This Thing With Charlie Read online

  I should have thought. Perhaps used my brain. I should have seen every little signal and read into every one of his smiles. I was a Doctor of Medicine for fuck’s sake, yet I had somehow, got this all wrong.

  Because Charlie, my Charlie, was suddenly far too close and far too warm as his breath hit my face. He was suddenly everywhere, his hands on my waist, his lips softly pressed against mine.

  I was a respectable adult and should have known better. I should have hugged him and made him giggle and said all those words to make this right. Instead, the imbecilic turd that I was? I pushed him away and spat out some pathetic sentence laced with disgust.

  “The fuck?” came out of my mouth at the end as Charlie recoiled in confusion.

  “Oh,” was all he said.

  I stood there, the fool that I was. I just stood there as he turned around and walked away. I stood there, and I suddenly didn’t know who the hell I had become.

  This thing with Charlie had ruined my life. It sounded pathetic, but it had. If I thought I had been miserable before, it was nothing compared to the ache and embarrassment in my chest that I carried with me the following day. I was short-tempered and miserable, embarrassed and rude, as I snapped at my patients and only sighed when Mrs Hallet strangely offered me a cup of tea.

  I took the long way back from work so I wouldn’t have to pass the bakery where he worked or run the chance of running into him anywhere else, even if I knew exactly where he would be because foolishly I had asked him and he had told me, long before he had kissed me, and I had ruined it all.

  I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Fuck, I was such a fool.

  When I thought back, the clues were all there. He had never mentioned girlfriends, always using neutral words. Always talked loosely about clubbing and hookups and apps and flings. I shuddered with unease again, trying to justify my simply stupid generalisations and prejudices. He was a beautiful man, generous and charming, and had looked after me, treating me with kindness when my life had contained none. He was…

  He was a proud, gay man, and I was a complete idiot.

  He had also flirted shamelessly with me from the first day we met, and I had, in my imbecilic state, flirted right back. I had played along under some strange guise that he was a kindred spirit, a friend I simply just clicked with. We had gelled and got along, and he laughed at my jokes as I laughed at his. He had called me his, and I had called him mine. I cringed at the realisation of our words, in complete and utter shame. He was lovely and funny and made me feel good about myself. He was Charlie. He was my Charlie, and I had…

  I had fucked up. I had fucked up so badly that I couldn’t even justify it to myself or explain my frankly weird behaviour, however hard I tried.

  I wiped my eyes in the clinic toilets at the end of the day when the pressure was too much, and my nerves were shot to shit. I just couldn’t bear it, the look in his eyes and the hunch of his shoulders when he had walked away from me, and now, I would have to somehow, fuck... I didn’t know what to do. What to say. How to...

  I would have to pack my bags, sell my wreck of a house, and move somewhere else. I would have to run away, leave town and never come back. Yet those thoughts carried the strange afterthought of never seeing Charlie again and that, precisely that, was messing with my head.

  I wanted to just erase the last twenty-four hours. I’d gone over the conversations we shared, over and over again. And in my head? I had corrected every mistake and said all the right things, cleverly outplayed that kiss and pleaded and explained and justified and smoothed out the way things had gone until things made perfect sense. In my head.

  They actually made no fucking sense, whatsoever, but then again, my head was not a sensible place, and my heart was smashed to unfixable splinters. So what else could I do? I snuck into the Nordic Star Hotel with my tail between my legs, wondering if I could get away with crawling past the bloody bar-ception-shite-thingy out of sight with some of my dignity intact.

  I couldn’t, of course, because there was an elderly couple sitting by the fire, sipping Charlie’s perfect cups of tea. Little fancy mince pies lingering on a plate between them as the fire crackled and Christmas music played in the background.

  The scented candles made me want to cough, the music made me want to throw up there and then. And of course, Charlie was standing behind the counter; both hands firmly placed on the top, his shoulders tensed up and his face in… a smile.

  “Hey!” he shouted out as I skulked towards him, my head held low. I couldn’t look at him. I just... couldn’t.

