Interrupted (The Progress Series) (12 page)

“Oh! Charlie, right. The revenge fuck, foiled. Nice to meet you,” Gabe said, nodding and reaching his hand out to greet her.

Her eyebrows shot up.
Well, at least he’s honest. Blunt, but honest.

“Oh, Gabe! I heard you were a dick. It’s nice to meet you, too,” she said, shaking his hand firmly.

“Hey, go easy, you two.” Samuel said teasingly, enjoying the banter.

Smiling, Gabe retorted, “Who told you I was a dick?” He looked at Sam out of the corner of his eye.

“Oh, I just know a girl you used to date, that’s all,” she said.

“Oh yeah? Which one?” Gabe asked, titillated by reminiscent thoughts of past affairs.

Wow. That just went right past his head.

“We’ve got a sharp one here,” Charlie mumbled to Samuel while Gabe was thinking about his recent hook-ups.

“Okay! I’m going to get dinner started. Gabe, you want some lasagna?”

Shaking out of his haze, Gabe snapped up his head. “Oh, no. I’m good. I’m going to dinner with Scott. We’ll be heading over to his place tonight.”

“Sounds good. I’m going to give Charlie the tour. Talk to you tomorrow,” Samuel said, nodding a goodbye.

“Have fun, you two.” Gabe winked and headed out the door.

“Nice to meet you, Gabe.”

*

“Want to see my room?” Samuel asked, after popping the lasagna in the oven.

“Sure.”

Leading her through a small hallway, he opened one of three doors. Like a bulldozer, the smell of Samuel almost knocked her over. She closed her eyes briefly to take in the crisp scent of soap and the dulled smell of sleep. The room was small, dark and messy. A blanket was draped over the small corner window, keeping out all light from outside. An office desk was crammed in the corner with a laptop and other electrical gadgets plugged into it, and a mattress and box spring sat on the hardwood floor along with a few empty soda cans and chip bags.

“This is my messy room,” he said without entering. “And over here is the bathroom and Gabe’s room.”

As they made their way back to the living room, Charlie turned to Samuel. “I completely forgot to tell you!”

“What?”

“I got the job. And so, I got the apartment! I can move in a few weeks,” she said, looking down at her arm. “Once I get my cast off, that is.”

“Really? That was fast. When do you start the job?”

“A week from tomorrow. I told her about my arm, but she said I’d be doing light duty stuff for the first couple of weeks, anyway.”

“That’s great, Charlie.”

“I’m pretty excited. This is going to be something totally new for me.” She smiled.

Samuel took a step closer to her and she looked down, escaping his mesmerizing gaze. “So, can I come over and see you at your new place?” he asked, closing the distance further.

She nodded. “I hope that you do.”

Break the rules, damn it. Do it. Kiss me.

“I’ve wanted to tell you something, Charlie,” he said quietly.

“Yes?” she asked, lifting her chin to look into his eyes.

Oh, he’s so close. He smells so good.

Charlie closed her eyes and breathed in deeply before opening them again. Samuel stared into her blue eyes, darting back and forth from each one, searching for something.

He took a step back and broke eye contact.

“God, you make it feel so…possible,” he whispered.

Looking scorned, he turned his head away from her. When his eyes returned to see the empathy on Charlie’s face, he softened his own with a smile and shook his head.

“What are you talking about, Sam?”

He reached out and rubbed his thumb against her cheek as she tilted her head towards his palm, closing her eyes.

“Everything is so easy right now. Everything is…perfect. You.
Me. Together. You make it feel possible that I can trust you. And that puts me in a very difficult position. It makes me…feel like a jackass for trusting someone again. And so soon,” he whispered.

Oh god, that hurts my heart. Who could hurt this man? Who does that to a guy like Samuel? Who could cheat on him?

“Listen to me.” Charlie brought him to the couch and sat down. She took his hand and interlocked their fingers. “I get it. I don’t know what your ex-girlfriend was thinking. I honestly don’t have the slightest clue who could do something like that to anyone, but least of all
you.
And I’m not going to tell you that we’re going to have a perfect relationship, or that we’re not going to hurt each other at some point. But I can guarantee you one thing: I’m not the kind of girl that cheats. I have much more control over myself than that. But honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever need to fight those kinds of urges, because…for the past few weeks, I haven’t had any urge to be with anyone but you,” she said. “Samuel, look at me.” Charlie took his chin and tilted it toward her face. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

His eyes told her he still didn’t quite believe her.

“It’s fine. Really,” she paused, “I’m in no rush. You don’t have to believe me today, because I’m looking forward to proving it to you tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. But, just believe me when I tell you that I would never cheat on you, Samuel.”

“I believe that
you
believe it,” he said.

Just as the bell rang on the oven, Charlie gave a quiet smile, realizing that their faces were mere inches from one another’s. Her stomach did a flip as she thought about how intimate the moment was.

“Hungry?” he asked, tearing away from her stare.

She rolled her eyes. “Ravenous,” she said with a wink.

*

Lying in her bed that night, alone, Charlie felt like she was floating. Floating on a high of Samuel, the drawing he had shown her, and a lasting feeling of fullness in her heart.

He was right, it’s so easy right now. It’s effortless to be with each other. There are no games, no lies, and I feel so…so strong and confident when I’m with him. He’s a little broken and a little insecure, I can see that. But I’m not going to give up on him. He’s worth too much, and he means too much to me now. I’m not going to give up as easily as I have before, because he’s worth it, and I’m worth it, too.

