Disclaimer: I do not own Good Luck Charlie or any of the characters associated with it. The plot is the only thing that's mine.
Tahiti was everything Teddy hoped it would be. The air was warm but not humid, which would have ruined everything, in Teddy's mind at least. The sand was almost pure white and the water was a beautiful, clear blue. Schools of tropical fish swam close to the shore, as if they were trying to get better looks at the endless line of tourists in ill-fitting swimwear waiting their turns to be taught how to snorkel by a bored college student for an astronomical price.
Teddy and Spencer didn't see much outside of their honeymoon suite, though. It was the first time they had ever slept together, something Teddy was sure most of her friends and family would be surprised to learn. With her white wedding gown draped across the back of the loveseat, Teddy and Spencer sealed their marriage with passion that only true love could create.
"Spence," Teddy whispered as they lay next to each other in the suite's king-sized bed. She traced patterns up and down his arm, her legs wrapped around his and tangled in a mess of cotton sheets. It was two days after the wedding and they had spent much of the last forty eight hours in bed.
Spencer's eyes opened slowly. He'd been sleeping soundly for almost an hour; Teddy had been watching his chest rise and fall with the rhythm of his deep breathing. "Babe?" he responded in a husky, sleepy voice, rubbing his eyes with the palm of his hand.
"Nothing," Teddy said softly, bringing herself closer to him. She lay her head on his shoulder, trying to get her breathing to match his. "I just wanted to make sure this is all real."
Spencer kissed her forehead. "It's real," he told her softly before drifting back to sleep.
On their last day in paradise before returning to the real world, the newlyweds decided to finally venture out of the suite. Teddy pulled on her navy blue bikini and grabbed her straw hat and sunglasses, heading for the door.
"Here," Spencer called, tossing her the white swimsuit coverup she'd brought along.
Teddy caught it but set it on the chair beside her. "I don't need it today, babe. It's pretty hot, and besides we were just going to go get in the water anyway." She reached for the doorknob.
Spencer's hand pushed the door shut. With his other hand he grabbed the coverup and held it out to Teddy. "Put it on please," he said firmly.
She studied his face for a moment, not liking what she saw. His expression was one she'd never seen before. It was hard, almost angry. His eyes glistened in a way that was not their usual, happy sparkle.
"Fine," she whispered, pulling it over her head. As the fabric slid down her face and settled over her body she wondered what had just happened. She hadn't done anything wrong, had she?
Just as quickly as Spencer's anger appeared it was gone. "Good. Are you ready for the beach? I know I sure am," he laughed, grabbing their room card from the table near the door and heading into the hallway.
Teddy stood in the doorway, watching as Spencer walked down the hall to the elevator. Her mind was racing, wondering what had provoked Spencer to be angry with her. He'd never cared that she didn't wear anything over her bikini before. Whatever it was, it made her feel uneasy.
"Come on, slowpoke!" Spencer teased from beside the elevator. "It's our last day of vacation, we have to make the most of it!"
Teddy forced herself to smile at him. "Coming!" she called, hoping her voice didn't sound as confused as she felt. She pulled the door shut behind herself and ran down the hall to meet her new husband.
"Charlie, could you come here for a moment, please?" Mr. Weston asked as the bell rang and the rest of Charlie's eighth grade English class filed out of the room.
Charlie's best friends Owen and Natalie shot her silly faces before they left, Owen with his eyes crossed and Natalie's tongue sticking out. It was their thing, making faces at each other all the time. Sure, it was a little childish, but it was fun.
Charlie suppressed a grin and groaned internally, wondering what she was in trouble for this time. Mr. Weston had been on her case all semester, whether it be about her grades or her social life. Last week Charlie had been reprimanded by him because apparently her flowered headband caused too much of a distraction in class. She'd thought it was unfair that she was being punished just because every girl in the class kept asking her where she bought it. It was super cute, so Charlie wasn't surprised with her classmate's reactions. She just couldn't believe Mr. Weston had thought it was such a big deal.
"What did I do this time?" Charlie asked gloomily, hugging her textbook to her chest. Mr. Weston shook his head and stood up from his desk. He reached for the white board's eraser and began cleaning off that day's notes.
