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I know how he feels. It’s not just missing out on another roll in the hay. Part of me is wondering, what happens once we get back to reality?
For now, we pack up our things and stroll the long way back to the parking lot.
“Did you ever go to Hayworth Halloween Fest as a kid?” Charlie asks.
“Are you kidding? Of course.” There were hayrides and a maze, the pumpkin patch and bobbing for apples. When my brother was little, he could never sit still for face painting or tolerate the wet brush on his skin. But he loved when I looked silly. So, every year, the pictures include me with jack o’ lanterns or black cat silhouettes painted on my cheeks.
“This place keeps reminding me of that,” Charlie says. “Even though there are no pie eating contests.”
He’s right. The scene is different, but the feeling is the same—wonder and pure fun.
Fun. What a concept. Before this whole wedding season, I couldn’t even identify the hole in my life, but now I’m beginning to see what was missing. I’ve worked and worried and coped for the past year—with hours at my aunts’ shop and redecorating and movie marathons and stops at the dog park. But have I had fun?
Hardly at all.
But now, with Charlie, and his friends…
I try not to follow that thought, because it can’t lead anywhere good.
Part of me hoped that finally surrendering to the sexual tension would loosen things up between Charlie and me. Scratch the itch, and all that jazz.
But instead, it’s only ignitedmore.
We hit the road for the drive home, and impossible as it is to believe, I want him more than I did on the drive up.
In fact, the chemistry is just about killing me.
Charlie takes my hand, holding it casually across the center console, and every time he strokes his thumb against mine, I feel it in the center of my body, molten. I fantasize about asking him to pull over, and straddling him right there in the driver’s seat.
Or, even worse, blurting out my questions about what, exactly is going on between us now.
Was this a one-night-only, out-of-town thing?
Or could it be something even better, somethingreal?
But I bite my tongue and stay silent, talking instead about everything except the uncertainty buzzing in my mind.
There’s no reason to get carried away. I tell myself.
Just see what happens next.
* * *
We reachthe city by early afternoon and make our way through traffic back to my place. Charlie pulls up out front, and then is out of the car as quick as I am, popping the trunk.
“I can get my own bag,” I protest, though mostly for show. I suspect—I hope—that he’s only doing it as an excuse to walk me to my door.
He shoots me a smirk. “Now, what would my mother say if I just dumped you back at your apartment after an overnight trip?”
I smile. “I’ll allow your Midwestern manners.”
I use the outside entrance to bypass any interrogation by my aunts, and he follows me upstairs. I pause by my door, my heart suddenly pounding.
“I had fun,” Charlie says slowly, reaching out to brush hair from my eyes.
I feel myself blushing, remembering just how much fun it was.
“Me too.”
