(Charliegh, Part Two: unedited)

Cale was the first thing she saw when she opened the door. He was leaning against the scratched expanse of his Chevy, illuminated by a pool of moonlight. As she approached, he straightened, a sober grin appearing across his face. He almost looked hungry, eyes darting down her figure and back up to meet her eyes. One meaty hand pushed his sagging beanie further up on his head, light catching upon his carrot hair.

 “Charliegh.” He drawled.

She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling exposed by his naked curiosity.  “Cale. What’d you want?”

“Well.” He tipped his head, scrutinizing her. “I wanna know why Sylas sucked tonight.”

She winced. A few quick, careless slashes, and he had sent her emotional rollercoaster to a slamming halt. “Why would you ask me? Maybe he was just off.”

“He’s never off.” Cale met her gaze, slow and steady. “You came to one of our first gigs – and he wouldn’t shut up about you, mumbling. The name is pretty unusual.”

“My name?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, your name. So?”

She took a deep breath, trying to organize her thoughts. How could Sylas turn his back so completely, after one mistruth? He seemed to have a personal vendetta against Nolan. Yet as far as she knew, they had never interacted.

And they never had a reason to – Nolan idled his days away in parking lots and tattoo parlors, while Sylas spent hours with his band, or in his bedroom, rehearsing until his throat was raw. One was determined, driven by his quiet ambition. The other was lackadaisical, content to waste his life on unfulfilled promises.

So why had this one name – Nolan Endell – cause him to back away in surrender, leaving her to puzzle through the broken ends of her relationships alone?

“I have no idea why he’d be…off.”

“He doesn’t talk to you at all? Like, anything?”

“No,” she said briskly, “but when he does, I’ll be sure to ask him.”

Cale towered over her, mouth set in a grim line. “Look, Charliegh. I really don’t care about your problem with Sylas, but we’re playing an important gig next Friday. So, he needs to be, I dunno, non-sucky.”

Was that the reason? Had he abandoned her for his music? It seemed rather convenient that, when her problems became too much to handle, his career was at a tipping point. Charliegh pressed her fingers into her temples, bracing herself.

“I was going to talk to him,” she said. Lie. “But the music ended and he left.”

They stood in silence for a moment as Cale considered her words. As she looked around, pulling her arms tightly across her chest, it struck her how empty the world was. Time seem suspended by the ticking crescent moon, and even the stars seemed frozen, burning dimly against the darkened sky. A lone streetlamp buzzed nearby, illuminating the vacant parking lot in watery, rust-colored light.

It reminded her of hopelessness – how, even within the confines of an idyllic town, it snaked through the corners and bled through the doors, demanding to be noticed, commanding to be recognized.

It was not something that was easy to ignore. And neither, she realized, was Sylas’s mistake.  

“Well.” Cale paused, frowning. “We, uh, were gonna grab dinner after the gig. Actually…” He stuck his hand into his pocket, pulling out his cell phone. “I should tell them I’m still coming. Plus one.”

Charliegh wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that, plus one, rolling off his tongue with the practiced grace of a musician. “And I’m the plus one?”

“Just talk to him. Maybe, I dunno, you could make up. Or something. Just fix it.”

“What if,” Charliegh asked quietly, “I don’t know what the it is?”

Cale pressed his phone to his ear. His gaze pinned her to the spot, vaguely amused. “Guess you’ll have to find one.”

After calling Sylas, he helped Charliegh into the truck and left the café, heading right down the highway. The interior of his car smelled stale. They spent ten minutes in strained silence, the jagged notes of Pink Floyd falling between them. Cale, who wasn’t much of a talker anyway, ate up the gravel with his brooding gaze, while Charliegh fidgeted in the passenger’s seat, heart pounding through her fingertips. The nerves churned around in her stomach, blurring her mind, rendering the painful memories of Nolan’s attack obsolete.

By the time they pulled into the parking lot of a small pizza place, panic had taken up residence beside the nausea. Cale pulled into a spot next to Sylas’s battered Chevy.  Charliegh closed her eyes, trying to breathe deeply. Her whole body felt cold. “This is a bad idea.” She said, voice tight.  