"Believe it or not, nothing," he said with a laugh.
Charlie relaxed slightly, though she still thought something was off. "Well then why did you need to see me?"
Mr. Weston set down the eraser and pulled a manila folder out of his top desk drawer. He flipped through a couple of papers before finding the one. "This is why I needed to see you," Mr. Weston told her, handing over the thin packet of printer paper held together by a small staple.
Charlie set her book on the edge of the teacher's desk so she could take it from him. She recognized the assignment, it was one she'd turned in two weeks ago. They were supposed to write a four page paper about the person who had had the greatest impact on their lives so far. Charlie flipped to the back page, which was where Mr. Weston wrote the grades in blue felt-tipped pen.
Her eyes widened. "I got an A?" She frantically searched through her paragraphs for the usual cross outs and corrections that riddled her C papers. There were none. Instead, there were smiley faces in the margins near underlined sentences that Mr. Weston had marked as "excellent!".
Mr. Weston watched Charlie with a pleasant smile on his face, glad she was finally proud of a grade that was returned to her. "This paper is by the far the best assignment you've ever turned in, and it was my favorite one to read out of the whole class." He returned to his chair and leaned back with his hands behind his head, pleased with Charlie's reaction.
"Wow," she mused softly, returning the paper to Mr. Weston's desk. "Thank you!"
Mr. Weston shook his head and leaned forward so his elbows were propped on the edge of his desk. "Don't thank me, Charlie. This was all you. See what can happen when actually like what you're writing about?"
The warning bell for next period rang, prompting Charlie to grab her textbook and head toward the door. "Yeah, I see what you mean," she said over her shoulder. "Thanks again, Mr. Weston."
She ran up the stairs to health class, where Owen would be saving her a seat near the back. Natalie had opted for choir that period and would meet them downstairs after for lunch. As Charlie entered the room, she waved to Owen and instead of sitting with him, she took a seat in the front row. Just as the final bell rang, Owen slid into the empty seat beside her.
"This is new," he whispered, settling into the new environment. "What's up?"
Charlie glanced over at him, secretly loving everything about him. His auburn hair wasn't obnoxiously long like most boys' hair, but it was long enough to look perfectly messy. His gray eyes sparkled in any kind of light and his easy smile made the whole world brighter.
"I think I want to actually start trying," Charlie murmured, the vision of her A paper still present in her mind. The title made her smile. Good Luck, Charlie – How My Sister Prepared Me for Life.
It was too early for a drink but Gabe didn't care. He pulled a Guinness from the fridge and popped the cap off using the edge of the counter top. Turning so that his back was leaning against the refrigerator, he took a long swig from the bottle. The bitter taste had never been one that he enjoyed, but it was the feeling he got after drinking a few that made it appealing.
Guinness was the first alcohol he ever tried. Gabe grinned at the memory, sidestepping clutter on the floor of his messy apartment to get to his stained, broken couch. He was fourteen and he'd been at his friend Jake's house for the weekend. His parents were too preoccupied with Charlie and a sick Toby to even ask what he'd be doing with Jake.
On that Saturday night Jake's dad had a date, so the two boys were alone in a large house with more than one liquor cabinet and an icebox refrigerator in the garage dedicated solely to beer. Jake, who over the summer had hit puberty and turned into quite the ladies' man, invited a few girls to come over.
The three girls Jake invited arrived twenty minutes later. One of those girls was Amanda Collins. Amanda. Even back then Gabe knew she would be the one for him. When she walked in, Gabe could have sworn she was an angel. Amanda's face was round and pretty, with soft hazel eyes and freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her lips were cherry red, which Gabe later learned were naturally like that without the help of makeup. Amanda's light brown hair fell into ringlets that were always the slightest bit frizzy. She always looked at bit nervous, but that night she stopped being shy.
Gabe had long forgotten the names of the other two girls, but he remembered they weren't nearly as pretty as Amanda, though it was not that they didn't try. Their heavy eyeliner and unnatural looking blush didn't deter Jake, though, and Gabe knew that he had gotten to second base with both of them that night.
