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Charlie is the only one gallivanting across the city in the middle of the fucking night like a blood-thirsty vampire. Hey, he is legitimately as popular as Edward Cullen could ever be.
Shit, what did I even say? Cake…has name? That’s not a complete motherfucking sentence! I was trying to tell him there’s a piece of cake that has my name on it.
We’re all a lot of where we come from, just as much as we are the people who raised us and who we’ve met along the way.
Charlie twists the gold ring on his finger. A Faust Academy crest of a falcon and crown rest in the center. He never had to tell me, but I know that’s his father’s high school ring.
“Deep down,” he says. “I don’t give a shit if people love me. Or hate me. Or think I’m an entitled, spoiled brat. I’d have to care enough about them to care about their opinions—and I don’t give a shit. You want honesty, I have reasons I want my life filmed, but I’m not going to tell them to you. And if you think I’m going to care about exposing myself to the world—I won’t. I don’t.”
“If people think that I’m betraying my family, they’re dumber than I thought,” he says. “Which is saying something because I think the human race has a chronic case of idiocy.”
“You don’t seem like the kind of guy that overthinks things. And not for nothing, Long Beach, but it’s just cereal.” “Yeah,” I nod. “I just don’t know what I feel like.” “So have both.”
Cobalts place the bar so high for themselves, they can’t see the ground anymore.
“Because I don’t like calling in favors with girls I’ve fucked.” He sticks the cigarette between his lips and mumbles out. “It’s uncouth.”
“I’m a genius who doesn’t give a shit.”
“Do you ask all your co-workers for a kiss?” he shoots back. I smile, trying not to disintegrate in my seat from this conversation. “Only the cute ones,” I say, popping a chip in my mouth. As smooth as that was, I regret it. Oliveira, stop flirting with the straight boy. Holy fucking shit, I’m hopeless.
“It was worth it.” Is that the measure of our actions? Whether they’re worth something for the people we care about?
I’m not straight.
No matter how many times Charlie comes back to see the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a gorgeous eight-foot marble sculpture of a winged goddess, he still has that same awed reverence in his eyes as the first time I saw him here. It’s a gift not to become jaded by beauty.
Charlie ditching me. Fine. Charlie ditching me in the motherfucking Louvre. Not fine. Not fine at all.
“Oscar?” The older man’s French accent is thick. “Haven’t heard from you in months. I thought maybe Charlie fell out of love with the Louvre.” “Hardly,”
Flirting again. Twenty points deducted from Slytherin. The Hale family would be so proud of my geeky ass thoughts.
“My money is inherited. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the fucking same.”
If you were my boyfriend, I’d fuck you.
Sitting at his usual table, with a cigarette between two fingers, is Charlie Keating Cobalt.
No one really knows Charlie but Charlie, and probably his twin brother and father. But I have one of the best windows into his life. He’s enigmatic and alluring to the world, but what they don’t realize is that he’s just as destructive as his brothers. He’s simply better at fooling people.
Charlie says, “I’m doing it for you, you know. The show, the one about my life.”
“Then I made the right decision with this show. Aunt Lily always says she can predict love, but she has nothing on me.”
“L’enfer est vide et tous les diables sont ici.” Hell is empty and all the devils are here. I recognize the Shakespeare quote. The Tempest.
As long as I’m protecting Charlie, there’s going to be a large part of me that has to protect him from himself. He’s not the only self-destructive client, but he’s the one who runs the most laps around the world.
There is no direct translation of “saudade” into English. To me, it’s always been a nostalgic longing for a love that’s missed and gone. When I left for college and missed my brother and sister, sometimes I’d call them and groan out, Quero que você mate minha saudade. I want you to kill my saudade. I want you to kill this longing feeling inside of me.
Farrow smiles wider. “Miss me, wolf scout?”
“Da-da,” Ripley giggles, trying to swim to Farrow who plays peek-a-boo, using his inked hand to shield his face. Maximoff has their son loosely in his hold, but the baby can already float too well.
Charlie. That little bastard hooked me up with Highland, and somehow, it worked.
