The Space Between Us (37 page)

I managed to creep away to take a peek into my old bedroom, looking empty without my pictures on the wall and clothes in the closet. The bed seemed way too small after so long in a queen-size, but I sat on it anyway and put my hands flat on the bare mattress to feel the places where the springs wanted to poke through.

“It’s still yours if you want it,” Vic said from the doorway. He came inside and shut the door behind him, then took a seat in the desk chair. “You know that, right?”

I drew in a shaky breath. “I wasn’t sure.”

“Tesla. You and Cappy…you always have a place here. As long as I have a place, you have one.”

It was so good to hear that that I almost cried again. Knowing I could come back was more important than actually moving back in here—something I knew I couldn’t do.

“But you won’t, huh?” Vic’s smile was rueful.

I shook my head.

He sighed and ran his fingers through his short-cropped hair, rumpling it. Even though I knew he’d probably been woken before dawn, he didn’t look nearly as tired as he used to. He rubbed his palms against the thighs of his jeans. “Where will you go?”

“I’m sure I can find an apartment. Could I stay here tonight?”

“Of course. You’ll have to let me kick your ass at the new Resident Evil, though.”

I had a smile for that. “You can try.”

Vic grinned, then let it soften. “Tesla…I’m sorry about…whatever happened. I should never have stuck my nose in it.”

“You were right, weren’t you? Look what happened.” I shrugged. “Better it ends now than later, I guess.”

“Are you sure it’s over?”

I looked at him. “I remembered what you told me.”

He didn’t ask what that had been. Just nodded. “Well. Then, good for you.”

It wasn’t good for me, it was awful. It was breaking my heart. It was leaving me alone, and I hated it.

Chapter 41

I
didn’t expect Meredith to call me, but when my phone rang late Christmas night, I hoped it would be Charlie. He sounded tired, his voice a little muffled. He said my name when I answered, and that was it.

“Is she listening?” I asked.

“No. She’s in the shower. She doesn’t know I’m calling you.”

I was in my old, narrow bed in a sleeping bag, because for some stupid reason I’d taken my comforter and sheets to Charlie and Meredith’s house even though I’d known they wouldn’t fit the other bed. My phone was cool on my ear, but quickly warmed. I curled into the warmth my breath made in the cave of my covers.

“Then you should hang up,” I said.

A beat of silence. “Tesla, I’m sorry.”

“For what, exactly?” I wasn’t trying to be crappy. Just trying to understand.

“I don’t know. What she said, I guess. It’s not how I feel. You know that.”

“Does it matter, if that’s how she feels?”

I wanted him to say yes, it mattered, but Charlie only sighed. “She…booked the trip. She got us a hotel and ski package and everything.”

I swallowed a lump the size of my fist. “Good. You go. You should have fun.”

“I want you to come.”

“I can’t, Charlie.”

He made a low noise. “I can cancel it.”

“You could,” I said, tired and heartsore. “But you won’t.”

“It’s not quite a week,” he said. “We’re leaving tomorrow. Coming back New Year’s Eve. We can be together for that, Tesla. We’ll just take this little break, get our heads straight. This will all work out. Okay?”

He sounded pleading.

“Okay,” I said, but I knew, as he must’ve, even if he wouldn’t admit it, that nothing was going to work out.

Chapter 42

T
he day after Christmas still felt festive in the Mocha, where we’d keep up all the lights until after the New Year, but I was feeling anything but merry. I wore the new coat Vic had bought me to replace the one I’d torn on the glass, and though I loved it, not even the fresh feeling of new clothes could lift my spirits. I wore Charlie’s bracelet, too, which wasn’t helping.

“Darek,” I said, surprised to see him. “What are you doing here?”

“Came in to see Brandy.” He gave me an unabashedly googly grin. “She gets off in twenty minutes. I’m taking her out for dinner.”

My brows rose. Darek didn’t bother looking defensive, just shrugged. I shook my head and waved him into a seat. When Brandy came out of the back, she squealed and ignored the line of customers waiting for service so she could run over to him. I thought Joy might make something of that, but she only rolled her eyes and stepped up to help me.

“Why don’t you leave early,” she said across the counter to both of them. It was my turn to raise my brows. Joy shrugged. “It’s better than watching them make out.”

