Cross

At this point in the story, there are several paths we could proceed down. And this is most probably due to the fact that after Charlie told Josh that she had a boyfriend, their paths diverged. They appeared to be on separate courses. It was hard for either of them to even think of the other, let alone interact in anyway. They tried. An occasional and strategic Facebook status like. But hardly anything more than that in the months of February and March.

And so there’s the fork in the road. Not to say that at some point their two paths won’t converge again, meet somewhere in the middle. Because they surely will, and sooner than either would expect.

There were a certain few weeks in which the two of them, separated by nearly half a world and bitter feelings, tried to think of anything but the other. Their friends helped of course, knowing the situation and knowing better than to mention it for the most part.

Of course Mia Michaels wasn’t always tactful, especially while drunk. She and Charlie were seated at the kitchen table, leaning against one another. They had been consuming a lot of booze in recent times, mostly for Charlie’s benefit. Mia was the more inebriated of the two, but not by much. “You know you act different around Avery than that other dude.” She was smart enough to not say his name, at the very least.

“What the fuck’s that mean?” Charlie said. She had winced at the thought of ‘that other dude’. It made Charlie want to do another couple shots of whiskey.

“Avery’s all over you and all about you.” She took a swig of her drink and some of it spilled from her lips as she spoke. “I mean, he’s an asshole and all, but he practically worships you. And you totally just brush him off all the time,” Mia said. “It wasn’t like that with…” She didn’t finish her sentence.

Charlie hated hearing stuff like this. It made her self-conscious and hyperaware, almost paranoid. She just wanted to be able to disappear sometimes. “Yeah, okay.”

As if his ears were burning, Dustin Avery appeared in the kitchen. He had a bottle of Jack Daniels swinging from his hand and sloppy smile on his face. A sliver of a smile crept up Charlie’s lips. With his closely cut blonde hair and smattering of brightly colored tattoos, Charlie thought he was absolutely gorgeous. He was all lean muscle and dirty jokes. Avery, as he was known to almost everyone, was the drummer of a decent metalcore band. This meant that he was not only a little rough around the edges at times, but also endlessly hyper, as drummers often are. “Charlie!” He yelled immediately upon seeing her. “Guess what?”

“What?” She replied as he leaned down to kiss her cheek.

“Mark just called me.”

“Alright?”

“You’ll never believe what he said.”

Charlie didn’t have much patience for guessing games, but she humored him since he was quite prone to humoring her. “What’s that?”

“We got the Warped spot.”

Dustin Avery’s band had been waiting to hear back from a Vans booking agent about whether they would be able to play the Kevin Says stage on Warped Tour that summer. They’d been in the running for a spot and no one had been holding out much hope for them to even make it. But here was the decision. And it jolted Charlie to her senses a little. Maybe because there was something familiar about a band being excited to play Warped. A band in which one of the members knew the intimate details of her underwear.

She pushed those thoughts away then said “Oh man, that’s awesome.”

“I need shots,” Avery yelled. “Where are the glasses?

Charlie stood up, holding the table for support as she nearly teetered over. She went to the cabinet, ignoring Avery as he slid a hand along the small of her back. She reached onto the shelf and first took two glasses then turned to Mia and said “You too, doll?”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?”

And Charlie took a third shot glass from the shelf. She rubbed her forehead and considered the fact that the only liquids she had consumed in the past week were alcoholic. She was keeping herself subdued, intoxicated. It kept her from thinking too much about the itch under her skin. Normally it was the need to escape that caused such an itch. But this was different. She was filled with prickly desire and guilt. He was playing on repeat inside of her, in her veins and buried in her organs. His name kept flashing in her head. The phantom sensation of his messy hair under her fingertips taunted her senses; she could almost feel it as though it were still in the moment. Muscle memory. The way he spoke still rang in her ears. The long broad A sounds especially, words like talk or bath or Charlie. His voice either sweet or sharp, depending. It was ingrained in her. Etched into flesh and bone and brain. And she couldn’t take it. She didn’t understand it. So with intoxicants as her aide, she tried to pretend that he had never existed.

