AFTER A FEW MOMENTS’ REST, WE SHOWER TOGETHER IN THE DARK, his hands serving as my loofah, sliding over every inch of my skin with great care.
We collapse into the lounge chairs on our terrace. I purposefully choose the one we just had sex on.
“This is my favorite place in all the world,” I tell him, looking up at the now twinkling evening sky.
“Turks?”
“No, well, yes, but I mean here, specifically. These lounge chairs on this terrace.” I turn toward him and he’s grinning. “We should take a boat out tomorrow and find some remote island to live on so we can stay here forever,” I say, wanting to extend this delirious enchantment as long as possible.
Charlie doesn’t miss a beat. “Sounds good. We can build our own commune, completely shut off from the outside world.”
“Like North Sentinel Island or that Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach.”
He smiles. “Both of those end very badly for new arrivals. No new arrivals. That’s key.” He flicks his chin at me.
“Agreed. So do we bring others during the settlement, or is it just us?” I have a flash of an alternate life, Charlie and me alone on a remote island, covered in only loincloths and using rocks as hammers, Finn somehow with us. A perfect world of our creation, just like a video game.
“We’d probably need reinforcements. Andres. He’s resourceful.”
“Agreed. We’ll definitely bring Andres. And maybe Mrs. Mustache and CrossFit Girl.”
“Who?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. Never mind.”
The sky is an early deep blue, full of stars, unobstructed and magnificent. It is wholly resemblant of our last intimate night together. As I sit here, next to Charlie, staring up at the endless void, I can’t help but think wistfully about the equal grandness and quaintness of stargazing.
“Wasn’t that Leo beach movie filmed somewhere around here?” he asks.
“No. Thailand.”
“You are a wealth of a diverse range of information,” he says with a loose grin, then leans in toward me. “It’s a great plan. One problem though.”
“What’s that?”
“There is no tomorrow.”
I exhale sharply. He’s right. Tomorrow we’ll be on a plane back to LA.
I can’t think about that right now. Instead, I take note of his hand, which is now on my thigh. He has found a way to remain touching me since we sat down.
I abruptly turn to face Charlie again. “Tell me your baby name.”
He shakes his head. “I knew you were dying to know.”
I slap his arm. “Of course I am. Tell me.”
He presses his lips together in almost a pucker, sinking his dimple deep into his cheek. “Was this entire day built around getting me wasted so you could get this out of me?”
I curve my body toward him. “No, but in hindsight, it should have been.”
He rolls onto his back, clasps his hands behind his head, and stares up again. “Fine.” He speaks to the sky. “It’s Loki.”
“What? Wait—you want to name your kid after one of the bad guys in the Avengers films?”
“He’s complex,” Charlie says matter-of-factly. “And he had a redemption arc.”
“Don’t you have some family obligation to name your kid the next in the row? Alpha, Bravo, Charlie . . .”
“Delta,” he finishes, then smiles. “I like to break the rules.”
Just when I think I’ve figured him out. Charlie—who’s unnerved by airplane turbulence and centipedes and needles. Who painted Mrs. Crandall’s kitchen. Who sings the wrong lyrics and dances to Taylor Swift. Who played Gomez Addams in multiple high school productions. Who has a seemingly endless collection of punny T-shirts. Who in the dark of the shower mere minutes ago felt like a tower I wanted to climb. Who wants to name his yet-to-be-created child Loki. Who has endured heartbreak and is somewhere on the other side of it. He is none of the things I would have expected from the guy who showed up at my apartment door with the offer of this trip.
“There’s a shooting star!” Charlie points to a moving light in the sky, slightly brighter than the others.
“That’s a plane, Charlie.”
He turns to face me with an expression that I can only describe as Kix. “Just pretend,” he says gently, and his voice tugs at my belly like a magnet.
We sit just that way, silent, watching the sky, looking for shooting stars that might be airplanes. It’s one of those scarce moments when I try with all my might to stop time. And when I fail, I grasp at the bits of it to tuck away, so I can remember it just so when it’s all gone. The balmy breeze. The euphoric glaze of several rum punches. The comfort of Charlie beside me. And most of all, the thing that makes memories truly stick, the feeling inside me—one of unabridged contentment. It’s a feeling so foreign to me over the last several months, I feared I’d lost it forever. But I’m pleased to now know, the body remembers.
When I believe I’ve stored the moment away adequately, I turn to face Charlie. “Tell me about Brooke. About your relationship.” My request doesn’t carry the same unease as before when mentioning Brooke. Not for me, and I don’t believe for Charlie any longer either. Now I want to know because I want to know him—this significant part of him that brought us here. And how his views have changed over this past week and even the last few days since we last spoke about her.
He rolls to face me, and we lie on our sides, heads propped facing each other with an elbow against the head of our chairs, a sky of stars and airplanes overhead.
