The Infinite Moment of Us (25 page)

was still leaving notes under the wipers of Wren’s car.

Bitch. Slut. Fucking whore.
Wren hadn’t told Charlie about the notes. Tessa did. When Charlie went to Wren about

them, she pulled away from him again.

“Please don’t do anything,” she’d said. “That just gives

her power. Anyway, confronting her would mean talking to

her, and you said you didn’t anymore. Or do you?”

No, he didn’t, not even when Ammon came to him and

told him that Starrla had a new boyfriend who was big and

mean.

“She’s hanging with a rough crowd, man,” Ammon had

said.

“Not my problem,” Charlie’d said. He didn’t mention

that to Wren, either.

In the hot car, with her shirt unbuttoned, Wren was still

waiting for his answer.
Is this real? Are we real?

Bringing up Starrla was out.

His other option was to bring up Chris, Pamela, and

Dev, and maybe he’d have to, because as he held Wren’s

hand, he realized what else Wren was asking:
And if we
are

real . . . why won’t you come to Guatemala with me?

If a man loved a woman, he should find a way to be with

her. That’s what Wren seemed to believe, though she never

said so directly. Maybe she didn’t say it because she also

believed—and this she did say directly—that Charlie was

doing the best he could.

Was he? He was trying, but he felt like a shit for disap-

pointing her. He knew that, deep down, she wanted him to

come anyway. With her. To Guatemala.

Charlie felt like he was in a bind. He also couldn’t help

but wonder: If a woman loved a man, couldn’t she find a

way to be with that man? Instead of Charlie going to Gua-

temala to be with Wren, couldn’t Wren stay in Atlanta to

be with him?

Wren sighed and broke off eye contact. Charlie knew

he needed to catch her now, before she slipped away from

him.

“Wren, I love you to infinity and back. You’re the love

of my life. You know that, right?”

Wren sighed again.

“And you do make me feel like a man,” he said. “No one

makes me feel like you do.”

“I’m glad,” she said.

“I am, too,” he said.

“But, Charlie, you
are
a man.” She turned her head and looked at him. “I’m glad I make you feel that way, but it’s

not me. It’s you. You
are
a man, and not just a man, but my man. I need you.”

“I need you, too, baby,” he said, worried that she didn’t

fully grasp the truth of that.

“And also, I just plain
want
you,” she said. “Don’t you want me? Don’t you want to be with me?”

“Of course I want you. Of course I want to be with

you.”

“Well, okay. But I’m leaving in three weeks, so why . . . ?”

And there it was:
If you want me, why don’t you put me first?

Or, closer yet:
Why don’t you want me enough to
want
to
put me first?

Because in three weeks, Wren would get on a plane

and fly to a strange new land, while Charlie would stay in

Atlanta, swallowed by the hole she’d leave in his life.

It tried to swallow him now. He resisted, because she

hadn’t left yet. They shouldn’t waste what time they had.

He ran a finger along her hairline, tracing the side of her

face and down the line of her jaw. She had beautiful lips,

full and generous.

“Do you remember that day at the hospital?” he said.

“When I came in, and you fixed me?”

She smiled. Of course she did, and he knew it, just as he

knew that she loved the way he’d turned the hospital visit

into part of their personal mythology. She loved the idea

that she had “fixed” him, even though she always denied it.

“I didn’t fix you,” she said. “You didn’t need fixing.”

“I did,” he said, unwaveringly sincere. “I did, and you

did.”

She pulled down his hand, which was still cupping her

face. She kissed his fingers, each one in turn, and Charlie

thought, Good. Yes. She’s back.

He didn’t want to mess that up, but he didn’t want to

avoid her question, either. Avoiding her question, even if

she hadn’t put it into words, would be the coward’s way

out.

“Do you remember how we talked about Dev that day?”

he asked.

She drew her eyebrows together. Then her brow cleared.

“Oh—now I do. You were telling me about how you’d been

to the ER before. And that Dev . . .” She drummed her fin-

gers on her leg. “That Dev had been burned. Is that right?”

“Yeah. Only, I let you think it was an accident.”

She let go of his hand and pulled the lever that brought

her seat upright. She crossed her legs beneath her. They

made a skin-sucking sound when she moved them, but nei-

ther she nor Charlie laughed as they might have if the topic

of their conversation was something lighter.

“It wasn’t an accident?” Wren asked.

“No.”

“Then what happened? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Because he didn’t know her then. Because it was too

private.

She studied him. “Will you tell me now?”

Charlie went away for a moment. Thinking about it

brought back an acrid smell. “It was two guys who go to

Dev’s middle school. Two eighth graders.”

“Two boys burned Dev? On purpose?”

“With a cigarette lighter. Dev wouldn’t tell us who, so I

figured it out on my own.”

“Charlie,” Wren said. “Jesus.”

Charlie had driven to the middle school in the mornings

and in the afternoons. He’d tutored there for his senior

community service hours, plus he’d gone there him-

self when he was Dev’s age, so he knew the schedule.

He noticed who was nice to Dev and who laughed

behind Dev’s back. He paid particular attention when

the buses came, knowing that buses were a bully’s any-

thing-goes zone. He saw the asshole who rammed into

Dev’s wheelchair—sorry, dude, my bad—and he saw the

second asshole who high-fived the first. He spotted asshole

number two’s cigarette lighter, because asshole number

two pulled it out and flicked it to life, let the flame die,

then reignited it.

Flick, flick, flick,
right in front of Dev, who blinked

pretended not to be bothered.

Dev’s hand had gone to his leg, though, where it tapped

a jittery dance on the exact spot where Pamela had applied

a fresh bandage that morning.

“What did you do?” Wren asked. “Did you turn them

in?”

