By the time I kick open the back door, arms loaded with bedding, Charlie’s already got the tent set up.
“Well,” I say. “You’ve done it. You’ve surprised me.”
“And here I thought that if you needed to stun a shark, you were supposed to just smack it between the eyes.”
“No,” I say. “Competency with portable shelters is the way to do it.”
He crouches inside the tent and starts unrolling the air mattress we bought at Target — because, sure, Libby and I are going to camp, but we’re still Stephens women. “How are you such a pro at this?” I ask.
“I camped a lot with my dad, growing up.” The intense daylight has every sharp line of his face shadowed to black, his eyes more molasses than honey.
“Have you gone since you’ve been back?” I ask.
Charlie shakes his head. After a few seconds, he says, “He doesn’t want me here.”
His tone, his brow, his mouth — everything about him has taken on that stony quality, like he’s just reciting facts, objective truths that don’t affect him. “They weren’t thrilled when I decided to stay in the city instead of coming back to work for one of them.”
I wonder if people fall for that. If, every time Charlie talks about the things that mean the most to him, the world sees a cold man with a clinical view of things, rather than someone grappling for understanding and control in a world where those rarely appear.
I swallow the aching knot in my throat. “I’m sure they want you here, Charlie. It sounds like that’s what they wanted from the beginning.”
He tips his chin toward the patio table, on which the extension cords we bought sit. “Mind plugging in the air pump?”
For the next couple of minutes, we’re silent as the pump howls. I set up the fans we pulled from the closet and plug them into the power strip. Charlie puts the bedding onto the mattress, and I hang the paper-lantern lights, arranging the mosquito-repelling candles at regular intervals.
We’re quiet until I can’t take it anymore. “Charlie,” I say, and he looks over his shoulder at me, then turns to sit on the edge of the air mattress.
“I’m sure he’s grateful you’re here,” I say. “They both must be.”
He uses the back of his hand to catch the sweat on his brow. “When I told him I was staying for a while, his exact words were, Son, just what do you think you can do? The emphasis on you was his, not mine.”
I sit on the deck in front of him, cross-legged. “But aren’t you two close?”
“We were,” he says. “We are. He’s the best person I know. And he’s right, there’s not a lot I can do to help him. I mean, Shepherd’s the one keeping the business going, keeping up with the work their house always needs. All I can do is run the bookstore.”
My heart stings. I remember that feeling, of not being enough. Of wanting so badly to be what Libby needed after we lost Mom and failing, over and over again. I couldn’t be tender for her. I couldn’t bring the magic back into our life. All I had on my side was brute force and desperation.
But I was trying to live up to a memory, the phantom of someone we’d both loved.
Now I see what I missed before. Not just that Charlie never felt like he fit, but that he saw what it would’ve looked like if he did. I didn’t make much of it at the time, but seeing Shepherd standing with Clint at the salon — it isn’t just that they are comparable heights and builds, or the same trope. They look alike. The green eyes, the blond hair, the beard.
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.