Summary: MC (Charlotte) finally comes clean about James to Chris and Zig.
Notes: I’m getting in just under the wire for Smuterday (it’s 11:58 PM here), but I’m going to go ahead and say this counts. 😂 Thank you to everyone who has been so encouraging and supportive of this series so far, you are all wonderful and I appreciate you so much ❤️ I know I’m not very consistent in terms of posting installments so I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all the positive feedback and support as you all bear with me.
The next morning, Charlotte sat on the hood of her car outside the flower shop, waiting. After James had left the previous day, she’d spent the rest of the day packing and trying to put the house back in order. She knew James would more than likely have a cleaning service come in, but she still figured the least she could do was straighten up a little.
The street had just began to hum with early morning traffic when Chris’s truck pulled up beside her car. Chris grinned when he saw her and Charlotte tried to return the smile, but it faltered. She knew this might be the last time Chris ever smiled at her like that and she wasn’t ready for that.
“Hey!” Chris exclaimed as he climbed out of his truck. He shut the door with a loud thunk and headed over to Charlotte. She noticed he was wearing a red henley, her favorite shirt of his. Should’ve stolen that, she thought. He put his hands on her knees as he leaned in to kiss her, gently squeezing her bare skin. “You here for me?”
“I need to talk to you,” Charlotte said, trying to keep her voice light. Even though she hadn’t told him yet, she could already feel Chris slipping away from her.
“Okay, come on in,” Chris said. He took her hand in his and led her over to the shop, dropping it so he could unlock the door and hold it open for her. “After you.”
“Thanks.”
Once inside, Chris headed behind the counter towards his small office and motioned for her to follow him.
“So, what’s up?” he asked as he sat in his desk chair and started to spin the numbers on the safe beneath the table. Charlotte sat on the edge of his desk and stared at her shoes for a moment. “Charlotte?” he asked, letting go of the safe and sitting back in his chair to look at her.
“You met James yesterday,” Charlotte said.
“Yes,” Chris agreed slowly, not sure where this was going.
“And you know we dated.”
“Yeah,” Chris said with a smile. “I read your book, remember?”
“Chris, please, this is hard enough to tell you.”
“Okay, sorry,” he said softly, reaching out to take her hand in his. She squeezed his fingers. Here goes nothing. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
Charlotte took a deep breath. “We didn’t … just date in college.” She glanced at Chris and saw him waiting patiently for her to continue. “A little over a year ago, he came to one of my readings. I hadn’t seen him in years, but that night … we started seeing each other again.”
“Are you still seeing him now?” Chris asked.
“No,” Charlotte said, momentarily relieved that she could be immediately honest in response to one of his questions.
“Were you still seeing him when he came to the house yesterday?”
Charlotte hesitated. In the time it took her to pause, Chris pulled his hand away from hers. “It’s complicated.”
“Uncomplicate it for me.”
“It’s completely over now,” she said. “But …”
“Charlotte, just tell me.”
She looked up at his face and saw an anger there below the surface she’d never seen before. There was no sense in dragging this out any longer; better to rip off the band-aid and get it over with.
“When we started seeing each other again, he was engaged. I’m pretty sure he lent me his house here to get me out of Boston.”
“I thought you came up here to write.”
“I did,” Charlotte said. “And I have been writing.” She swallowed, trying to steady her voice. “But I could’ve just written my book in Boston.”
“So why did you come here?”
Charlotte looked away from his eyes, unable to bear their hardness as he stared at her. “Because he got married this summer.”
“And he came back to see you yesterday.”
“Yes.”
Chris stared at the wall over his desk, stiller than a statue for an excruciatingly long minute. “Unbelievable. This is unbelievable.”
“I know, and I’m so sorry, I–” Charlotte started to say but he held up a hand to stop her.
“Two nights ago, you left the bar and didn’t return my calls because you thought I was engaged to Nicole,” Chris said slowly. “I spent a very long night trying to get ahold of you, worrying about you, and then I showed up and told you–” he stopped. “And all this time, you’ve been involved with a married guy.” Charlotte’s face burned and she stared down at her shoes again. “That is … god, you’re such a hypocrite.”
His words stung, but she knew they were true. Out in the main part of the shop, the faint jingle of the front door rang out, but Chris made no move to get up.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” he asked. “Or are you just telling me because he showed up yesterday?”
