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Charlie
Present Day
“I left that day with only a backpack of belongings. I haven’t been back since.”
“Do you keep in contact with your brother?”
“I tried. Every time I’d call and try to speak with him, my mother would hang up on me. I went to his school a couple of times and saw him. Once she heard about that, she told the administration that I was to be nowhere near him. It’s almost like she hated me; like she wanted to blot me out of her life and my brother’s too. I don’t understand it. A mother is supposed to love her child, right? I don’t understand why she didn’t love me.”
“Oh Charlie.”
“It’s ok. You learn how to deal.”
“It’s not ok. What you’ve been through is not ok,” Dante countered.
“I wish I’d known you back then; maybe I could have hired you to break that fucker’s legs or something.”
“I wish you had too. And I would have done it for free.”
I smiled at that.
“So you’ve been on your own ever since?”
“Yep. Followed my boyfriend out here when I was seventeen. He wanted to be an actor. Mostly, I think we both just wanted to get out of Philly; see the world. We drove across country the day after I graduated high school. It was a blast, and I thought we’d be together forever. Turns out, what I thought was forever turned out to be about four months. He dumped me as soon as some legally blonde wannabe actress batted her baby blues at him. About eight months after that, I met boyfriend number two. Nice guy, but all he wanted to do was smoke weed and hang at the beach. That would'a been great if not for the needing food, clothing and shelter thing,” I smiled. “Sleeping under bridges – kinda not my thing. After him, I swore off men for a few years. I was just done.”
“Swore off men? You were only what, 18, 19? And you swore off men for years?”
“I was looking for love in all the wrong places. And I got exactly that – the wrong guy. And I was struggling, hard. I figured if I was gonna struggle, I could do that all by myself. So that’s what I did. The last guy I dated, I thought he was the one – and then I found out what he did for a living.”
“Which was?” Dante asked. “Charlie?” he prompted.
“God it’s so fucking embarrassing because it’s so predictable now that I look back. Boyfriend number three was a small-time hood who wanted to be a big-time hood. His specialty was jacking cars. He jacked’em and sold’em to a chop shop. That’s where I learned that a car is worth much more in parts than it is as a whole. Anyways, bullets flying through your apartment at three in the morning is kind of a wake-up call that this is not Mr. Happily Ever After – not if you want to stay alive.”
“I’ve always said you were a smart girl Charlie. Good for you for getting out.”
“That one scared the shit outta me, and some common sense into me. That was almost two years ago. I’ve been on my own since.”
“I see why you gave up. That’s quite a track record, especially for one so young.”
“Chronologically young. Emotionally, I feel twice my age.”
“Look on the bright side,” he said.
“Which is?” I wondered. I saw nothing positive about my experiences with men – except the fact that I’d survived them.
“That you’ve learned what you don’t want in a man. Such a shame you’ve sworn off men though ... all this beauty going to waste is a crime against nature,” he said, lacing the warm fingers of his right hand through my left one. It was the most intimate of touches without being sexual – exactly what I needed at that moment. “I will take care of you Charlie. You won’t ever have to worry about anyone harming you as long as you’re in my care,” he said, his eyes making promises I didn’t want to speculate on.
In that moment, I knew I could trust Dante with my life. But I was starting to realize that the more pressing question was ...
Could I trust him with my heart?