  “I don’t…” I started. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then just shut up… and I assume you want a pint of the guest ale, it’s Friday after all. Today’s brew is a local Christmas ale, smooth with a little hint of citrus in there and a crisp bitter finish. I read the tasting notes earlier, haven’t tried it though. You up for it?”

  “Charlie…” I sighed, sitting myself down on the barstool as spineless as a child. “Charlie, Charlie… Charlie.”

  “Oh, shut up, Daniel, and listen to me,” he said, leaning over on his elbows, staring at me through his fringe. “I read the whole thing wrong. I read you wrong, and I apologise. It’s not the bloody end of the world, not to me, anyway. It will be something you and I will laugh about in the future, once I have gotten over the fact that you can be a bit of an arse, and of course, there is the tiny little detail, that you are not into me, at all. Which is fine. Sad but fine, but I will probably forgive you for that one. One day. After you have apologised. I will hold your pint hostage while you think up an apology you can grovel out to me, then I will consider it, and if it’s good enough, I will let you have a plate of the absolutely orgasmic chicken curry cooking away on the stove back there, with my special coconut rice on the side. Kind of a Thai takeaway thing I sometimes make. I thought you might like it. Friday night comfort food. You know.”

  He was flustered again, chewing the fingernail on his thumb as I tried to calm my beating heart.

  “If I were you, I would never speak to me again,” I started off as he sighed softly.

  “If I never spoke to you again? That would make me sad. Remember, I am nursing a tiny little stupid crush on you.”

  “Tiny little crush,” I teased, finding a small strain of courage somewhere in my stomach. “That was a full-on kiss. That wasn’t anything like a tiny little crush kiss. That was a big-arsed full-on crush kind of kiss you had going on there.”

  “I didn’t use tongue,” he teased back, keeping his voice low as he looked over my shoulder to check on the couple who were chatting quietly behind us.

  “I’ve already had all your germs,” I smiled..

  Thank god for that. He was laughing again, and the ache in my chest was starting to hurt a little less.

  “You can have all of my germs, any time. There are lots of lovely things we could do to each other to exchange germs. Sex and kissing and blow jobs and other nice things like that. But, oh yeah. You’re not into men or gay shit and all that. Sorry. My bad.”

  He was smiling, but those were my exact words, and he was just echoing them back to me with an edge to his voice. Yes. I’d hurt him. I knew that. I was stupid and rude, and said all those things with added anger and disgust.

  “I’m not…”

  “Yeah, you’re not,” he snarled back, chewing furiously at his thumb.

  “The gay thing is not problematic.” I tried to find all those smart sentences I had practised in my head. The sensitive and supportive words you were supposed to use. The ‘love is love’ shite that people posted on social media, all things that had suddenly disappeared from my head, leaving my brain an empty hole of mush.

  “I’m not attracted to men,” I tried, cringing as the words left my mouth.

  “I’m not attracted to men either,” he said, looking completely serious. “I am attracted to women, and I am attracted to men, and sometimes I am attracted to people who don’t necessarily identify with either of those ge
nders. I don’t fucking care who I fancy, I just—you know—meet people who are lovely, and then my stupid heart decides that I would most probably enjoy kissing them. Sometimes, they even enjoy kissing me back. So, I kissed you because, whatever you think right now, you are lovely—when you’re not being an arse.”

  “You said you would forgive me for being an arse.”

  “You haven’t grovelled enough yet.”

  His voice was a little louder than I would necessarily have preferred, right now, as I turned around and checked on the couple behind us, who were—just as I expected—staring at us.

  “Mrs Harris, would you like another pot of tea?” Charlie asked graciously, leaving me to stew in my misery over by the bar-ception-thingy of doom. Because that was what it felt like as he cleared the cups from the table, chatting excitedly with Mrs Harris, offering suggestions for little walks and the best gift shops to browse for their grandchildren’s presents.

