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Maybe is hope.
When I next woke, it was to floorboards creaking.
“Charlotte?” I mumbled sleepily.
“Uh, hi.” She sounded soft and sweet but nervous too. “Sorry to wake you. I just wanted to check on you. How are you feeling?”
I hauled myself to sitting against the headboard and ran a hand through my hair. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”
“You didn’t eat anything yesterday. Would you like something? Something light? I make a meanpineapple-coconut smoothie.”
I was tired of people doing everything for me. So fucking weary of it.
“Yeah, okay,” I said dully. “That sounds great. Thank you.”
“I’ll be right back.”
I heard her rustle around in the kitchen, then the whir of the blender, and then she was back, and the scent of pineapple mingled with her own vanilla sweetness.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly and took a sip from the cold glass she’d pressed into my hand. “It’s good.”
I heard the smile in her words. “My mother taught me. Of course, she always used fresh pineapple, but I can’t cut one of those suckers properly to save my life. The packaged, frozen kind is easier. Hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
A silence fell, and then I heard her intake of breath. “Okay, well, um, do you need or want anything else?”
What I needed, I realized, was to get my ass out of bed, out of this room. For her. For me too, I supposed, but mostly for her. I didn’t have anything to give her, not one damn thing, but I could make her feel good about her job. That, I could do.
“Charlotte?”
“Yes?”
“I’d like to take a walk today if you’re up for it. Maybe around noon?”
“Uh, yeah…yes! Of course. I could pack a lunch for us. We could eat in the park?”
Eating among other people. Not my favorite thing. But she sounded so…happy.
“Sure. Whatever you want.”
“Okay, great!”
She was talking to me differently. Our kiss was right there on her lips, coloring her words, making her smile.
You stupid, stupid man.
Charlotte didn’t need my pathetic overtures, my warped version of romance. I hadn’t been thinking clearly last night. I’d been in pain and then exhausted in every fiber of my being. I was her boss. She was my employee.
The memory of her soft lips on mine rolled in like a bowling ball, knocking my neat little reasons down, one after another. But I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let anything happen between us.
Fuck hope. Like Harlan said, certainty is better. And there was no greater certainty than what I’d told Charlotte about inflicting my ugliness on her. I’d promised her I wouldn’t do it and I meant it.
I started to tell her that maybe a walk wasn’t such a good idea, but she was already retreating. “I’ll go get it all set up and meet you whenever you’re ready.”
She was smiling at me. I didn’t have to see it; I could feel it. When she’d gone, I fell back against the pillows.
