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Chapter Twelve
Before they could order, Charlie feigned illness and told Angelo that she needed to go home. He suspected that it had to do with Joey's presence, but if she didn't want to be in the same room with Joey then he wasn't about to see that as a bad thing.
They drove in silence. When they pulled up she started to get out of the car, telling him goodnight as she went.
"Hey! Can I come in?" he said, figuring she was just being absent-minded. He had thought she would drop the pretence of feeling sick once they got home.
She fidgeted, holding the car door open. "I'm really not feeling well. I'll call you tomorrow?"
He stared at her. He got the feeling that if he tried to push it she was going to bite, so he decided to leave it alone. "Sure," he said, his jaw firmly clenched. He was getting very tired of being pushed away all the time, but obviously now wasn't the right time to get into it. Maybe she really was sick, though he doubted it.
She watched the car lights recede until she was sure that he was gone, and turned to walk back to where they'd come from.
** ** **
Emily waited until Aden had gone to the bar before talking to Joey.
"What's going on?" she asked, concerned.
Joey looked away, not wanting to meet her eyes. She was embarrassed at being caught in what must have looked like a very compromising position. They'd spent a lot of time talking about Charlie and how much she'd had her heart broken; she knew she must look like a fool running back into her arms. Especially when Charlie's boyfriend had been right in the next room.
"I don't know. We're going to meet up later and talk. Look, don't mention this in front of Aden okay? The less people who know about this, the better."
"Yeah okay, of course." Emily leaned forward, narrowing her eyes. She was starting to feel like there was a lot that she didn't know. "Have you and Charlie been seeing each other on the sly?"
"No, no. We haven't, I've told you everything there is to know."
"So what did I walk in on?"
Joey looked over her shoulder to make sure that Aden was still in conversation with Alf. "I wish I knew. I just wanted to talk to her quickly and I don't know, it went a bit far I suppose. Fuck, what am I doing?" She pressed her hands to her closed eyes.
"It's okay, it's okay." Emily patted Joey's arm. "Do you want to go and talk to her?"
Joey shrugged helplessly. "Yeah, I do. The whole thing's a mess. The way we've been going isn't working, so I don't know what else to do. This is a small place, we've been running into each other all the time. If the air doesn't get cleared properly, once and for all, it's always going to be awkward."
"Then do it," she paused, not wanting to overstep her bounds. They hadn't been friends for long, but she already cared a lot about Joey and she hated to see her so clearly being stuffed around. "Don't get mad at me, but just watch out for her alright? She's messed with your head before, she can do it again. The woman has a boyfriend, she needs to sort herself out."
"I know," Joey said, trying not to get annoyed. She was only having a problem listening to such advice because she knew Emily was right.
"Don't let those big blue eyes hypnotise you. She's hot, she has special powers," Emily said, trying to lighten the mood.
Joey smiled, playing along. "I know this."
"And the other thing is, I want to know EVERYTHING," she hurriedly said as Aden came back to join them.
"What are my two number one ladies talking about?" he asked.
"Nothing," they said at the same time.
** ** **
She saw the dark shape of Charlie in the moonlight, sitting on the sand. She called out hello as she moved closer, so that she wouldn't scare her. She could make out Charlie's face as she turned to look.
"I wasn't sure you'd come," Charlie said softly.
"I promised." She sat down next to Charlie, deliberately not sitting too close. Emily's warning had brought her back to earth and she felt wary again. Although she knew it hadn't been calculated, Charlie had proven herself to be very good at making her forget which way was up.
She looked out at the black waves crashing on the sand. She could feel Charlie's eyes on her and it was clear that neither of them knew where to start.
"Thank you for coming," Charlie said.
"That's okay." She could feel tension in her whole body, her shoulders taut. This was weird. It seemed like it didn't matter how far apart she tried to sit and how much she tried to detach, her skin still tingled at being alone with Charlie like this.
"I wanted to talk to you all this time. Now I don't know what to say," Charlie confessed, laughing nervously. She felt like she had one chance to say the right thing, and she was terrified of blowing it.
"I know. I don't know what to say either."
Charlie spoke quickly, deciding she might as well just dive in. "I guess I feel like we've got so much unfinished business. I understand why you left the way you did, but we never really got any closure."
Joey rubbed her palms on her jeans. She was lightly sweating, she had never thought they would have this conversation and she had never wanted to.
"I told you at the time that there was nothing to talk about. I shouldn't have to tell you how much you broke my trust. There's no talking your way around that, Charlie. Sometimes people just need to break up, and there's nothing to work out. I'm sorry but that's how I felt, and nothing's changed. You've moved on now, so it makes even less sense to hash it all over now."
Her speech was met with silence.
"Okay," Charlie said after a few long moments, sounding resigned. How could she say that she hadn't moved on at all, when Joey seemed to feel nothing for her now? She had been elated earlier, knowing how much Joey was obviously still attracted to her. But maybe that was all it was for Joey, just the pull of an old chemistry. Joey obviously didn't love her anymore – maybe she didn't even like her.
