Page 90 of Business Casual
A deep breath rattles out of him from somewhere in his chest. Relief, swift and sudden. I wince.
“I moved it underneath the potted plant on the other side of the porch,” I rush to explain. “I give him three minutes before he finds it.”
Charlie launches himself from the bed. “I thought I told you to move it.”
My arms struggle with the blanket wrapped around me. “Just because you tell me to do something doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”
“I guess not,” he snaps. My front door rattles again, and Charlie drops to his knees, reaching under my bed for his discarded clothes. I don’t even know how they got under there. It happens every time. My room almost consistently looks like it survived a bomb blast these days. “I’m not wearing pants, Nova.”
I finally manage to free my arms from the blanket. “Then I suggest you put some on.”
We collapse into a flurry of frantic movement and whispered arguing. I trip over the edge of the blanket and slam into the dresser. Charlie almost tears the arm of his shirt punching his hands through the sleeves. I listen for the door as best I can while Charlie mutters a string of obscenities under his breath.
He army crawls from beneath the bed again with his belt in one hand and his jeans in the other. His chest is still mostly bare, his shirt unbuttoned, a line of hickeys worked across his ribs in the shape of the little dipper. I was feeling creative earlier but now all I’m feeling is bone-deep frustration that I don’t have a chain and lock on my frontdoor. Maybe I’ll start wedging a chair beneath the handle like I did in high school when my siblings lacked boundaries.
I hear the unmistakable sound of a key sliding into the lock. They still lack boundaries, apparently. I toss Charlie his sweater and it smacks him right in the face.
“Hide,” I whisper.
“I’m a grown-ass man, Nova.” Charlie strides across the room to my window with his jeans unbuttoned. “I’m not hiding.”
“What are you doing?”
He yanks the window up with one hand.
“You can’t climb out the window,” I whisper, sounding hysterical.
“I can absolutely climb out this window,” he whisper-yells back. “I don’t want to die tonight.”
“You said you’re a grown-ass man.”
“A grown-ass man who is terrified of your brother, yes.”
“You might die when you fall out of my window.”
Charlie winks at me, one leg thrown over my windowsill. Behind him, the moon hangs heavy in the night sky.
His lips tilt up at the edges. “But soft, what light through yonder window—”
“Oh my god,” I mutter, spinning on my heel and leaving the room. I slam my bedroom door behind me. There’s a shuffling at the door and then it opens.
20
NOVA
Beckett appears witha frown, his eyes immediately finding me at the top of the stairs. “Hey,” he says, after an awkward stretch of silence. He holds up my spare key. “I let myself in.”
“I can see that.”
I haven’t seen Beckett since our argument at our parents’ house. It feels like a lifetime ago. It’s probably the longest we’ve ever gone without talking to each other, including the time I told him he couldn’t propagate garlic for shit and he didn’t talk to me for an entire week.
He shifts on his feet and tugs his hat off his head, bending the bill beneath his palms.
“Is it okay that I’m here?” he asks.
My shoulders relax. “Of course it’s all right that you’re here.” I make my way down the stairs. I wish he had shown up twenty minutes later and didn’t know about my spare key, but there’s not much I can do about that now. “Come on. I’ll make us some tea and we can talk.”
Beckett awkwardly follows me down the short hallway. We’re usually comfortable in the quiet, but this is a different sort. His hurt was—and is—unbearable to me. I haven’t reached out because I don’t know what to say. And now I’m just as clueless as to where to start.
