Heat Wave

“Good,” he says.

“So what’s your family drama all about?” I ask and with a big sigh, he starts talking about how his parents are divorced but they play nice every holiday. His older brother is a gambler and has lost his house and his younger sister is a stoner who still lives with the mom, and now his mom is juggling both kids while the father gallivants with his hot new wife. Even though Charlie’s family drama is a lot different than mine, it just goes to show how no family is perfect. Every family is fucked up in one way or another, it’s how you deal with it and how you accept it that makes us different. Denial is the easiest alternative in the short-term but it fucks you up over time.

“And you?” Charlie asks. “You can’t take and not give, sweet thing.”

I finish the second shot, feeling woozy already. “I’ll spare you the boring details. But my mother is the deputy mayor of Chicago, and my father is kind of her bitch, and from the moment we were born, my mother groomed Juliet to be perfect and she groomed me to be just like Juliet. Only I’m not Juliet and never will be. But as far as my mother is concerned, Juliet was the golden child and I was some sort of mistake. Now that Juliet’s dead, she’s this legend I’ll never live up to.” I cough and give Charlie an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I know that sounds callous of me.”

“No, no, I get it,” he says. “I could see how hard that would be. I mean…not to add to it, but Juliet pretty much was perfect.”

“I know,” I grumble.

“But I mean, like sometimes it wasn’t in a nice way…if that makes sense.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know…it doesn’t seem right to talk about her like this.”

“Right or not, we are. If Juliet has something to say about it, she can give us a sign.”

Just then a bottle behind the bar crashes to the ground and smashes to smithereens. People in the bar give a hearty cry, “Opa!” and the bartender gives a bow.

Charlie and I look at each other warily.

“Anyway,” I say quickly. “Keep going.”

“You ever seen that movie the Stepford Wives? With Nicole Kidman?”

“Yeah.”

“Like that. A little too perfect. Always smiling, always had the right thing to say. She never raised her voice, never got upset. She was kind of robotic, and sometimes I thought it was a little bit fake. Like a mask. Like she was hiding something underneath that was anything but.” He throws up a hand. “I don’t know, don’t listen to me. These are just things I think of when I get too high.”

Juliet the Stepford Wife. I can’t help but feel there’s some truth in what he’s saying. But if we only saw the mask, then who was the real Juliet? Did Logan ever see her? Or was she a mystery to him to?

Maybe that’s why he cheated on her, I think. He never felt he was married to someone real to begin with.

But of course that’s just making excuses for him, and that’s the last thing I want to do right now.

“Anyways,” Charlie goes on, a bit pink in the cheeks and clearly uncomfortable, “I don’t mean any harm by it. She was lovely. And I could see how living up to that would be hard when you’re clearly nothing like her.”

I frown. “What does that mean?”

He sighs and adjusts himself on top of the tiki stool, slipping his bare feet on the metal rung beneath the bar. “I feel like this conversation has the power to take a horribly wrong turn. For me.”

“Charlie,” I warn. “Tell me or I’ll tell Kate you were with another girl tonight.”

“I wasn’t!” he exclaims. “She’s just a friend.” Then his features go aloof. “And there’s nothing between me and Kate anyway. So I don’t care.”

I kick his leg. “Tell me.”

“It’s not an insult,” he says. “You’re just…the opposite. Yeah you kinda look the same, the eyes mainly. But you’re like…a hurricane. And she was the…”

“Calm before the storm?”

“No. She was the underground bunker. The shelter. Could withstand anything and come out looking clean while everything around her is destroyed. She could hide and avoid damage.” He groans. “Fuck, I’m getting introspective and I’m not even high. Do you want to go?”

I nod, even though Charlie is making more sense than he thinks.

When we get back in the truck, he asks. “So what was the drama you were discussing with Logan then?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Does the story involve unresolved sexual tension?”

“What?” I snap.

He grins at me. “I’m just messing with you.”

I watch him carefully for a few beats, making sure he really is “taking the piss” as Logan would say, before I say, “You better be.”

Even so, as I go to bed that night my brain is reeling with too many things.

And then I’m dreaming.

About Logan.