“I think you don’t want me to know you, but I do,” Charlie said. “I also think that anyone who knows you well scares you.” That truth came as such a surprise, Glo flinched. Charlie put a hand on Gloria’s arm. “Girls like us, remember?”
Charlie was referring to the heart-to-heart they’d had the night Glo ran into Jordan in her nightie. Having nowhere else to go, Gloria had run straight to Charlie. She’d needed someone to talk to and she knew Charlie wouldn’t turn her away.
“We need to be caveman-dragged,” Charlie finished quoting.
“Asher isn’t a caveman.”
“No. But he’s all man. And he is aching for you. He hates that he hurt you. Hates that he can’t have a do-over. Except for Hawk. He wants his son. He wants to grow up. I think he has in a lot of ways.”
“I take it he’s had conversations about this in your presence.” Gloria looked at the remaining wine in her cup.
Charlie didn’t confirm, but she did say, “Evan is good for him.”
Gloria didn’t doubt it. Evan was an adult. He’d dealt with life head-on and as a result was a man who knew what he wanted. Being dealt so many low blows by the universe had made him who he was. But what about Asher? What did Gloria know about his past, his struggles, his life? She’d been trying to keep things with them on the surface.
Until the night the intimacy between them broke through. But the sex just now? Totally fun, and totally earth-shattering, but definitely not as vulnerable as last year.
Who were they when they were together?
“Sometimes I wonder if there are too many bumps between us to smooth out, you know?” Gloria wanted to eat her words the minute they fell out of her mouth. Damn wine. It made her sentimental. Made her look up at the stars and tell stories to herself. Make up future possibilities, and worse. It made her hope. She could feel the spark of it now flickering in her chest.
“There is a lot of water under Asher and Gloria Bridge,” she continued, on a roll and not caring how she sounded. “I was seduced by the image of him the same as those girls up there.” She tipped her chin to the dock where a gaggle of girls hung out. “Groupies aren’t bad girls. They’re just passionate. They fall in love on a superficial level with the idea of a sexy man singing his deepest thoughts and convictions. Then they follow blindly to the ultimate end.”
Sex. Closeness. It was the only way to capture a man like Asher. He was like smoke. You could hold him in your hands for a limited time, then he’d slip from your fingers.
“That may be true,” Charlie said, “but that isn’t what you and Asher have. You have something else. Something that keeps you in each other’s orbit.”
“It’s called a contract,” Glo quipped.
Charlie grabbed the wine bottle and refilled her own cup. “It’s called something else and I’m sure you don’t want me to spell it out. But if I did, I’d say it started with L and ended with E and there are a whole lot of tumultuous, torturous, beautiful parts in between.”
“Damn, girl.” Gloria held up her cup and they bonked it against Charlie’s in a toast. “You should write a book. Need an agent?”
Charlie smiled. “Do you want to get trashed? Just bottom out this wine and maybe one more bottle and pass out on the beach?”
Gloria, hand to her collarbone, pretended to choke up. “Charlie Downey, that’s the most romantic proposition I’ve ever received.”
“I need it,” Charlie admitted, and her eyes filled with sadness.
“The pregnancy thing,” Gloria said, venturing into territory marked with DO NOT ENTER signs.
“It’s hard to want something and not get it while you watch everyone else around you attain it without effort.” Her eyebrows pulled together. “That’s unfair. And untrue. Things come as they come, and usually they’re not easy for anyone.”
“I feel like your observation could be about you having a baby or me having a relationship. Are you sure you don’t want to write a self-help book?”
“I’m sure I don’t want to tonight.” Charlie lifted the bottle again and this time filled the cups to the top before tossing the bottle into the sand. “Bottoms up, beautiful.”
“If I had a nickel.”
Charlie laughed and Gloria laughed, too. She tipped her cup and made it her goal to finish every last drop of wine in it. And then, she’d do as Charlie suggested and open a fresh bottle.
*
Evan stood over the pair of girls passed out on the blanket on the beach and shook his head. “Well, well. What have we here?”
A soft snore came from one of them, hell, maybe both of them, and Asher smiled. Everyone but Shiff had gone home, or in the band’s case, back to their hotels. Shiff was the unofficial bodyguard of the group and right now he was sitting on Asher’s deck strumming a guitar really badly.
“Better get Charlie home.” Evan raised his eyebrows at Asher. “Want me to take Glo, too?”
“I got her.”
“She gonna be okay with that?” Evan asked, his expression bemused.
She’d agreed to stay. Ash assumed she meant for the party, not for the night. But he wasn’t letting her out of his reach now that he had her here.
“I doubt it, but I won’t take advantage of her passed-out state, so don’t worry.”