, and Charlie brought Wren with him. This, the two of them together, was how it should be.
They stopped, eventually and reluctantly. They were still in the backseat of Wren’s car. It was still a bright June day. They heard kids shrieking on the play structure, which was far away but not far enough away.
Wren sat up and wriggled out from under him. Charlie sat up, too. As always, he wished her hand would go to him, but he didn’t want to push her.
He pressed his hands onto his quads. He knew he’d have to let off steam soon.
“Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi,” he whispered back.
“You have amazing eyes,” she said. She nestled up close, tucked her legs beneath her, and rested her head on his shoulder. With one hand, she played with his hair. Her other hand drifted down his chest, stopping at the waistband of his jeans. She put her hand under his shirt and found his belly, tracing lazy circles. It amazed her that he wasn’t ticklish. She’d told him so. For a while, she’d tried to prove him wrong. Now she seemed to simply enjoy running her fingers over his skin.