"Well that was one of the most boring experiences of my life," Joey exclaimed, dropping herself onto Pacey's knee and burying her head in his shoulder.
"Ah, poor baby," Pacey cooed. Joey pulled back to pout at him.
"Everyone was really smart and opinionated."
Pacey cocked an eyebrow at her. "Then surely you fit in perfectly?"
Joey made a loud noise of protest and batted him around the head, causing some patrons of the bar from other tables to look over at them curiously.
Jen smiled at them and reached for her cocktail. "Least you didn't have to sit through our movie."
Wrinkling her nose Joey replied; "That bad?"
"That bad," Charlie agreed. "I thought you were looking forward to the whole journal writing experience?"
"We edit, not write," Joey filched a sip of Pacey's beer. "And I was, but it was just kinda dull in the end. Not really what I expected it be. So how bad was your movie?"
The others shared looks. "Truly horrendous." David offered. Joey smiled in sympathy.
"Well, I did tell you that the giant bugs were a bad idea," she looked around, confused. "Hey, where's Dawson?"
More looks were shared, this time of amusement. "Erm," Charlie said, trying to not laugh. "He may have been a little freaked out by all the bugs."
Joey burst out laughing. "Seriously?"
Pacey looked at her sceptically. "You do remember the garage, right?"
She just laughed harder. Charlie watched her with an amused grin on his face. He always forgot just how easily Pacey could make her laugh and felt a familiar twinge that he wasn't able to do that for her. Looking at the laughing couples stationed around him, literally everyone paired off since Dawson had gone home, Charlie felt himself once again to be all alone. A cocktail cherry thrown at his head knocked him out of his contemplation.
"Hey!" He yelled, rubbing his hair where the cherry had hit. "What was that for?"
Jen shrugged innocently. "You just looked like you needed to be woken up."
"Well, I was fine until small fruits were thrown at my head, thank you very much."
"You know what you need?" Jack said, looking up from where he was precariously balancing sugar packets into a pyramid, David's arm loosely thrown around his waist.
"What?" Charlie asked sceptically.
"A girl," Jack announced grandly, adding one more pack of sugar and then leaning back to admire his work.
Charlie saw an unholy light flicker in Jen's eyes and he held up a hand to ward her off. "No, I do not need to be set up."
"Yes you do!" said Jen excitedly. "You're fine at picking up random skanks but I think that to be in a deep, emotional, longer lasting than a month relationship you may need some outside intervention."
"Guys, I don't think that this is a very good idea," Pacey said warily.
Charlie held a hand out to him as proof. "See! A terrible idea! He agrees with me."
"Oh, shut up you," Joey muttered, batting Pacey on the head, she seemed to be getting far too much into the idea. "Now who do we know who is single and willing to put up with him?"
"Hey!" Charlie protested whilst the others giggled.
Jen chewed her lip thoughtfully and poked CJ. He sighed in resignation and leaned into his bag to retrieve a pen.
"A pen? What the hell do you need a pen for?" Charlie exclaimed.
"To make a list of potential girlfriends," Jen told him patronisingly, the 'silly' implied.
Charlie groaned and dropped his head into his hands.
"Right, there's Samantha in my Lit class," Joey offered.
Jack wrinkled his nose. "The one with the hair?"
"Yes," said Joey, raising an eyebrow, "She does have hair."
"But she has bad hair."
Joey's eyes widened and Jen hastened to intervene. "Okay, okay. We won't add Samantha to the list. What about Lucy?"
"The waitress at my restaurant?" Pacey asked. Jen nodded in reply. "I guess she's a nice girl but I don't know if she's right for Charlie."
Bristling at this, Charlie said; "What I'm not good enough for nice girls?" The others all gave him patronising looks. "What?" He defended himself.
"Charlie, dear," Joey leaned forward to pat him on the head, "It's not that you're not…" She was interrupted by her phone ringing and, after glancing at the screen, she answered with a cheerful "Hi!"
Jen continued to chew thoughtfully on the end of her pen. "Hmm, do you guys know Mandy at the radio station?"
Charlie gave up and let his head thump back against the chair back as he listened to the others compare notes on random women.
"But she has all those piercings!" Jack was protesting about some girl that David knew.