“Like you and Zane, it was incredible. Until it wasn’t. I think back to those first few months and how surreal it was. How everything was better, brighter. She was like this tour guide into how life was supposed to be, how it was supposed to feel.”
I pay attention to the way he speaks and his expression, but don’t hear or see the nostalgia I expect. Instead, it’s a factual recount.
“When she started working more closely with Spencer at their PR firm, things changed. That was a year in.” He picks at a loose thread at the chair’s edge. “It was like I was her favorite pair of jeans that somehow didn’t fit anymore,” he continues, and I imagine the ache inside of him. “I chased that feeling more than I actually had it.”
It’s a complicated sensation, I know, devaluing yourself in a desperate attempt to hang on to the thing that once made you more alive than you’ve ever been.
His jaw tightens and I imagine his insides are passing through a shredder.
“It’ll pass,” I tell him softly. “It will. You’ll get over it—her—eventually.”
He looks up at me with impossibly big eyes. “I already have.”
“Charlie, it’s only been a few days.”
“Yeah, but being here, with you, has made time move at warp speed. It seems like things with Brooke ended months ago. Years, even.”
I turn onto my back, stare up at the stars. I see one move, though I don’t point it out to him. “You need more time,” I tell him softly.
He shakes his head but doesn’t speak further. I quickly become consumed by my own thoughts. This trip has included some of the best days I’ve had in a long while, maybe ever. Perhaps it’s the location. Perhaps it’s Charlie. Perhaps it’s that, bit by bit, I am finding my shine again.
“I have an idea,” he says eventually, a strike of energy taking him on. He stumbles up from the chaise, disappears into the suite, and returns with my laptop and two Turk’s Head beers from our minifridge. He sets the laptop on my thighs and hands me a beer.
“You should send Catapult the game. Here. Now.” His unwieldy grin reminds me of his post-coital one.
“What? No, I haven’t written the email to go along with it. And I need to review the game one more time—”
Charlie leans in even closer, ensuring my attention remains on him. “You are incredibly talented, Sloane,” he says to stop me.
“I know I am,” I tell him. Because I do know it. And with Charlie, I don’t have to pretend I don’t. He smiles. A wide, closed-mouth smile as he gives me a slight nod. There’s baffling solidarity in his gesture.
“Sloane, it’s done. You said so yourself earlier today. So why not just send it from here, your favorite place in the world? Can you think of a better way to cap off this trip?”
I raise my eyebrows. He’s got a point. I feel good about my game design. No, I feel great about it. During this implausible week, I’ve managed to build a prototype I’m proud of. One Zane shouldn’t be able to beat.
But just one more review and round of tweaks could give it the edge it needs . . .
I’m still looking at Charlie when I open my laptop. Next to him, I feel the urge to take a chance, more strongly than I ever have.
He looks on as I copy the link to the game, type out an email to Jack Palmer and team, and, before I can talk myself out of it, I hit send.
And exhale.
To my surprise, Charlie leans over, pulls my chaise closer to his, then throws his arms around me. He inhales sharply through his nose.
“Are you crying again, you drunken sap?”
“No, of course not,” he says, pulling away quickly, forearm to his eyes.
“C’mon, lemme buy you dinner,” I say, pulling on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
“It’s an all-inclusive,” he reminds me, though he knows I know.
“Well then, let’s go get your money’s worth.”
He tilts his beer bottle toward me. “You don’t think we have yet?”
“Not quite yet.” I jump to my feet and grab his elbows to pull him up. As he stands, the space between our chairs is barely there and means that we are pressed against each other. I think about him on top of me just two nights before, again just an hour ago, the sound of his whispering voice in my ear. The skin at the nape of my neck chills.
He’s thinking about it too. I know he is. Everything in this moment gives him away. The blush of his cheeks evident across his tan face. The blue of his eyes almost completely taken over by the black of his pupils. The slight twitch at the outer corner of his right eye. We stand like that, pressed together between the two chairs, and we might as well be naked, the way the breeze hits me at all points.
Our shirts graze and retreat as our chests rise and release in unison. Each time the fabrics make contact, it’s like a knife striking against flint, orange glints of flame leaping out at each swipe. Just like our matching tattoos.
There’s a lot I want to say to him, even more I want to do, my desire for him insatiable.
I bring my hand up to cup his wrist and our eyes catch. On the other side, I feel his hand graze mine, then his pinkie clasps onto mine, and it’s the strongest handhold imaginable.
We stand like this, pinkie curled around pinkie on one side, my fingers wrapped around his wrist on the other, and I don’t want to move. Not closer, not farther away, not at all. I want to stay here, just like this, in our spot on this terrace—to remain in this bubble with him forever, drinking and laughing and exploring each other like nothing else exists or matters.
A dull ache builds in my chest, knowing our time together is coming to an end. I’m desperate to hold on to him a bit longer, but also afraid that if I do, it will be that much harder to let him go.
“Let’s go to dinner,” I say eventually, releasing his wrist. “I’m starving.”