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“Always work with you.” She laughed and took another sip of wine.
“Not all the time,” I said, wanting her to think of me as more than a boss in this moment.
She leaned forward in her seat, and her loose waves cascaded around her shoulders. The delicate gold chain of her necklace reflected the candlelight.
“Then I have a proposal for you,” she challenged.
“What?” I asked with hesitation.
“No more work talk for the rest of the evening.”
“Done,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t the best suggestion since I couldn’t stop thinking about Charlie’s lips. The lack of professional boundaries wasn’t going to help with that.
“What do you want to discuss?” My voice came out deeper than I intended.
“What doyouwant to discuss?” she parroted back, shooting me a playful look. “So serious all the time.”
“It’s not intentional,” I said.
“Then where does it come from?”
I paused, already hating the personal questions. But Charlie made me feel more comfortable than most people. I didn’t feel like I had to pretend with her. She gave me the undeniable feeling that she would understand things about me that even I didn’t fully grasp.
“Growing up, Oliver was always the fun one. One of us had to take life seriously.”
She tilted her head considering that. “And you felt it had to be you?”
“It certainly wasn’t going to be him.”
“How is it going with him? Still trying to bond?”
I snorted, taking a break from the conversation as the waiter dropped off our first course, some kind of vegetable risotto.
“I think he might be trying to secretly kill me—or severely maim me at the very least.”
She laughed, using her napkin to cover her mouth.
“I’m serious,” I continued. “It would be a great plan. Lure me in with the guise of wanting to know me, but secretly using it as an excuse to drag me on all these dangerous adventures. When I finally end up in some fatal accident, he’ll be able to tell our parents he was just trying to share what he loved.”
Charlie traced her finger around the base of her wine glass, listening intently to me.
After a moment of silence, she cleared her throat. “It must be hard to feel that kind of competition with a sibling.”
When I lifted my gaze, she looked at me with what I could only describe as support. She wanted me to open up, and she wanted to be the person I opened up to.
“It was harder than I was ever willing to admit,” I finally said. “I don’t think our family dynamic was typical.”
She nodded, urging me to continue.
I thought back to my childhood—something I rarely did. “In all honesty, I’m not even sure how my parents ended up together, but I know why they stayed together. Me. My mother found out she was pregnant and they got married. Two years later they had Oliver. I’m convinced the two of us were the only reason they stayed together. Although, they might as well have divorced, with her taking custody of Oliver and my father getting me. It wouldn’t have made that much of a difference given how things turned out.”
She leaned forward, her chin resting in her palm. “It’s hard to imagine how your mother could have been so distant with you.”
I tried not to wince at her comment. “I think she regrets it now. She calls me more and more each year. Growing up, I just reminded her too much of my father. She couldn’t separate the two of us. I think she resented me for being too much like him and took solace in Oliver. He was always hers.”
Charlie shook her head. “I feel so sad for you as a kid. It shouldn’t have been like that.”
“My father wasn’t a bad man by any means,” I added hurriedly. “He just saw the world in black and white. I owe a lot of my success to the way he raised me.”
