Sunlight streamed in through the window bathing them both in golden air. Dust motes danced in the beams of sunshine burning away the night's darker moments. Charlie woke slowly, taking in the room and understanding where he was.
Reese…he thought. This was Reese's house…and Reese was here. Her warm body draped across his chest with her dark hair providing black and white picture contrast on his pale skin. They were like photo negatives, he thought. Dark and light, rock and roll and Zen, coffee and fruit, him comfortable only in the sunshine and her most happy in the darkness of the night; they were like balance, yin and yang.
The events of the night before were fuzzy to him. Not the way he wanted to spend his first night in bed with Dani Reese. He delicately pulled her hair back, to expose her face. She was his choice. She was the future he didn't believe in. You can choose who you trust, but not who you love. Charlie had been denying he loved her for so long he could no longer place the exact moment when he first started.
She was the glue that held him together. He, who was a thousand fractured pieces held together with Zen and the sticky syrup of fruit; he, who was most like a broken mirror, no longer capable of reflecting back a vision of himself that was true, but Dani saw him. She accepted him, albeit begrudgingly at times, she recognized in him a kindred soul and she chose to trust him.
And he was about to blow all that to find out something that happened in his past. The past didn't exist, it was there only in memory, yet the draw of knowing the unknowable was still there. Was it worth risking this fragile hard won moment? There was after all - only the moment – now. But he also knew here was no way she would let him not tell her – that part he remembered well. "Tomorrow you're going to tell me why you had to get drunk to come here." she told him and Charlie knew she meant every word of it.
But Charlie remembered he didn't get drunk to come there. He got drunk first and then when he didn't know what to do or where to go, his heart steered him here - to her. He couldn't remember how he got here, when he made the choice to go – or if there even was a choice. He just remembered an inescapable need to find her - to be in her presence. Even if she was angry, even if she pouted, which secretly he kind of liked – then she would still be there, with him and he would not be alone with his thoughts or his fears. What he feared most was that what he felt for here was due to events put in motion beyond either of their control. Events years in the past, still paying dirty dividends today.
And Charlie did remember why he got drunk – it was because he couldn't wrap his head around the fact that his father, her father, Mickey Raybourne and Jimmy Dunn were all in the same academy class. Then flash forward twenty-five years and Jack Reese's daughter and Charles Crews' son were…what? Partners? Lovers? From his state of dress, he figured not yet… but close…. Perhaps they had not yet crossed the physical line of lovers, but Charlie knew his heart was lost to her as sure as if he'd given it to her in a gift box. He could no longer deny that he wanted, desired, needed to be near Dani Reese.
She smiled against his chest and butterflies danced across the surface of his stomach and his heart beat faster. What the hell was he thinking? This just made things worse, didn't it? He knew in his head it did. But she made him feel better just being there. It wasn't just the way she made his pulse quicken – it was the way she balanced him.
"They" could put them together (if in fact that was what "they" did), set them up as partners, but there was no way they could possibly know - how she would make him feel. Was there? he turned the idea over in his head as the closed his eyes against the increasing brightness of the new day.
Then suddenly, Charlie was in the past, he knew it wasn't real, but he couldn't keep from being sucked into it like a massive whirlpool. It was crushing him, he couldn't breath and he couldn't escape. He knew he was dreaming, but he was also helpless.
Crescent City, Pelican Bay Federal Maximum Security Prison - it was two years in. He was in the infirmary again. What's a couple more broken bones among friends right? He quipped to the prison doctor who was stitching him up (again), he'd lost count of how many times or how many stitches.
He vaguely remembered having a favorite pair of jeans as a boy, which were ripped and torn many times, but he refused to throw out and his mother dutifully pieced back together so he could keep them. He thought how his skin now resembled those jeans – at least the portions of his torso where many attempts to shank him had left a pattern of lacerations and scars over the brief 740 days he'd been a guest at Pelican Bay.
He remembered the crisp, white, antiseptic sheets. The only place in prison that the sheets were ever really clean was the infirmary. He remembered the grey green walls thick with layers of latex enamel paint, so the blood and body fluids cleaned up easier. Everything in prison was utilitarian. Nothing was superfluous, no beauty, no elegance, no charm, no taste. Charlie remembered the pained expression on the doctor's face every time the man set a broken bone or stitched him up. Charlie no longer needed anesthesia, he was numb to the pain or so he thought… until the day the letter arrived.
There was a plain manila envelope with the name of a lawyer and law firm printed in the upper left hand corner looking very officious on his bunk when Charlie returned from the infirmary. It was opened, of course, first by the guards, looking for contraband; then again by his sneaky bunkmate, Tony, who was looking for anything of value. The sheepish look on Tony's face should have told him it was bad news, but Crews was unprepared for what came next.
The envelope contained a thick sheaf of papers, divorce papers, from Jen - divorcing him. Charlie felt the air leave his lungs with the force of a seven foot tall, 300lb man punching him the gut. The edges of his vision closed in like a tunnel, he felt physical pain and it literally dropped him to his knees. Tears pricked his eyes, but you don't cry in prison, not if you want to live. Slowly he willed himself to draw a breath, then another, not gulping, he grabbed fistfuls of the sheet on his bunk - just trying to stay upright. It was a dream…wake up…he told himself… this was his past.
Then he was awake again with a very concerned looking Dani Reese peering curiously at him, her brows knotted in concern. His heart was hammering in his chest and his breath came in choked gulps. His hands were tangled in the sheets where he'd fisted handfuls of them. Dani was talking to him, but he couldn't hear her. She sounded far off like she was in a tunnel. " It's just a dream Crews" she said. "No"… he told her… it was a nightmare.
