Page 163 of Power Play

I returned to the bedroom and picked up the shirt I had abandoned on the bed, but my attention stayed on the hallway long after she was gone. I could wait six days and handle missing her. I had survived longer separations from people who mattered more than Charm should have mattered after six weeks.

That was the problem.

She already mattered enough that comparison felt like a lie.

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked toward the open suitcase while everything I hadn’t said pressed against my ribs. Holding the boundary hadn’t made me feel strong. It felt like handing the woman I was falling for the exact weapon she could use against me and trusting her to return without swinging it.

I needed Charm to choose me when choosing me became uncomfortable. I needed to know she could stand beside the Chicano foster kid with barrio ink beneath his clothes while Lance looked at him like every ugly assumption had finally walked through the door.

I didn’t need her fearless.

I needed her willing to be afraid and stay.

Waiting for that answer was the first thing I had wanted badly enough to terrify me, because Charm was already deep enough that if she decided I wasn’t worth the cost, I knew exactly where the loss would land.

9

Charm

By the third day without Ryan, I had become very good at having conversations with him that said absolutely nothing.

He tried anyway, and that was the part making it unbearable.

His first message had arrived before seven the morning after our fight, while I was still lying in bed wearing the shirt I had changed into after leaving his apartment and pretending sleep had happened at some point.

Ryan: Leaving for Flint. Roads are clear.

I stared at the message long enough for my screen to go dark, then woke it again and read the same six words as though something different might be hiding beneath them the second time. There wasn’t an accusation. He didn’t ask whether I regretted coming over or tell me I had been unfair. He simply did exactly what he had promised he would do.

He told me where he was going instead of disappearing.

I finally typed back.

Charm: Drive safe.

Ryan answered almost immediately.

Ryan: You okay?

My fingers hovered over the screen before I forced them to move.

Charm: Yep. Just tired.

The typing bubble appeared, disappeared, then returned.

Ryan: You’re terrible at lying before coffee.

Any other morning, I would have sent him a picture of whichever coffee I had chosen and argued that caffeine had no relationship to my honesty. Instead, I put the phone facedown on the nightstand.

A few minutes later, it vibrated again.

Ryan: I meant what I said about giving you room. I’m not going to force a conversation. Just don’t disappear on me.

That message stayed unanswered for almost an hour because I couldn’t figure out how to tell him I wasn’t disappearing from him as much as hiding from everything he had made me see about myself.

Eventually, I managed a response.

Charm: I won’t.