“God, baby,” Charlie told her, his breath hitching. “But … hold on …”
He gently pushed her shoulders. When her mouth left his dick, he made a sound. He fumbled with his boxers, less graceful and more urgent than he’d been with his jeans. He got them all the way off, and Wren’s eyes widened at the sight of this beautiful boy—her boy, her Charlie—naked and hard in front of her.
He lay her down. He slipped her panties off, and he kissed her toes. He kissed her shins, her knees, her thighs, and when she lifted her hips, he stretched his body over hers and eased his finger, maybe two, inside her. With his thumb, he rubbed other places.
Wren lifted her hips higher. She pressed against him and found his mouth with hers. His dick was hard against her but not yet in her. How was he going to …? Was she supposed to … was there something she was supposed to do?
With his knee, he spread her legs. She gasped. She clung to his shoulders, and the night sky was above her and around her. The stars so bright. The shuush of the leaves in the trees. Warmth between her legs. Pressure. Slippery, hard, soft—but it didn’t go in, or it didn’t feel as if it did.
“Charlie? I don’t—”
He pushed harder, and she widened her legs. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she was willing to try.
Charlie did something with his fingers—she wasn’t sure what—and her body acted on its own. She arched her spine and pressed the back of her head into the blanket. She smelled the earth, and she smelled Charlie, who thrust into her. She cried out at a sudden sharp pain, and Charlie stilled.
“Are you okay?” he asked, bearing his weight on his forearms.
“I’m fine,” she said, wanting to be. But ow. He was sweaty, and she was sweaty, and the pain took her out of the moment, and was it gross that she was all sweaty?
She took him by his hips and pulled him back inside her. Okay, better. Yes. It no longer hurt.
She nudged him out a little with a rock of her own hips. In, out. In, out. It worked, it made sense, it felt really, really—
Their rhythm fell off, and their hips kind of bumped, and again, Wren couldn’t get it back. She worried she was letting him down, even though she was fairly sure she wasn’t. She worried about the fact that she was worrying, which didn’t help, and there was a stick beneath her. Crap. She fumbled beneath her.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Charlie whispered.
“Nothing, just—” She tried to ignore it. She couldn’t. Crap. She made a face and said, “There’s a stick. Sorry.”
He positioned himself on one hip and slipped almost all the way out of her. She missed him. He fished beneath the blanket, tossed something into the woods, and then came back.
She grasped his hips, and he thrust harder. Faster. She moved with him, and oh my God, yes. So silky. Salt from his neck. She nibbled and licked and kissed, and small sounds came from her, and she found that if she twined her legs around his, she could raise her hips even higher.
Charlie groaned.
In and out, together, and she loved this boy. She was doing it. She was having sex with Charlie, making love to Charlie, and everything inside her expanded and connected. Stars. Sky. Leaves. Moon. Two bodies moving together.
More than.
Charlie called out her name, and he stopped thrusting, but he stayed inside her, his muscles taut.
“Oh, baby,” he said, panting. He shifted his weight to one elbow so he could pull back and see her. He brushed a strand of hair from her face.
Only, no. Not yet. She moved beneath him, needing more—and more and more. Desire welled inside her. Desire and pleasure, until she felt crazy with it. She grabbed his hips and pulled, and he thrust again and kissed her roughly.
Was this weird? Was she being weird? He moved his mouth to her breast, and she didn’t care if she was, because Jesus. He circled her nipple with his tongue before sucking and tugging.
“Charlie. God, Charlie …”
He switched to her other breast, and everything—
Every nerve, every cell, every particle of air around them—
Her muscles tightened, and she turned her head to the side as she rose one last time to meet him.
Then she let go.
Wonder, followed by a flush of embarrassment, followed by sadness, deep and unexpected.
But why? Why sad?
Charlie pulled out of her, slowly, and lay beside her. They faced each other. She smoothed his damp hair.
