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Oscar passes Charlie the phone. “Dad?” Charlie says, his voice controlled. “Can you just talk to me for a second?” He slides down the wall and tucks his head between his knees.
Oscar nods. “If intelligence is a ladder,” he tells me softly, “Charlie’s trapped at the top. And it’s a frustrating place to be.”
“I don’t want time,” Jack breathes. “I want you. Your support. Emotional, mental, physical. I want it all.”
“Meu raio de sol, we’re married. For tonight at least. I’m your husband.”
We just made love, and emotion still strings between us like a lit flame. His head buries against the crook of my neck. I am so in love with him. And I’m so fucking scared of losing him.
He’s smoking a cigarette, reading a book, and ignoring the girls that try to converse with him from nearby carousel horses, bobbing up and down.
“Cobalts who slay together, stay together,” Donnelly says as he leaves, throwing up a hand gesture that means love you.
His hand goes to his heart, and he fists the fabric of his shirt like he’s trying to stop the organ from beating. “Your love is weak, Oscar. It never protected me.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlie breathes. It’s one of the few times I’ve heard him verbalize an apology.
“Life,” Charlie says, eyes closed, pain cinching his face. “Stupid people, the aftereffects of my choices…walking backwards.”
Charlie doesn’t put on a facade for anyone.
He’ll surrender himself to pain because he doesn’t care about his own life.
“And I’m still your 24/7 bodyguard, Charlie. That’s not changing, okay?” He frowns for a second. “Are you still my friend?”
“We’ll always be friends,” I tell him.
A smile reaches his eyes, and then he captures my pawn in a casual move. “I hope Jack will still do the show,” he says. “I know how much it means to him, and that does mean something to me.”
“Love,” Charlie muses into a sad smile, almost longing. Wishing. I wish I could help open that door for him one day.
Maximoff hugged him, and they kept hugging for a long beat.
I’ve learned a lot about Charlie and myself. I’ve met my limits on what I’m willing to do, and it’s right here. I can’t produce a show that’s centered around someone who’s self-destructive like him, who’s too apathetic about his life being seen.
I realize he’s dropped the legs of his chair he’d been leaning back on. He’s bowed forward.
Charlie careens back to whisper to us, “Who is that?”
Charlie just turns forward, but I catch his smile.
“I was never rewriting my life when I met you. There was no rewrite, Oscar, because this is how it was always supposed to be written. I am supposed to be with you. You are supposed to be with me. Nothing else makes sense.”
“Basta ikaw,” I use his words now and translate, “as long as it’s with you, because it’s you.”
