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“Charlie? Are you all right?” I see Charlie in my peripheral vision, but I can’t take my eyes off her to respond.
“What? What are you staring at?” Liz asks. The anger in her voice is evident.
I don’t care about her anger. I can’t. I’m too focused on my own. “You slept with my fiancé. You! You—” My tears cut off my words, choking me.
I feel the chair disappear from behind my legs, then an arm wraps around me. Warm. Strong. Charlie. “Come on.”
I want to throw something, anything I can get my hands on, anything that will take the pain and betrayal away at the moment. But I’m rushed out of the room.
Right before the front door closes, I hear her yell, “Wait! Jim’s Charlie?”
Charlie shouts for the valet. “Get the car!”
Irrational thoughts darken my mind, and I can’t wait for the car. I start to run down the rounded driveway, but gravel and high heels don’t mix, and I stumble. I don’t fall, catching and steadying myself.
“Charlie, don’t,” he calls behind me.
I can hear the crunch of the rocks under his shoes as he rushes to catch me, running to a halt in front of me. “Stop! You can’t run back to Manhattan. The car is coming.”
“No,” I beg through tears. “I can’t be here. I can’t be near that house or her.” My resolve weakens as he grabs my arms by the wrists to still me. “Please, Charlie. Let me go. I can’t do this, not here where she can see and not in front of you.”
The car pulls beside us, and the driver hops out and opens the door.
Charlie’s eyes reveal sympathy, and I drop my head in shame, knowing there’s no other way for me to get out of here in one piece. My heart is shattered all over again, and now I’m humiliated that Charlie has to witness my breakdown. He pulls me to the car and helps me in. I’m a rag doll, helpless and vulnerable, all my strength left in that dining room, just as I was so long ago when I first found Jim with Liz in our bed that rainy fall day. That image has haunted my days and nights.
I hear Charlie say something to the driver, who takes off running toward the house. He slides in next to me and pulls my limp body onto his lap. I’m weak, drowning in the memory.
I let Charlie hold me, needing the closeness. I’m ashamed because he’s realized I was dumped for someone from Jim’s world. There was someone better than me—someone made from the same cloth as him, and my ex-fiancé chose her over me. I don’t fit into Jim and Charlie’s world, and I never will. I’m not of their kind, not from elite breeding, or the socialite type. I’m just a Barrow from the suburbs of Chicago.
The driver returns, handing Charlie my clutch then drives us away from the Adams’s mansion and away from her. As we are driven back through the center of the quaint town, I realize it’s all an illusion. Charlie warned me. He said it was visually idyllic, and it is—all surface and no depth. They put on a good show for the outside world, but in my eyes, I’d rather see the ugly truth so I know what I’m getting into. This false world of happiness hides the shallow thoughts of a society that still idolizes itself above all else.
Although I knew Jim was from this world, he had convinced me, at one time, that he was different. He wasn’t like them in that way. I believed he wasn’t when he was with me, but once he returned to this culture that demanded his time and attention, he forgot what we had shared—real emotions were covered in a charade of perfection, much like this town.
I close my eyes against Charlie’s chest. He hasn’t spoken since we left because he either knows me well enough not to or doesn’t know what to say. I’m not sure, but I appreciate the silence all the same. Tonight, I’ve finally grasped how much Charlie is like Jim. Not in looks or personality, but they both escaped this superficial society only to be dragged back.
I rub my hand along his lapel and breathe him in. The realization that Charlie isn’t mine to keep hurts, and even more because I was starting to open up, I was finally ready to let him in. I came tonight ready to show my heart and expose my true feelings, but I was kidding myself to think we could be more than friends. And now, we won’t even be that. Maybe not today, but eventually, he will go back, just like Jim did. He will succumb to the pressure, choose someone more worthy of his status, and leave me behind.
