"Hello?" I called as I pushed open the door to Honey Bee's bakery.
"Is that really you?" Bee cried out from back in the kitchen. "Charlie?! Did I finally lure you in here with the promise of free baked goods?
I bit my lip and smiled and walked all the way into her sweet little shop. "It smells amazing in here!" I cried, inhaling deeply.
"Butter," she said with a knowing nod, wiping her floury hands on her apron. "Have you really never been in here yet? And what are you doing here in the morning?"
I shrugged. "I needed to get out," I said, ignoring the way her eyebrows zoomed upward. I already knew that was out of character for me.
But then again I'd been doing a lot of out-of-character things these past few days.
Since Jameson left, I'd stopped by the diner and said hi to all my old co-workers. I'd swung by Maisie's house and thanked her again for taking such good care of Malcolm the night of the fever. I'd made plans with Gina for us to drop by and give her some of Malcolm's hand-me-down baby toys. It felt odd putting myself out there, but the more that I did, the more that I saw that the people I cared for cared for me back. It was odd how odd that felt.
"How long has it been since I first asked you to come?" Bee was saying as she bustled around behind the counter with her fancy coffee machine.
I thought for a second. Bee and I had become friends back when I worked at the diner and she made bread deliveries in her beat-up old truck. One afternoon she was out on a delivery at the moment my mom called to say Malcolm had fallen at the park. Bee drove that old delivery van faster than any ambulance to get him to the hospital. And we'd been good friends ever since.
Although, technically it had been her that was the good friend. I had been a flake.
Up until now.
"Here," she said, grabbing a napkin and picking out something buttery and flaky from her glass case. "I've just started trying my hand at croissants. What do you think?"
"I don't have much time," I mumbled, then bit into the flaky confection. "Oh my God," I said, sitting down.
"Better than sex, huh?"
I reddened and she noticed and pulled out a chair. "Oh! So maybe not quite as good as the sex you've been having?"
"I'm not having any sex right now," I said, sounding comically glum.
She burst out laughing. "Well, I mean neither am I. Right now." She waggled her eyebrows. "But what happened? Weren't you seeing somebody?"
"Saw," I said briskly. "Past tense. I saw someone exactly twice."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"But it was good? The two times."
I inhaled sharply and then smiled, and Bee started laughing again. "You don't need to answer, I know that look. I didn't think you were capable of being all swoony, Charlie."
"I'm not swoony."
"It's a good look on you," she teased. "Makes your cheeks pinker."
"I'm not swoony. We had a one night stand."
"Twice?"
"Okay, two one night stands."
"Did he sleep over?" she interjected.
"What does that have to do with it?"
"It has everything to do with it," she cried, clearly exasperated with my stubbornness. "If you fuck and go, it's a one night stand. If he sleeps over, it's a relationship, no matter how short."
I bit my lip. "He slept over," I realized. "Both times." I chuckled. "I mean the first night we were sleeping upright on my couch because Mac was sick..."
"Aw, he stayed up with you? That's so sweet."
I ran my tongue over my teeth. "Yeah," I said softly. "It was."
"He sounds nice," Bee said. "Why is it past tense?"
"Because he left to go back to his home, wherever the fuck that is?" I hissed through clenched teeth.
Bee fell silent and we both took sips of our coffee. She tapped her foot on the floor for a second, and suddenly burst out. "Did you think he'd stay?"
I took another deep sip of my coffee to give myself time to think. It was a question I knew the right answer to, but I didn't know if it was the correct answer. "I always knew that he was going to leave, he told me from the get-go. But I - "
"You thought he might change his mind?"
"I mean -" there was a hot flush creeping up the back of my neck. "I don't know why it worked, but it did. We have nothing in common. I mean absolutely nothing. He's traveled, lived all over the world, I've never even been on an airplane. He has more money than God, I get excited when they have the dented can sale at the IGA." Bee snorted and I grinned at her. "He isn't tied down in any way, and I have a rugrat attached to me for the next eighteen years."
"The cutest rugrat in the world."
"Oh, for sure," I smiled. "But still. Jameson's free and unencumbered. And I have all this...stuff I've got to worry about."
"How's your mom doing?" Bee interjected.
"She's having dizzy spells with the new meds, she says. But she says it's getting better. She hasn't had one in a while that I've seen, so hopefully, she's even-ing out."
"Good." Bee nodded. "So this guy? Jameson was his name? He just...left?"
I winced. "Well, no. It wasn't entirely on him."
Bee smiled over the rim of her coffee cup. "What did you do?"
"I might, yeah I might have given him the finger and told him it was just a fling and didn't mean anything."
She raised her eyebrows. "And that's not true?"
"I don't know!" I wailed. "It should be true. Fuck I mean we spent a grand total of forty-eight hours together. Maybe less. That's not enough time to know anything about a person and yet I can't stop thinking about him and walking around all dazed because I feel like I've lost something important and I can't remember where I put it." I buried my head in my hands, dislodging a wayward curl. "Like maybe my mind."
"Sounds like me," Bee chuckled. "When things started with Finn and Jackson."
"How?" I swallowed and leaned back. "How did it start? With you and your guys, I mean."
She laughed and did some reddening of her own. "Um, well Jackson caught me trying to illegally dump trash in the dumpster over there."
I laughed. "Love at first sight, huh?"
"Actually I thought he was an asshole."
"He is," I nodded. "Sorry."
"Oh don't be. He's Mr. Personality. Mr. Bad Personality." But she kicked her legs out in a way that showed just how much she loved that about him. "Why, do you believe in love at first sight?"
"No," I said immediately, chomping down on the flaky croissant and catching the crumbs in my hand. "I'm honestly not even sure I believe in love."
Bee cocked her head to the side. "Not sure how I'm supposed to respond to that."
"Doesn't love mean making sacrifices?"
"It can," she hedged.
"And doesn't love mean you stay together no matter what?"
Bee leaned forward. "Is there something you need to talk about?"
"No," I said firmly. "I'm not in love. I barely fucking know him."
She grinned. "Right," she said, running her tongue along the inside of her cheek.
"What?"
"Nothing." She wrinkled her nose in that adorable way she had. "And if he walked in that door right now, you wouldn't jump his bones?"
I looked at the door a little too eagerly and she laughed. "No," I declared with a lift of my chin. "I'd throw something at him for leaving." And then I looked down and traced my finger around the rim of my coffee cup. "I really fucking wish he could have stayed."