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I take a deep breath and walk over to join him.
“Here you are,” I say, lifting one of the glasses he’s set on the bench beside him. The other, he grips in his hand like a lifeforce. “Holding my drink hostage, ye scallywag.”
It’s a terrible joke, but he looks up with a weary amusement on his face. “People tore through the wine supply, and all they had left was mead. You might thank me for staying away.”
I’m not so sure about that. I take a seat beside him. “It might just be me, but a marriage is something you slide into conversation sometimes.”
He sighs. “Sorry about everything back there. Nothing like divorced guy energy to liven up a wedding.”
Divorced guy. That’s part of who Charlie Fox is, and I had no idea.
“We don’t have to talk about it.” I lie, even though I’m dying to discuss it at length. “Instead, I’m happy to list all the possible Ren Faire names I’m considering for myself. The frontrunner is Rosalind.”
He smiles, taking a sip of his mead. “Christ. Is this getting worse with every sip?”
I touch my glass to his, not quite hard enough to make a clinking sound. “Yes, but I assume, like all bad alcohol, there’s simply a wall we must push through. It’ll taste better on the other side of tipsy.”
“I’ll take Rosalind’s word for it.” Charlie
takes a giant gulp, swallows, and says, “I got married when I was twenty-four. It lasted a grand total of two years before we pulled the plug. And I know, I should have said something, save you from getting blindsided, but… Most days, it feels like a different life. One I’d prefer to forget.”
Twenty-four… It’s young. So young.
I try to imagine younger Charlie Fox, down on one knee. Waiting at the end of the aisle, bright-eyed and hopeful. Then trudging to meetings with lawyers, signing off on paperwork. Divorced.
“You know, the anti-commitment thing is starting to make more sense for me…” I remark.
“Yep, that’ll do it,” he says, grimly. “Foreveradds a kind of pressure that snaps things in two. The minute you put that kind of label on it, the expectations… It’s like taking something living, and stuffing it in a box, suffocating it with no way out.”
“Well, that’s not at all a disturbing metaphor at all.” I say brightly, and he gives a hollow chuckle.
“Sorry.”
I sit there, processing. Part of me wants to ask for all the messy details, but I bite my tongue. Breakups are always complicated, even when there seems to be a simple reason. I could say that Miles left me for my best friend. Maybe it’s true. But it’s probably truer to say that I chose a guy who wasn’t meeting me halfway. He wasn’t even meeting me a quarter of the way.
And maybe Charlie’s marriage was like that, and there were all kinds of problems before they said, ‘I do’. I don’t know. But I do know a new side to Charlie now: Someone who’s given love his best shot, and had dust kicked in his face.
“Are you freaked out?” Charlie asks. “Things just went from jousting to deep emotional scars in like sixty seconds flat.”
“Freaked out?” I repeat, smiling. “Me? The girl who told you about her ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend debacle while you were trapped on a boat with all three of us? No way.”
He laughs a little, under his breath. I can hear his relief, that we can joke about this.
“You haven’t met her,” he adds. “My ex. Rachel. I mean, she’s not any of the exes at these weddings. She doesn’t live in the city anymore.”
This, somehow, is a relief. I would have hated to wander into the middle of that mess unawares.
“And there was no cheating on either side,” Charlie offers, before my brain can even get there. “It just went wrong. Everything went from easy and fun to… The opposite. We started fighting, all the time,” he said, looking down. “About the stupidest things. Every small thing felt huge because it’s that small thingfor the rest of your life. I think we both felt trapped, and we both resented each other for it. And instead of trying to fix it together, I guess we both started pulling away. Then she got a job offer in Europe,” he adds. “I offered to move with her, make one last-ditch attempt to fix things but… She told me to stay. I was so relieved; it was like she was letting me off the hook. It wasn’t even a hard divorce,” he says with a wry, twisted smile. “Easier than what led there, that’s for sure. We agreed on everything, signed the papers, and voila. One failed marriage, under my belt. A lesson learned, that’s for sure.”
I feel an uneasy shiver.Right, the lesson never to have another committed loving relationship. “But twenty-four is so young,” I point out. “The human brain isn’t finished developing. When I was that age, I was wearing skinny jeans and doing tequila shots. You can’t be expected to pick your soulmate if you can’t even get through Saturday night without a very dubious decision.”
Charlie smiles ruefully. “My parents got married when they were even younger, and they’re still happy. Like, really, obnoxiously happy.”
The wistfulness in his voice is clear.
“You wanted that,” I say quietly.
“Yup. At least, I used to.” He shrugs. “But there’s more than one way to be happy, right?”
