Page 82 of Off the Mark
“You?” She pointed at herself. “I’m talking about me.”
I held up the paper, one brow lifted. “Ain’t nothing bad about this, Charlie. You got Steve to donate $10,000 to the rec center, didn’t you?”
Her expression perked up at my words, and she stepped fully into the office, quietly shutting the door behind her. “He came through? Because he said he would, but also, as you warned me, he was—”
“A patronizing asshole?”
She snapped her fingers. “Yep. That’s the one.”
I set the paper down, shifting my body so I fully faced her. She didn’t come closer, her teeth gnawing on her lower lip. “How did you get him to do it? And…and why?”
She blew out a breath, gaze landing everywhere but on mine. “I didn’t hit him in the face with my helmet like I wanted to. But I told him what this place did. How it was like a home. Like a community, everyone filling in to help where it’s needed. And I read your website and talked to him about your older neighbors who need extra food every month, and it turns out Steve’s family isn’tallmega-rich. He remembered his great-grandfather being on food stamps, and how complicated he felt about having to ask for help, later in life.”
Emotion crowded the back of my throat. I grabbed the printout again, where I’d missed the indicator that read:earmarked for the senior food program.
“I know it’s not enough to, like, permanently save Dean’s job, but I was hoping it was a start,” she added.
I sent Charlie a huge, grateful smile. “It’s like you putting on my tire chains all over again.”
She smiled back, the sight of it loosening the muscles in my chest. “This is tough for me to talk about, but I think I was…lonely, as a kid. I had my bike and I had my dad, and both those things made me very happy. But my world was pretty much racing dirt bikes and trying to pay our bills. I wasn’t close to many people. Every time I walk in here”—she indicated the space around us— “all I feel is this yearning, that I wish I’d had a place like this. Wish my dad had a place like this now.”
She paused, turning her gaze back to me. “That’s why I did it. And because, as you pointed out the other day, it seems like we’ve been taking care of each other for longer than I wanted to admit.”
A heady kind of relief rushed over me. “Charlie, can I say how sorry I am—”
But she was shaking her head. “Not to interrupt or anything, but I kinda practiced what I wanted to say. In the mirror, like a total nerd, and you can’t tell anyone I said that, okay?”
I settled back on the desk, pleasantly surprised. “I promise, I swear it. Not a word.”
There was another long silence from her while I waited. She kept chewing on her lip, fingers drumming on the back of the chair she was standing next to. The silence held the same heavy weight as the pauses I would take on the pitcher’s mound before throwing—reading the sign from the catcher. Aligning my body into a perfect form. Winding up as players on base dropped low, preparing to steal.
The heaviness came from the possibility. That’s what waiting for Charlie to speak felt like to me.
“I don’t get called on my bullshit very often,” she finally said. “Mostly because it feels impossible to let people in. Trust isn’t…it’s not easy for me. It probably has something to do with my mom leaving me like it was no big deal. Like I was no big deal.”
The sad tilt of her mouth was almost too much for me to bear.
“My extended family dumped us too. Me and my dad. When he wasn’t winning anymore, they stopped coming around. So it’s been this thing I do, pushing people away.”
I reached my hand out, unable to resist bringing her close a second longer. To my surprise, she took it. Let me tug her along until she was standing between my spread legs.
Up close, it was even more noticeable that she was as wrecked as I was—there was a weariness around her eyes, the same kind that had my grandmother peering at me this morning like she was worried I was seconds away from passing out.
“After the race, you were trying to be a good friend, and I was an asshole about it. I’m really,reallysorry, Rowan. And you’re right. It’s not fair of me to keep comparing you to how you were back at Jolene’s when it’s obvious how much you’ve changed. How different you are.”
I squeezed my pinkie finger against hers. “You weren’t an asshole.”
“But I was.”
“Meanwhile, I took what was a celebratory professional moment for you and tried to ask you on a date when you’d made it clear you weren’t interested,” I said. “Then sulked off when you wanted to talk about it.Iwas the asshole, and I’m sorry for messing everything up.”
Her eyes narrowed but her lips were already curving into a smile. “So are we both the asshole?”
I grinned, rubbing a hand across my jaw. “We’re both amateurs at this. I’m surprised we’ve lasted this long as a fake couple.”
Charlie stepped closer, our pinkies still entwined. “What you said, about asking me on a date. After the race, you swore youweren’tdoing that. But were you truly asking?”
I almost went for my usual evasive tactics—a flirty joke, some explanation I could shrug away with a grin. Instead, I opted for Dean’s advice. Hewasthe expert now, after all.