She took her shot of whiskey along with Mia and Avery, and she forgot his name again.

“I need to do some drugs if I’m gonna drink anymore,” Mia stated soundly. She routinely did this. Drank herself stupid and then had a quick powder pep-up and then drank some more.

“I need to do some drugs to fucking celebrate.” Dustin Avery raised both fists in the air. He was feeling triumphant. His band was finally getting recognized for all the shit-hard work they’d done in the past few years, which was on top of the fact that he’d finally reclaimed his long lost love. Charlie. He thought she would never ever have come back to him. And he wasn’t entirely sure why she had in the first place. She had once sworn that she would “rather die than let [him] touch her again”. But of course that was way back in the day.

It might now be necessary to fill you in on the details of Charlie’s first time in Tempe. Though Charlie claimed that it was ancient history and needn’t be discussed, there are several important points to make. A quick careful list of events may suffice.

1. Charlie turned sixteen.
2. Charlie was kicked out of her Grandmother’s house.
3. Charlie moved to Tempe with her Aunt Selene, her mother’s sister.
4. Charlie met JC Hammond et al.
5. Charlie became enamored of Dustin Avery and his doubly pierced lip.
6. Charlie popped her first pill, a 5mg Percocet given to her by Dustin Avery.
7. Charlie spiraled.

Some say that marijuana can be a gateway drug, but Charlie had always considered pills the dangerous beginning downhill. It really wasn’t such good time for her and she still wondered what drew her back to this place. She’d become a bit of a fuck up the first time. She’d cleared that all out of her system then. At least she told herself as much. But when JC entered the kitchen upon hearing the word “drugs”, Charlie began rethinking these things.

“I think I can accommodate some celebrating,” JC said, digging in the pocket of his jeans. JC was always good for the illegals.

It was a small bag tucked full of white powder. This should have been a giant flashing warning sign for Charlie. But she was so busy forgetting that she disregarded the memories of what this kind of life could do to her. She should have known better. Even if she couldn’t learn from her own example, she could have learned from her father’s. The Hamiltons proved that they could not handle themselves around illicit activities for very long without giving in.

JC had organized eight thin white lines onto a blue glass plate. Mia was the first to lean over the counter with a rolled up dollar bill pressed to the base of her nose. She expertly took both of her allotted lines, quickly and effortlessly. JC followed suit, laughing and kissing Mia when he was finished, the same as he did when he took a shot.

Before Avery took his lines, he leaned to Charlie, his lips and nose buried in the dark hair by her ear. “It’s like déjà vu, isn’t it babe?” His mouth brushed against her cheek and he stepped up to the counter, next up to bat.

And it was like déjà vu. It was the old days. It was the wild days all over again. But she didn’t think of how those days had ended and she didn’t think about how these days, her second round Tempe days, would end. Instead, she blew the small white lines right up her nose and laughed along with the rest of her friends, holding her burning nose.

While her brain started rushing in a way she’d not exactly missed, only a flash of a thought about Josh occurred. What was he doing while she was snorting coke?

--

Josh wasn’t sleeping much those days. Well to be quite frank, he wasn’t doing much of anything aside from band related things. He played enormous sold out shows, he signed autographs on posters and on chests, he gave interviews about how lucky he was to have the life he did and then he went home. At home, he played a lot of video games while listening to incredibly sappy music (naturally, loads of Jimmy Eat World and Brand New) and eating loads of shit junk food. He gained about five pounds from the inactivity.

It was ten til five in the morning and Josh was on the sofa in his apartment, flipping through the channels upon channels of late night tele. He’d been particularly taken with the CSI reruns that were played consecutively all night every night. But the informericals weren’t so bad either. They were mindless programs, things he could tune out and didn’t have to think about. Thinking just fucked with him.

Because he was starting to think it was time to get off his brooding lazy arse. Move on already. He knew letting go was a good thing, drop the dead weight of ‘what if’ and ‘maybe’. He’d been through a hundred how-could-it-be-different scenarios and it wasn’t helping. He was still sitting around watching crap television and moping. And it needed to stop.