  He still made me smile, with just the sound of his voice. He made my body warm up just with him being near. It was crazy, I decided. It was some strange hormonal surge brought on by the shock of my divorce. It was my body reacting to the stress of the move. It was the inhumane pressure of having to live up to Mrs Hallet’s expectations and the constant passive-aggressive critique coming out of Mrs Pasankar’s mouth. I told him all of this in a pathetic attempt at apologising for my out-of-order comments and inexcusable behaviour.

  Charlie just shook his head and crossed his arms.

  “It’s a particularly good curry. I used organic coconut milk and fresh coriander. You will have to try harder than that if you want dinner.”

  “You kissed me. You invaded my personal space and did not ask my consent before you made your advances.”

  That, at least, made him smile.

  “You are so full of shit, Daniel.”

  “And I know it,” I said, banging my head on the tabletop. “Can we just not just… forget that yesterday evening ever happened?”

  “Yesterday evening? Can’t remember a thing.”

  “Charlie…”

  “I think it must be sugar-induced amnesia. I seem to remember a giant dessert with chocolate sauce. I remember absolutely nothing after that.”

  “Nothing?” I laughed.

  “Nothing. Now, do you want your chutney on the side or just a big slob of it on top of your rice?”

  “Am I forgiven?”

  “Forgiven? For what?” he said as he disappeared into the kitchen and left me alone with a pint of beer sat in front of me, mocking me with bubbles.

  So, it was all forgotten. Strangely, it didn’t feel forgotten at all.

  We ate, chatting awkwardly about the weather. I finished another pint as Charlie read from the essay he was working on. I said goodnight before ten o’clock, sighing with relief as the door to my room closed behind me.

  I sat on my bed for what felt like an eternity before pulling myself together enough to shower the day from my skin.

  Then I just sat there, wearing a clean t-shirt and boxers, feeling dirty and abused. I didn’t know why, but his indifference had rubbed me the wrong way. His easy forgiveness, too easy on my stupidity. I didn’t like that he didn’t shout at me. I didn’t like that we didn’t fight. I wanted him to fight me. I wanted him to fight… for me.

  I just sat there, and again, wondered how I had become this dumb.

  I didn’t even have his number so I could rant at him in badly thought-out texts, and I was not dressed enough to walk back down into the lobby. I didn’t want to get dressed again. Well, I was too chicken to get dressed again despite the need to shout at him because I was picking a fight, wanting someone to shout at me, needing all this anger and sadness to somehow get out in the open. All this stupidity, and all my mistakes. My weakness, my ridiculous demands and all the things that went wrong in my marriage, now infecting my brain with things I could no longer control.

  I stood and placed a hard kick against the wall. Then I felt stupid, as it made nothing but a faint dirty footprint on the wall.

  I needed to control my anger, and I was definitely no Joe Wicks, as my foot now ached from its non-existent impact with the wall. I was not fit, nor strong. I was weak and pathetic and unlovable and stupid, and I couldn’t even sustain a simple friendship that I had come to treasure. Instead, it had become something I couldn’t handle, and now…?

  I deserved every pathetic thought in my head. I deserved none of his kindness nor forgiveness.

  So, I sat there in a haze of thoughts, surrounded by crisp pillows and posh-looking throws, wondering how on earth someone like me ended up like this. I’d had a good life. A fantastic education. The best job in the world. A beautiful wife. Twice over.

  Then there was a knock on the door, no doubt Charlie asking me not to kick at the walls, thus disturbing Mrs Harris’s beauty sleep.

  It was Charlie, of course, because who else would it be? And he was carrying a cup of ginger tea with lemon, his coat buttoned up and his scarf tightly wound around his neck.

  I immediately missed seeing all the leather straps and silly pearls against his skin and tried to not look at him at all.

  “You forgot your tea,” he said, walking up to the bedside table, placing the cup down on a coaster he had magicked up from his coat pocket. “I’m heading home, so I thought I would bring it up to you.”

  “Thank you,” I piped out in a pathetic little voice.

  “Daniel,” he said, and then he walked up, keeping a perfectly acceptable distance before carefully stroking my bare arm.

