Page 44 of Deep In Love
“Charlie, do you want to be my partner?”
So predictable.
Her gaze slides to mine from across the table, and there’s something hesitant in it.
Say no.
Her lip twitches, then morphs into a smile. It’s becoming difficult to sit here, to watch as she offers her warmth to someone new. In Rhode Island, I had the benefit of ignorance. If I didn’t hear about her dating life or see her with anyone, I could live in wonderful, unenlightened bliss with the belief that she harbors intense feelings for me.
Watching her with Shaun makes me want to throw him overboard and feed him to sharks.
“Uh, sure,” Charlie says. “As long as we can be blue.”
I want to be a petty asshole and steal those pieces, then crush him with my Catan skills.
“I already chose blue,” Jett admits, laying them on the table in front of him.
If his chaotic energy, outrageous sayings, and perpetual good mood weren’t already growing on me, this moment would be the tipping point from acquaintances to an unbreakable lifetime bond.
“We can be partners,” I declare, moving seats to sit beside him while keeping track of Shaun and his smarmy face, afraid if I turn my back he will whisk Charlie away.
“Mateo and I are going to crush you all like little bugs!” Jett points around the room but pauses when Sofía lifts a brow.
“And if Vivian and I beat you?” she asks.
“Not gonna happen, dudette,” he boasts, before leaning over and whispering, “How do you play Catan?”
Oh, this is wonderful. I can mold him to do my bidding. I rise, signaling for Jett to follow. “We’re going to strategize.”
“You can’t do that,” Charlie yells as we huddle in the corner. “Not fair!”
“You have a partner,Charlie,” I say pointedly. “Strategize with him.”
Her eye twitches, the telltale sign she’s pissed off but trying to mask it. Makes two of us.
Leaning in, I tell Jett the plan. “I don’t care about winning. I only care about sabotaging Shaun.”
Jett’s head tilts before a roguish grin appears. “Ah…This is about Blondie, isn’t it?”
Blondielaughs across the room, and the sound skitters along my spine.
“She’s wicked cool, man.”
I know she’s wicked cool. So does Shaun, which is why he’s trying to flirt her right out of her panties, and I hate him with every fiber of my being, because it might be working.
Five days on the boat and he might accomplish what I never have: earning Charlie’s attention.
It’s embarrassing how badly I want her to notice me, to see me, but my inner demons whisper that if she did see me, something would have happened these last two years.
I’ve never been subtle in my flirting, but maybe she’s never seen me in that light, and every effort has been futile.
Crippling fear of rejection is not a phobia easily shed, especially not when it played a pivotal role in my developmental years. I blame Karla Jergens and her brutal annihilation of my self-confidence at thirteen when I asked her to the winter ball and she laughed at me like it was some kind of prank.
I didn’t ask another woman out until college, and even then, she essentially told me to ask her out because she was tired of waiting. What I felt for Karla pales in comparison to how I feel about Charlie. Karla’s rejection crushed me, but if Charlie tells me she has no interest in me, it will result in a Permian-level extinction of my ability to put myself out there.
“So, like, you love her, right?”
My head jerks to Jett, who wears a lopsided grin. I frantically search around to make sure no one else heard him, and he throws up his hands in peace. “No dramas, man. She’s dope, but like, I’m right,right? You’re totally in love with her. I can see it.”
