Summer of Love (12 page)

“Fine, speak.”

“Fine — let me.” Charlie gathers his thoughts for a moment and I stand with my hands on my hips, aware of how cold I am, how much I am annoyed with him, and how much I want to him to just grab me and kiss me, forgetting all the reason why I shouldn’t want this.

“Come inside, though. It’s cold,” he says and of course, I go with him.

Inside, Charlie motions for me to follow him down a corridor, down three short steps, and into a parlor room furnished with oversized leather club chairs, a fireplace the size of a soccer goal, oriental rugs, brass lamps, and a chandelier that Charlie immediately dims by touching a switch on the wall.

“You know your way around here,” I say and try not to picture him dating the Manor Club girls who fly in for weekends, host teas, and then take off for The Hamptons or Nantucket, Newport or Europe.

Charlie gives a quick answer, “My grandfather served here. I used to come with him sometimes.”

Now I picture a grandpa version of Charlie — basically him with wrinkles and white hair — and imagine little boy Charlie and his grandfather serving drinks from big trays, dealing with all the rich society requests for extra olives or onions, cherries for the Manhattans. No wonder Charlie seems both at home here and resentful of the lavish surroundings.

“So,” I say as I perch on the edge of one of the brown leather chairs across from Charlie. “Defend yourself.”

“I’m sorry you see it as a defense…” He stands up and faces the fire, the embers glowing neon red and orange. “You’re right, Love — I shouldn’t have left you sitting there. And it does seem like I stood you up. The only reason in my mind that my actions didn’t qualify as standing you up was because I didn’t want to.”

I shiver, both from the chill easing off my skin and from his words — is he a bullshit artist or for real?

“So you’re saying that because you didn’t want to stand me, it didn’t count?” I ask, my voice quiet because the room is library-like, demanding soft tones. My stomach growls and I remember I have yet to have any dinner, despite the fact that I’m attending a dinner party.

Charlie takes a couple of steps closer to me, so the front of his legs brushes the front of mine. He pulls me up and the sheer feel of his hands on mine is enough to make me want to pass out. But by some miracle, I don’t, I just stare at his face, his mouth, the way he bites on his lower lip, trying to explain his thoughts. He backs up and sits down on the cushioned green bench that surrounds the fireplace. “I had every intention of being there that night. Only a total asshole would have missed that opportunity.”

I don’t bother to tell him that I’ve called him that in my head for nearly a year, that I haven’t been able to think of him without that night slapping any good memories in the face. “But you did…” I sound sad, sadder than I should for just a brush-off, but I liked him, and who knows how different my year might have been if he’d shown up.

“Mike was ill,” he says suddenly. “She…how to put this tactfully? She swallowed a few too many Tylenols and…”

“Oh,” I say and now I feel like a jerk. “You were with Mike.” Then I realize — he was WITH MIKE. While he was kissing me? “So you cheated on her, stood me up, and then rescued her? How gallant.”

“What? Cheated on her?” A huge smile comes across his face and he starts to laugh but I’m still flustered and annoyed. “Mike? You think I’m with Mike?”

“Oh — she’s just a FWB? Either way…”

“Mike’s my sister,” Charlie says. “She goes to Exeter and was pretty depressed her senior fall — last year — and…”

In truth, it’s so much info that I don’t know what to consider first: that Mike is not Charlie’s girlfriend, that he rushed to her aid rather than deserted me, or that she goes to Exeter when I thought she was this island local who mixed with the summer crowd.

“So Mike just graduated from Exeter?” I ask. “Is that how she knows Henry and these guys?” I gesture with my arm like Henry and his buddies are in the room with us when really they’re dancing and drinking and enjoying the shortest night — all without me.

“We all grew up together,” Charlie says. “Though you wouldn’t know it….”

I shake my head. “You mean you knew Henry during the summers?”

Charlie sighs. “It’s complicated.” I imagine he doesn’t want to get into the typical townie versus preppy discussion, and I don’t want to wound his pride or anything by making him seem somehow in competition with Henry’s heritage.

My stomach makes a last-ditch shot at being placated with food. The growl echoes in the high-ceilinged room. I put my hand over my belly. “Oops. I never did get dinner.”