That's it? Joey thought. That's all I had to say all these weeks, to make her back off?
Joey paused. If she didn't ask now, she would always wonder. Some things she'd been talking about with Emily had been playing on her mind. "I just – can I ask you one thing?"
"Of course you can," she said. She felt like crying, and swallowed the lump in her throat.
"I don't know how to put it but . . . was I an experiment for you? Did you just want to try it out, because you'd been having a rough time?"
Charlie was shocked. That had been the last thing that she was expecting. "How can you ask me that? You know how much I agonised over my feelings for you!" She realised that her voice was rising and she was starting to sound hysterical. She couldn't believe that Joey would even think about reducing their relationship to that status. "It wasn't something I took lightly, I was serious about us."
"Okay. I'm sorry. But I think I have a right to ask. You did sleep with a guy just to prove you weren't gay, and you obviously got together with Angelo pretty quickly after I left. You told me that there was no shame in being gay and then you wouldn't even hold my hand in public. So what else am I supposed to think?"
Joey was starting to realise just how raw her wounds still were. Now that they were talking about it, she was feeling it all over again. She knew that some of what she was saying wasn't fair, but all she could think about was how it had felt at the time. Her temper was starting to flare and she could tell that it was the same for Charlie.
Charlie opened her mouth, not sure where to start. She had thought Joey had understood some of what she was going through, that it had all been new to her and she had just needed more time. But the words about Angelo stung the most, maybe because she knew they were true. She hadn't waited. But Joey didn't know what it had been like to wait for her, and to hear nothing.
"Exactly Joey, you left me, and you didn't call me or write to me. You weren't even going to say goodbye. You let me think that I might never see you again. And I had to find out you weren't planning on coming back when you said you were from Brett of all people!"
Joey took a deep breath and tried to calm down. She was about to say something she really regretted.
"I thought it was for the best. Once I got away and thought about things, I realised maybe it would just be better for both of us to just leave it be."
Charlie tried to follow Joey's lead and calm down. She thought for a moment before speaking. Her mind was ticking over, and some things were suddenly making sense. "Does your thinking that it was for the best have anything to do with your other question?"
"What do you mean?" Joey asked.
Charlie reached over and took Joey's hand, looking down at their interlaced fingers when she spoke.
"Did you turn your back on me so completely because you thought I'd never really loved you in the first place?"
"Yes," Joey said simply. Those months on the boat had been amongst the hardest of her life. She'd looked back and thought herself a fool for ever trusting Charlie, for ever thinking that Charlie could ever return her love in the way that she wanted.
"You were wrong," Charlie said, with so much conviction Joey could not doubt it. "I loved you more than I ever loved anyone," she said, speaking carefully when she found that she was almost slipping into the present tense.
Joey couldn't answer. Overwhelmed by the words, she squeezed Charlie's hand.
"I was a wreck when you left," Charlie confided. "I'm not saying I don't understand why you did it, I knew I deserved it. But it all happened so fast. One day we were together, and it was . . . exciting, and scary, and new. I thought we had so much ahead of us. And then it was all just over."
Joey struggled to reply. "I know. That's how I felt, exactly."
With their hands linked, they looked out at the water. Joey turned her head and saw that Charlie was watching her in the dark.
At the same time they put their hands to one another's faces. The emotions their talk had aroused were too much too ignore. They moved in, closing the distance between them. Joey's lips moved to Charlie's and they kissed slowly, tasting one another.
Charlie opened her mouth and sought out Joey's tongue with her own, burning with the sweetness of it. She put her hands to Joey's shoulders, clutching the material of her shirt in her hands, pulling her in.
Their kiss became more urgent. Joey slid her hand up Charlie's smooth bared thigh and brushed it gently with her fingers, raising shivers in both of them. Charlie responded by running her tongue over Joey's soft lower lip, causing her to gasp.
They broke apart for breath.
"God Joey, you make me feel . . ." Charlie started, but didn't know how to finish. She leaned in and touched her lips to Joey's again softly, savouring the contact. Joey put her palm to Charlie's cheek and tenderly stroked her skin.
"I think I should go. Should I go?" Joey said, rambling, her voice think with desire. She had a feeling that they were dangerously close to going down the path of having sex right here on the beach. All she wanted to do was touch Charlie, every part of her. Her whole body remembered what it was like to make love with Charlie, and right now the thought of repeating the experience was making her tremble with the wanting of it. "I should. I'm going to go now. I'll talk to you later."
"Okay. Are you okay?" Charlie said. She smoothed out Joey's shirt with her hands, trying to avoid the temptation to move them lower. She felt out of control with lust. Nobody had ever made her feel this way.
"Um, yeah. Are you?" Joey said. Charlie was well and truly rattled, and nodding like an idiot, not knowing what to do.
"Then . . . goodnight, Charlie."
"Goodnight," Charlie replied, waiting until Joey left to put her head in her hands. She guiltily tried to wipe the smile off her face.
