Chapter Three:
The Astronaut
If their housemates knew what had happened between them, no one said anything - probably because Lauren and Donnie were too busy being obvious and they were all too busy trying to find ways not to make fun of them for it - and life continued on as before. Maybe Charlie didn't bother so much with the Rum (and maybe these days that was Paul's breakfast beverage of choice) and maybe he might ask Donnie to surf first before he tried to rouse her from bed (generally, she appreciated that), and maybe she stopped playing footsie with him during debriefings at the bureau, but nothing much else changed.
They drifted on to their separate cases, this time using their own names as covers (it had come way too close on way too many occasions, with Paul's - no, Eric's - mouth on hers and a person of interest in the investigation looking on, and what was his - her - whose? - name again?), and they weren't spending nearly every waking hour in each others breathing space and so it was fine.
There was a night, at the Drop, beer and pool tables and laughing as usual, and she pointed out a curly redhead across the bar.
"Her," she said. "She's had her eye on you all night."
Paul turned to look. "Hmm… I definitely could."
"You definitely should." Charlie corrected. "How long has it been now?"
"One month and three days." Paul flashed her that cat-got-the canary grin because she knew exactly what happened one month and three days ago.
"Stop." She gave him a playful shove. "What's your in?"
"I could go pilot. It's pretty standard."
"But not very ambitious."
"I used photographer too recently."
"I thought you said it had been over a month?"
"I don't like to cycle around that quickly. And it's still not very good."
Charlie thought for a second. "I bet she'd buy it."
Paul looked at her, "It? The photographer?"
Charlie shook her head. Realization flickered across Paul's face.
"The astronaut? Naw, I don't know if I could pull that off?"
"Never picked you for the self-doubt type."
"Would you buy the astronaut line?" He asked.
"No, but that's because I've seen you lie. Seriously, try it."
"Maybe."
"What's the worst that can happen?" Charlie was goading him. She really wanted him to get back into the game. He had to, because then their "thing" would be done with.
"You really wanna see me strike out, huh?"
"Go get her, cowboy."
"That's astronaut," he smiled, tipped a fake hat, and swaggered across the bar.
DJ slid in next to her. "That was benevolent of you."
"You haven't been doing paperwork with him the past week. He needs to get laid."
DJ raised an eyebrow. "Sure."
She didn't see Paul again until he stumbled in the next morning in last nights jeans and dirty t-shirt while she was frying up an omelet for her own hungover self. He pulled a beer from the fridge and set one down in front of her. "I owe you, like, a month of drinks."
She smiled. "Made it stick?"
"Oh this astronaut did much more than-"
She stopped him. "I don't want to hear it. Feel free to buy me all the drinks you want."
Charlie could feel her cheeks reddening and she knew she had been smiling too much but she couldn't help it. The man across from her wiggled his eyebrows and spoke with his hands.
"And then he says, What do you mean the monkey doesn't come free?"
She couldn't actually tell you why the monkey might have come free in the first place, only half listening to the man, much more interested in watching him, his exuberance and positivity. A breath of fresh air from the normal doom and gloom of her life at Graceland, where everyone was a criminal and everyone was lying.
"Sounds crazy," she said, still smiling too much.
"Oh, let me tell you," he shook his head. "That day was insane. But how about you? How is work going?"
Charlie had told him that she was a nanny for a rather demanding married lawyer and stockbroker, and he had bought it, so far. It accounted for her ridiculous hours and if the kids she babysat were named "Johnny" and "Dale," who could blame her?
"Oh those boys… getting up to all sorts of trouble. You know how that age is." (They were six and eight, by the way.)
He chuckled. "I can imagine. You must have the patience of a saint."
His name was Manny and he was tall and lean owned a small gym. He was perfect - a good guy (she'd checked), clean, well-spoken and knew how to treat a girl right. Smoking hot to boot. She'd lucked out and still wasn't entirely certain what he saw in her - her track record wasn't so stellar and before moving to California she'd begun to concede that maybe she was a magnet for sleazeballs. But maybe she just hadn't met the right kind of guy yet.
Manny was one of those "right guys" - which was a problem, because she was an undercover FBI agent, and very much not the right girl. They'd been on three dates now and as they sat, making irrelevant small talk over fish tacos and beer, she knew he was getting antsy; she hadn't slept with him yet.
She couldn't bring herself to do it. Not that she didn't need it; au contraire, she needed to shake the spectre of Paul Briggs - it had been far too long - and if she didn't soon she might as well just throw out the nice undies and buy herself a cat. But it just wasn't fair to Manny. She couldn't give him more than a night - and he was a great guy, he deserved so much more.
On days like this, Charlie hated being an undercover agent.
