Page 144 of Charming Like Us

“Sorry!” they laugh.

“FOUR!” one chuckles.

Akara is fuming. “Stay here, Sul.” He hops off the cart. “Hey! No one is playing golf tonight!”

Bougie bar-hop.

I can’t wait around for Akara.

“See you, Sulli.”

“Yeah…” She’s in a daze watching Akara confront the drunks.

I’m off running.

And I reach Hole 2 dripping sweat and trying to catch my breath. No one wants to hear me cough up a lung on footage.

Charlie loiters at the edge of a dark pond in the night. Temps stand off to the side, not interfering. I focus my camera on him.

He sips champagne, the bottom of his wrinkled shirt untucked from his dress pants. His gaze turns away. “Trying to upstage me?” he asks.

I back up about to capture the other person he’s speaking to.

Fuck.

It’s his twin brother. Dressed in a crisp suit, dark hair artfully styled, Beckett Cobalt saunters up to Charlie. I turn off my camera.

Can’t record Beckett.

Still, it took me forever to reach Charlie, so I might as well wait out this interaction.

“Believe me, everyone I’ve run into today has asked foryou,” Beckett says into a smile. “You were cursed by the fucking devil at birth, I swear.”

Charlie smiles bitterly. “The one who wants to be alone is always wanted.” He finishes off his champagne. “Too bad I can’t be wanted by someone interesting.”

Beckett slides over that comment and acknowledges me with a nod. “How’s it going, Jack?”

“It’s going.” My shoulders ache under the Steadicam. “Charlie’s been a great audience. I actually prefer to socialize with him over the guests.”

And I do mean that.

The ladies and men who laugh in their clustered groups all appear glossed over with false bravados. Even Connor Cobalt, Charlie’s dad has put on an air of charm that has a layer of deception underneath its sincerity.

Charlie might be “a pain in the ass” as Oscar puts it, but he’s always himself.

“Charlie’s said the same about you,” Beckett says casually.

That surprises me—that Charlie would talk about me in private to his twin brother. Then again, I have been following him for weeks. I guess, I’ve become a part of his life in a way that I never have before.

A Secret about Charlie Cobalt:He told me that he’s the one who introduced Beckett to cocaine, and he’s regretted it ever since.

Charlie plucks another champagne flute off of a passing server’s tray.

“Jack!”

I turn at the sound of Oscar’s nineteen-year-old sister Joana.

Oh no.