Cale twisted the keys out of the ignition and pocketed them. He was grinning as he climbed out of the car, hunching his shoulders against the abrupt chill. “For you, maybe.” He said, and then he slammed his door shut.

Her hands were shaking so acutely, she barely managed to twist the door handle open. The cold struck her like a visceral force as she slid out, yanking the air from her lungs. More forceful than the weather, however, was the sight of Sylas and his bandmates lounging in a window booth.

He almost looked happy. Unjustly happy, as if her absence had not affected him at all. Each step towards his elusive figure, blurred through the glowing windowpanes, was like walking on knives. Cale came alongside her as she started for the front of the shop. “Worried?”

She had to stop before the door, straightening her shoulders, before she could step inside. “No.” she said quietly. “There’s an explanation. I’ll fix things.”

“Okay.” Cale, catching sight of his friends, lifted one hand to wave. He turned to her, grin yellow under the fluorescent lights. “Work your magic.”

It took all of five more tortured steps to realize that Sylas would not acknowledge her. She stood by the edge of the table, oblivious to the hum of greetings surrounding her, and stared him down. He was leaning back in his seat, one lean arm extended to grasp his soda glass. His eyes were fixated upon the tablecloth, and when he raised his head, his smile was crooked. Artificial.

“Charliegh.” He said. He sounded irritated. It was her. Of course, he was irritated at her. It couldn’t be Cale, who had dragged her outside the café to confront her. Who drove her here, and pushed her inside, and allowing her to bask in her own idiocy.

It was her. The abandoned girl, being left behind yet again.

“Hey.”

“So you came with Cale?”

Charliegh furrowed her shoulders. It was almost painful, straining to talk to the boy who had, just a few short weeks ago, understood everything. “He thought we should talk.”

Sylas set down his glass and placed his hands palm flat on the table, as if weighing his options. He sighed, bored and seemingly unmoved by her twitching nerves. “I think you’ve told me everything. Unless you hooked up with Price, too?”

Her cheeks flushed. Humiliation flickered as one of his bandmates snickered. Cale, ignoring them both, continued to talk, voice sliding over their heads.

“It was a mistake.”

“A mistake that, even after getting trampled, you continued to make. I don’t get it, C. You just kept going back.”

“I thought….I don’t know. That he understood, maybe. Because of Viv.” Charliegh lifted one shoulder, feeling ridiculous. And helpless. And weak. She was tired of feeling weak, and so she attempted to smile, smoothing over her insecurities with fake charisma. “I guess I’m an optimist.”

Sylas bunched his fingers in the tablecloth, crumpling and flattening it with his methodical movements. He seemed restrained, mulling over her words, mouth set in a firm, decided line. “Maybe. But that made you a doormat. Nolan’s doormat.”

“What’s wrong with second chances?” She stepped closer, anger growing. This wasn’t Sylas. These weren’t his careful, measured sentences. This was his frustration, or his disappointment.

She wasn’t sure which to fear more.

“When you give them to the wrong people?” Sylas said patiently. “I thought…”

“That if you talked to me once, on a beach, and tried to push all the scars away, they would cease to exist?”

His chair squealed across the floor as he pushed it back, towering over her with surprising swiftness. “Excuse us,” He said to his friends, and grabbed Charliegh’s wrist. He practically pulled her out of the restaurant, steps quick and furious. Once they were outside, breath rising in vaporous wisps, he released her.

For a split second, he reminded her of Price. An animal, nerves strung taut, looking for a reason to pounce. The disapproval in his eyes was crushing, and how he touched her – like she was unclean – made her hair stand on end.

Before he could speak, she apologized. After all, what else was there to say? How else did you gain forgiveness?

“I’m sorry,” she said. Making amends was exhausting, but she couldn’t bear to lose Sylas. Even if it meant squashing her pride, and curling down deep inside of herself. Anything to keep the one person who had stood firmly by her side.