“I studied Kinesiology. Sports medicine. It’s actually how I met Farrow. We had some classes together at Yale since the sciences overlap.”
“I have so many questions. What’s a coxinha?” His pronunciation of coxinha isn’t perfect in this cute way, and it makes me grin. “It’s fried dough in a teardrop shape with shredded chicken inside. Quinn likes it with jackfruit instead of chicken. He’s—” “Vegetarian,” Jack finishes. “I remember.” Right. “Mortadella? Isn’t that Italian sausage?” “It is, but I grew up eating a lot of mortadella sandwiches in Philly. You take the meat—lots and lots of meat, add provolone, mayo, Dijon, all on sourdough.”
I like making people feel good, but making him feel good turns me on in more extreme ways.
“And if anyone gives you hell for it in your lifetime or invalidates your feelings because they knew their sexuality for longer—don’t listen to them. They can’t tell you who you are. The fact that they’re trying to says more about them than about you.”
“He’s a Hale,” Charlie tells Ernest. “Last time I checked, H.M.C. Philanthropies stood for Hale, Meadows, Cobalt. You’re an idiot if you think he wouldn’t be here.”
“I own the board. I could remove you tomorrow if I wanted.” “You do already want that,” he says flatly. “But you won’t. You know why?” Charlie tilts his head, avoiding a ray of sun. “Because I’m the son of Connor Cobalt. And the only reason this company hasn’t dissolved is because I’m still a part of it. I will concede—you do own the board, Ernest. I have no control over them. But you don’t own me.”
“Getting lost in the woods together—one of my favorite romance tropes,” he muses and sticks the blunt in his mouth.
The more I’m understanding Charlie, the more I’m realizing he’s more of an open book than people would believe, but his pages are written in an ancient language.
“He doesn’t have much care for his own life.” But the more Charlie doesn’t care, the more I just want to ensure he’s still standing at the end of the day.
“At least not Farrow. Donnelly, yeah. We encompasses anyone who’s Team Cobalt, and Farrow has always been Team Hale, even before the Husband.”
Charlie bought out the box for a whole year…for the past four years. Same box. Same chairs. My ass probably has a permanent imprint in this one. And I explain how Charlie and Jane made a bet to see who can attend the most performances to watch Beckett dance. Some months, Jane wins. Other months, Charlie does.
Effortless beauty and grace with the ferocity of a lion. Charlie read that review to me after Beckett’s first season as a principal dancer. He smiled at his twin brother’s success, and no matter how many hundred times I’m here seeing Beckett jump and twirl, I think of that quote.
And how it’s the pretty sheen of the Cobalt Empire, the romantic one, but underneath it all, there are cracks. But like so many people, the romanticism is needed on heavy days, and sometimes I even try to let it help carry me through.
“Basta ikaw,” I say in Tagalog and translate casually, “as long as I’m with you, because it’s you.” I swig my beer. “Baseball isn’t so bad in your company.”
“MAXIMOFF! FARROW! MAXIMOFF!” and “MARROW FOREVER!” I yearn for a forever-in-love stable relationship like Farrow has with Maximoff,
“I heard a fan outside ask who your celebrity crush is,” Farrow grins wider, “and I definitely heard you answer, my husband.”
Maximoff is balancing Ripley on his waist, and while Farrow takes earplugs out of their son’s ears, I hear Maximoff say more quietly, “I just want our son to know I love you. When he sees media footage, I don’t want him to think I don’t care about you.”
I nod, confident that I’d do just about anything in the world for Jack motherfucking Highland.
“Okay, promise me that whatever happens next, you won’t shut the window on me. Promise that it’s wide open and I’m on the other side with you—that it’s you and me and anyone who tries to come in, you’ll help me keep out?”
“I promise. It’s Oscar and Jack take on Philly, New York, California, the world—you and me, Long Beach.”
He suddenly, mightily, resoundingly bridges the gap—and his lips are on mine. Time freezes. The world recedes, and we clasp each other’s face and kiss and kiss with soul-bearing passion. Hanging on. Like we’re spinning on an axis and headed for the sky.
