Page 65 of Charlie and Her Sweet Escape
But Lily had a tricky side to her too. She had a very specific way she liked things to be done, and she wasn’t always good at communicating those expectations. I’d spent a lot of time mollifying her, especially after she felt I’d chosen someone else above her. If we were together and I held the door open for someone else (even though I’d held it open for her too), she was upset. If I answered one of Rosie’s calls when we were together and I had to step out to walk her through how to restart her modem or convince her she couldn’t write off a manicure on her taxes, Lily would give me the silent treatment until I could coax a smile from her again.
But it hadn’t bothered me, though my siblings insisted it should. After Jules went to therapy as an adult, he’d decided to give me some unsolicited advice, in the way that people who had a tiny bit of newly acquired knowledge in a specific subject did.You feel like you need to make yourself essential, so you’re not abandoned.
I’d pushed him off the boat when he’d said it. How was that foressential? There was nothing worse than know-it-all little brothers.
“Lily loved you,” Charlie said, heatedly. “I don’t get why she said no.”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“She didn’t tell anyone. Just shut herself up in her room for a week and then emerged and pretended like nothing had happened.”
Oh. I’d assumed she’d tell everyone why, and that’s when I’d taken off for as many excursions I could and cut off everyone who wasn’t my family. “I prioritized everyone else’s needs above hers.” I cut the last strand of Charlie’s hair and then backed away from touching her anymore.
“What? I don’t believe that for a second!” She turned her blazing eyes on me.
I shrugged. “If I was helping other people, I was neglecting her.”Making yourself essential to everyone at her expense… If I could push Jules off a boat again, I would. I made a mental note to do it next time we were out at the island.
But his accusation sat uncomfortably close to where I filed awaytrue thingsin my mind.
“No. Nope.” She shook her head, then shook it a few more times, as though feeling the novelty of short strands of hair brushing against her cheeks. “I know what neglect feels like, and it’s not watching your partner be kind to other people. It’s when they treat you like an obligation or like an asset. Or worse, it’s when they walk away to talk to someone and completely forget you’re there.Youalways come back.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t walk away in the first place,” I said quietly. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have driven her off. I may not have up and abandoned her, but what I’d done was in the leaving flowchart. When I fixed Mrs. Mabel’s car, or took on an extra fishing excursion because a family was going out with their grandma for the last time, or ran to my siblings at the drop of a hat when they needed me, that meant I was walking away from something—someone—else.
Did it matter that I was walking away to help someone? Or did what really matter was thatI was walking away? Even if only for a short amount of time.
And if I couldn’t be everything for everyone, how long before they left too?
Charlie took my hands in hers. “We all have to ‘leave’ at some point. We have work. And our families depend on us. We live in a remote community that relies on each other to survive, but people have to be able to stand on their own, without you.”
Her earnestness made me almost believe her.
I tucked her hair behind her ears, where it flipped forward to curl around them like a shell. Something about being out here made it too easy to delve into these deep topics. “I like the short look.”
Charlie clamped her lips together, looked like she was going to say something else, and then must have decided to let it go, because she shook her head again and let her hair fly like a skirt caught in the wind. “I love it so much. Thank you!”
Charlie threw her arms around my neck, and I nearly fell back in surprise before wrapping my arms around her too. I gave in to the temptation to breathe her in, a scent even better than everything nature had to offer.
26
CHARLIE
Greg texted me that he thinks we should see other people this year, since it’s our first year of college. I hate when he does this. I called Rosie crying, and we blew off our classes to spend the afternoon at her house, watching rom-coms and eating cookies-and-cream ice cream straight from the carton. Bennett watched one of the movies with us after he came home from an excursion, but he ended up falling asleep halfway through. I probably watched him more than I watched the movie. At one point, Rosie threw a handful of popcorn at my head, and I realized she caught me staring at her brother. I apologized, super embarrassed. She just smiled in that “we’re about to steal a backhoe” kind of way that makes me nervous. But then she suggested another movie and asked Bennett to order us pizza, so I’m probably being paranoid.
—from the journal of 18-year-old Charlie Savage
Bennett fell asleep the moment he closed his eyes. One second, he was awake, getting us zipped in tight, and the next, he was breathing steadily. His nerve endings were clearly not zinging and pinging and generally ringing endlessly at the remembrance of his knuckles brushing against me while he cut my hair.
Don’t move an inch, Charlie.I even breathed shallowly, worried that any squirming on my part would bother him and wake him up.
I longed to scoot closer and bury myself in his side. Not only for warmth, but for the closeness I craved. I wanted to hook my leg over his and slide my hand under his shirt to rest against his solid chest and press my lips to his neck.
And therein lay the problem. Because it turned out, Ididdo that. Once I fell asleep.
I suctioned to his side like an overly curious octopus, all eight limbs holding him in the death grip of my neediness.
I’d woken up three mornings in that position, and it took every ninja skill I possessed to ease myself away without waking him up.
But what if it had happened other mornings, and I wasn’t aware of it?
