Book Lovers(79)

I climb into the tent beside him, the mattress dipping under my weight. “You’re his son, Charlie.”

He runs his hands down his thighs, sighing. “I’m not good at this shit.” He kneads his eyebrow, then leans back on the mattress, staring up through the mosquito-netted roof, a Charlie-suggested compromise that still counts as Libby and me sleeping under the stars. “I’ve never felt so useless in my life. Things are falling apart for them, and the best I can do is open the store every day at the same time.”

“Which, from what you’ve told me, is a vast improvement.” I move closer, his warm smell curling around me, the sun coaxing it from his skin. Overhead, spun-sugar clouds drift across the cornflower blue sky. “You’re not useless, Charlie. I mean, look at all this.”

He gives me a look. “I know how to set up a tent, Nora. It’s not Nobel-worthy.”

I shake my head. “Not that. You’re . . .” I search for the right word. It’s rare that my vocabulary fails me like this. “Organized.”

His eyes crackle with light as he laughs. “Organized?”

“Extremely,” I deadpan. “Not to mention thorough.”

“You make me sound like a contract,” he says, amused.

“And you know how I feel about a good contract,” I say.

His smirk pulls higher. “Actually, I only know how you feel about a bad one, written on a damp napkin.” He lies back fully on the mattress, and I do too, leaving a healthy gap between us.

“A good contract is . . .” I think for a moment.

“Adorable?” Charlie supplies, teasing.

“No.”

“Comely?”

“At bare minimum,” I say.

“Charming?”

“Sexy as hell,” I reply. “Irresistible. It’s a list of great traits and working compromises that watch out for all parties involved. It’s . . . satisfying, even when it’s not what you expected, because you work for it. You go back and forth until every detail is just how it needs to be.”

I look sidelong at Charlie. He’s already looking at me. The healthy gap has developed a fever. “What’s the deal with Amaya?” It’s out before I can second-guess it.

The corners of his mouth turn downward. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I say, “you almost married her. What went wrong?”

“A lot of things,” he says.

“Oh, like you were too forthcoming?” I tease.

His lips draw into their smirk-pout. “Or maybe she just wasn’t enough of a smart-ass for my taste.”

After a beat, we turn our gazes back to the cotton-candy-soft clouds and he says, “We started dating in high school. And then she went to NYU, and after some time at community college, I followed her.”

“Your first love?” I guess.

He nods. “When we finished school, she wanted to look at places back in Asheville. It had never occurred to me that she’d want to move back, and it had never occurred to her that I wouldn’t, and we were so bad at communicating that it didn’t come up much.”

“Did you try long distance?” I ask.

“For a year,” he says. “Worst year of my life.”

“It never works,” I agree.

“Every day feels like a breakup,” he says. “You’re constantly letting each other down, or holding each other back. When we finally ended things, my mom was pretty brokenhearted. She told me I was making all the same mistakes she did and I was going to end up alone if I didn’t figure out my priorities.”

“She just wanted you to come back,” I say. “And Amaya was the fastest path.”

“Maybe.” He lets out a breath, like he’s resigned himself to something. “We barely spoke for a few months, and then . . .” He hesitates. “I came home for the holidays, and I found out Amaya had been dating my cousin since a few weeks after we split. That’s what she wanted to clear the air about, the other night.”

I sit up on my forearms, surprised. “Wait. Your ex-fiancée dated your cousin? Shepherd?”

He nods. “My family basically agreed not to tell me, but I found out anyway, and we had another rough stretch after that.”

And there it is, another little piece of Charlie popped into place.

“There aren’t a ton of prospects here,” he goes on, “so I didn’t exactly blame them, but at the same time . . .”

“Fuck that?” I guess.

He runs a hand up the backside of his head, then tucks it there. “I don’t know, she deserves to be happy. Shepherd had a better chance of giving her that.”

“Why?” I ask. He looks at me, brow pinched, like he doesn’t understand the question. “Why does he have any better chance at making someone happy than you do?”

“Oh, come on, Stephens,” he says wryly. “You of all people know what I mean.”

“I definitely don’t,” I insist.

“Your archetypes,” he says. “The tropes. He’s the guy every woman falls for. The son my parents wanted, working full-time at the job my dad wanted me to have, all while making, like, fucking rocking chairs in his spare time. He even went to my top choice for school.”