The table was loud in the good way , Kieran had found a second wind, Mivo was doing the thing where he got more animated with every glass of wine, Reeves was laughing at everything, and Hartley had eaten an amount that suggested the food had earned his full approval, which was the highest possible endorsement. Charlie presided over it all with the particular ease of a man who had spent years being the loudest thing in every room and had learned there was a different kind of power in being the one who held the room together.
I was telling the story. I was always telling the story , this one was about a road trip three seasons ago, before Felix, a rental car and a GPS that had catastrophically failed and a four,hour detour through what I was fairly certain was a different state entirely, and I had the table and I knew I had the table and I let it build the way a good story builds, pausing at exactly the right moment,
I didn't look at Felix.
Except I did. Just for a second. Just to check.
He was watching me with his elbows on the table and his wine glass held loosely in both hands, and the expression on his face was not the Felix face. It was something quieter than that. Something that looked like a man watching something he liked, without the filter of pretending he didn't.
I lost the thread of the story for exactly half a beat.
Kieran: "And then what?"
I found it again. "And then Murph , this is the important part , Murph decides the GPS is broken because it has a personal grudge against him. Specifically him. Like the GPS has opinions."
The table erupted. I rode it. I did not look at Felix again.
Across from me, Charlie looked at Felix with the expression of a deeply perceptive man who was going to be insufferable about something later. Felix looked at his wine.
After dinner, the table cleared gradually into the living room, into small clusters. I ended up in the kitchen helping with dishes because Charlie had a system and the system required a second person and I was the one who'd been recruited into it three dinners ago and now it was just mine.
I was drying a pan when Charlie handed me a wine glass and said, not looking up from the sink: "You lost the thread."
"I did not lose the thread."
"Midway through the GPS story. You looked at Felix and you lost the thread for half a beat."
"I was building dramatic tension."
"Shay."
I dried the wine glass. Set it down. "It's fine."
"Okay."
"It is."
"Okay," Charlie said again, in the tone that meant he was going to let it sit there until I dealt with it myself, which was an incredibly effective tactic that I resented deeply.
I dried another glass.
"He was looking at me," I said. "That's all. He was looking at me and it was , it was a different look. And I lost half a beat. That's the whole thing."
Charlie handed me another glass. Didn't say anything.
"It's probably nothing," I said.
"What kind of look," Charlie said.
I thought about it. About the wine glass held loosely. The elbows on the table. The specific quality of the attention. "Like he wasn't trying to look away."
Charlie was quiet for a moment. Then: "Yeah."
"Yeah what."
"Nothing. Just , yeah."
"Charlie."
