It didn’t matter. Everyone laughed. It was funny either way.
As Charlie poured more bourbon—with ice this time—she decided she was glad she’d come. She was just buzzed enough to feel an expansive warmth for the people in the room. See, she was fine being a normal person and doing normal-person things. She ate some cheese that Tina made from the milk of her own goats and which no one had the heart to tell her tasted weird, and smiled for absolutely no reason.
Then she heard Ian, speaking loudly enough to drown out the Sonos. “Hey, Vince. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen at that job of yours?” His tone made it into a challenge.
Vince looked up from the winged armchair where he sat, caught midconversation with Suzie and José. The chair, Charlie noted, looked as though it had been shredded by a cat, and bits of stuffing showed along the arms.
“None of it’s great,” Vince said, clearly attempting to deflect the conversation.
“Yeah, but there must be something. An eyeball in the sink. Hair on the ceiling. Come on.” Ian grinned in an entirely unfriendly way. “Entertain us.”
Charlie had been feeling pretty good until that moment. Her current boyfriend wasn’t sulking in a corner, or saying something obnoxious, or picking a fight, the way that past ones had. Vince was willing to listen and make the sort of encouraging noises that kept people going—catnip to the self-involved. But no matter how much any of her friends were getting along with Vince, the night was about to go bad anyway.
“Ian,” Charlie said, trying to make her voice as stern as Odette wielding a cat-o’-nine-tails in her back office.
He smirked at her, and she was suddenly sure that this wasn’t about being unpleasantly curious. It was about some weird feeling Ian had about Charlie. He wanted to prove something to her, or ruin something for her. “I’m just asking a question. Getting to know the guy. I mean, if you’re fuc—”
Vince interrupted him, pushing himself out of the chair. “Once I saw someone turned entirely inside out.”
Charlie was used to him hunching a bit, trying not to take up too much space or be too intimidating. Not with his shoulders back, the muscles in his arms tense. His voice sounded as calm as ever, but the hair stood up along her arms. “Bones and organs and fingers and toes. Everything. Like a sock. Inside. Out.”
“Really?” Ian asked, impressed.
“No,” Vince said, stone-faced.
People nearby laughed. Even Charlie laughed, surprised into it.
“Fine, asshole, I won’t ask you about your stupid job,” Ian said, moving in close. Getting up in his face, daring to get hit. When Vince didn’t react, Ian gave him a shove.
Vince let himself be pushed back, but there was a barely restrained glee in his eyes she had never seen there before. “It’s just a lot of picking bits of brain off walls. Nothing much to tell.”
For a moment, the two men stared at one another.
A moment later, Ian blanched and ducked his head. “I didn’t know you’d be so boring,” he muttered.
Vince sat back down with a shrug, as though nothing had happened. As though nothing had been about to happen.
Charlie was heading over to apologize when Suzie Lambton perched herself on the arm of Vince’s chair. She touched Vince’s shoulder as she said something. Tossed her hair. Laughed. Vince smiled in return, one of his real smiles.
Charlie had a sudden and almost overwhelming urge to knock her to the ground.
She drank a slug of bourbon instead.
“You know, you can’t make her catch on fire just by staring like that,” Barb said.
Busted, Charlie looked away. “I wasn’t—”
Barb laughed. “Go over and tell him he did good. It’s not easy to let some little guy insult you.”
“I’m sure Vince is fine,” Charlie said, scowling a little. “He never gets riled.”
What he did get was hit on. Vince, with hair the color of old gold, was a lot of people’s type. Charlie had a gaudy kind of beauty. Nothing understated in her curves. No subtlety to her cleavage. Maybe Suzie thought she had a shot.
Suzie was pursuing a master’s degree at Smith. Rumor had it that her wealthy parents still paid her rent. Was able to do that yoga move where you stood on your head. Maybe she did have a shot.
“Harsh,” Barb said. “Abandoning him to the wolves. Well, just one wolf, but you know what I mean.”
Charlie shrugged.
“Don’t blame me if you wind up in a thruple.”
Charlie rolled her eyes, heading for the wraparound porch outside. She needed to get some air. The intensity of her anger at Suzie bothered her. She didn’t get jealous. Not like that.
It didn’t make sense to long for someone who was already yours.
It’s the alcohol, she told herself, as she sat on a porch swing that she hoped wasn’t full of spiders.
Most of the nearby houses didn’t have lights on, but a scattered few caught her eye. The soft glow of a pink night-light in a child’s room. A television, the screen moving between images. A beacon burning over a garage door, waiting for someone to return. This area had all been farms once. Tobacco, probably. You still passed old drying barns on the back roads.
Out past the highway was the Connecticut River, a black snake curling around Mount Tom until it shed its skin and became the Chicopee River, then the Swift River, and finally the Quabbin Reservoir. Charlie remembered walking around there when she was a kid on a field trip at school. They went to see a fish hatchery and then climbed the observation tower. Charlie had stood at the top and looked down into the water, wondering if she could see the drowned buildings beneath the waves.
The Quabbin was a human-made reservoir, created by flooding four towns. And while the residents had relocated, their homes, shops, and halls remained. They were still down there, with whatever had been left inside. Secret, unless you knew where to look, and how.
She thought of shadows moving in the dark, as impossible to spot as drowned towns.
“You ready?” Vince asked, the door closing heavily behind him. She jumped, surprised.
His eyes looked eerie in the porch light. Silver.
“No thruple?” she asked after a moment.
He frowned at her in the same confused way he had when she’d read the French phrase off her phone. She wished she could make him tell her what he was thinking. Of course, it was possible he was just thinking that he was tired, annoyed with her friends, and wanted to go home.
Or it was possible that he was thinking there was something seriously wrong with her.
“Never mind.” She got up from the swing and dusted off her pants.
Charlie needed to stop looking for trouble where there was none. She needed to stop looking for trouble, period.
* * *
At home, she got ready for bed, washing her face and putting on a t-shirt. She moved to climb over Vince to her side of the mattress when he put his hand on her hip. She paused, straddling his chest.
Outside their window, the moon was a bright silver coin in the black sky, lighting the room well enough to see the intensity of his gaze. He reached up to thread his fingers through her hair.
“Your friends are nice.” His mouth curved up on one side. “Mostly.”
She wondered if he was going to ask her about Ian. “You were a hit.”
“Because I brought ice,” he said, clearly not believing her. “Everyone loves the guy who brings ice.”
She could have explained how bad the previous guys she’d brought around were, and how great Vince seemed by comparison, but that didn’t reflect well on either one of them. “I certainly do,” she said, before realizing what that meant. She’d intended to be funny, to imply I love ice, not I love you.
But he didn’t seem alarmed, and after a moment the sharp spike of panic faded. She was just drunk. Drunk people said stupid things.
“Come a little closer,” he told her.