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Since neither of them owned a car, they’d rented one for the weekend. Charlotte wanted to drive, and Mike was happy to let her do so.
In a way, it was odd being in a car with her in the driver’s seat. Another reminder of how grown up they were. When he’d left Ashton Corners, he’d still been a few years away from being old enough to drive, and now, he was going back for the first time since he’d left. Since that horrible morning when his parents had woken him up and given him one hour to pack.
He was looking forward to seeing the beach, the playground.
Most of all, to seeing Charlotte’s parents.
The rural scenery started to feel familiar as they approached the “Welcome to Ashton Corners” sign. It was a different sign from before, and the population had shrunk by fifty people.
The Tim Hortons had also been renovated. The elementary school looked the same as before, although there were no longer two portables at the back.
As they drove along Main Street, Mike started to feel nervous, which he hadn’t expected.
When Charlotte parked in her parents’ driveway, he got out of the car and regarded the house next door. The porch had been redone and—
“Mike!” Mrs. Tam cried, hurrying down the driveway. She’d forgotten to put on her shoes and was still wearing pink slippers. “So good to see you again. You are very handsome. I knew you would be.”
“Mom,” Charlotte said, opening the trunk.
Mike rushed to grab the suitcases so she wouldn’t do it all herself.
“Is this your car?” Mrs. Tam asked.
“No, I don’t have a car. We rented it for the weekend.” He braced himself, somehow expecting her to be disappointed.
But she said, “This is best, if you don’t need one in the city. Just rent a car a few times a year when you need it and save more money for your RRSP. Smart, yes? Charlotte says you’re a financial planner.”
“That’s right, Mrs. Tam.”
“You should call me Bonnie. Ah, you’re carrying both suitcases. Good that you have nice muscles.”
“Those suitcases are only five pounds each,” Charlotte said. “We’re just here for one night.” She’d decided it would be better to drive up Saturday morning rather than going on Friday, and since it was a fairly hot September weekend, it wasn’t like the clothes were heavy.
Mrs. Tam—Bonnie—was now peering closely at his hair.
“What on earth are you doing?” Charlotte asked.
“Checking to see if his hairline is receding,” Bonnie said, as though this were an ordinary thing to do. “No, he has very thick hair.”
“Thanks to my special shampoo,” he said, and she laughed.
He and Charlotte followed her inside.
“I made your favorite for lunch,” Bonnie said. “I assume you still like lor mai fun. But if not, it’s okay, I can make something else.”
“No, no, it sounds wonderful,” he assured her. He loved her sticky rice with Chinese sausage, dried mushrooms, and dried shrimp, and the stuff he’d had at restaurants hadn’t been as good as hers.
They took off their shoes, left the suitcases in the front hall, and headed to the kitchen. When Charlotte squeezed his hand, he almost snatched it away, feeling like they were doing something illicit.
But her parents knew of their relationship and were happy about it. Hand-holding was pretty tame.
“Hi, Mr. Tam,” he said to the man who was setting the table. He couldn’t remember Charlotte’s father’s first name.
“Albert.” He shook Mike’s hand.
The Tams had gotten a new table, which wasn’t surprising since it had been twenty years, but otherwise, the kitchen felt very similar. A rice cooker sat on the counter. There was a pot of tea in the center of the table.
It was a little like coming home.
They sat down for lunch—the aforementioned sticky rice, plus snow peas stir-fried with shrimp—and it was delicious, as he told Bonnie more than once. She insisted on giving him seconds of everything, saying he would need lots of energy for...
Charlotte cut her mother off with another outraged “Mom!”
They’d probably be talking in Cantonese if it wasn’t for him, but Mike didn’t speak Cantonese, other than the few words he’d learned from Charlotte. His Mandarin was pretty poor, too. For him, Mandarin was the language he used for speaking to his parents, and his skills had deteriorated since he’d cut contact with them. He should have tried to practice, but it was tangled up with complicated feelings.
Charlotte’s parents didn’t say anything about wishing he were a surgeon who spoke Cantonese. Nope, they seemed happy with him just the way he was.
And Charlotte kept her hand on his thigh during lunch, and when they went up to her old bedroom to put away their suitcases, he pinned her against the wall and kissed her.
