“Grant says I should keep going—” I start.
“Forget Grant. That guy’s a dick.”
I laugh. “He’s my best friend.”
“He’s still a dick.”
“Um, OK,” I say uncertainly as we reach the halfway mark on the tub.
“I’ve missed this,” she says quietly. “You and me. Like this.”
I did not see that coming. “Really?”
She nods.
“Are you not seeing anyone?” I ask, because looking like that, how could she not be?
“No. You?”
Momentarily Hannah flits into my mind. “No. Not really. I mean, no, not at all. Look at me, Charlotte. I’m overweight from the steroids, and maybe because of the ice cream. I’ve lost all my hair, I have cancer, I have no job, and I live with my mom and dad. Who would want me?”
“I would,” she says quietly and her hand reaches out to touch mine as I dive back into the ice cream.
“Charlotte,” I say. “You don’t mean it.”
“I do. I’d still be with you now if you hadn’t ended thingsbetween us. I loved you. Love you,” she corrects herself. “I still want you,” she says, avoiding my gaze and dipping her spoon into the tub. She lifts it, places the ice cream onto her tongue, and does something to that spoon with her tongue that makes me suddenly hard.
“Jesus,” I mutter and then look at her. “Um, OK,” I say, not for the first time today.
“You don’t want me?” she asks in a voice that indicatesshewantsme.
I am not sure if she’s referring to sex or to us getting back together. I am also not sure what my answer to either of those would be. Is this for real? I’ve seen how I look. Has she gone blind in the last year and a half?
“My mom is home” is the only thing I can stutter out,in caseshe’s talking about what I think she’s talking about.
“Is that the only problem?” she asks and her voice has taken on a seductive tone.
“I guess,” I say slowly, a smile creeping up the edges of my mouth. Am I misreading this?
“And she hasn’t even come down to say hi to me?” Charlotte asks with a snide smile. My mother made no secret of the fact that she hated Charlotte. It was no surprise that when I told her Charlotte was coming over, my mom made herself scarce upstairs, muttering something about laundry.
“I don’t live withmymom,” Charlotte says and somehow she manages to make that innocuous sentence sound…suggestive.
“OK,” I say again. And then because I’ve known Charlotte so long, and we had the kind of relationship where the sex was great but the conversation was…well…Anyway, I ask, “Just to be clear, you want to have sex with me?”
She laughs, puts her spoon in the tub. “Sure.”
“Now?”
She nods. “My car’s outside.”
I open my eyes wide. “This is sympathy sex, right?” I suggest.
She laughs, stands up, and pulls her car keys from the pocket of her jeans. “You can call it sympathy sex. You can call it one for the road. You can call it whatever the hell you like, Davey Carew. But the fact of the matter is: you either want me to bang your brains out or you don’t.”
I stand up so fast the chair falls over behind me.
Chapter 19