She left while he was in the bathroom, and went straight to the Drop, where she knew her housemates would be drinking and trying too hard, and told them to find her an easy one for that night because her date had been a mess. If they didn't buy it, they didn't let on, and she got it out of her system between the slightly-grungy sheets of a tanned surfer who smelled too strongly of pot and whose blonde hair was too greasy for her hands.
The next day, when Charlie plopped her hungover ass down at the kitchen bar stool with a bowl of Frosted Flakes, Paul walked in, poured her a mug of coffee and picked up a bottle of rum for himself, sitting down next to her.
"What." She snapped. She still felt a little dirty, and his presence felt like an ugly reminder.
"She died."
"Who, the redhead?" That had been like, a month ago. What was he trying to tell her? If this was a confession, she would need more coffee.
"My ex." He clarified. "Lisa."
"Oh."
"We had another safe house - the Estate. It was the prototype for this place... But there was a fire."
Paul's face was a rock, indecipherable - the thing that made him the best agent and the best liar, and if it weren't for the bags under his eyes, just a little larger than usual for a guy who never missed an opportunity to sleep in, she wouldn't have known that he'd spent all night agonizing over those two words. She died.
"Sometimes," he said, with a swig of rum, "I hate being an undercover agent."
Charlie should have felt privileged that he had told her but now she just felt a little dirtier.
Lisa. The one DJ had been giving them both the stink-eye over for months, as if their flirting was some sort of offense. Lisa - the ex. Correction: not an ex; a dead girlfriend.
He taught her to surf in his dead girlfriend's wetsuit. The one she still used, hanging up outside the garage right now.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because we're partners," he kissed her forehead, "and it sucks for me too."
When Paige first moved in, Lauren and Charlie took her out to a classy little tapas place in Los Feliz, told her the house rules and the way things really worked between the agencies.
"The thing with the washer - you've got to jiggle the knob a little."
"Street parking is a bit of a nightmare because of the beach. If you can't get on the driveway, try two blocks south. It's almost never busy there."
"There's only one ICE agent in the house; we try not to give him too much shit about it. Don't steal his food."
"But not too little shit, either. Can't be let him getting a big head."
"Those dreads though…"
"Charlie takes the chore wheel as gospel. She once hid Johnny's surfboard and keys until he cleaned all the toilets."
"I do what I need to maintain order."
"Don't touch the rum in the kitchen. It's Paul's. There's a stash in the linen cupboard for cocktail-related emergencies. Don't worry, Paul Briggs might be able to take down half a cartel in a days' work, but he doesn't even know we have a linen cupboard."
In return, Paige regaled them with tales of busts gone wrong out in Austin, of the music scene and the occasional difficulty in distinguishing a perp from a run-of-the-mill weirdo.
"So, these handsome men in our house...' Paige asked, "I mean, what are they like?"
"Don't get involved," Charlie warned.
"She knows what she's talking about," Lauren piped up.
Charlie fixed her with a death glare. "Pot. Kettle."
Lauren took another sip of her margarita and turned her back to Charlie, directly addressing Paige. "Donny is off the market. DJ is grumpy as shit on a good day. Paul is all hung up on his ex."
It was vague, but Charlie was fairly certain Lauren was talking about her. Lauren didn't know about Paul's dead girlfriend; he had barely ever mentioned her to Charlie, and she was his partner.
"Never bring up the ex." Charlie added, for safety.
"And the dating scene around here?" Paige asked. She would have had no way of knowing; she'd never worked a long term cover like this.
"Look," Charlie explained. "It's not that we can't date. We just can't get involved."
"I see," Paige said, but clearly a little skeptical.
"They wouldn't really get to know the real you," Charlie said. "What's the point?"
Without realizing it, she had been talking about all of the men in bars and all of the beds and all of the drunken kisses that weren't her arrogant, stubbly, gorgeous partner.
Maybe once or twice (or three, or four times… ), it would be two am and everyone else would have drifted to bed while Charlie had hung around to clean up because mothering the lot of them was a compulsion she could never get rid of. Briggs would hang around to keep her company and feed her gossip from HQ while she scurried around him. Until it became too much, and he caught her at the waist and stopped her. She'd stare up at him for a second deciding whether or not this was a terrible idea; sometimes, she would walk away, and that would be that.
But sometimes, she would find herself up on her tiptoes, and - just this once - she would be reaching to meet his lips and they would steal kisses in the kitchen (on the couch, against the wall, perched on the stairs). Tomorrow morning they could return to the status quo.
It took Charlie a few years to realize that everyone else could see the way they revolved around each other, that she was his sun and he her moon. They sizzled and crackled together, like the moments before lightning hit, and their housemates knew enough to make themselves scarce, give the two of them a few minutes of privacy (in the garage, in the phone room, on the beach) because they were undercover agents, and Paul was still in love with a dead woman, and this was as good as it would ever get.