“Mike!” she said. “Don’t you want to go to the beach and see me in a bikini?”
That got his attention. “We’re going to the beach now? And you’re wearing a bikini?”
“Yeah, you’re lucky I like you so much. You remembered to bring your swimsuit, didn’t you? Tiny little Speedo?”
He laughed. “Not so much.”
Though he was excited to go to the beach, he spent a moment looking around the room before opening his suitcase. The furniture was all in the same place as before, but there was little else in the room. A lot of stuff had been cleared out.
There was, however, a small binder on the desk labeled “Charlotte’s Drawings, Ages 2-12.” He opened it up.
The first few were scribbles in crayon. Her parents had place them in sheet protectors and lovingly labeled each one.
A bunny pooping. Charlotte, age 2.
Mommy cooking dinner. Charlotte, age 2.
Frosty the Snowman. Charlotte, age 3.
Baby Julie crying because she wants milk. Charlotte, age 3.
The playground. Charlotte, age 3.
A polar bear playing with a seal. Charlotte, age 4.
A cow’s udder. Charlotte, age 4.
Then there was a letter, written by someone who was decidedly older than three or four.
Dear Mr. Garbageman, My mom threw out my drawings. It was an accident and she is very sorry. If you find them, can you please return them?
He laughed. “What’s this?”
Charlotte looked over his shoulder. “My mom didn’t think it was necessary to keep all seventeen drawings I drew each day. She doubted I’d notice, but I did, so I made her write a letter to the garbageman. Which she obviously didn’t send.”
Mike kept flipping through the binder, a bit overwhelmed by the care her parents had taken to put this together. His parents would never have done anything like this, but one day, he’d keep his own children’s artwork.
And then he saw something that made him stare for a full minute.
He didn’t remember this drawing, but apparently, he was the one who’d done it.
Charlotte. The letters were written in blue pencil crayon, a mix of capitals and lowercase, and at the bottom of the page, her mom or dad had written: A portrait of Charlotte by Mike Guo, age 6. She is wearing a purple shirt because purple is her favorite color, and she is frowning because she doesn’t like having her picture taken.
“Your parents kept a picture that I drew?” he asked, his throat clogged with emotion.
“Well, you drew a picture of me, so it was important.”
Yes, but still. “I bet it’s the only drawing from my childhood that exists.”
“Nope. Turn the page.”
He did, and he found himself staring at a picture of John Olerud that he’d drawn for her, twenty-five years ago.
“Probably worth a fortune now,” Charlotte said.
“Just like all those eggplants you drew at the bar.”
She snorted before giving him a kiss. He walked backward and toppled onto the bed with her, wincing when his head hit the wall on the other side.
It was only a twin bed. Not a queen, like they both had in their apartments.
“So, we’re supposed to share this bed?” he asked.
“We don’t have to. One of us can sleep in Julie’s room. But outside of my parents’ room, there are only twin beds in the house. And since my parents like you so much, they aren’t going to force us to sleep separately.”
He’d kept expecting something to go wrong today, but so far, everything was going right.
But there was still lots of time for it all to go to shit.
* * *
It was a ten-minute walk to the beach. Charlotte was wearing shorts and a non-geology-related T-shirt over her bathing suit, an ugly sunhat on her head. She’d planned to wear her Blue Jays cap, but her mom had protested that it didn’t cover her ears and the back of her neck, and had instead given her this oversized straw sunhat with a pink ribbon tied around the middle.
It was truly ridiculous, but Mike had said she looked cute, so she hadn’t put up too much of a fuss when her mother pushed her out the door in it.
He was wearing green swim trunks that went practically to his knees, a white T-shirt, and her Blue Jays hat. He carried their bag of towels, books, water, and sunscreen.
“I thought you didn’t like the beach?” he said. “Or has that changed?”
“I still hate swimming.” Stepping into cold water was like having to wear pants with a zipper and a button—something she avoided if possible. “But I thought it might be fun to lie on the beach with you.”
“You mean you want to see me half-naked.”
Though they weren’t at the beach yet, he pulled the T-shirt over his head and stuffed it into the bag, then did a macho strut that made her laugh.