“I wanted to tell you,” Charlotte said quietly as the first hot tears spilled down her cheeks. She made no move to wipe them away. “I just didn’t know how.”
Chris rubbed his eyes and sniffed loudly as he stood up. Charlotte glanced over at him and saw his eyes were watery. Her chest ached with the desire to reach out and hold him, to pull him close to her one more time, but she didn’t think she could handle it if he pushed her away.
“Is there anything else?” he asked, his gaze boring into her. She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “You deserved to know the truth before I left.”
He stared at her, dumbfounded. “Wait, you’re leaving? When?”
“You have a customer out there.”
“I don’t care. When are you leaving?”
“Now.”
Chris turned away from her, raking a hand through his hair. “You’re not even going to stay so we can talk about this?” he asked, angry as he whirled back around to face her.
“I can’t stay in that house anymore and I can’t afford to stay anywhere else,” Charlotte explained. “I’m driving back to Boston today.”
Chris exhaled loudly through his nose, frustrated. “Charlotte, you can’t just keep running away when things get hard.”
“Where the fuck am I going to go?” Charlotte exclaimed, her emotions finally bursting out as her voice ricocheted around the small office.
“Stay with me!” Chris yelled back.
“What?” Charlotte’s mouth fell open, dumbfounded.
“Am I really pissed off right now? Yeah, I am, but you can’t just drop all this on me and skip town!”
“You deserve so much more than me.”
“Stop it,” Chris snapped.
“No! It’s true, and you know it,” she snapped back. “I’m a complete fuck up. I spent the entire summer hiding in my married boyfriend’s cabin and then I dragged you into my fucking mess. You–”
Chris shocked her by closing the ocean between them and kissing her, cutting off the rest of her words. His kiss was bruising and demanding and she let herself fall into it pulling him close to her, clinging to him as if her life depended on it. His hands tangled in her hair, gently tugging her head back to give him better access to her lips. Charlotte pulled him closer, her fingers slipping beneath the hem of his shirt. Chris picked her up, setting her on his desk and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He ran a hand up one of her thighs, his fingertips brushing the edge of her shorts.
Charlotte tugged at his shirt and he broke their kiss so she could yank it over his head. As she dropped it to the ground, he reached behind him to shut the office door, clicking the lock into place.
“You have a customer . . “ Charlotte said as Chris turned back to her.
“They’ll come back.”
He kissed her again and she tugged his hips against hers. Charlotte wasn’t sure why this was happening, but she didn’t want to miss a moment of him. She tentatively ran her fingers down the front of his jeans and he moaned softly into her mouth when she grazed his growing hardness through the fabric. Charlotte palmed him more assertively this time, squeezing slightly and he groaned louder, pushing up her t-shirt. He yanked at the thin fabric of her bra, pulling down the cups to expose her breasts. Chris ducked his head, taking one of her nipples in his mouth, biting pleasurably at the soft flesh. Charlotte arched her back, letting her head drop back against the wall above the desk.
Chris kissed his way back up to her throat, sucking at the the delicate skin of her neck as his fingers drifted lower, pausing at the button on her shorts. She nodded, her cheek brushing against his, and he quickly undid her shorts, pulling them so hard to remove them that he nearly pulled her off the desk. Charlotte unzipped his jeans and slipped her hand inside, cupping him through his boxer briefs. She could feel him straining against the fabric and she realized she didn’t want to wait a moment longer for him. Charlotte pushed his jeans and boxers down his hips, his cock springing free from the restrictive fabrics. Chris dug a condom out of his pocket and ripped open the foil with his teeth, spitting the wrapper away as he rolled it on. Charlotte took him in her hands and immediately guided him to her. No teasing, no hesitation. Not now. Chris pushed into her, slowly at first, but his speed quickly increased and he slammed into her, causing her breath to hitch with each thrust.
Charlotte’s nails dug into Chris’s shoulders as he gripped her hip with one hand, the other sliding down between them. His touch was gentler than she’d expected and as his intuitive fingers teased her, bringing her closer and closer to a release, she felt a tightening in her chest that she couldn’t explain.
“I’m close,” she gasped, clutching him tightly as he pushed her to the edge. He buried his face in her neck, his breath hot on her flushed skin.
“Come with me.”
