Page 25 of What He Doesn't Know

“Honestly, I really don’t. Can you talk, instead?”

I scoffed. “Come on, don’t you know who you’re sitting next to? Can I talk…” I joked.

Charlie smiled as I jumped right into the story I was going to tell Blake about Mrs. Garrett, and before she’d even finished that first beer, I had her laughing. We ordered another round as soon as she’d polished off the one in her hand, this time opting for a citrus wheat ale from a brewery in Georgia. It went down even easier than the first beer, and before I knew it, we were four beers in. I switched to water after that, knowing I’d need to drive eventually, but Charlie ordered another round.

There was something different about her that night, and it wasn’t just her jeans. I could feel her slowly opening up to me, slowly letting me in, and the more she gave me, the more I wanted. If she offered me a smile, I begged her for a laugh. When she gave me a sentence, I pried for a paragraph.

I’d always been greedy when it came to Charlie.

“That’s so disgusting,” she said as I lit my second cigarette. Her nose wrinkled when I inhaled the first hit, blowing out a big puff of white smoke with a wink in her direction. “I thought for sure you’d have given up that habit by now.”

“Nah. It’s like my dad used to say. Something has to kill me eventually, might as well be something I enjoy.”

“You don’t have to speed up the process. You’re going to have lung cancer at forty.”

“That’s still five more years of good cigarettes, great beer, and even better sex.”

Charlie laughed, her cheeks flushing a deep pink. “It’s like trying to argue with a five year old.”

“You would know better than I would,” I told her, taking another pull from my cigarette. I was careful not to blow the smoke in her direction, though my eyes stayed on her. “You’re drunk.”

“Maybe.” She giggled the word, picking up her beer to take another drink, anyway. “It’s been so long since I’ve had beer. I forgot how it makes you feel all… swimmy.”

“Swimmy?”

“You know,” she said, extending her arms to the side and doing a weird version of the wave. “Floaty. High. Free.” Her smile settled into a lazy smirk, her glazed eyes finding mine. “You were responsible for my first beer, you know.”

“Ohhh, no,” I corrected, holding up my right pointer finger. “Don’t even try to pull that. Youbeggedme for your first beer. I said no. You threatened to tell my parents about the porn stash you and Mallory had found under my bed. AndthenI gave you a Stella, which you couldn’t even finish because you hated the taste so much.”

“Is that how it went?” she asked, feigning innocence.

“It was. You were such a brat for being a quiet little pigtail-wearing bookworm.”

She threw her head back in a laugh. “Oh, my God. I still can’t believe my mother let me wear those things for as long as she did. What sixteen-year-old still braids her hair into pigtails?”

I swallowed, not wanting to admit the answer to that question — at least not out loud. The truth was, Charlie had been unlike any other sixteen-year-old girl I’d ever met. She was smart, quiet, witty, and way too sexy for her own good. Charlie didn’t even have totryto look sexy, either. She had this innocent school-girl thing going for her — no makeup, petite frame, pink lips and rosy cheeks. It was even worse when she wore her glasses, which I noted she’d traded in for contacts sometime in the years we’d been apart.

At sixteen, she knew more about the world than most of the kids I hung out with at college parties. Hell, she knew way more than I did, and I was five years older. I used to love just talking to Charlie, even though I’d fake that she and Mallory both annoyed me. Sometimes I’d even complain when I’d come home from a party and Charlie was there in the kitchen, the only other person still awake in my house. I’d pretend I didn’t want her to be awake, that I didn’t want to hang out with her, didn’t want to spend the entire night playing music for her and listening to the thoughts inside her head — but it was always just that. An act.

Charlie had always been different. Special. She just never saw it herself.

Taking one last drag of my cigarette, I pulled up the sleeve of my cardigan, checking the time on my watch. It was half past ten, and as I drove what was left of my cigarette into the ashtray to extinguish it, I eyed Charlie with words I didn’t want to say balancing on my tongue.

“It’s getting kind of late,” I unwillingly pointed out. “Are you… do you have to go soon?”

Charlie’s eyes grew sad again, and she stared at the amber liquid in her glass before tilting it to her lips, finishing what was left. She wiped the corners of her mouth with a shrug.

“Go where? Home to go to bed alone while he works?” Her fingertips skated the top of her empty glass. “Not exactly in a hurry for that.”

My brows bent together, hand twitching to reach for her again. I gripped my glass of water to keep from reacting the way I wanted to. “So, that’s what happened to date night,” I mused. “He works with your dad, right? I remember him working long nights and weekends when we were younger, too.”

Charlie sighed, running her hands back through her hair before she realized it was still in a bun. She messed it up with the drag of her nails, but instead of fixing it, she just tore the hair tie out and shook out her long brown hair, letting it fall over her shoulders.

I couldn’t help but stare as the strands fell over her shoulders. I was almost positive it was the first time I’d ever seen her hair down, and I had to fight the urge to reach forward and run my fingers through it.

She was so damn beautiful.

“Yeah, he works with Dad,” she said. “And I know he wouldn’t be working if he didn’t have to. I didn’t mean to sound like such a brat.”