He seemed to be having a good time, for the most part, but she’d sensed today was a little hard for him. Seeing his old house, her parents, their childhood artwork.
For someone who didn’t talk to his parents and had never met a girlfriend’s parents before, eating lunch with hers and having them fawn all over him... Well, that would probably stir up feelings.
There were moments when she could tell he was swallowing hard or recalling an unhappy memory, but she didn’t think they were obvious to anyone else. They were only obvious to her because she was so in touch with him now, like their hearts were beating as one or some such nonsense.
There was only a small section of usable beach in Ashton Corners, and so the town had never really built up a tourism industry. It was mainly locals who went to the beach, similar to Mosquito Bay farther south. If you wanted a bigger, busier beach, you went to Grand Bend.
They claimed a spot at the edge of the beach, not too close to anyone else. She pulled off her shorts and T-shirt and was about to apply sunscreen when he said, “We’re going in the water first.”
“I’m not getting wet. Yes, it’s late summer, but it’s Lake Huron.”
“Fortunately, you’re not going to get wet.”
He crouched down, and it took her a moment to realize what he wanted her to do. She hopped on his back, her arms around his neck, and he hurried into the water. She couldn’t help laughing. She’d taken off her sunhat, and her hair blew behind her in the breeze. Although droplets of water hit her lower legs, she wasn’t getting very wet, not when she was clinging to Mike.
“You better not drop me in the lake,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I would never.”
Since he wasn’t the sort of asshole who’d immediately break his word, he waded out a little deeper, until her toes were grazing the water, then made his way back to shore.
When he set her down, he turned her so she was facing him. He stepped into her personal space, but she didn’t mind, even though they were in public. In fact, she gripped his solid arms as he kissed her.
“Alright, let’s get started on the sunscreen,” he said, gesturing for her to lie down.
She pulled her hair into a ponytail, then lay on her stomach, arms crossed under her head.
He started with her legs. She could have done her legs herself, as well as her arms, but she wasn’t complaining. There was something about the slow, deliberate way he was applying the sunscreen that made goose bumps break out on her skin, even in the hot sun.
Next, he used his large hands to run the sunscreen into her back, and she felt like she was melting into her towel.
“I wish this beach was private,” she murmured.
“Do you, now? What would you like to do? Tell me in explicit detail.”
She reached back to slap him at his teasing tone.
“You want me to put sunscreen on you now?” she asked.
“Nah, I’m going swimming first.”
Charlotte had meant to read her book, but this piqued her attention. She turned so she was looking toward the water and propped her chin in her hands. “I’m waiting for the show.”
Mike jogged to the lake and waded out to his waist. Although he was far away, she still enjoyed looking at him. He waved at her, and she felt a strange sense of pride that she was his.
He dove under the surface, emerging a few seconds later and doing a short stretch of the front crawl before diving under again. When he walked back onto the beach, his skin was glistening with water, and she stupidly wanted to lick it.
He sat down and she started applying sunscreen to his broad shoulders, but it turned into a massage.
“You’re tense,” she said. Though he’d been acting easy with her for the last hour, she wasn’t surprised.
She wished she could be closer to him. Take him inside her, touch his skin in a way that would tell him he was okay—better than okay.
“Charlotte,” he groaned. “You’ll have to stop that if you want me to survive the day.”
She moved in front of him, and though she didn’t think she’d ever done something that could be called a “shimmy” in her life, she did so now, hoping to draw attention to her boobs.
Even if her shimmy was hardly high quality, it worked; he had what could only be described as bedroom eyes.
“If you keep that up, I’m going to flex,” he said warningly.
“Aw, what a threat.”
But it was.
She was a freaking sweaty, goose-bumpy, turned-on mess. She wasn’t sure she’d survive this, either.
And then he sat up and flexed his left arm.
She rolled her eyes and pretended to be unimpressed. “You’re such a show-off.”
“Just around you.”
“Yeah, I know you like picking on me, but I’m not impressed by your flexing, shirtless, pineapple-on-pizza-loving ways.”
His burst of laughter made the couple nearby look at them.
“Yeah, you are, Charlotte.”
Yes, she was.
But it was still many, many hours before she got to be naked with him.