But one part of him was resisting this train of thought. No, he wasn’t ready to get over Charlie. Not just yet. Because it had been so surreal while it lasted. What was it that his friends had called her? Epic, they’d said Charlie was epic. Josh thought this was, more or less, the right word for her.

He didn’t want to forget about her. He could see why it might help, which of course doesn’t mean that he could do it. At the very least, he didn’t want to be seated at home wallowing. He realized it was six in the morning, but he needed to get some air.

The day was just beginning as Josh left his apartment building. The sun was beginning to come up, giving the sky a dull red winter glow. The air was biting and clean, almost refreshing. Cars were driving down the streets, their drivers looking tired. Josh felt wide awake. After two months, he was getting used to not sleeping. Granted, he was half delirious most nights, so sleepy that sometimes his eyes started to grey at the edges—as though he may pass out, but he never did.

It was sometime around the first mile of his walk that Josh realized in the previous three days, he’d gotten roughly two hours of sleep. And that had been when he fell asleep sitting in the waiting room of the label office by accident. Everyone had let him sleep, feeling slightly sorry about his situation. It sounded rather bad when he thought about it. There was the pity to consider: his own self-pity and the pity his friends took on him. It was somewhat pathetic, most definitely.

As he walked along his neighborhood, he worried that he may just go unconscious right on the street. His limbs felt unsteady, as though his legs might not hold him up much longer without rest. He could just imagine some poor schmuck walking their dog and finding him snoring on the ground.

This thought made him laugh out loud and Josh was glad no one was around to hear it. He was losing his marbles, he came to conclude. It was half heartbreak and half insomnia driving him batty. He needed to do something about one or both of those things.

First, he’d get some goddamn Ambien. Then he’d get laid.

Recovery was possible, though he’d always had a hard time accepting that.

--

And now, a brief interlude that we shall call “Josh and Charlie at 16”.

“Mate, it’ll be fine,” Max told him.

“I love her.” Josh pushed his hands up the side of his face and into his hair.

“Love? Come on now, it’s not that serious.”

“You can’t tell me how serious this is, you don’t know how this feels.”

“What’d you mean I don’t know? I’ve been broken up with before.”

“Liza didn’t just break up with me, she’s properly stomped my heart.”

“Oh, now you’re just being a melodramatic twat.” And with this, Max gave up trying to help his best friend with girls, indefinitely.

Liza had been Josh’s first serious girlfriend. She was already out of school and she drove him around places a lot of the time. An older girl had never been interested in him before five months before, when he’d met Liza at one of the band’s shows. She wore short skirts and lots of eyeliner. The best part of it had been that she even liked him at all. Before the band started playing regular gigs, he’d always been the awkward one who couldn’t talk to girls. Then, when he was fronting a band, girls like Liza waltzed right up and spoke to him. No need to do any stuttering or stammering. He thought it was a miracle. And he’d fallen in love within weeks and she seemed to be okay with him telling her so.

Until one day she wasn’t.

This was a day when Josh swore he’d make damn sure that it was really love the next time he went giving his heart away.

--

"Have you completely lost your mind, Char?" Her grandmother was less than pleased with the turn of events.

"I dunno, you tell me. You seem to think you know all about my mind." She was a cocky little shit back then. Mouthy and arrogant.

"If I'm going to pull you out of this mess, there is one thing we have to get perfectly clear." Grandmother was using a more serious tone than Charlie had ever heard. "You will not be disrespectful to me any longer."

"I never--"

"No arguments, please. Just watch your tone." Grandmother shifted her Vivienne Westwood bag onto her lap. "The officers said that was one of the reasons they brought you in... That you were causing a disturbance."

With this, Charlie couldn’t help but laugh. A disturbance. She’d been somewhat belligerent when they found her puking on the sidewalk outside one of the Arizona State University fraternity houses. Avery was inside the house, buying some pills from one of the brothers that lived in the house. If the cops had pulled up five minutes later, they could have busted Charlie and Avery both. But as luck would have it, they only got Charlie and the minute Dustin Avery saw the flashing lights, he bolted back in the house and out the back door.

