Worthy to Think the World Of

Charlie tied up Viola on the porch, safely out of the rain, while she grabbed a hazelnut latte at Sleepy Monk. Usually she’d be with Braden, and after picking up their drinks they’d part ways and she would go to her appointment with Dr. Lynch, but neither of those things was happening today. Both Braden and Dr. Lynch were still out of town, visiting family up the coast. According to Forrest, they wouldn’t be back until Monday.

Piper greeted her with a smile when she came in, removing her hood and tucking her hair behind her ears. The storm had passed overnight, but the rain was supposed to stay for another two days at least. “Morning, Charlie,” said Piper, once it was Charlie’s turn to order.

“Morning,” the blonde replied. “A small hazelnut latte and a chive scone please.”

“What did you get up to last night? I didn’t see you at Jake’s.”

Charlie thought about Forrest, and how they’d made Kraft Dinner and ate it in his bed, then huddled together under the blankets and watched The Lego Movie, but Forrest spent most of it kissing her neck and her jaw and her collarbones and every bit of skin in between. They’d fallen asleep there, but Charlie guessed that Forrest had woken up sometime in the night because when she got up the next morning the laptop was back on his desk and the dishes were gone. He’d woken her up before dawn, because he was going surfing with Neil in Manzanita (the waves were always better when the weather was bad) and wanted to give her a ride home. They’d kissed in his truck for fifteen minutes before Neil finally called, wondering where his best friend was.

“Oh, nothing much,” Charlie said, handing over a ten dollar bill. “How did the party go? The storm didn’t ruin anything?”

“It was only local kids, since nobody wanted to drive down with the weather being so awful. But it was fun, everyone got totally wasted and slept over,” Piper explained. “I had to hang out with Krystal the whole time, which was kinda shitty because Ed was there and we hardly spent any time together, but he drove me home this morning and we’re going out for dinner next week.”

“That’s nice,” Charlie smiled.

The other barista slid her drink across the counter and Charlie bid Piper goodbye. The rain was in a lull, but it would probably pick up again soon, so Charlie untied Viola’s leash quickly. “Wait, Charlie!”

The blonde spun around, just about to step off the porch and into the rain, looking at Piper expectantly. “Yeah?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to come over later? Neil and Forrest are probably gonna be taking up the living room when they get back from Manzanita, and I don’t really want to hang out with them alone. We can even do homework, if you don’t feel like doing something girly like painting our nails or whatever.”

Charlie hadn’t even thought about what was going to happen the next time she saw Forrest, but suddenly it was the only thing on her mind. What would happen at school? Were they dating? Was she allowed to tell anybody about it? What she supposed to say to her parents?

She pushed all those thoughts to the back of her head, though, because Charlie had been neglecting Piper lately, the bubbly girl who’d reached out when Charlie could barely say two words to another person. “Sounds fun,” she said, with what she hoped was an encouraging smile.

It seemed to convince Piper, because her face lit up and she hugged Charlie. “Awesome! I’ll text you when I’m off.”

The redhead bounced back inside and Charlie turned toward the rain. She and Viola hurried back to the house as quickly as they could, and Charlie’s latte spilled on her hand a few times from walking so fast. She left her jacket in the foyer and grabbed a towel to dry off Viola.

“Charlie? Is that you?”

Charlie followed the sound of her mother’s voice, cradling the latte in her cold hands. “Hi,” she said, finding Rebecca in the hallway, transferring clothes into the dryer. Charlie hadn’t seen either of her parents in over 24 hours, because she spent the night with Forrest and got home while they were both still asleep, then slipped out some time between her father leaving for work and her mother waking up.

“Did you come home last night? I checked your room before I went to bed and you weren’t there.”

Rebecca didn’t sound particularly angry, just a little surprised. Charlie hesitated a moment before answering. “I stayed at a friend’s. I got back pretty early this morning.”

“Which friend?”

Charlie had been worried her mom would ask this. “Um, Forrest Lynch.”

“Lynch?”

“He’s Dr. Lynch’s son,” she explained. Rebecca stood up, turning toward her daughter. “He’s been really great, him and Piper, they’re both great.”

