Page 8 of This Thing With Charlie

This thing with Charlie had ruined my life. It sounded pathetic, but it had. If I thought I had been miserable before, it was nothing compared to the ache and embarrassment in my chest that I carried with me the following day. I was short-tempered and miserable, embarrassed and rude, as I snapped at my patients and only sighed when Mrs Hallet strangely offered me a cup of tea.

I took the long way back from work so I wouldn’t have to pass the bakery where he worked or run the chance of running into him anywhere else, even if I knew exactly where he would be because foolishly I had asked him and he had told me, long before he had kissed me, and I had ruined it all.

I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Fuck, I was such a fool.

When I thought back, the clues were all there. He had never mentioned girlfriends, always using neutral words. Always talked loosely about clubbing and hookups and apps and flings. I shuddered with unease again, trying to justify my simply stupid generalisations and prejudices. He was a beautiful man, generous and charming, and had looked after me, treating me with kindness when my life had contained none. He was…

He was a proud, gay man, and I was a complete idiot.

He had also flirted shamelessly with me from the first day we met, and I had, in my imbecilic state, flirted right back. I had played along under some strange guise that he was a kindred spirit, a friend I simply just clicked with. We had gelled and got along, and he laughed at my jokes as I laughed at his. He had called me his, and I had called him mine. I cringed at the realisation of our words, in complete and utter shame. He was lovely and funny and made me feel good about myself. He was Charlie. He was my Charlie, and I had…

I had fucked up. I had fucked up so badly that I couldn’t even justify it to myself or explain my frankly weird behaviour, however hard I tried.

I wiped my eyes in the clinic toilets at the end of the day when the pressure was too much, and my nerves were shot to shit. I just couldn’t bear it, the look in his eyes and the hunch of his shoulders when he had walked away from me, and now, I would have to somehow, fuck... I didn’t know what to do. What to say. How to...

I would have to pack my bags, sell my wreck of a house, and move somewhere else. I would have to run away, leave town and never come back. Yet those thoughts carried the strange afterthought of never seeing Charlie again and that, precisely that, was messing with my head.

I wanted to just erase the last twenty-four hours. I’d gone over the conversations we shared, over and over again. And in my head? I had corrected every mistake and said all the right things, cleverly outplayed that kiss and pleaded and explained and justified and smoothed out the way things had gone until things made perfect sense. In my head.

They actually made no fucking sense, whatsoever, but then again, my head was not a sensible place, and my heart was smashed to unfixable splinters. So what else could I do? I snuck into the Nordic Star Hotel with my tail between my legs, wondering if I could get away with crawling past the bloody bar-ception-shite-thingy out of sight with some of my dignity intact.

I couldn’t, of course, because there was an elderly couple sitting by the fire, sipping Charlie’s perfect cups of tea. Little fancy mince pies lingering on a plate between them as the fire crackled and Christmas music played in the background.

The scented candles made me want to cough, the music made me want to throw up there and then. And of course, Charlie was standing behind the counter; both hands firmly placed on the top, his shoulders tensed up and his face in… a smile.

“Hey!” he shouted out as I skulked towards him, my head held low. I couldn’t look at him. I just... couldn’t.

“I don’t…” I started. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then just shut up… and I assume you want a pint of the guest ale, it’s Friday after all. Today’s brew is a local Christmas ale, smooth with a little hint of citrus in there and a crisp bitter finish. I read the tasting notes earlier, haven’t tried it though. You up for it?”

“Charlie…” I sighed, sitting myself down on the barstool as spineless as a child. “Charlie, Charlie… Charlie.”

“Oh, shut up, Daniel, and listen to me,” he said, leaning over on his elbows, staring at me through his fringe. “I read the whole thing wrong. I read you wrong, and I apologise. It’s not the bloody end of the world, not to me, anyway. It will be something you and I will laugh about in the future, once I have gotten over the fact that you can be a bit of an arse, and of course, there is the tiny little detail, that you are not into me, at all. Which is fine. Sad but fine, but I will probably forgive you for that one. One day. After you have apologised. I will hold your pint hostage while you think up an apology you can grovel out to me, then I will consider it, and if it’s good enough, I will let you have a plate of the absolutely orgasmic chicken curry cooking away on the stove back there, with my special coconut rice on the side. Kind of a Thai takeaway thing I sometimes make. I thought you might like it. Friday night comfort food. You know.”

He was flustered again, chewing the fingernail on his thumb as I tried to calm my beating heart.

“If I were you, I would never speak to me again,” I started off as he sighed softly.

“If I never spoke to you again? That would make me sad. Remember, I am nursing a tiny little stupid crush on you.”

“Tiny little crush,” I teased, finding a small strain of courage somewhere in my stomach. “That was a full-on kiss. That wasn’t anything like a tiny little crush kiss. That was a big-arsed full-on crush kind of kiss you had going on there.”

“I didn’t use tongue,” he teased back, keeping his voice low as he looked over my shoulder to check on the couple who were chatting quietly behind us.

“I’ve already had all your germs,” I smiled..

Thank god for that. He was laughing again, and the ache in my chest was starting to hurt a little less.

“You can have all of my germs, any time. There are lots of lovely things we could do to each other to exchange germs. Sex and kissing and blow jobs and other nice things like that. But, oh yeah. You’re not into men or gay shit and all that. Sorry. My bad.”

He was smiling, but those were my exact words, and he was just echoing them back to me with an edge to his voice. Yes. I’d hurt him. I knew that. I was stupid and rude, and said all those things with added anger and disgust.

“I’m not…”

“Yeah, you’re not,” he snarled back, chewing furiously at his thumb.

“The gay thing is not problematic.” I tried to find all those smart sentences I had practised in my head. The sensitive and supportive words you were supposed to use. The ‘love is love’ shite that people posted on social media, all things that had suddenly disappeared from my head, leaving my brain an empty hole of mush.

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