I couldn’t disagree. I watched them, their faces alight with that fresh buzz of new…well, I wasn’t sure it was love. On the other hand, what did I know about it? Apparently nothing.

There wasn’t much of a rush when Darek and Brandy left, and I fully expected Joy to head for her office to whatever it was she did back there. When she stepped in front of me, looking me in the eye, I stopped. Wary, I took a step back.

“You weren’t supposed to come in today,” she said.

“I know.”

She studied me. “Are you okay?”

It was such a strange question to come out of her mouth that at first I couldn’t answer her. Joy looked pale, her generally unsmiling mouth tight in a frown. She’d cut her hair to shoulder length, and it looked good on her.

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“Me, neither,” she said bluntly. “I’ve been seeing doctors for months for my endometriosis, and it sucks. It hurts like hell, I have to have embarrassing and expensive procedures, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never have kids. Merry fucking Christmas, right?”

“Oh, Joy. I’m sorry.” Instinctively, I touched her shoulder, then pulled my hand back right away, but she didn’t snap at me.

She sighed. “I am a raging bitch around here. I know it. And I watch you get along with everyone, I see people like Sadie come in here…I see everyone around me having everything I want, and I don’t know how to get it. Or worse, know that even if I knew how to get it, I couldn’t, anyway.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I don’t want you to quit,” Joy said. “We need you here, Tesla.”

I coughed. “I don’t…I wasn’t going to quit. I mean, I’m not planning on it.”

“Good.” She nodded firmly, her familiar frown easing just a little into something that tried to be a smile. “I’m glad.”

“See? You have it in you,” I told her. “Let that out a little more often. It gets easier and easier.”

Her lip curled and she rolled her eyes, but something about it seemed halfhearted. “Just like meth, right?”

I put my hand on her shoulder again, this time letting it linger long enough to squeeze. “Not really.”

She gave me a genuine smile then, the sort she usually reserved for Johnny D. “Let’s take down these freaking Christmas lights. They’re making my eyes bleed.”

I grinned. “Can I change the music station, too?”

“Oh, hell no,” Joy said. “I’m not going to be that nice.”

Chapter 43

“S
he’s gone.”

The words came out of the dark, curling like smoke, and I almost jumped out of my brand-new Christmas boots from Vic and Elaine. I hadn’t seen Charlie sitting on the living room couch in the dark. I’d assumed he and Meredith would still be in Vermont. I’d brought some packing boxes and garbage bags, intent on getting my shit out of there before they got back. Even if we did manage to salvage something, I knew it wasn’t going to be me living there.

The simple truth was, I didn’t want to be a part of them anymore. A part of Charlie, yes. That I couldn’t deny. But not a part of the two of them.

I put down my armful of boxes and crossed to him to turn on the light. “Where’d she go? Vermont?”

“No. I don’t know.” Charlie looked at me, his eyes rimmed red. A nearly empty bottle of whiskey and an ashtray filled with cigarette butts were both on the coffee table in front of him. He held an empty glass. “I told her I didn’t want to go to Vermont without you, that we’d talked about making the trip for three and it didn’t feel right with just two.”

“Oh. Ouch.” I sat next to him, not touching. “Charlie, baby…that was…”

“It was true,” he said fiercely. His hair was rumpled, his shirt unbuttoned at the throat. “Dammit, Tesla. It was true.”

My heart lifted even as my stomach sank, in a coordinated bit of anatomical talent I’d never have guessed my body capable of. “She just…left? Without telling you where she was going?”

He nodded, then put a hand over his eyes and drew in a long, ragged breath. When he blew it out again to look at me, I smelled the booze and cigarettes on his breath. I was looking at a man undone, and I hadn’t been the one to do it. I wasn’t really sure I could be the one to put him back together.

But fuck me, I was willing to try.

I took his hand and pulled him closer, our mouths meeting. Tongues stroking. Our teeth bumped, but instead of pulling away, Charlie put his hand on the back of my neck to hold me closer. His low groan pushed my heart into beating faster. His hand between my legs even more so.

Charlie had been shy and sweet and kind and generous with me. He’d been funny and considerate. And now he was desperate.