“A boy,” Rebecca mused. The last time she and Charlie had talked about boys was Dean, when he’d come to see her after Sarah broke her nose. Rebecca had interrogated him at the door, then did the same with her daughter later that same evening. The conversation wasn’t a high point in their relationship, and Charlie wanted to forget about it just as much as she wanted to forget seeing Dean that day.

“It’s not like that,” Charlie insisted, though it was, and hoped her tone was convincing.

Rebecca raised her eyebrows. “Alright, if you say so. But I want to meet him.”

“Mom,” Charlie complained.

To her astonishment, her mother smiled. “You almost sounded like a teenager just now.”

Charlie realized that she had, and for the first time in a long time too. There had been a lot of that lately.

“I’m going to Piper’s later,” she said, once the moment passed. “Probably won’t be back for dinner, so you get the house to yourself tonight.”

“You I never have to worry about,” Rebecca replied. “It’s your father that never gives me a moments rest. But with the both of you out, I can finally relax.”

Viola, who Charlie had let loose upon returning home, raced around the corner and promptly sat down next to Rebecca with her tongue hanging from her mouth.

“Of course I didn’t forget about you!” Rebecca exclaimed, scratching behind Viola’s ears. The terrier craned her head, wanting a certain spot to be itched, making both Rebecca and Charlie laugh. “You have a good time with Piper tonight, honey.”

Charlie nodded, heading to her room. She set down her latte and took off her jacket, then climbed into bed and grabbed The Hobbit off of her bedside table.

A few hours and one grilled cheese sandwich later, Charlie’s phone was buzzing with a text from Piper. She was on her way home from work, and wanted to let Charlie know that she could come by any time. Apparently there was some big feast planned for dinner thanks to Piper and Neil’s mom, including lots of seafood and burgers, which seemed like an odd combination to Charlie, but apparently this was the norm in the Turner household.

Charlie stood in front of her mirror for a full two minutes before deciding that changing would be suspicious. She was wearing her favourite blue sweater and a new pair of jeans — she’d bought several pairs on the shopping trip up to Astoria with her mother — and it shouldn’t matter anyway what she was wearing, even if Forrest was going to be there. So Charlie wound her scarf around her neck and put on her rain jacket, tucking her phone and keys into her pockets. There was a chance they’d be doing homework, so she put a few things into a tote bag to take along.

“See you later!” she called out to her mom, while pulling on her boots at the front door.

“Have a good time!” came the response.

The rain had eased up, and Charlie was relieved that she wasn’t soaked through when she arrived at Piper’s. She walked up to the door and removed her hood, quickly twisting her hair into a knot atop her head before knocking.

Unlike Charlie, Piper had changed. She stepped aside to let Charlie in, bundled up in a cable-knit cardigan and a pair of grey leggings, and smiled her usual smile. “Hey,” she greeted cheerily, while Charlie removed her jacket and boots. “I figured we could hang out in my room for a bit. The guys are paying some dumb video game in the living room.”

“Okay,” said Charlie with a nod. She reminded herself again that she was here to see Piper, and that just because Forrest happened to be here at the same time didn’t mean they would be spending time together.

“Did you wanna say hi first? Not that they’ll notice, I was sitting in there earlier and it took ten minutes for Forrest to realize I was right next to him.”

Charlie laughed. “It doesn’t really matter to me. We can go straight to your room, if you want.”

Piper ended up taking her to the living room, apparently to steal some chips, and Charlie’s heart started to race the second she stepped through the doorway. She stared at the back of Forrest’s head, her breath caught in her throat, and found herself frozen on the spot.

“Charlie, do you like sour cream and onion?” asked Piper, who was standing by the coffee table staring at the array of snack food.

The game paused immediately, and Forrest jerked around, his eyes widening when they landed on Charlie. “Hey,” he breathed, a smile breaking out on his face.

“Dude, what the hell,” Neil droned, waving his controller in the air. “Oh, hey, Charlie. What’s up?”

Charlie blinked, tearing her gaze from Forrest’s to smile at Neil. “Not much,” she shrugged. “How was, uh, surfing?”

