I looked into his almond eyes but the calm I usually felt when I was near him didn't come.
I reached a hand up and ran my fingers along his cheek. My calm Charlie. Everything was going according to plan, right now. I was marrying a kind man, who was my best friend. I had a supportive family, great friends, and a job I loved.
And yet, for days now, I'd been plagued by a foreboding so powerful I woke in fear every night. Knowing it was irrational had done nothing to quell it. Standing here, on a beautiful spring day, I couldn't shake the feeling that a dark shadow chased me.
“Honey, please don't worry, everything is going to be fine.”
When he used to smile at me like that, it would make me feel like everything was right in the world. But not today, or for the last week. If I could just understand why I felt like this, maybe I could get myself out of this funk.
“I don't know what's wrong. It's just this feeling I can't get rid of.”
“Everything will be fine.”
His hands brushed my hair back from my face as he looked at me with concern. “Fine.” I hated that word. I didn't want fine. I wanted great and fantastic. But Charlie was a “fine” person. Never swung too much in either direction and that was what I loved about him. He grounded me, so I overlooked the choice of words, knowing it was petty.
“I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm acting like this.” I smiled back at him but it was forced and he knew it. “Let's eat.”
I tugged him along after me into the luncheonette.
Chapter Sixteen
“What are you doing here?”
I looked over to see Fate sitting next to me on the bench across from the luncheonette I used to go to with Charlie.
I didn't know myself how I'd ended up here. Once I'd started thinking about my life, I'd also started losing some of my control. I’d picked up my Honda this morning and the next thing I knew, I was driving to all my old haunts until I was sitting there, a stalking dead girl.
Charlie and I used to meet here at least once a week for a long lunch. Small tables lined the front sidewalk, where we'd sit when the weather was nice. If I squinted my eyes, I could see the menu board above the counter we used to order from.
“How did you find me?” I was resentful of the company. This was my place. And Charlie's. This was my life and nothing to do with Fate, or the office and the craziness surrounding it.
He leaned against the wrought iron back and rested an ankle upon the opposite knee. I'd never met someone who could make themselves so comfortable no matter where they were.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“Doing what? Sitting on a bench?”
“Him.” Fate was staring at Charlie, who was sitting by himself at our favorite table.
I looked at Fate's slightly squinted eyes, like he'd rather not see Charlie there.
“Why do you dislike him?”
His face relaxed instantly. “I don't like or dislike him. He's simply there.”
I looked at him for another minute and then back to Charlie, eating by himself. I didn't want him to be alone.
“What are you accomplishing by doing this? No matter what happens, he's not slated to die for another sixty years.”
“You know when he's going to die?” A week ago, I would’ve been surprised by that statement. Now I asked just for confirmation.
“Yes.”
“Do you always know?”
“No, but he's got a strong destiny. He’ll start up a chain of medical clinics for the under-privileged.”
I smiled. He was really going to do it. Charlie had talked about plans for a clinic since the day I’d met him. “Do you know if he'll be alone?”
“He'll get married.”
“I'm glad.”
I broke my gaze from Charlie to look at Fate. His eyes, face, everything, was the polar opposite of Charlie's warmth.
“Let's go,” he said.
I wasn't ready to leave. “Why do you care what I do? This has nothing to do with you or our arrangement.”
“You're creating useless emotions. What logical purpose does it serve?”
“Of course you don't understand. You'd have to understand love, be able to feel it. Logic has nothing to do with this.”
He stood up abruptly and I got the distinct impression I might have hit a nerve I didn't know existed. I was hoping he'd leave but he didn't. He stood in front of me as if resigned to some course of action I wasn't aware of yet.
“I got a flash. If you want to check it out, we have to go now.” He looked down at his watch.
“Where?”
“Florida. We've got to leave now if we want to make it.”
I stood and took one last look back at Charlie. His eyes caught mine and he gave me an awkward smile. It was the kind people give when they catch a stranger staring and they are trying to be polite. I smiled politely back and then went to follow Fate.
“I want to drop my car off first,” he said.
“What about my car?”
He looked down the street where my Honda was parked and dismissed it quickly. “We'll tell someone at the office to come back for it.”
I settled into the passenger seat and did a double check on my seatbelt. Fate drove like a demon.
“You were never meant to be with him.”
I'd thought we had come to an unspoken agreement that we wouldn't talk about Charlie, but he seemed to want to change the rules again today.
“You have no idea what you're talking about. Please keep your opinions to yourself.” I watched the road whiz by and wondered how many times I was going to have to tell him the Charlie subject wasn't open for discussion.
“Did you forget who you're talking to?”
“You don't know everything about him. You're just like the rest of us. You get flashes. The universe hasn't seen fit to make you all-knowing.”
“Maybe not, but I know his fate.”
“And that means you know every detail of his life? I don't think so.”
“No. But I've seen souls who were fated to be together. Lifespan after lifespan, there is still a connection. I saw him look at you. Nothing. You're relationship with him was purely luck. I might not know love, but I know fate. You two were never supposed to end up together.”
“Why are you doing this? Why can't you mind your own business?” I watched him across the small expanse of car and wondered why he couldn't just leave it be.
“I'm not saying this to be hurtful. I just want you to understand you didn't lose anything. You were never meant to be with him. When you move on from this and get reborn, as he will, you still won't be together. You are clinging to a life that was never going to be.”
I didn't scream but I came really close. “You don't get it because you have no feelings. You're a robot. Maybe I was human, which makes me a dirty transfer, but I like my humanity. I like having feelings. You have no idea what it's like to lose everything you are but still be there, so close that you could reach out and grab it—except that the second you did, it would fall like water through your fingers. So you might think you know, but in truth you have no clue. So please, shut the hell up.”
I turned my head away from him, back to look out the window. He actually did shut up.
He didn't know if we were meant to be together or not. It was nothing but a guess.
The phone ringing through the speakers broke the silence a few minutes later.
“Fate?” the voice spoke through his car speaker system.
“Harold, you called my phone. Who else would it be?” Fate’s voice had an edge to it that I hadn’t heard before.
“I need you to come back to the building.”
“Can't.”
“This isn't optional.”
“Neither is this.”
“Mother's flipping out.”
Fate groaned then hit the steering wheel. “Be there in five.”
He hung a hard left that sent me crashing into the car door and had horns blaring.
“What are you doing? We'll miss Bad Guy,” I said.
“And if I don't get back there and handle this, it could be worse.”
“I don't care who Mother is, or what's happening back there. I'll go on my own.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Who are you to tell me no?”
“I don't want you to go alone.”
“Why?”