Page 93 of Fade into You

“Oh god, that’s right,” I groan, burying my face in herneck. “Charlie middle-named me in front of you.”

“Hey, I love your middle name. And your first name and your last name and your nickname. Basically all your names are my favorite names.”

I nestle into her more closely and whisper, “I love all your names too.”

“Why do they call you Birdie, anyway?” she asks, bringing our hands up into the pale light like she’s studying the way they look with our fingers entwined.

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “That’s just what they’ve always called me.”

“You never asked why?”

“I guess it’s an old-time nickname for Elizabeth. I looked it up once. But I think…” I pause and close my eyes to try to remember but can’t quite make the fragments of my memories stitch themselves together. “I think it was my dad, maybe, who started calling me that.”

“Well…” She lets go of my hand and pulls me closer, locking her leg around mine. “It suits you.”

I don’t remember falling back asleep, but we wake up to loud knocking on the door. Jessa practically jumps out of my arms and scrambles across the room to get to the other bed just as Charlie’s opening the door.

I honestly wouldn’t have cared if he’d seen us. But I know how she feels and I’m not going to argue about it anymore.

“Wakey, wakey,” he says, poking his head in.

Jessa’s sitting on the edge of the other bed. “Morning,” she tells him.

“Hey, I was gonna head over for breakfast, if you wanna join. I’ve gotta hit the library after, so I might not see you again before you head out.”

I sit up now too. “Yeah, let’s get breakfast, then.”

“Cool. Meet you downstairs,” he’s saying while already pulling the door shut behind him.

We throw clothes on, and she lets me kiss her quickly before I open the door.

He brings us to a different cafeteria for breakfast than the big dining hall the night before. This place reminds me of the kind of free continental breakfasts they have at hotel chains. We get some good coffee and bagels and sit with Charlie in a little corner booth, and as we talk, I have a hard time concentrating because all I want to do is tell him how happy I am. That Jessa’s my girlfriend. I can barely think of anything else to say, so much that I start to worry it’s just going to slip out like “honey” did last night.

“So, Jessa,” he says. “What did you think about Birdie’s surprise?”

She shakes her head and smiles. “It was awesome. Such an amazing badass night! I was totally surprised.”

“She really was,” I agree.

Charlie extends his hand across the table for a fist bump. “I suck at keeping secrets,” he says. “Did you notice how I almost let it slip last night at dinner?”

I nod, but there’s some kind of sadness building up inside me as I realizeI’mgetting pretty good at keeping secrets.

“Hey, Charlie, any news about Boston?”

His eyes dart to Jessa for a moment, and it occurs to me that he’s probably better at keeping secrets than he thinks.

“Jessa knows all about it.”

“Oh,” he murmurs, seeming taken aback. “Um, well nothing much, really. The restaurant—our dad’s restaurant that we found out about,” he adds for Jessa’s sake, “doesn’t have any kind of online presence. I’m gonna do some digging, I promise. Probably even today, after I finish this term paper.”

“Nice. Good,” I say. “That’d be awesome, Charlie. Thank you.”

“Yeah, of course. I want to find him as much as you do.”

Jessa says, “I keep telling Bird we should just go there. Drive up one weekend.”

“You think you really will?” he asks, sounding surprised.