“No, Dev didn’t want me to.”

“So? I mean, I understand that Dev didn’t want to be a

tattletale, but I’m sure you didn’t just . . .” Wren let her

sentence trickle off. Her face fell. “Charlie, I am so sorry.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I know.”

She hesitated. “So what did you do?”

Charlie looked at her face. How much of this did he feel

comfortable revealing? It was in the past. In some ways,

he’d been a different person, because he hadn’t yet met

her. But would he do the same thing now?

Yes, because he loved Dev, and when he loved someone,

he protected that person. He loved Wren, and if he needed

to, he would fight to protect her, too.

“I followed the two guys to a gaming café, and I, uh,

stole their computers.”

“You did?”

Charlie nodded. While the two eighth graders were

ordering their drinks, Charlie casually cruised by their

table and swiped their laptops. He left the café and drove to

the deserted middle school parking lot, where he worked

quickly, dousing both laptops with kerosene and laying

them on the concrete. Then—he wished he had that kid’s

own lighter—he lit a match.

“I burned them,” he told Wren.

“You
burned
them?”

“Yeah. Where they would find them.”

When Charlie watched the plastic cases melt, he’d envi-

sioned the clocks in a Dalí painting he’d learned about in

his junior year classics class. Time was relative; maybe that

was what Dalí had been trying to represent. Pain was rel-

ative, too, Charlie thought. Dev might not have felt the

cigarette lighter’s flame eating through his jeans, but those

kids had given him a third-degree burn, and Dev would

have a scar for life.

“That’s pretty intense,” Wren said.

“Should I not have told you?”

“No. I asked. I wanted to know. And, Charlie, you can

share anything with me. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said.

“You’re a good big brother.”

“I have to be. It’s my job.”

“To take care of him?”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Is that why you have to stay?”

He didn’t answer, because he knew, again, what she was

really saying. She was saying,
Why Dev and not me? Don’t you
want to/need to/have to take care of me?

She looked away from him. “It’s all right.”

Charlie was aware of everything about her: the warmth

radiating from her skin and the citrusy smell of her hair.

Her bare thighs. Her curves.

“I’m not choosing Dev over you,” he said.

“I know.”

“I just . . . I’ve never had a family before. I’ve had other

foster parents, but none like Chris and Pamela.”

Wren faced him, and the look on her face almost killed

him. He wanted
her
, not her pity. “Can we not talk about it?” he said.

“Okay. But . . . I’m so sorry. I never meant—”

“Don’t,” Charlie said curtly.

Wren blushed. She returned to staring out the window,

and he let go of her hand and started the car. She buttoned

her shirt as they pulled out of the secluded nook they’d

found. They didn’t talk, which was fine, as the ride was

loud on the bumpy dirt road.

When they reached the highway, Charlie rolled up his

window and turned on the air-conditioning. Wren glanced

at him, then rolled up her window as well.

“Charlie?” she said.

He pretended everything was normal. “Yeah?”

“Do you remember that day in my car? After the ditch?”

“I remember many days in your car after the ditch.

Sometimes your car, sometimes mine.” He saw her naked

in his mind, and his voice changed. “Sometimes, as I recall,

we even went back to the ditch.”

Wren blushed. “Ha-ha. That was only once.”

“Twice.”

“Twice. Fine.” She whacked him, and he smiled, feeling

more like himself. He steered with one hand and rubbed

Wren’s neck with the other.

She scooched closer. She put her hand on his leg. They

were connected again, the way they were meant to be.

“On the day
I’m
talking about, we talked about how a

home was more than a house, more than a place, and you

were, like, ‘Okay.’” She paused. “You might not remember,

and that’s all right.”

“I remember.”

“Well, I heard a song recently, and I kind of love it. It’s

about a guy and a girl who are in love. The guy tells the girl that she’s the apple of his eye, and the girl tells the guy that he’s her best friend.”

He kept rubbing her neck. “You’ll have to play it for

me.”

“Uh-huh, I will. But the part I love most is the chorus,

which the guy and the girl sing together. It goes, ‘Home is

wherever I’m with you.’”

Her voice, as she sang, was a patter of rain on a dusty

road.

She leaned over—it was awkward with the gearshift

between them, but doable—and rested her head on his

shoulder. He moved his hand from her neck and slipped

his arm around her.

“Anyway, that’s what it’s like for me,” she said. Her voice

dropped to a whisper. “You’re my home, Charlie. Thanks

for finding me.”

Charlie stroked her hair. He was the one who’d been

lost, but now he was found.

c h a p t e r n i n e t e e n

August came way too fast. And hot. August in

Atlanta was almost unbearably hot. Wren knew it would be

hot in Guatemala, too—hotter, possibly—but she didn’t

want to think about that.

She drifted nowhere in P.G.’s pool on a ridiculously

comfortable, extra-thick float. Tessa, on her own float, was

a few feet away. They didn’t even have to be inflated, these

pool floats. They were made of foam and molded into the

shape of chairs. They had armrests. They had drink holders.

In the drink holders were fancy plastic cups of lemonade,

and if the girls got hungry, they could paddle themselves

over to a floating foam square with several indentions

carved into it. The indentions held bowls, and the bowls

held a variety of snacks: cashews, grapes, pretzels. Oreos.

P.G. had fixed them up with everything they needed,

and then he’d left to play golf with his buddies. Not Char-

lie, because Charlie had to work, and anyway, he didn’t

play golf.

Wren couldn’t imagine Charlie playing golf. She could

imagine him doing other things, though. She could imagine

him kissing her, laughing with her, getting on a plane with

her.

Except he wouldn’t, not that last one. She was wrong

to want him to, and selfish, and yet she
did
want him to, because she wanted
him
. She wanted to be with him,