“It’s not funny, I hope you know,” her Grandmother said. “Drugs? Booze? Seriously, Charlie, what were you thinking?” She shook her head. “God, especially with your father the way he is. I thought you’d know better.”

Charlie sunk down into the uncomfortable chair even further. It was a seriously low blow to bring up Charlie’s dad. The subject still made Charlie squirm. It was the reason she’d been sent to Tempe to live with her Aunt in the first place. Because her Dad was seventeen kinds of fucked up, and because Charlie was not afraid to tell Grandmother she thought so. It had been the catalyst for the fight between grandma and granddaughter. This conversation, in the Tempe police station, was the first time Charlie and her Grandmother had spoken since their rather epic argument nearly a year before.

“You’re almost seventeen.” Grandmother just shook her head. “Don’t you think it’s time you settled down?”

The answer had been most clearly: No, it wasn’t time to settle down. Settle down being code for grow up and quit running.

--

And now, back to the contemporary.

You see, Josh was doing better for awhile. A little peppier, a little more alert.

Maybe it was the sleeping pills. Probably it was the sleeping pills. His doctor had been wary about prescribing them. He’d narrowed his eyes and looked Josh up and down, maybe debating if this was some sort of drug-seeking rock-star behavior or just genuine unrest. But Josh then went on to explain, in a fit of manic babble, that he’d lost the girl of his dreams, that his friends thought he was insane and that he was pretty sure he’d seen every episode of CSI over the span of a few weeks. The doctor had handed over a scribbled medication note very shortly thereafter.

And Josh could sleep again. It was a drugged out heavy sleep. The kind of sleep where you don’t dream. He woke every morning with the numb sensation that he had missed something important and every morning he’d tell himself that it was just the nighttime he was missing. After two months of seeing dusk turn into night turn into dawn, Josh couldn’t comprehend simply waking up to sunlight already peeping through the windows.

But he figured it out okay, and he was even going places with his mates again. Bars and parties and such. He still hadn’t quite worked his way up to the second goal he’d set for himself, getting laid. He knew it wouldn’t be hard if he actually tried, but it was difficult to try. It was like he was still waiting. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was waiting for until it came.

An e-mail from Charlie.

To: joshmeatsix@gmail.com
From: chchcharlie360@yahoo.com
Subject: I come in peace.
Body:
Hey boy, it’s been awhile and I was wondering how things have been. If you don’t hate me too much, maybe we could do a Skype session?
xoCharlie

To: chchcharlie360@yahoo.com
From: joshmeatsix@gmail.com
Subject: Re: I come in peace.
Body:
I don’t hate you.
Would your boyfriend approve of a Skype session?
-Josh

To: joshmeatsix@gmail.com
From: chchcharlie360@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Re: I come in peace.
Body:
I don’t need his approval. I just need to talk to someone. If that’s alright with you.
xoCharlie

His hair had grown out a little bit. That’s what Charlie thought about when she saw him on her computer screen. His hair. It was becoming an obsession of hers. He was running his hand over the messy mop of it and when he looked to his own computer, Charlie was smiling to herself. She looked tired though, with dark circles and all the like. She’d hastily applied a layer of red lipstick, trying to brighten herself before seeing Josh. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to do this but she didn’t worry about it much.

She just waved. “Hey.”

He lifted his hand and said “Hello love.” There was resigned affection in his voice; he couldn’t help it.

“Lemme turn down this music…” She’d been playing Young Guns at a rather loud volume. “There, got it… So how’s things?” She asked.

“Could be worse.”

“Yeah…” Then she realized that she wasn’t sure she could do this. She was crazy for wanting to see him again, she told herself. Two and a half months. Wasn’t that enough time to dissolve someone? For Charlie, it had always taken so much less time. But looking at his face was staggering. It was relieving and unnerving, though she wasn’t sure how it could be both. “So tell me something interesting.”