When the orgasm seized her, she felt the pleasure rock through her limbs, cells on fire as she gripped Chris, pulling him so close her knuckles turned white. He thrust into her a few more times, his movements faster, sloppier, and then he groaned, pulsing inside her. As the physical high hit its crest within her, something emotionally broke inside of Charlotte and she burst into tears.
“Oh my god, are you okay? Did I hurt you?” Chris asked, panicked. He lifted his head from her neck and she saw his own face was streaked with tears. She shook her head.
“No, you didn’t. I–” she tried to explain but she couldn’t, her words lost in a sob. She covered her face with her hands as Chris removed the condom and tossed it into the trash can beneath his desk. She heard him pull up his pants before he put his arms around her, holding her close. Charlotte buried her face in his bare chest and cried, loud keening sobs that she couldn’t believe were coming from her.
“Please stay,” Chris begged, his voice shaky with tears of his own. She couldn’t speak, words locked in her throat so tightly she could barely breathe.
As she drove to the ranger station, she felt completely drained, but she had one more goodbye to say. Chris wasn’t the only one she’d dragged into her bullshit that summer, and she owed Zig an explanation. But when she arrived, he was nowhere to be found.
“Zig? He’s got the day off,” one of the other rangers said, not bothering to stand up from his desk where he was scrolling through his phone.
“Oh.” Charlotte said, feeling both disappointed and relieved.
“You okay? You look like hell?” the ranger said, glancing up from the screen.
“Just dandy,” Charlotte said.
“Want me to give him a message?”
“No, thank you.”
Charlotte left the station and walked back into her car. Once inside the driver’s seat, she flipped down the visor and checked out her reflection in the mirror. God, she did look like hell. Her face was puffy and red from crying, her mascara rubbed around her eyes in shadowy smears. She tried to clean up the mascara as best she could with her fingers, but she only succeeded in making it worse. Her gaze drifted down to her neck where there was a small red mark from Chris. He’d never left a mark like that before; why had he today? Charlotte sighed, too tired to wonder, and pulled out her phone.
“Hey, you’ve reached Zig. I’m not available right now, but leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
If he wasn’t at work and wasn’t answering his phone, maybe he was at his apartment. Charlotte drove along the forest service roads back towards town and was reminded of her first day in Hull, driving through the trees searching for James’s green mailbox.
“Who the fuck has a green mailbox in the forest?” she said aloud as she drove, half smiling at the memory. Of all the things to find funny on a day like this, that certainly seemed strange, but Charlotte felt she wasn’t in a position to question anything anymore.
At Zig’s apartment, there was no answer when she knocked on the door. She tried his phone again, but it went straight to voicemail. Part of her wanted to stay and wait for him, but she wasn’t sure she could take another confrontation like what she’d had with Chris. Charlotte returned to her car and dug into her computer bag, pulling out a spiral notebook. Kaitlyn always mocked her for using the same notebook as a fourth grader, but Charlotte insisted they worked best for her. As a writer, everyone always gave her the fanciest journals and notebooks as gifts and although they were beautiful, she was always too nervous to use them out of fear of ruining them. Spiral notebooks, on the other hand, could be trashed with her erratic handwriting without guilt.
Dear Zig,
Charlotte stared at the two words on the page, momentarily stalled. Zig deserved better than a letter, but she didn’t know where he was. This would have to do. She started to write, slowly at first as she carefully chose her words, but then the whole tale started pouring out onto the page. Charlotte unburdened herself on the page, her story rushing out of the pen as fast as she could write. She told him everything, starting with the night she’d reunited with James. She told him about the nights she’d hated herself, both when James had called but especially when he hadn’t. Charlotte told Zig about how she was certain that James had stashed her away in another state to keep her away from his wedding, but she’d wanted to make a fresh start. She thanked him for rescuing her over and over, but she’d realized that she had to stop waiting for someone else to save her. She was leaving, but she wanted him to know how much he’d meant to her. Above all, Charlotte told Zig how sorry she was. Just because she’d allowed herself to stay in a bad situation didn’t mean she should have dragged anyone else into it. Zig deserved so much; she just didn’t have anything to offer him.
It wasn’t until she’d finished the letter that Charlotte realized she was crying again. She pulled the pages out of her notebook and folded the letter carefully before writing his name on the outside. Charlotte climbed back out of her car and walked back to Zig’s apartment, sliding the letter under the door. Then she returned to her car, put on her seat belt, and began the long drive back to Boston.
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