"She's cool!"
"Charlie's like an advert for Abercrombie and Fitch, would a girl with piercing really go for him?"
"Good point."
"Oh, I know this chick from my cookery class that's kinda cute," Pacey offered as Joey clicked her phone shut.
"Cute, hey?" she teased.
"Not as cute as you, honey. Who you talking to?"
"A girl from my journal edit class. She's going to hang with us tomorrow, she doesn't know anyone in town."
"Ooh," Jen piped up, "is she a potential candidate?"
Joey took a sip of Pacey's drink. "Not really, Rory's a bit too academic for dear old Charlie."
Charlie considered retorting but decided he couldn't be bothered as the description really was quite apt.
"Rory? That's a girl's name?" Pacey asked.
"Yeah, Pacey, whatever can her parent's have been thinking?" Jen chided gently.
Joey laughed. "Yeah, Pace, you didn't exactly get stuck with a normal name yourself. And Rory's named after her mom. Lorelai or something."
Charlie suddenly felt slightly ill. He'd been pretty surprised when he'd never ran into anyone he knew when he met Joey, who went to Worthington, but the name Lorelai in relation to Rory was ringing some very familiar bells.
He tried to remember the girl at Chilton's name. For God's sake he'd had a crush on her for like a year, you'd think he'd remember it. Think, Charlie, think. It was definitely Rory, that much he was certain.
"With a name like Rory she needs a really feminine surname," Charlie tried, ignoring the odd looks his friends sent him.
"Uh-huh," Joey said, humouring him. "Well, I don't know if it's really feminine, but her surname is Gilmore."
Rory Gilmore. He repeated it in his head. Rory Gilmore, Rory Gilmore. Fuck. That was it. That was that girl's name. Damn it.
"So, what are you guys all doing tomorrow?"
"Just hanging, I guess." CJ said, shrugging.
"Right," Charlie knew he sounded weird, but he couldn't help it. He quickly drained his beer.
"Wow, man. Slow down," CJ chided, taking the empty bottle away.
"Yeah, sure," Charlie stood up, his movements fidgety as he tried to find his jacket, "Anyway I have some work to do and I'll probably be doing it all tomorrow as well. So, I guess I'll see you whenever."
"Man, we live with you," Jack pointed out, regarding Charlie warily.
"Right," said Charlie, flailing for words, "I do. So I'll probably see you later at home. But not out. Because I need to work."
"Charlie, are you okay?" Jen asked, looking concerned.
Charlie froze for a moment, staring at all of them. "I'm just fine." And then he turned and practically ran from the bar.
*
Pacing around the still empty house Charlie felt his stomach flip-flopping. He kept telling himself that there was a very good chance that Miss Rory Gilmore wouldn't even recognise him and then he kept remembering how he had tormented her for a year. And he was fairly sure that his disappearance might even have migrated out as far as her outward social circle.
Charlie remembered how irked he had been when she had refused his advances and he couldn't help the sting of male pride that the memory evoked. He was having a hard time remembering what she looked like, a blur of dark hair and blue eyes all his memory could come up with. He was certain that she was pretty, there wouldn't have been any other reason that he would have gone after her, but he couldn't recall her exact features for the life of him.
Growling in frustration with himself and his inability to not let the arrival of this girl annoy him, he stomped up the stairs to look for her picture in his yearbook.
After dragging it out of it's closet confines, Charlie flicked to the right page. He eyed the picture critically, recognising why his younger self had chased this girl. She was definitely pretty and he couldn't help but wonder if the case was still true. Shaking his head to clear his mind of those thoughts he tried to remember anything else about Rory.
She was smart, always had her head in a book. It was bad. He couldn't remember one more thing about her.
Resisting the urge to once again lob the book at the wall, Charlie slid into a sitting position. The arrival of someone who had never even had that big an impact on him was throwing his current life off-kilter and he was realising that his previous pledges to change his life had never really come true.
Because when he recalled the girls that he'd hooked up with at college, barring a few exceptions, he wasn't able to bring to mind anything more about them than he could about Rory.
Charlie was just going to have to stay away from her. Because with his new found refusal to not be the same guy he always was the last thing he needed was a reminder of Tristan DuGrey.