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"You're talking crazy again," she whispers.
"It's only crazy because you won't let yourself believe it's true," I say, reaching for her foot. I place it in my lap, digging my fingers into her arch. She has the cutest little feet. One fits perfectly in my hand. Chipped pink polish colors her nails.
She huffs a breath but doesn't say anything.
"Why are you so afraid to let yourself love me?" I ask, reaching for her other foot. She tries to keep it from me for a split secondbefore she finally gives up and lets me pull it into my lap with the other.
"I'm not," she says.
"You know you haven't once tried to deny it," I say. "Every time I say you love me, you get all flustered and cute, but you haven't tried to say it's not true."
"Because you never listen," she says, still not denying it. Because she can't. She's in love with me, and even though she's fighting like hell to keep me from seeing it, she can't bring herself to say those words. She can't lie to me.
"What happened between you and your mom, Charlotte?"
"Me," she whispers, her expression slipping. Sadness drifts through her gaze, darkening her eyes like storm clouds on the horizon.
"What does that mean?"
"It means she got tired of trying to manage me," she says with a shrug, avoiding my gaze. She focuses on the bubbles instead, making shapes in them with the tip of one finger. "I was supposed to go to college back home, but she told me she thought it would be better if I went to school here instead. She said it was because Uncle John was lonely out here by himself, but I heard her telling her best friend that she needed a break for a while."
"Jesus," I mutter, shocked. John never said anything about it, so I'm guessing he doesn't know. He probably thinks coming here was Charlotte's idea. I may not know everything about my girl, but I know her well enough to know she rarely ever complains. She picked up after me for five months straight without a single complaint. She dealt with her landlord on her own for three months without a single complaint. I'm guessing she's been carrying this shit by herself, blaming herself for it.
"It's not her fault," she says, right on cue. "I'm a hard person to be around."
"What the fuck?" I growl. "Did she say that shit to you?"
"What? No, of course not," she says, looking at me like I'm crazy. "My mom loves me, I know that. She's never been mean to me or tried to make me feel badly for being the way I am. She's been fixing up my messes my whole life. She just got tired of it, that's all."
"What's wrong with the way you are?"
"What's wrong…?" She blinks at me like an owl. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, Theo. I'm defective."
I gape at her, shocked into silence.
"Bad things happen around me. A lot." She grimaces, shrinking in on herself. "I think the universe hates me."
"First of all," I growl, pissed she thinks any of this is on her. It isn't. It's on her mom for making her feel like a burden. Even if she never intended to make Charlotte feel that way, she did. That's not okay with me. "The universe doesn't hate you, and you are not defective, baby doll. There's not a goddamn thing wrong with you or the way you are. You've been the best part of my life since I met you. And I know damn well that John adores you. He wouldn't have warned me to keep my damn hands to myself if he didn't."
"He did?"
"Second of all, you don't take breaks on people you love," I say, ignoring her question. "What your mom did was the height of selfishness. The last place you need to be is out in the world on your own. She should have taken better care of you while she had you."
"I'm a bigger danger to the world than it is to me, Theo," she says.
"The hell you are." I haul her across the tub toward me. Water sloshes over the sides, but I don't care. It's not like there aren't already bubbles all over the place. "There is nothing wrong with you, Charlotte."
"Yes, there is!" she cries. "Normal people don't set apartments on fire or destroy libraries or flood houses or cause car accidents. That's what I do, Theo. I get distracted or excited, and I forget things, and then bad things happen."
"Baby doll," I whisper, my heart breaking for her. And then I frown. "You destroyed a library?"
"Yes," she says, hanging her head. "I got excited about a book and accidentally ran into a man. He fell into a shelf. And then a whole bunch of other shelves fell, too. It was like train wreck dominoes!"
Jesus.
"And the car accident?"
"There was a spider," she whispers. "I took my hands off the wheel for just a second to help him leave the car. My car drifted over the line and almost hit another car. The driver crashed into another car."