He gazed at her, and in his eyes she saw the joy and love and gravity of what they’d shared. Her sadness ebbed, though it didn’t completely go away. It was what it was, and maybe sadness was part of the mix?
The joy and love were stronger, and she embraced those truths with all of her heart and sent them back to him. Yes.
He gave her the sweetest of smiles. “You are amazing.”
You are, too, she silently replied.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the sky. He did the same, then changed his mind and did some rearranging, moving the picnic basket off the blanket, along with the iPod and the speaker. Harry Connick Jr. was no longer singing. The playlist had ended. Wren had no idea when.
Charlie lay back, flipping the other half of the blanket over them to warm their sweat-cooled bodies. They linked hands and listened to the shadowed scuttlings around them. Cicadas sang, and tree frogs called to one another in their funny, rasping chirps.
“I don’t want this night to end,” Wren said. She kept her focus on the moon. “You’re still here, but I miss you already.”
“We’ll see each other tomorrow,” he said. He squeezed her hand. “And I am still here, and so are you. You’re right where you belong.”
“I know,” she said, and maybe a little of her sadness slipped out, because Charlie pulled her to him.
“Hey,” he said. “Come here.” He wrapped his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “I love you, Wren.”
“I love you, too. Forever.” She looped her arms around his waist and put her head on his chest. She could hear the thrum of his heart, strong and constant.
Charlie and Wren. They were together every chance they got. They had sex every chance they got. But while the sex was exhilarating—he couldn’t get enough; he wanted her all the time—what was even better was the closeness that came with it.
Actually, Charlie thought, it was the closeness that made the rest of it possible.
“We’re like bunnies,” Wren said to him after making love in P.G.’s pool house. They’d done it on an enormous pool float shaped like a dolphin, which Wren was still lying on. She laughed. “Can I be your bunny, honey?”
“Absolutely,” Charlie said, tossing Wren her bikini top and scanning the floor for his swim trunks. He found them and tugged them on. “But I think you’re more like that dolphin: slippery when wet.”
“Charlie!” Wren exclaimed. Her cheeks turned pink, but Charlie knew she wasn’t truly offended. “Come here,” she said.
He lay beside her on the dolphin float, and she put her head on his chest. Skin to skin, soul to soul.
“This feels so right,” she said, softer.
“Because it is,” he said.
The next time they made love was two days later. It was in the middle of the day, so no ditch—too hot, too bright, too many kids on the nearby playground—and Tessa and P.G. were off doing their own thing, so no pool house. But they craved each other and couldn’t keep their hands off each other, so Charlie drove them out of the city and halfway to South Carolina before finding a remote dirt road that hairpinned lazily into the dense forest. They parked, and Wren put her seat down as far as it would go. She draped herself over it, hugging the headrest, and Charlie took her from behind.
“God, you make me feel good,” she told him afterward.
“Baby, you are the sexiest woman in the world,” he replied. “You know that, right?”
“And you’re the sexiest man,” she said with a giggle. She stopped giggling and regarded hi
m with half-lidded eyes, drowsy and content but oddly solemn. Her seat was still reclined, and she rolled onto her side and tucked her hands beneath her head. Her shirt was half-unbuttoned, exposing her bra. It was black today. So were her panties.
“You know what?” she said as the humid summer air blanketed them in his Volvo.
“What?” he said. He’d climbed back into the driver’s seat. The gearshift made it nearly impossible for the two of them to snuggle. Plus, it was so hot. But he reached for her and took her hand. Their interlocked fingers rested on his thigh.
She bit her lip, then said, “I know you’re kidding about … you know. Me being the sexiest woman in the world.”
“I’m not kidding. What are you talking about?”
“Well,” she hedged, because sometimes she still had a difficult time accepting his compliments. “But—and don’t laugh—you make me feel like I am a woman, if that makes sense.”
She said it like a confession. As if he might actually laugh, as if she didn’t quite believe she was a woman despite the abundant evidence to the contrary.