Charlie heads over to the doorway, standing by the bronze plaque on the wall. Each room, each corridor at The Manor House seems to have a plaque named for some fancy person who, Arabella and I read in the handbook, had been a founding member of the club (read: so wealthy, WASPy, and white that they are immortalized by the plaques). “Come on,” Charlie beckons. “Let’s get you some food and I can explain…”

With each step I take toward him, I’m aware of all the distance I’ve tried to put between us — the hurt at being stood up, his off-limits status as a taken man, his disinterest in me — and how none of these appear to be real. He holds out his hand to me to pull me up the step and he guides me to food and explanations, I happen to look at the bronze plaque:
The Addison Room
. Charlie. Charles Addison. Charlie.

“When you say your grandfather served here,” I ask with my hand in his. “I take it he wasn’t serving appetizers?”

Over his shoulders, Charlie looks at me and grins, his eyes sexy as hell, his lips taunting me to kiss them. “Serving — on the board of trustees…” He says and like that, his boat boy image starts to fade — and I follow him away from the bustle of the Midnight Hour dinner party and into the Vineyard night.

So much for the midnight hour — try the early morning hours complete with stars, sand, and so much sexual tension I can hardly breathe. But as of yet — no kiss. Not even a peck from Charles Addison. Charles Addison who is not as previously assumed by me to be a penniless local fisherman but the American equivalent of financial royalty — a family whose name is a corporation.

“So the Addison building at Harvard?” I ask. We’re sitting on the small stretch of beach near Charlie’s cottage, our bare feet burrowing into the wet sand.

“Ours.”

“And the Addison building in New York right near where I interned at Music Magazine?”

“Ours.”

“Huh.” It’s all I can come up with — I’m just too amazed at my own superficial assumptions and the reversal of them.

“I wanted to tell you — well, no.”

With my arms linked around my knees, I swivel so I’m facing him rather than the ocean. Back at the Manor, Henry was busy romancing every hot woman in a slip dress (read: tons) and didn’t notice when we slinked past. “Start from the beginning — and go slowly. Apparently, I’m in need of remedial social inferences instruction.”

“Okay…” Charlie stands up, his dinner suit pants rolled at the ankles; he points a tanned toe into the sand and draws a line. “here’s where we met. Or when I saw you.”

“On the street — with Aunt Mable when she called out to you.”

Charlie shakes his head. “No. Before then.”

A smile lurks on my mouth — he saw me before then? Or noticed me? I like that. “Go on,” I say.

“I was on the ferry early in the morning that day — and I saw you board. I wanted to talk to you but then you kind of disappeared and when I figured out where you were you were sharing a dessert with Henry Randall.”

I think back to that day. “it was a sticky bun.”

Charlie looks disappointed, like the fact that I remember what I ate with Henry means I love him or something. “It was a really good pastry. And I love sweets.”

Charlie grins. “Fine — so that brings us to here.” He draws a mark in the sand with his toe, continuing. “So I didn’t talk to you then. But I — I wanted to. And then there was the street incident, which made me smile all day.”

“My aunt had a way of embarrassing me in public — but in a good way.” I stand up, too, and place my feet on the line Charlie’s drawing in the sand. Every time he talks, he pushes the line forward and I follow on it.

“So then I rescued you and your dad…”

I cough in mock disagreement. “It wasn’t exactly a rescue — I mean, we would have gotten out of there eventually.” I want to add how gorgeous I thought he was then and how badly I wished he’d want to talk more, but I don’t. I have no idea where all this is leading.

“And then your dad tried to give me money.”

I shake my head and put my arms out for balance like the sandy line is a tightwire. “He meant it to be nice — and you didn’t take it — and you were on a boat. So I just kind of thought….”

“You did what we all do — assume someone’s actions, or their surroundings explain who they are. But…” Charlie keeps extending the sand line along the beach and I keep walking on it, stopping when he does. “And part of me liked that you thought I was just this person. This island guy with no buildings, no memberships, no real estate.”

“I do…” I start and then cover it by adding. “How come you didn’t tell me your — oh my god I almost said your real identity. Like you’re a superhero or something.”