But, facing him, she wondered if it was really worth it. Was he worth it, if he had abandoned her after one honest moment? What would he do if he knew the truth – the whole truth, about everyone?

“What do you want me to say?”

“There’s always forgiveness.”

He let out his breath, shaking his head. “There’s that,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “And then there’s the fact that Nolan Endell slept with you.”

“Sylas.” Charliegh crossed her arms over her chest, trying to cage the hurt inside of her. The guilt. The shame. He was flattening the past few years of her life onto the pavement like shrapnel, and she wasn’t sure which to regret the most. The boy? The action? The lack of love, or the means to achieve it? “Why does Nolan matter?”

“His mother was one of the two people who nearly ruined your life. He hates you. And I can’t understand why you, C, would take up with anyone in the first place.”

“Maybe I was lonely.”

He leaned forward, acidic sentences tangling like memories in her hair. “Lonely isn’t an excuse. It’s a state of being.”

“I don’t…”

“What? Regret Nolan?”

“No. No,” Charliegh said, biting her lower lip hard enough to quench the rising tears. He was shooting straight into the chinks in her armor, and it burned. “I just don’t…I don’t know how to come to terms with it all. I don’t know how to reconcile it. Or make things better.”

He was silent. Dead silent.

The world moved on without them. Life continued for millions of other people, and yet they were fixated upon this one occurrence, this one string of mistakes. Through the window, his friends were still laughing, talking. Cale had removed his beanie, orange curls spilling like miniature tongues of fire over his shoulders.

It was all so normal. Expected. No one else seemed to face consequences, to be driven by their past. Charliegh felt shackled to it. It was something she could not free herself of, and Sylas, her one isolated source of comfort, was pulling away.

“Sylas,” she whispered, taking a shaky breath, “I don’t know what to do.”

“And you expect me to help you? I can’t sort this out for you, C. This is the one thing I can’t help you with.”

She wiped her eyes. Tears burned in the corners, and she pressed her fingertips against her lids, trying to hold them at bay. Now he couldn’t help her? Now, he couldn’t fight her battles – he couldn’t even be bothered to try? “With Nolan?”

“With boys. Earnest, Price, him. What if I don’t know what to do, either?”

“I told you – you could forgive me. I don’t really need a solution. Just a friend.” She looked away. This was difficult because it was different. She was, perhaps for the first time, truly alone. For years, someone had stood by her side. Held her hand. Helped her through the messy, uncertain bits in life. And now, left to her own devices, she couldn’t find the proper words to say.

Everything sounded desperate. Nothing was swaying Sylas, who looked more determined than ever to leave her behind.

“Well. I’m the wrong choice.”

He was a black-haired blur, overrun by her emotions. She tried to pull herself together, only to buckle over, bending at the waist. Vomit tugged at the back of her throat, saliva pooling in her mouth. She had done this. She had driven him away. And this time, there was no bringing him back. “I’m sorry.” She said. “I’m so sorry.”

Pandora’s Box stood between them, something so small and yet so inescapable. Her greatest mistake, she realized, was telling Sylas everything. He had ammunition. He had reasons. Their friendship had been flawed from the start. It had been a game of giving, and Sylas – among others – had taken the pieces she had given away and carried them around in the sleeves of his jacket.

And now, he was giving them back. In the end, all she was left with were a few dimmed conversations and coffee house clatter, overshadowed by her impending nightmares.  

While Sylas was opening his mouth, preparing for another half-hearted rebuttal, the insistent pull in her throat grew worse. Retribution disappearing, she did the only thing she knew how – she bent over and released her dirty laundry, splattering the remnants of forgiveness over his the toes of his Converse sneakers.

***

For whatever reason, it wouldn't let me post music the side. Song of the chapter is Scene One -- James Dean & Audrey Hepburn by Sleeping with Sirens. I would highly recommend looking it up, first because the lead has an amazing voice, and second because it fits perfectly with the tone of events in this chapter.

Vote or Comment if you've been enjoying the book. Thank you so much for the support.