I remember thinking that day he came to the restaurant that his timing was horrible. But in hindsight, I can say that his timing was absolutely perfect. I suppose that’s how life works. People are brought into our lives for different reasons, at different times, in order to teach us something: the things we’re supposed to learn.

The following week, Charlie had two hostess shifts at The Crimson. Her cast wouldn’t be removed for another two weeks, and it was beginning to bother her as the anticipation of her new job, and Samuel, mounted.

She packed what she could with discarded lettuce boxes that she began accumulating from the restaurant. Twenty years’ worth of crap stored in her parents’ basement was going to require more effort than she had the energy for, but with nothing and no one otherwise to occupy her time, she started organizing the physical memories of years passed.

Sifting through yearbooks, journals, photos and sketches, she kept only the essentials and tossed the things she couldn’t remember why she had kept in the first place. Once she had finished with the things she had stored in the laundry room, she focused on packing the items in her bedroom the next day.

Box after box she packed and shoved to the side as she found her groove. Listening to Fleetwood Mac, Seals and Crofts, and The Steve Miller Band, she fumbled her way through the majority of the items she knew she wouldn’t need before her moving day. The music kept her nostalgic—the same easy listening her mother always had on the radio.

Staring at her from the corner of her room was the box that held the items that were closest to her heart. Opening it slowly, she began to uncover its little treasures. An antique ashtray, a small jewelry box, a 1987 Twins World Series Homer Hanky, and her mother’s round tin that was home to over five hundred unique buttons that dated as early as the 1950s. She reached into the box and pulled out the next item. It was a men’s bathroom sign. She stared at it for a minute, trying to remember why she had it.

Her smile turned into a blank gaze as she recalled the moment:

“Hey Foxy. I got somethin’ for you.”

“Did you finally buy me some smokes?” she joked.

“I got you this.” Jesse held up a men’s bathroom sign. It was blue with a handicapped stick-person on the front and in big white letters spelled MEN.

“Did you steal this?” she shouted a whisper at him.

“Yes. What? Don’t look at me like that. It was starting to fall off the door — it was just begging me to take it.”

Her stomach turned and goosebumps shot up her arms. Putting the sign aside, she dug deeper.

She found an envelope with her teddy bear necklace inside and farther down in the box was a CD with the name
Progress
written on the top. She ran to the CD player and put it in immediately. The only thing that remained at the bottom of the box was an envelope with Jesse’s name on it. She knew exactly what it was: a letter that she had written to Jess a few days after they spent the night together. She decided to keep it sealed and threw it in the box that held her lifetime’s worth of journals.

As the music started, her
stomach went hollow and her chest heaved. It felt like an eternity since she had stirred up any emotion about Jess. Her life was different now. In just two short months, she no longer had any use for drama, nor did she welcome it. She had left the storm of adolescence behind her and she was moving forward, but she still carried the regret of what she did to Jess that night.

She put on her necklace and was grateful that her experience with him, and her confrontation with Aaron Paulson, had gotten her to where she was that day—on her own, strong, and in a healthy relationship. She decided to wear the necklace always, as a reminder of where she had been and how far she’d come.

*

Later that afternoon, Charlie heard footsteps coming downstairs. She set down the delicate vases that she had been securing with old newspapers and peeked around the corner.

“Hey, Pops! Slowly but surely, I’m getting there. I have a lot of shit!” she said, delighted with her progress.

A strange laugh erupted from her father’s throat as Karen walked downstairs behind him.

Charlie’s system went on high alert, sensing something was definitely wrong. Very, very wrong.

“Dad? What’s going on? Mom? You’re both being so quiet,” she said.

“You’ve gotten a lot done,” her dad said, with something else visibly weighing on his mind.

“Dad? What’s going on?” she repeated it slower, her heart sinking as she saw the expression on her mother’s face and the puffiness in her eyes.

Staring at the floor, Bill wouldn’t, couldn’t look up. Karen came around and squeezed his hand. “You can tell her, honey.”

“What? What’s going on!” Charlie shouted.

Bill put his arm around Karen and gave a quick squeeze.

“Jesus, what is it?”

“It’s back. The cancer is back,” Bill said.

Charlie’s hand swooped up to cover her mouth.

No.

Daddy.

After an hour’s conversation with her parents and several outbursts of tears, Charlie curled up with her comforter that night and fell asleep before eight o’clock. She had missed the two texts and one phone call from Samuel.

No one
could reach her.

She knew what this meant. There had been a good chance that the colon cancer would return, even after his arduous and lengthy battle with chemotherapy and radiation that had crippled his frail body five years earlier.

Charlie was always the strong one—the one who kept order in chaos, the one with the level head in times of delirium, and the one to research alternate solutions just when everyone thought the bottom of the barrel had been scraped.

There were no more solutions for this. She knew it. The cancer had spread from his colon to his liver. From his liver to his breast plate. From his breast plate to his lymph nodes. It was everywhere. He was in fourth-stage cancer, and Charlie seemed to be the only one that didn’t hold out hope. Hope wasn’t logical. Hope would only delay the inevitable.

Taking a few days to regroup, Charlie avoided Samuel, her parents, and packing. She fought the urge to cry every time it cropped up and spent her nights watching movies that took her mind off of it.

*

Are you avoiding me? Talk to me. :( xx Sam

Charlie let out a sigh as she began texting him back.

Yes, and no. Haven’t been in a talking mood. I’ll explain Sunday. Miss you. xx

She got up and put another movie in the DVD player when she heard her phone ring. She got back into bed and ignored the chipper ringtone.

Charlie? Why won’t you pick up? Talk to me.

Her phone started ringing again. She picked up the remote control and hit the pause button.