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We snagged a table tucked in the corner of the terrace, next to a trickling pebble fountain.
“Cool, huh?” Charlie asked, sitting down, leaning forward on the table, and looking around. His eyes darted back down to his hands on the table. “Shit,” he said.
I looked over his shoulder, but I couldn’t figure out what caused his reaction.
“It’s Michelle,” Charlie explained, going off my confused look. “I don’t want any drama today.”
That’s when I spotted her, sitting a table away from us. She pretended to have her nose buried in her phone, but I could tell her attention had been fully honed in our direction.
“What happened between you two?”
“I wish I knew. All I’m sure of is that she hates my guts and probably wants to feed me to hyenas.”
I cocked my head, considering my options. Charlie wasn’t exactly the picture of innocence, having already crushed my heart once before; I could easily see how he could do it again. But what if there was something deeper to Michelle’s feelings? What if she were somehow attached to this case? At this point, I felt like anything could be possible.
And that meant doing anything possible to solve this.
I stood up.
“What are you doing?” Charlie asked, following me with an increasingly panicked look in his eyes.
“I’m going to ask her what happened.”
Charlie didn’t have any time to argue. I reached her table and placed a hand on the empty chair across from her. “Mind if I sit for a few minutes?”
Michelle’s eyes narrowed. When I lived in Blue Creek, Michelle and I probably shared a total of five words, but I had a feeling she remembered who I was, and she undoubtedly heard about why I was back. News spread faster than melted butter in this town. She looked like she was about to nod until Charlie showed up at my side, and then her eyes bulged before she started collecting her things.
“No, no, I’m not doing this,” she said.
I put a hand out. I didn’t expect this reaction at all. I knew they were exes, but I didn’t realize she couldn’t even be a couple of feet away from him. “Whoa, whoa. What’s going on, Michelle?”
She pointed at Charlie with a shaky hand. “I’ve already had to deal with so much because of him. I told him never come near me again, and I meant it.” Michelle stood, grabbing her drink and fixing her teal jacket over her shoulders.
“Jesus, if my dad saw us right now,” she said, almost under her breath.
“What happened between you two?” I asked, not wanting to let this moment go.
“Nothing.” Michelle’s tone felt pointed, sharp. “Absolutely nothing. Charlie led me on for months and then broke up with me when I wasn’t useful.”
Charlie made a sound, and I knew he was about to argue with her, but I put a hand on his arm. He swallowed whatever he was about to say.
“It doesn’t matter,” she continued. “What really surprised me was seeing you two together.” Michelle’s painted red lips curved into a scythe. “With how things ended between you two, obviously. I didn’t think anything could come back from that, amnesia or not.”
I immediately tensed. Charlie and I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk about how things ended between us. I still remembered all the venomous words we spat at each other and could practically feel the burn from my knuckles slamming into the wall. It was one of the darkest days of my life, only topped by the weeks that followed Dean’s death.
“I fucking hate this. I hate you, I hate you for ever making me think this was real!” I shouted.
“And I hate you for even coming into my life and fucking everything up,” Charlie said, his face bloodred.
Charlie couldn’t remember anything from that day, so did that mean he was absolved from the vile shit we threw at each other?
He didn’t waste a second before asking her, “What happened?”
Michelle’s razor-thin eyebrows inched up her forehead. “You guys haven’t talked about it yet? I guess that explains why you’re so close, then.”
“It’s hasn’t been the right time,” I said, hoping to make it clear in my tone that tonight definitely wasn’t the right time.
Michelle smiled around her sip of her strawberry margarita. “Okay,” she said. “Well, I think it’s the right time for me to find my sister and drag her off whatever frat boy she’s attached herself to.”
Before Charlie could keep digging, Michelle pushed through us and disappeared back into the bar, leaving a trail of questions in her wake.
Charlie turned to me, confusion clear on his face. “What happened between us?” he asked, a stern set to his jaw. The dim orange glow from the lamps cast his jawline in perfect strokes of shadow and light.
I sighed. There was no better time than the present. Charlie needed to know what went down between us.