But he thought he understood what she was trying to express.
“You make me feel like a man,” he told her, and it felt like a confession to him, too. It felt scary.
A boy and a girl having sex in a car? That was a thrill ride, the excitement of a summer fling.
But a man and a woman making love to each other again and again, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, from the front, from the side, from behind, sometimes rough, but always tender …
He looked at her, and she held his gaze, and he knew her well enough to recognize the mix of hope and uncertainty in her eyes.
Her fingers tightened around his, and he responded with a strong squeeze. By telling him he made her feel like a woman, Wren wasn’t just making conversation; she was putting out a question. Not Do you love me?—because she knew he did. He told her so all the time, and she answered with the same.
What, then? What was she asking?
Charlie weighed as best he could Wren’s loaded, expectant energy. He turned it over in his mind. He didn’t rush, because he took Wren’s thoughts and feelings seriously. He took Wren seriously.
He concluded that Wren’s question assumed love was a given but nudged timidly at something deeper.
Is this real? she wanted to know. How real is real? How real are we?
Wren was waiting for Charlie to say something, and the pressure to not screw up was almost unbearable.
Charlie’s thoughts went to Starrla, who once upon a time had claimed that Charlie told her “I love you” too often. Starrla never said it back, and one time she had said, “Jesus, Charlie. I’m going to fuck you anyway,” which made him feel foolish.
But sometimes Starrla had clung to him and said he was the only good thing in her world. Other times, she smirked at him and told him he was an idiot, that no one liked him, that everyone laughed at him behind his back.
I hate you; don’t leave me. That had been Starrla’s creed, and it had messed with Charlie’s mind.
With Wren, he had discovered what real love was—and, yes, what he and Wren had was real. He just didn’t know how to tell her without bringing up Starrla, because bringing up Starrla was never, ever a good idea.
Last week, as Wren lay snuggled against Charlie’s chest, she had asked him if sex with her was better than sex with Starrla. Charlie was boggled, because in his mind there was no comparison. How could Wren not know that? Then again, since it was Charlie’s mind and not hers, how could she?
Wren interpreted his hesitation as a need to think the question over, and she pulled away from him. Not to the degree she did on the bad night—the night of the sexy picture, the night of their first and only fight—but she grew distant, even when Charlie told her over and over that sex with her was amazing and real and genuine. Intimate in a way that it never was with Starrla.
Finally Wren said, “I just don’t like thinking of you having sex with anyone else, period. Even if it was … you know.”
So bringing up Starrla was a nonstarter, not only because of the lingering reality of Charlie and Starrla’s past, but also because someone—surely it was Starrla—was still leaving notes under the wipers of Wren’s car. Bitch. Slut. Fucking whore. Wren hadn’t told Charlie about the notes. Tessa did. When Charlie went to Wren about them, she pulled away from him again.
“Please don’t do anything,” she’d said. “That just gives her power. Anyway, confronting her would mean talking to her, and you said you didn’t anymore. Or do you?”
No, he didn’t, not even when Ammon came to him and told him that Starrla had a new boyfriend who was big and mean.
“She’s hanging with a rough crowd, man,” Ammon had said.
“Not my problem,” Charlie’d said. He didn’t mention that to Wren, either.
In the hot car, with her shirt unbuttoned, Wren was still waiting for his answer. Is this real? Are we real?
Bringing up Starrla was out.
His other option was to bring up Chris, Pamela, and Dev, and maybe he’d have to, because as he held Wren’s hand, he realized what else Wren was asking: And if we are real … why won’t you come to Guatemala with me?
If a man loved a woman, he should find a way to be with her. That’s what Wren seemed to believe, though she never said so directly. Maybe she didn’t say it because she also believed—and this she did say directly—that Charlie was doing the best he could.
Was he? He was trying, but he felt like a shit for disappointing her. He knew that, deep down, she wanted him to come anyway. With her. To Guatemala.
