Page 88 of Business Casual
I yawn again and Charlie sinks his hands into my hair. He rubs at the base of my skull, and I let out a deep, ugly moan. He snickers and circles his arm around my back, tipping me over into my bedding.
“You like that move,” I grumble, my face half buried in a pillow.
He snorts a laugh. “You seem to like it too, Nova girl.” He slips off the edge of the bed and tugs at the blankets trapped beneath my legs. I stare at the stretch and pull of the muscles in his torso and do absolutely nothing to help. He grunts and tries to yank at a blanket. It rolls me sideways and my legs go flailing.
“Easy,” he says, dodging my foot. “I’m trying to burrito you the way you like.”
“You are not doing a very good job.”
“I’m doing a great job.” He slaps at my knee and tries to pry a fuzzy gray blanket out from beneath my hips. “You’re not exactly being helpful.”
I snicker. “How so?”
“You’re in my way.”
A laugh bursts out of me, incredulous. “Oh, excuse me, Charlie. I didn’t realize I was in your way as you try to swaddle me.”
“Thank you.” He manages to free my fuzzy blanket and he wraps it around my shoulders. “Apology accepted.”
I stare at him as he fusses with the material, tucking it just right so it’s under my chin. He is entirely focused on getting me cozy. I watch his face as he wraps the rest of the blanket over my shoulders. I guess he’s been paying attention when I roll myself in my blankets every night.
My smile is half hidden behind a blanket that has tiny cats all over it. It’s nice to be taken care of.
His phone buzzes across my dresser, and he sighs, shoulders slumping. I wiggle in my blanket cocoon and nudge him with my foot.
“Your dad again?”
He makes a vague noise of agreement. “Yep.”
“Do you want to answer it?”
“Nope.”
I frown at him. He sighs and yanks my blanket around me tighter. “I’m a grown man. I don’t need to talk to my father if I don’t want to.”The ringing on the dresser stops, and Charlie lets out a sigh of relief. “This is just a thing he does when he feels like he’s not getting an appropriate amount of attention. It’s been worse since—”
He lets the rest of that sentence drift off.
“Worse since what?”
He scratches at the back of his head and ducks down, peering at me. “You really want to talk about this?”
The way he asks the question—disbelieving and a little unsure—raps against the hollow in the center of my chest. Does he truly think I wouldn’t care?
“I do.”
He nods and collapses on the bed next to me. I go tilting to the side in the blankets, but he slips his arm around my back, holding me up. His hand squeezes at my hip, then slips down and gives the curve of my ass an affectionate pat through three layers of fleece.
“Since the divorce was finalized,” he finishes with a sigh. His phone starts buzzing across the dresser again, and I can feel it this time, the wave of tension that makes his body pull tight. “I think he’s lonely, but he’s got a shit way of trying to connect with me.”
Yeah, I’ve overheard some of their conversations. The first time I heard him talking to his father on the phone, I thought I was eavesdropping on a business meeting. There was no affection. No warmth.
“You don’t deserve that,” I tell him quietly, the words feeling clumsy on my tongue. I’m not good at comforting people, but I wish I was. I wish I could make the look on his face disappear.
Charlie rubs his hand across his jaw, keeping his face angled away from mine. “It is what it is,” he says. He blows out a breath. “I can’t be too hard on him.”
“Why not?”
He shrugs and his phone finally stops that incessant rumble across the top of my dresser. We both stare at it, waiting for it to start up again. “I crave attention. I think I’m—” He swallows. “I think I’m more like my dad than I like to admit.”