He pushed me back on the cushions, his kisses bruising and relentless. Delicious. Frantic. He dragged up my skirt and worked at my tights, then opened my thighs to dive between them.

I cried out when he licked me, his lips soft and moving just right against my clit. When he pushed his fingers inside me, he groaned against my pussy. The unaccustomed roughness of his stubble scraped my sensitive flesh in the best of all ways. This was hard and fast, nothing tender about it, and my body responded without hesitation even if my mind and heart were a few steps behind.

His hands fumbled with his belt. His cock pressed against me for a second or two before fucking into me. I cried out again when he filled me, not quite ready for him but embracing the push of him inside me.

Charlie buried his face against my neck. His teeth pressed my skin, then bit. His hands moved under my ass, tilting me against him. The couch protested as we rocked it. Normally I’d have laughed at the sound it made, at how frantically our fucking had begun. All I could do now was rake my fingers down Charlie’s back, the material of his shirt keeping my nails from cutting into his skin, and give myself up to him.

This was ending all around me, and all I could do was go along with it.

He said my name when he came. Then again, lower. Softer. He slowed the pace, thrusting once more. Then again. That last press of his pelvis to mine pushed me over the edge into an orgasm brilliantly edged like a diamond, like glass. Beautiful and sharp, and cutting.

Breathing hard, Charlie pressed his forehead to mine. Whiskey breath caressed me. When he pushed himself off me, I ached at the loss, too soon, too sudden. He pulled up his pants and waited until I’d dragged my tights and panties back up my thighs. He poured himself another drink and sipped it, then set the glass heavily on the coffee table and stood. I stood, too.

Charlie’s mouth.

That’s what I wanted on my body. His hands and mouth. Tongue, teeth, fingers. I wanted the crush of him on top of me, the silken brush of his hair against my flesh, the whisper of his lashes as he closed his eyes against the sight of me.

I wanted Charlie’s mouth, and yet something made me turn my face away. His eyes shut, but I couldn’t close mine. I had to see every hair and pore, every scar. Every blemish and flaw that made Charlie so perfect.

“If I’d known.” His hands were heavy, one on my shoulder, the other on my hip. His breath smelled of whiskey and smoke. He looked like Charlie but didn’t smell like him.

Please, Charlie. Please don’t tell me you wish you’d missed all of this.

He sighed. “It’s just…there’s this space between us. This big, wide space. And I don’t know what to do with it.”

We fill it,
I wanted to tell him. But I said nothing. The words wouldn’t come. If I couldn’t kiss him, how on earth could I possibly tell him that I loved him? That it didn’t matter where Meredith had gone or if she was coming back. All we needed was right there. The two of us would find a way to make things work. That it would all be okay.

I
could
tell him that,
I thought, as Charlie pulled away. His back was toward me, his shoulders slumped. The jutting lines of his shoulder blades urged me to reach and touch him, but my fingers curled in on themselves instead. I touched myself because I wouldn’t touch him.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said again in a low, hoarse voice.

“I’m not,” I said finally. “I’m not sorry about any of it, Charlie.”

And that, at least, was the truth.

“I love you,” I said, and Charlie looked away from me. “I don’t regret anything that happened. I’m sorry Meredith couldn’t deal with it. I’m sorry if you can’t.”

He shook his head, just a little. I touched him then, my hand flat on his back. I stroked my fingers down his shirt, rumpled from our lovemaking. I hooked my fingers in his belt just long enough to tug him the smallest, tiniest amount.

And then…I let him go.

“I came to get my things,” was all I said. “I’ll pack them up and get out of here.”

Charlie sat on the couch again. Poured some more whiskey, but didn’t drink it. “She packed it all up. It’s in the dining room. I can help you take it out to your car.”

This stung me worse than almost anything, that Meredith had already shoved me out of the house she’d invited me into, even though she’d left it herself. Without a word I went upstairs to the room they’d said was mine. It was stripped clean of anything remotely resembling my occupation. I even looked under the bed and found nothing.

In the dining room I discovered the neat stacks of boxes, all sealed with tape. When had she done this? When had she gone? I shook my head, forcing myself not to care, and started taking them to the car. There weren’t many, and Charlie helped, though he was a little unsteady on his feet and I did a better job all on my own.