Josh should have been prepared for this, but he never was when she said it. As if he’d never experienced anything interesting in his whole life. But quickly, he came up with something he always thought was interesting. “No piece of normal-size paper can be folded in half more than seven times in a row… Did you know that?”

Charlie shook her head. “Na-uh, is that true?” She proceeded to pull a sheet of notebook paper from off her nightstand and she folded it over and over, as if to prove the validity of his fact. She tried quite hard to fold the paper eight times, but it wouldn’t work. “Huh. Interesting.”

“You know what would be REALLY interesting?” Josh asked.

“What?”

“If you told me what Charlie was really short for.” It was something that Josh always thought about, knowing that she had lied that very first day when she said she was just Charlie.

“It isn’t short for anything,” but her smile betrayed her lie. “You know that.”

“Come on.”

She shook her head. “No way.”

“It’s Charlotte, isn’t it?” Josh was feeling a little unusual, confident maybe. He wasn’t sure why, maybe because he was a little loopy. It was past midnight and he hadn’t taken any of the stockpiled Ambien, which was weird considering the fact that any time he was at home alone for any extended time, he popped one or two and let the lights fade out.

Charlie looked down at her keyboard, smirking. “No, it’s not.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Charlotte.”

It had always been reflex for Charlie to promptly flip off anyone who called her Charlotte. Instead she said “Charlotte Adrienne Marie Hamilton. Four names, just like you.” She recalled his Facebook display name, Josh James Alphonse Franceschi.

“Charlotte Adrienne Marie Hamilton,” he repeated. It was kind of dumbfounding, thinking of her as something other than Charlie Hamilton. Charlotte, he said in his head again and again. Charlotte. “Why don’t you like your name?”

“It’s not that I don’t like it… It’s just that my parents used to call me Charlotte when I was really little.” That was in the brief selection of memories she still had of the time when her mother and father still spoke, still loved each other. “And I didn’t wanna be Charlotte anymore.” She hadn’t thought about these things in years. The only time she ever considered the fact that she was Charlotte Adrienne Marie was when she looked at her passport.

“I can’t call you Charlotte then?”

“Only if you want to get stabbed in the chest.” A bit of a laugh rolled off her tongue and through her microphone to his speakers. It wasn’t nearly as nice as hearing her laugh right into his ear, with her breath brushing his skin, but it sufficed. As the brightness of her laugh fell from her face, the worn expression returned. She looked sick almost.

“So, like,” he said, “is everything okay?” He was kind of worried but kind of not. He didn’t want to be worried about her was the thing really. Because he wasn’t responsible for making her happy, someone else was. This Dustin person. This boyfriend of hers. It was his job to make sure everything was okay.

She sighed, because she couldn’t understand how he saw through everything. “Yeah, everything’s great. Been sending my portfolio to prospect clients, seeing who needs work… Mostly magazines and all that. It’s great. Hopefully someone wants to work with me. I’m doing really great here.” She was blathering, using the word ‘great’ three times in the same breath. It was pointless pretending that everything was perfect. Josh knew her better than she gave him credit for.

“Really? Then why’d you say you needed someone to talk to in your e-mail?”

“Maybe it was just a ploy to get you to talk to me again.” Her game plan was to be as coy about things as possible. It usually worked. Keep quiet.

“You didn’t need to come up with a ploy.”

“No?"

“No, because you know I’m still wrapped around your finger.” It didn't matter how long she waited to talk to him. Two months or two decades, he'd always oblige her.

She just watched him run his hands through his hair again. It stuck up in whichever direction he pushed it. And she wanted to wrap her fingers around his wrists and over the curve of his shoulders and the side of his face. She wanted this to be literal, not just metaphorical and philosophical. She wanted to show her affection for him in a way that wasn’t based in thought, but in action. In the physical. She could show him what she meant, because her words could never do that exactly right. She rarely said what she meant.

If she had known how to tell the truth, the very exact and whole truth, they wouldn’t have had such problems.