Page 91 of Thirsty
And Rachel had Isolde backed up against a huge dark tree, their skin an urgent blur, lips fused together, damp breaths heaving between them, and Rachel’s hands—Lorenzo jerked his eyes away, throwing an arm in front of his face. He didn’t want to see where her hands were.
Maggie let out a mortified yelp. “What are you guys doing?” she wailed, hastening to follow Lorenzo’s example and block her eyes.
He could make out just enough to see them spring apart. “We—you—” Rachel stuttered, her lips shiny and wet.
Around them, the illusion was crumbling like crepe paper wilting after a long party—the greenhouse was disappearing, becoming Rachel’s room again. The tree was now just Rachel’s closet door, where Isolde seemed to have frozen, her face bright purple, her lower lip slack.
“We have your chicken,” Lorenzo managed.
For whatever reason, that was what prompted Rachel and Isolde to share a long, weighty look—and then flee in opposite directions.
Maggie turned to him with a frozen scream that was part embarrassment, part glee, and all horror. Lorenzo felt like his head was swimming. He didn’t like drama.
Especially when the one person he would have wanted to tell all about this was—gone.
No. Especially when that person had never been there; not really.
Lorenzo took a step backward, the implications hitting him successively. Charlie had claimed he was worried about Rachel and the way she’d seemed obsessed with Isolde—haunting her, stalking her, exploding around her. Maybe that was just how a poltergeist had a crush. And it had all started when Charlie had gotten them to talk, or at least helped Isolde open up.
Because he’d wanted to help them.
Maggie was looking at him, a careful, worried look on her face. “Lorenzo?”
He shook his head, and trudged back up to his dark, quiet room.
Chapter 28
Charlie woke up in his childhood bedroom. He didn’t move for a long while. Didn’t want to remember.
The morning after the party, he’d gone over to his dad’s place to explain everything. He’d felt awkward about his dad getting caught up in all the drama, and a small part of him felt like he owed him an explanation for having been back in town for months without saying anything.
His dad didn’t mention any of that, though; he just made a sour expression as Charlie explained, in as clipped and detached a way as possible, what had happened with Lorenzo. When he was done, his father had apologized for causing acommotion.
No, Charlie had told him.It was my fault.
Things had only gotten more uncomfortable from there, so he’d left quickly.
But then he’d gone back to his place—his stupid little sublet apartment—which was empty and quiet. Someone else’s home, not his. The only personal stamp he’d made on it was the black-out curtains he’d put up with Lorenzo.
So he’d shoved his toiletries and computer and a few other things into a bag and gone back to his dad’s place. His dad saw his bag and let him in without comment.
And now he’d been here a week. Ava had called him a few billion times; texted, DMed, and emailed. He was leaving her on read—not just about the column, but about the Advance Media offer, about everything. He hadn’t turned in a column in weeks. He wasn’t sure he’d ever write again. One of the emails in his inbox right now might have been a pink slip.
He didn’t care. He didn’t give a shit about any of it. Nothing mattered.
His eye caught on an old poster leaning rolled up against the corner of his room, faded orange and black. It was a fan-made vintageX-Filesposter, a stylized version of the shot in the credits of Mulder and Scully swinging their flashlights around. His mom had gotten it for him his senior year of high school—for his dorm room, she’d said. He’d called her silly for saying that, when they didn’t even know where he’d be going to college yet. He hadn’t even known where he’d gotten in, though his dad had already been mentioning the UB faculty tuition break every other day by that point.
But his mom had just smiled and said she knew he was going to get in somewhere great, and that he’d need a cool poster for his dorm. That was one of the last good days they’d had before she was diagnosed.
When it actually came time to move into his room at UB, Charlie put the poster up himself. He unpacked his clothes himself, plugged his mini-fridge in himself, and downloaded all the stupid apps himself. He also met his roommate, wandered through a decently fun freshman orientation street fair, andended up making friends with a big group of other new freshmen at the pub.
But when he got back to his room—his roommate hadn’t come home yet; good for him—thatX-Filesposter was still there, and Charlie was alone.
To be fair, his dad had called. The academic conference he’d been booked at that week was too important for him to miss, and besides, Charlie was an adult now, he’d said; he could move himself into college alone. And he’d still called at the end of the day to hear all about it, about the dorms and new friends and all the exciting new possibilities.
He’d been distracted, though, on the phone—thinking about the conference, maybe; Charlie couldn’t remember. In the months after his mom died, it had been like his dad was still around, but not quite all of him. And how much of him had there been to begin with, really?
Maybe there had always been something missing in his father; but maybe not, Charlie reflected, as he stared at the poor abandoned poster, rolled up now and abandoned in this room. He knew his mother and father had been good together. They’d brought out something special in each other. And he’d seen exactly what was left of his father when that stopped.