“Good waves. Forrest was shit though, weren’t you, man?”

“Just a little distracted,” Forrest replied, still staring at Charlie. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“She’s here to hang out with me,” interrupted Piper, deciding on the sour cream and onion chips and a bag of Halloween candy. “C’mon, Charlie, let’s go upstairs.”

Charlie lifted her hand in a small wave, looking at Forrest over her shoulder as Piper dragged her from the room.

When they got upstairs, Piper dumped the food on her desk and hopped onto her bed, fixing Charlie with narrowed eyes. “Okay, what was all that?”

“Huh?”

“The heart eyes, obviously,” Piper said with a roll of her eyes. “Like, I know Forrest has a thing for you, but when did you start to have a thing for him?”

“Oh,” Charlie said, her voice cracking. “It’s—we’re not. At least, I don’t think we are. I don’t really know, to be honest.”

Piper sat back, chewing on her lip in thought. “You need to find out. Because he’s going to drag you along and it’s going to suck. Trust me. Forrest has a hard time opening up about this sort of thing, to the point where you’ll start to wonder whether he has any real feelings at all, so you have to force him to talk. Otherwise you’ll never know what’s going on.”

It didn’t seem to Charlie like Forrest was pretending, but Piper had been in a relationship with him. She’d been through this before, the curiosity and the hesitation until finally everything falls into place, and the suspended stage in between where you have to decide whether or not this is going to turn into a relationship.

“Okay,” Charlie nodded. She trusted Piper, knew that she was looking out for Charlie and her best interests. Charlie hadn’t had somebody like Piper in a long time.

They did a bit of homework; Charlie helped Piper with her History assignment and cracked open her school issued copy of The Old Man and the Sea. They were moving right onto another book now that they’d finished The Grapes of Wrath and handed in their essays, and Charlie was looking forward to reading the short Hemingway novel. She’d read A Call to Arms before — last year when she was working in the bookshop, the owner had let Charlie borrow any books she wanted, so she went through at least two every week.

“I’ve never seen anybody read like that,” Piper said, some time later.

Charlie glanced up at her, still half-absorbed in the world of the book, blinking owlishly. “What?”

But Piper just laughed and went back to her work. Charlie frowned, her gaze flicking back to the page. She only got through one more paragraph when Neil knocked on the door, poking his curly red head through the crack. “Dinner.”

The girls followed him downstairs, and much to Charlie’s suspicion, Piper made sure that the blonde was sat next to Forrest. Charlie had met Mr. and Mrs. Turner before in passing, and was grateful that they didn’t ask her an absurd amount of meaningless questions the way that some parents did.

There was so much food at the table that Charlie wondered how they were going to eat it all. Forrest insisted that she try all the different kinds of seafood, from scallops to halibut to prawns, and when she stared wide-eyed at the prawn, the corners of his eyes crinkled from smiling so wide.

“It has eyes,” she whispered, looking at Forrest helplessly. “And — are those antennae?”

“I can’t believe you’ve never seen a prawn before,” Piper said, grinning at her across the table.

“Was the food very different in Nevada?” Mrs. Turner asked. “It doesn’t seem like it would be.”

“It’s not,” Charlie said. “My dad has a shellfish allergy, so we never had any of this stuff.”

“Are you sure you don’t have a shellfish allergy? You wouldn’t know if you’ve never eaten it before.”

Charlie shook her head. “My mom made sure I got allergy tested when I was a kid. She’s a nurse, so she’s kinda obsessed with that sort of thing. I hardly ever get sick because she’s crazy about ‘providing a safe and sterile environment’ or something.”

“Why don’t you guys provide a safe and sterile environment?” Piper joked, glancing between her parents.

Mrs. Turner raised an eyebrow. “Your home is very safe, dear. As for sterile, get your brother to shower more often and then maybe we’d be getting somewhere.”

“Hey!” Neil objected, his mouth full. Forrest snorted and Charlie grinned at him. A minute later, when she met Piper’s gaze across the table, the redhead raised her eyebrows in a knowing fashion and mouthed ‘heart eyes’ at her.