“Why haven’t you just told her how you feel?”
“I can’t do that. Charlie and I have been best friends since she moved here in second grade. She was this cute little girl with pigtails and sparkly pink running shoes. This bully pushed her down during recess, shouting that she had cooties. She was crying when he left her on the ground, and I felt really bad. So I went up to her and told her that I didn’t think she had cooties.”
He laughs out loud. “She gave me this look. You know, the Charlotte look? The look like ‘Well, duh, idiot.’ And then she lisped through her missing teeth, ‘Well, obviously I don’t have cooties.’”
I laugh at his seven-year-old Charlotte imitation, but don’t interrupt his story.
“I asked her why she was crying. She told me it was because there was mud all over her favorite shirt now.” He shakes his head, still smiling. “It was this pink sparkly shirt that matched her sneakers. At the time, I thought the kid did her a favor, but I didn’t tell her as much. She was still sitting there in the mud, crying. You know Charlie, always has been nonconfrontational, quiet, never stands up for herself.”
Chase frowns at thought.
“So I offered her the spare shirt that my mom put in my cubby in case I ruined the one I was wearing. It was this blue shirt with dinosaurs on the front, and would’ve been too big for her. I promised her I didn’t have cooties, either, so she could wear it. That way, she wouldn’t have mud on her all day.”
“Aw, how romantic, Chase,” I gush, picturing seven-year-old Chase coming to Charlotte’s rescue.
He laughs. “I was always a hit with the ladies. She changed into my shirt and it was too big for her, but I still thought she was beautiful. The mean kid saw her wearing my shirt and pushed her down again, said that she was giving my shirt her cooties. So I beat him up.”
I laugh, fake gasping. “Chase! You beat up a seven-year-old?”
“It was a fair fight! I was seven too!” He chuckles. “Charlie and I have been best friends since then. I guess I should thank that kid. Because he had this irrational fear of cooties, he brought me closer to the girl I love.”
That’s so cute. I wish I had someone who loves me like Chase loves Charlotte. He still remembers the day they met, down to the detail of her missing teeth and shoe color. “I thought you went to elementary school with the Boys?”
“No, Charlie and I went to one schoo
l, Julian and Aiden went to another, and Mason and Noah went to another. In grade six, our schools started having meets for sports and stuff, and we all met at a basketball tournament. We became friends and hung out outside of school. Charlie never liked them, and honestly, she never hung out with all of us until you came along and made her sit with us at lunch.”
“I think she likes them now. She even told me that Aiden isn’t that bad.”
“He isn’t; he just has his own stuff going on that he deals with. He’s a really tough guy, and doesn’t let people in.”
“Where was he last night? Why couldn’t he go to the party?” It better be somewhere important if he sent me to voice mail during an emergency. I had his passed-out best friend in my car. And he was the one who put his contact info in my phone in the first place.
“What? How would I know?” The guilty look Chase is trying to hide says otherwise. “Anyway, where was I in the story? Oh yeah, so we all went to grade nine and started at the same high school, and we were happy because we could see each other at school, too, instead of just after and on the weekends. In the middle of freshman year, Aiden casually brought up how I loved Charlotte, and I couldn’t believe how he noticed. None of the other guys noticed and I don’t think I made it that obvious.”
Aiden’s observant like that, noticing everything.
“He said he wouldn’t say anything and here we are four years later, with Charlie and everyone else still oblivious to how I feel.”
“Why haven’t you told her?”
He shakes his head and looks down at the glass of water in his hands. “I can’t do that. She won’t feel the same way and it’ll crush me, hearing out loud how I’ll never be with her.”
My heart aches for Chase. I wish I could reassure him that Charlotte feels the same way as him, but I can’t.
“I always try to put on this player image in front of her to try to make her jealous, which clearly hasn’t worked. I try to go out with other girls to move on from her, but that doesn’t work either. None of those girls are Charlotte.” He laughs a sad laugh. “I’ve known the girl of my dreams for a decade, and I can’t even be with her!”
This whole comforting-people-in-love thing is foreign to me. “I don’t know how Char feels about you, but I know she really cares about you. Maybe someday it’ll grow into something bigger—maybe she already feels that way about you. You’ll never know unless you tell her how you feel.”
His eyes widen and he shakes his head frantically. “No, no, no. I can’t do that. And you can’t either! Please don’t tell her!”
“Hey, I already knew and haven’t said anything.” I calm him down. “I won’t say anything, but this is going to eat you alive. You almost confessed everything to her in a drunken stupor in the middle of the night!”
“I’ll be more careful, I promise. She just can’t know. She’ll reject me and we’ll be all awkward.” He frowns again and looks back at the glass in his hands. “I’d rather have her as a friend and silently love her than tell her and lose her forever.”
12
Chase and I spend Saturday together, hanging out and lazing around my house.