Charlie felt like he was in a bind. He also couldn’t help but wonder: If a woman loved a man, couldn’t she find a way to be with that man? Instead of Charlie going to Guatemala to be with Wren, couldn’t Wren stay in Atlanta to be with him?
Wren sighed and broke off eye contact. Charlie knew he needed to catch her now, before she slipped away from him.
“Wren, I love you to infinity and back. You’re the love of my life. You know that, right?”
Wren sighed again.
“And you do make me feel like a man,” he said. “No one makes me feel like you do.”
“I’m glad,” she said.
“I am, too,” he said.
“But, Charlie, you are a man.” She turned her head and looked at him. “I’m glad I make you feel that way, but it’s not me. It’s you. You are a man, and not just a man, but my man. I need you.”
“I need you, too, baby,” he said, worried that she didn’t fully grasp the truth of that.
“And also, I just plain want you,” she said. “Don’t you want me? Don’t you want to be with me?”
“Of course I want you. Of course I want to be with you.”
“Well, okay. But I’m leaving in three weeks, so why …?”
And there it was: If you want me, why don’t you put me first? Or, closer yet: Why don’t you want me enough to want to put me first?
Because in three weeks, Wren would get on a plane and fly to a strange new land, while Charlie would stay in Atlanta, swallowed by the hole she’d leave in his life.
It tried to swallow him now. He resisted, because she hadn’t left yet. They shouldn’t waste what time they had. He ran a finger along her hairline, tracing the side of her face and down the line of her jaw. She had beautiful lips, full and generous.
“Do you remember that day at the hospital?” he said. “When I came in, and you fixed me?”
She smiled. Of course she did, and he knew it, just as he knew that she loved the way he’d turned the hospital visit into part of their personal mythology. She loved the idea that she had “fixed” him, even though she always denied it.
“I didn’t fix you,” she said. “You didn’t need fixing.”
“I did,” he said, unwaveringly sincere. “I did, and you did.”
She pulled down his hand, which was still cupping her face. She kissed his fingers, each one in turn, and Charlie t
hought, Good. Yes. She’s back.
He didn’t want to mess that up, but he didn’t want to avoid her question, either. Avoiding her question, even if she hadn’t put it into words, would be the coward’s way out.
“Do you remember how we talked about Dev that day?” he asked.
She drew her eyebrows together. Then her brow cleared. “Oh—now I do. You were telling me about how you’d been to the ER before. And that Dev …” She drummed her fingers on her leg. “That Dev had been burned. Is that right?”
“Yeah. Only, I let you think it was an accident.”
She let go of his hand and pulled the lever that brought her seat upright. She crossed her legs beneath her. They made a skin-sucking sound when she moved them, but neither she nor Charlie laughed as they might have if the topic of their conversation was something lighter.
“It wasn’t an accident?” Wren asked.
“No.”
“Then what happened? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because he didn’t know her then. Because it was too private.
She studied him. “Will you tell me now?”
Charlie went away for a moment. Thinking about it brought back an acrid smell. “It was two guys who go to Dev’s middle school. Two eighth graders.”
“Two boys burned Dev? On purpose?”
“With a cigarette lighter. Dev wouldn’t tell us who, so I figured it out on my own.”
“Charlie,” Wren said. “Jesus.”
Charlie had driven to the middle school in the mornings and in the afternoons. He’d tutored there for his senior community service hours, plus he’d gone there himself when he was Dev’s age, so he knew the schedule.
He noticed who was nice to Dev and who laughed behind Dev’s back. He paid particular attention when the buses came, knowing that buses were a bully’s anything-goes zone. He saw the asshole who rammed into Dev’s wheelchair—sorry, dude, my bad—and he saw the second asshole who high-fived the first. He spotted asshole number two’s cigarette lighter, because asshole number two pulled it out and flicked it to life, let the flame die, then reignited it.