Charlie runs his hand through his hair and then shoves his hands into his pockets. In the clean white moonlight, the beach nearly glows and his eyes are bright when he looks at me. “What was I supposed to do? Walk up to you and announce my status — and the thing is — it’s not mine. It’s my parents. And that’s what I was trying to tell you that night at your cottage…in front of the fire.”

In the movie version of this, he’d remember kissing me then and run over to me and do the same now, but it’s not a movie, it’s late and we’re cold and on a beach and he just stays where he is. “Did you know that I thought you were this local, hard-working guy?”

Charlie shrugs and scratches the stubble on his neck. “I was a local hard-working guy. That’s the thing. Just because I come from money doesn’t mean it defines me. And I don’t know — maybe I had some idea that you’d misconstrued something, but it was all pretty hazy in my mind.”

“In what way?”

Charlie makes a big loop in the sand and reaches down for a driftwood stick to use as a pointer. “See here?” he points to an invisible spot on the sandy chart. “this is when I was sixteen and an asshole and thought my trust would make me a worthy, cool person. And here, this is before that — when I was young and naïve and thought money made no difference. We summered here but I’d play with the local kids or hand out with the farm workers and be genuinely surprised that there wasn’t a future in our friendship.”

“And what’s this?” I use my toe to point to another destination on the line.

“That’s when I tripped and fell in the mud in Harvard Square and my pants fell down — it has nothing to do with what we’re talking about.”

I laugh and point to another place. “Okay, fine. Here.”

“So then I got to college and it all kind got crazy…the Euro crowd versus the old money blending in with the regular kids, the public school or Midwestern ideal — it all got to me. Like who the hell am I in all this?”

“Wait — back up. I don’t even know where you go to school.”

Charlie gives me a look — that look that tells me I do know. “Oh.” I say and clue in. “Oh! You go to Harvard?”

“Thus bumping into me at Bartley’s…”

“What a shitty day that was,” I say. Asher broke up with me on the phone, Mable got worse, and I felt like hell by the end of it.

“Thanks — it was good to see you, too.”

“I didn’t mean that,” I say and think that if he were closer to me I’d reach out and touch him to make a point, but he’s further down the beach. “And p.s. — I’m cold.”

“Gotcha. This will be finished in a minute — sort of — I think personal finance issues go on forever. But anyway, so it wasn’t like I was trying to deceive you by being this country bumpkin. I just didn’t know what to do myself so it came out funny with you.”

“You were basically trying on the poor life?”

“Not at all — and I’ll try not to be offended by that remark. But when I left Harvard — or rather, took a leave of absence to find out what the real world was like — my father in typical uptight fashion, decided to take away any money I had.”

“But aren’t you eighteen? Can he do that?”

“Until I’m twenty-five, he controls the funds. It’s how it’s always been in the Addison family — like at twenty-five you magically know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“So…” I say. “What a long and illuminating evening.”

“It’s the shortest night, Love.” Charlie says and then puts the piece of driftwood into the wet sand. “There.”

“What’s there?”

“That,” Charlie says and rests his hand on top of the marker. “Is where we are now.”

“And where is that, exactly?” I ask. I put one foot in front of the other and take careful steps closer to him.

“Here,” Charlie says and right when I think he’ll lean down and kiss me, points to the small cabin and gestures us both inside.

It’s funny to look at something from the outside — like this cabin when I first drove off the ferry and followed Charlie’s red pick-up here — and then to find yourself inside, like I am now.

“So this is yours?” I ask and look around the open plan room. To the left is a small kitchen (note: it’s clean with no dishes in the sink), to the right a big stone fireplace, and in front, all windows lined with one long cushioned seat — the perfect spot to sit and gaze out at the beach, which the windows overlook.

“Yes and no,” Charlie says as he piles logs into the empty fireplace and hands me some newspaper. “Here — twist and crumple.”

I start to unfold the paper, crumpling a couple sheets into balls, and another few into folded fan-like lengths that I twist and hand to Charlie who sets them inside his wood pile. “Hey, we make a good team.” Hey — I sound idiotic! Leave it to me to feel all windswept and adult making a fire in a cabin with a boy I like who might like me and ruin the moment by adding some generalized, sports-influenced rah-rah shit.