Daniel and I didn’t talk when we exited the restaurant. We said goodbye in the parking lot. It was abrupt and terribly awkward. Daniel knew before I did that I’d never see him again.
“That was interesting,” he had said, sullen and dejected. “Is it okay if I delete you from my contacts?”
I dropped my mother off at my childhood home and watched her skip up the driveway. She was so beautiful and happy. Her kiss on my cheek remained along with the special wish she said she made. “I can’t tell you what it is, or it won’t come true.”
Undressing for bed, I waited for the heat to rub off my body. My fair skin was glowing from Philip’s touch, compliments that had me restless.
My laptop sat open on the kitchen table, its reflection turning my cheeks a soft blue. My apartment was small, a studio, so in one short step I was seated at the table, typing his name into the Google toolbar.
Scrolling. Scrolling. Almost there, I stopped myself. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to fall for words and pictures that told another version of a story. I saw the word Manchester. I saw Private Equity, though I had no idea of the context in which it pertained to Philip’s career. And as soon as his picture came into focus on the screen, I shut the laptop.
The buzzing sound of my cell phone awoke me from sleep.
I rolled over in bed and reached for the phone.
“Hello.”
“Charley.” He said it like the r was missing. Chah-Lee.
My chest filled with giddy anticipation, a nostalgia-laced memory that pressed the phone tighter against my ear. Only one person had ever called me Charley before.
“Can I see you?”
I turned on my back, marveling at the city lights dotting the ceiling. I breathed into the phone. “How did you find me?”
“Do you know how many Charlotte Miles there are in Kansas City?”
I laughed, awake and alert.
“If we call you Charley, you’ll be easier to find.”
The way he said it thrilled me. His voice did that to me. He was the shot that sparked me to take off. To run. To jump off a ledge with no net below. I closed my eyes.
“Can I come over?” he asked.
I shook my head. “You’re crazy.”
“I’m flying out on an eight a.m. flight.”
I looked at my phone and it said 11:11. They were the numbers that wishes were made upon. They meant Take a chance. Leap. I made the wish.
“You’ll have to come back,” I said, taking a swallow. “Your business will bring you back, yes?”
“Perhaps, Charley. But I was thinking you’d bring me back.”
I fell deeper into my mattress. As much as I wanted to see Philip, I wasn’t ready for him to see more of me. While I owned my small apartment, and it was an accomplishment I was proud of, Philip and his big personality would never fit, especially when my heart was swollen with sensations I couldn’t even name.
“What happened at the end of the movie?” he asked, just when I thought he was going to say good night. “Did they end up together?”
He was referring to Jade and David. Endless Love.
I sighed. “They did.”
“Are they happy?”
I didn’t know the answer, but I liked to think they were.
“Next time we see each other, Charley Miles, we’re going to watch Endless Love.”
I didn’t correct him. I wanted to say something witty or deeply moving that would have him thinking of me each time he heard the ballad by Ross and Richie, but there were no words to capture the emotion. I hardly knew this man, yet invisible strings drew us close. The memory of his kiss lingered in the air, and I listened to him breathe.
It was all so ridiculous. I’d seen Pretty Woman enough times to know that the movie should have ended when Julia Roberts returned the necklace, passing the sparkling diamonds off like a stolen memory. I knew when Edward landed on her fire escape, professing the purest of love, it would never work. How would Edward incorporate Vivian into his life? Some forms of love weren’t nearly as brilliant as those diamonds. Not nearly as strong. And when one of the teachers from school tried to convince a handful of us in the lounge that the producers were creating a Pretty Woman 2, I argued all the reasons against it. I was told I was a pessimist, that I needed to believe in the power of miracles.
It wasn’t that. In part, maybe. But I knew nothing could ever be as profoundly moving as Vivian telling Edward she wanted the fairy tale.
“Charley?”
His voice interrupted the vision of Edward walking away from Vivian, telling her he couldn’t give her the fairy tale.
“Charley?” He said it again. Like he was afraid I’d hung up.
“I’m here.”
We talked that night until the light of an early dawn. While Google told me Philip had an important title, it was he who detailed his life’s work, the private equity firm he owned, the childhood he left behind in Manchester. His parents had died in a car crash when he was a young boy, and when I pressed him, his dismissiveness felt familiar. “I don’t dwell on those sorts of details.” The door swiftly shut. “This is the part where you tell me your history, Charley. I show you mine, you show me yours.”
“I wouldn’t possibly bore you.”
“Where’s your pop?”
I considered my answer. Honesty meant pity, which made me uncomfortable. “He’s a pilot. He travels all over the world . . . like you.”
“A man after my own heart,” he said. “Yet I bet that was hard for you.”
It rolled off my tongue like the truth. “We got used to it.”
“I like you, Charley. You’re brave and wise. An older soul.”
He couldn’t reach me, but his words found me. I was falling into the cushion of his kindness, letting him revise the narrative. What did it matter if I altered the details, when the outcome was the same? My father was gone. I eventually got used to his absence. I learned to distance myself from deeper feelings and expression, for they were as complicated as they were beautiful. Here was someone who understood that ties could be stripped away, that bonds broke as though they had never formed at all.
My silence didn’t go unnoticed.
“Did I say something to upset you?”
“No, I’m fine. Just thinking.”
“I’m thinking, too,” he said. “I’m thinking about seeing you again.”
My heart beat loudly, and I was sure he could hear it through the phone. Only it wasn’t my heart. It was a soft knocking.
“There’s someone at my door.”
His breath was loud. It caressed my cheek, and I rose from the bed. I took the sheet with me as I peered through the peephole.
“Philip.”
“Charley.”
It was him, knocking on my door and my heart.
CHAPTER 7
July 2018, Present Day
Islamorada, Florida
While Philip showered, his phone buzzed. The clanging sound plucked me from a flurry of painful memories, and I was unsure how we had arrived here. Philip and I had once been on track, but we’d veered off course. Normally the ringing was his to deal with, but the caller was insistent, a beating drum tapping and tapping. When I saw Natasha’s name on the screen, I picked up.