Chapter Twenty Six

It had been five, painfully long days. Joey had got even less school work done than normal and had tried and failed on approximately a thousand occasions to talk to Charlie. Her now ex-girlfriend was doing a great job of freezing her out. The whole thing was heartbreaking. And in the same way that Charlie was blanking her, Joey was blanking Brax. She knew it probably wasn't fair but she couldn't help but hold him responsible for everything. If only he had let her out of the bet at the beginning then she wouldn't be in this mess now. No, she thought soberly. If you hadn't been stupid enough to make the bet in the first place then you wouldn't be in this mess now.

Hearing Charlie's footsteps in the hall, a sound she had alarmingly come to recognise, Joey leapt up and hurried out of her room. She saw Charlie juggling her a backpack and a carrier bag along with her keys as she tried to let herself into her room.

"Charlie," Joey said, stepping up close behind her.

Charlie ignored her and stuck her key in the lock.

"Charlie..." Joey tried again.

To her surprise, the future police officer whirled around, fixing her with her iciest stare.

"Am I going to have to take out a restraining order?" she snapped.

"Charlie, I just want to talk..." Joey begged.

"I have nothing to say to you," Charlie said, dumping her bags on her desk chair behind her. "You're nothing but a liar and a fake. I regret every single second I spent thinking that you were something different."

"But I am something different!" Joey said desperately.

She reached out to touch Charlie's shoulders but was pushed roughly away.

"Don't touch me," she said bitterly.

"Charlie, I love you so much and I know I made a mistake but..."

"I let you into my heart, Joey," Charlie said, not caring if she sounded over dramatic. "I told you everything about me, even the painful stuff. I let you spend a month bonding with my daughter, for goodness sake. And it was all a lie!"

"It wasn't," Joey insisted. "Everything I've said to you, I meant. I love you. I need you."

"Well, I don't love you," Charlie lied.

Her heart ached with how much she still loved her and shutting her out was the only way she could get through the day.

"Charlie, please?" Joey begged, literally sinking onto her knees. "Please can we find a way to fix this? You'll never know how sorry I am..."

"I don't believe I word that comes out of your mouth, Joey," Charlie said. "And I don't want to hear anything more. You used me. You treated me as a bet, a game for you and your shitty little friends to play. You will never have any idea how much you've hurt me. And I'm not a forgiving kind of girl. So why don't you just run along with Brax and try and ruin some other girl's life? Or better still, grow up and try to do something useful with your life. But either way, leave me alone. I don't want to see you. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want all the crappy little presents you keep leaving me..."

She promptly stormed further into the room and dumped five red roses into Joey's arms.

"All I can hope is that you're so short of cash now that you've paid Brax off, that you can't afford to stay at Uni. Then you'll have to move out and I'll never have to see you again. You can go back to your poor little house and your pathetic mattress on the floor. I don't even know why I ever thought you were good enough for me."

With that, she slammed the door in Joey's tearful face. Joey remained there for several minutes, trying and failing not to cry. Slowly, she stood up, leaving the roses by the door. Taking a deep breath, she headed into her own room, tucked herself into bed and wept.

In the room next door, Charlie sank onto her own bed with her head in her hands. She worried that she had been too harsh. She wasn't entirely sure where some of the things she had said had come from. Joey had been paranoid about her family's wealth ever since she realised that Charlie had been brought up in a mansion. But it had never been an issue for Charlie. She hadn't cared where or what Joey had come from so long as she loved her.

"But she never did love you, Charlie," she said to herself. "She was using you the whole time."

The following evening, Charlie headed home as usual to spend the weekend with Ruby. Joey watched her go with her nose pressed against the window.

"Joey Collins, you're pathetic," said a voice behind her.

She jumped and turned around to find Brax, Angelo, Liam and Aden standing in the doorway.

"Excuse me if my heartbreak is a spectacle for you," she said coldly.

"It is," Angelo said in a rather more gentle tone than Brax had used. "So, we're taking you out to get wasted and hopefully laid. Come on."

"I don't want to," Joey said, alarmed at how like a petulant child she sounded.

"We're not taking no for an answer," Brax said, stepping forward and pulling Joey to her feet.

Having put Ruby to bed for the night, Charlie felt listless. With no inclination to spend the evening making small talk with her parents, she headed up to her own room. Flopping on the bed, Charlie sighed heavily. She toyed with her mobile phone, wondering what Joey was doing. It was so hard to be torn between love and hate. She tossed her phone away and stood up, getting into her pyjamas. It was hard to be in this room now, considering the love and affection she had shared with Joey here. But she knew she had to get over it and move on.

Joey sat in the crowded bar, getting increasingly drunk and miserable. She sank lower and lower on the bench that was holding her up, unable to stop thinking about Charlie.

"She's checking you out," Brax said, nodding towards a pretty girl in the corner of the room.

"Yeah, if she's checking me out in my current state then I judge her," Joey said sourly. "I'm a mess."

"Maybe she thinks she can save you," Brax suggested.

Without warning, he waved and called the girl over to their table.

Charlie had just got into bed when there was a small knock on the door.

"Yes?"

Ruby poked her head around the door.

"Can I sleep in your bed tonight?" she asked.

Charlie smiled a little tearfully and lifted the covers so that her daughter could climb in.

"Why are you sad?" Ruby wondered.

"I'm not sad," Charlie lied.

"You're crying. And you're not smiling with your eyes."

Charlie laughed softly at how perceptive her five year old was. She seemed far too adult for her years.

"It's just been a long week," Charlie said. "But how could I not be happy when I'm with you?"

Satisfied, Ruby smiled and snuggled up in her mother's arms.

"I just love her so much, you know?" Joey drunkenly wailed.

The girl, whose name she didn't recall, shifted uncertainly and looked rather desperate to get back to her friends.

"And I know I fucked up," Joey rambled. "But it was one mistake, you know? One mistake. Granted, it was a big one and if you knew Charlie the way that I do then you'd totally understand where she's coming from. But how can you love someone one minute and hate them the next? I miss her. She's the best thing that's ever happened to me. She's the one that makes me a better person. Do you know what I mean?"

"Uh... I think so," the girl said awkwardly.

"I need to make her love me again," Joey continued. "How can I get her to love me again?"

"I don't know," the girl told her. "Listen, I'm just gonna..."

She jerked a thumb in her friends' direction. Joey barely noticed her leave as she sank back on the bench, musing to herself about how she could win Charlie's heart back.

Next time… Charlie and Joey are brought together by an emergency…