I settled myself back on the stool, smoothing out my skirt.
Charlie pushed a button on his camera. It beeped.
I took another sip, a smaller one this time in case he decided to be an asshole again.
He didn’t. He turned the camera on the tripod.
Why was it so warm? Had the air-conditioning broken in here too?
Charlie shifted on his stool.
Was this what a heart attack felt like? Was I dying?
Charlie cleared his throat.
No! No! No— “What did he say!” I hadn’t meant that to come out sounding so shriekish, so imagine my surprise when it did just that. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When I spoke again, my voice was even, the very definition of calm. “Not that I care. Or that it matters. I suppose it’s nice when someone is thinking about you enough to ask. That’s all.”
Charlie’s lips quirked. That devious bastard. He was playing me, and even worse, it was working. I was outmatched. Outgunned. Out-everythinged. “It wasn’t much.”
“Oh,” I said, deflating slightly. “That’s… good.”
“Yes, just asked what your plans were for the summer. I didn’t know at the time, so I couldn’t tell him.”
I frowned. “Well, I am interning at Phoenix House. Terrible name, because Phoenix is a cesspool and Tucson is better in almost every regard. I suppose they mean the bird, like the LGBTQ community rises from the ashes more powerful than we were before to smite down heterosexual nonsense—”
“And what you’re doing after you graduate.”
“I don’t even know!” I exclaimed, that old familiar panic starting to wrap itself around my head and heart. “I’ve only gone to school for the last six years in order to do something with deserving kids so they never have to go through what I went through, but who in the hell decided that I need to stick with that and pile on student loans on top of it? What kind of fucking racket is adulthood anyway—”
“And how you’ve been, since he hasn’t really seen much of you as of late.”
I paused, considering. “Fine, mostly. I guess. I mean, I’ve been busy, what with planning for my future and surviving and worrying about how overdraft fees are designed to keep us trapped in debt—”
“And that he wanted Robert to pass on that he was thinking about you and hoped that everything was going well.”
I gaped at Charlie.
“Close your mouth, dear heart,” Charlie said gently. “In a place like this, that could be seen as an invitation.”
I snapped my mouth closed with an audible click. “He really asked all that?”
Charlie nodded. “He did. Or so Robert said.”
I stared at him suspiciously. “Are you meddling?”
He looked like a sweet, rough old man. It was a lie. “Have I ever?”
“Yes,” I said fiercely. “All the time, in fact. It’s like a trait with all of you that you passed on to me like some goddamn virus. You do nothing but meddle. I’ve been made complicit on numerous occasions due to all your meddling. Before I moved back here, I did nothing of the sort! You’ve tainted me.”
Charlie shrugged. “My word against yours. You’ll never be able to prove it. Feeble old man, remember?”
He was a master at manipulation, and I was nothing but a pawn in his Machiavellian game. “I see right through you, don’t think I don’t!”
“You’re getting loud again. A piece of advice?”
I sniffed daintily. “If you must.”
He smiled and reached over to squeeze my knee. His hand was warm and kind, and even though I was currently plotting ways to end him, I loved him so. “Don’t let time get away from you. I know you’ve got a lot going on, and you worry about things. And sometimes you shield yourself away. Armor is all well and good until one day you forget that it’s there and never take it off.”