  He made me shiver and not in a good way because he honestly frightened me. He scared me with all the feelings I couldn’t control. He scared me because of how much he had come to mean to me, and he scared me because I knew I was lonely and depressed, and he was the only human in the world that had shown me any kind of affection in an awfully long time. And I knew it was wrong, and I knew it was pathetic, but I hugged him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him in and sobbed into his shoulder as he carefully started to rub my back, shushing gently in my ear.

  “It’s okay. Nobody died, okay?”

  Nobody died. He could say that again, but I thought everything else around me had died as I let long drawn-out painful sobs produce enough snot to warrant me paying to dry-clean his coat. I tried to tell him that as well, but most of it just came out in pathetic lumps of blubbering nonsense.

  “You are exhausted.”

  I was. I could admit to that.

  “So, what is going to happen is that you are going to get into this lovely comfortable bed with its cheap-arse made in god-knows-where duvets that we are marketing as the height of luxury. They are filled with cheap replica stuffing, by the way, and not duck down despite our recent adverts. Just so you know,” he said, obviously trying to make me laugh. I didn’t because right now? I had nothing to laugh about.

  “Stay… for a bit?” I asked, grabbing at his arm as he covered my body with the cheap replica duvet. I didn’t care if the duvet was made in Hell at this point, as long as he stayed next to me. “I could do with some company.” I didn’t mean that in any way, except what I meant. I just wanted someone to share my space. I wanted him to be next to me so I wouldn’t feel so alone.

  “Want me to sit here?” he said, unwrapping the scarf from his neck.

  His shirt was unbuttoned like he’d usually wear it, his collection of necklaces riding the hem of the vest that showed underneath. I realised I loved his freckles, the way they showed up against the pale white cotton. I realised I loved all the little pieces of jewellery he wore on his skin. I loved the little nose ring that glittered in the soft sheen from the bedside lights. I loved that he was different, different from everything I had ever loved before, and in my muddled brain, I was starting to wonder if everything I had ever done before had been wrong, and that maybe, Charlie was my right?

  “I’ve been up since four this morning,” he said softly as he let the coat drop from his shoulders, the h
eavy fabric falling to the floor with a thud.

  “You must be exhausted too,” I said, pulling the duvet tighter under my chin.

  “You mind if I lie down on the other side of the bed? I’ll stick to my side. I won’t do anything stupid, like try to kiss you again. I’ll leave as soon as you’re asleep. Would that work for you?”

  I could hear the laughter in his voice and the smile that crept up on my lips strangely made me calm. I’d lied before. I didn’t want to be alone, but more than that, I wanted…

  I lay there with the bedside light on, listening to him curl up behind me. He sat up at one point and dragged his coat back up from the floor, letting the weight of it travel over my body before he covered himself up underneath it. I listened to him breathe, revelling in having him there beside me.

  For the first time in almost seven months, I was not sleeping on my own, and I fell into an almost comatose state until the light shattered the silence, and I was once again, alone.

  This thing with Charlie had become the only thing I cared about. And he was the only thing I could think of as I stood there staring at myself in the mirror.

  “I am a bisexual man,” I tried, cringing at myself. “I identify as pansexual.” That didn’t feel comfortable either as the words stuttered out of my mouth. “I have a boyfriend,” sounded juvenile and dumb.

  “He’s my Charlie,” rolled off my tongue with ease and made me giggle as I clumsily tied my now-too-long hair into a bun at the nape of my neck. I should really get a haircut and perhaps book in somewhere for a swim and a massage. All the things I had done in London as little pick-me-ups, things that now sounded foreign and strange as I tried to remember if Chistleworth even had a spa. I needed to find a good gym, too, and try to get healthy and fit.

  I would have to ask Charlie for recommendations, whenever I saw him next. I knew nothing of where he would be for Christmas, and I glanced up at the windows over the bakery as I walked to work with my coat wrapped tightly around me. We had again managed to talk about everything and nothing, omitting all those details that now seemed important. But now it was Saturday, and I was on weekend duty, manning the emergency phones and dealing with urgent matters from all over Chistleworth County.