After the girls all arrived Jake brought in a six pack from the garage and handed one to each of them. Gabe looked at it, unsure he even wanted to try one. He remembered PJ telling him about the first beer he ever drank, at a party his junior year of high school. He said it was the most disgusting thing he ever tasted, but afterward the buzz made you want another.
Sure enough, the first sip was hard for him to swallow. The two heavily made-up girls had no problems with theirs, and Gabe had no doubt in his mind they'd both downed more than few before. Jake finished his first and was on to his second before Gabe was even half done with his, but Gabe was too busy talking to Amanda to notice.
"You know you don't have to drink that," Gabe told her quietly, hoping she wouldn't be embarrassed that he noticed she'd hardly taken more than two sips. Her eyes met his and her cheeks flushed but she nodded and pushed the can away from herself.
"Do you guys do this often?" she asked timidly, her gaze wandering to Jake and her two friends, who were all getting pretty cozy together. Jake's face was set in a grin all night and the girls looked pretty thrilled as well.
Gabe shook his head, taking another agonizing sip of his drink. "Honestly, this is my first drink ever," he laughed. "And I've never been all alone with a pretty girl before, either," he added before he could stop himself.
Amanda smiled, a blush creeping onto her cheeks. "Well that's good," she giggled, not knowing what else to say.
"We're going out to the pool," Jake said, his words sounding sloppy. "Wanna come?" The two girls were already pulling off their sweaters, revealing their tank tops and bra straps.
"No thanks," Gabe called to Jake's already retreating back. After a few moments Amanda stood up and began to look at the pictures on the mantle above the fireplace. "You know," Gabe said as he watched her move from picture to picture, "I don't see you much at school. We had a few classes together in middle school right?"
Amanda nodded as she put back the photo she'd been looking at, one of Jake as a toddler sitting on the kitchen floor, an entire bag of flour dumped over his head. He looked like Casper. "Yeah, we had some together last year. I'm in the gifted program this year, so most of my classes are different from the regular ones." Gabe loved how she said this. She didn't sound the least bit snobby about being in the smart kid classes, she just said it as a fact. "I still have regular math though, it's not really my strong point," she said with a nervous giggle.
Gabe stood up to join her, leaving his Guinness on the floor. "It's not my thing either," he told her, standing as close to her as he dared. She even smells beautiful, he thought. Like apples. "Maybe we could help each other with it, you know, the whole two heads are better than one thing."
Amanda smiled, inching closer to Gabe. She was a couple inches shorter than he was, so she had to tilt her head up a little to look at him properly when she stood this close. "I'd like that," she said softly, a stray curl falling into her eyes.
Now, Gabe snapped back to reality as he finished off his drink. His mind was swimming in memories of Amanda, most of them good, only a few of them bad. The bad ones though, Gabe noticed, were a lot more recent than the good ones.
In the wake of Teddy's engagement two years ago, Gabe was one hundred percent certain that he wanted to ask Amanda to marry him as well. The idea rolled around in his head for about ten months before he decided it was time. The night he chose, the night before Amanda's birthday, was all set up to be extremely romantic. Basically, he wanted it to be nearly impossible for her to say no. He invited her out to dinner at her favorite Italian restaurant, ordered sparkling grape juice, because at just shy of twenty one he couldn't order champagne, and had a beautiful engagement ring in his pocket.
Right before dessert, which Gabe had chosen to be strawberry cheesecake because it was her favorite, Amanda told him her plans to go to Kenya next year and how she was planning to stay for two years.
And that, Gabe thought, was the beginning of the end. He got up to grab another beer from the fridge and start, for the hundredth time, a letter to his almost-fiancee, asking her to please come back home.
I hope you guys liked this chapter! I really enjoy writing Charlie's and Gabe's lives, so there might be a little bit more of them in the story than I had originally intended. In fact, I may go back and change the summary to reflect my shift from mostly Teddy to everyone.
Also, I really appreciate all the favorites and alerts I'm getting from you guys, but I'd really love some more reviews! Those are the things that keep me going. I'm a lot more motivated to write a really good chapter when I get feedback (positive OR negative) from those of you who are reading.
Thanks for reading! The next chapter is on it's way soon! And it could be even sooner if I get some feedback ;)