Explosions

Charlie sat glued to the television on Sunday. The game this week was in Indianapolis, and conference games always gave her a scare. Olivia sat next to her, though football did not interest her at all. She was on her new phone, occasionally looking up, but she didn’t say anything.

They had to win this if they were going to hope to be in the playoffs. Every single player knew that. The first quarter was going okay. The Texans scored first on defense, but their lead was short-lived. The second quarter began, however, and things got ugly.

After a hard hit between two Colts, Ryan was slow to get up. He stood up, and immediately, he collapsed back onto the ground. Charlie stood up off the couch. Ryan was holding his leg as the trainers ran onto the field. On the sideline, the rookie quarterback, Tom Savage, was warming up.

“No, no, no, no, no,” said Charlie under her breath. “Come on, Ryan.”

She paced back and forth, her fingers tapping nervously on her legs. The game went to commercial, and she inhaled sharply. Olivia looked up at her sister, and she shook her head.

“Why do you care so much about him?” she asked.

Charlie looked back at her sister.

“I’m asking because you were basically a hermit after he left,” said Olivia. “He broke your heart in every sense of the word.”

“He’s changed,” said Charlie.

“Has he?” asked Olivia.

“Yes,” Charlie said. “He and J.J. are pretty close now. Ryan’s grown up a lot, and I’ve become friends with him again, I suppose.”

“He knows you’re just friends right?”

“That’s a ridiculous question, Liv.”

“So? Are you going to answer it?”

Charlie sat down and said, “Yes, he knows we’re just friends. Why would you ask that?”

“Because I like J.J. and I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

“Liv, even if he liked me more than just us being friends, I’m not going to leave J.J. to be with him. It’s a two-way thing. I wouldn’t just go be with him because he likes me.”

The game came back on, and Charlie watched J.J. and an O-Lineman lift Ryan onto a cart. He had a boot on his leg, and he was shaking his head. J.J. took his hand and shook it. Ryan looked up at the sky as he was carted off the field.

“Do you like him?” asked Olivia.

“What?” exclaimed Charlie. “Liv, what? No, I don’t.”

Olivia rolled her eyes and stared at her sister.

“He and I were together for a long time,” said Charlie. “I loved him. I think when you love someone, your feelings never really go away. But that doesn’t mean that I want to be with him. There’s always going to be feelings, but I love J.J. more than anything.”

“I’m just saying that if I had an ex that lived in the same city as me, I would not want them hanging out at my house,” said Olivia.

“Well, this situation is a little different,” replied Charlie. “Ryan’s on J.J.’s team. He does more than just come over here and hang out.”

Charlie watched Tom throw an interception, and she shook her head.

“Olivia, look at me,” she said to her sister.

Olivia crossed her arms and shifted her body toward her sister.

“The easiest thing to do when you get your heart broken is to turn that person away forever,” said Charlie. “But Ryan and I were best friends for a long time, and I can’t just ignore those three years of my life. It took a few months for me to accept that Ryan lives here now, in Houston. Once I did, I’ve been a lot happier. I can’t say I’m not still upset about what happened, but the past is in the past.”

“If you weren’t dating J.J., would you date Ryan again?” asked Olivia.

Charlie shook her head and said, “No, I can’t say I would.”

“Good. You were a wreck, Char,” said Olivia.

“He wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen to me, though,” said Charlie. “I’ve been with worse people, Liv. You know that.”

“You have,” agreed Olivia. “Guess you should be glad J.J. found you when he did, right?”

“I’m grateful every day.”

---

Vince stood in front of Charlie, his arms down at his sides. Charlie could read his face. He was pissed, more than she’d ever seen him. He threw the mail on the table and stared at her.

“I don’t know what you want from me, Vince,” she said.

“I think I was pretty fucking clear last night over dinner,” he replied.

“I’m not moving to Miami,” said Charlie. “I just got this job with the Texans. There’s nothing for me in Miami.”

“Why can’t you get a job down there?” asked Vince. “The Heat? The Dolphins?”

“What do you not understand, Vince? I just got this job. If I leave or ask for a transfer, it’s going to look terrible. We’ve only been dating six months. I’m not going to move to a completely new city with you.”

“Is it because you don’t love me?”

Charlie narrowed her eyes for a second, then said, “I have never said that I loved you. I liked you, yes. If this is what you think we are, then I definitely don’t want to move with you.”

Vince grabbed Charlie’s face. This had been the only thing she’d worried about at the start of the conversation. His temper had taken a turn for the worst, and she tried to shake him off.

“What the hell were we doing then, Charlotte?” he snapped.

“We were having fun,” said Charlie as calmly as she could. “That’s all it was. That’s all it should have been.”

“I thought we had something,” said Vince, putting his lips to her ear.

She tried to pull away from him, but he grabbed onto her arm with his free hand. She struggled again, and her arm twisted in the wrong direction. She cried out, and he moved his hand down to her neck. He squeezed, and she gasped for air.

“Come on, baby,” he said. “Talk to me.”

“I am ending this now,” said Charlie, coughing for air. “It should never have gone this far.”

He tried kissing down her neck, but she elbowed him in the stomach a few times. The sharp pain caused him to let go of her, and she grabbed for her phone. He was doubled over, but he reached for her hand. He swung at her, and she grabbed a knife from the counter. She held the phone up as the other line rang. In her other hand, she held the knife out in front of her.

“You have thirty fucking seconds to get as far away from here as possible,” said Charlie.

“Don’t do this, darling,” Vince said.

“Don’t call me that,” snapped Charlie. “I mean it, Vince. I’m not afraid to press charges. You wanna go to jail before you move to Miami?”

Vince took another step forward.

“Get the fuck out of my apartment!” yelled Charlie.

She put the phone to her ear as the operator picked up. She watched him move towards the door. Before he was over the threshold, he turned back to her.

“You’ll regret this, Charlie,” said Vince.

“I’m sorry, was that a threat?” Charlie snorted. “Because it looks like I’m the one with the leverage here.”

He turned on his heel and slammed the door behind him. Charlie let out a sigh of relief and set the knife gently back down on the counter. The phone was still to her ear, and she heard the operator call out to her.

“Ma’am, are you okay?”

Charlie put her hand to her forehead and said, “Yes, I’m sorry. It was a false alarm. Thank you. I’m sorry.”

She hung up the phone and collapsed onto the floor with tears in her eyes. She was shaking as she touched her neck and felt the welts in her skin.

---

Olivia sat in a chair at the airport, watching her sister pace back and forth. After a good twenty minutes of pacing, they heard the clicking of crutches against the floor. Charlie stopped and watched Ryan coming down the hall, a boot on his left leg. She smiled sympathetically at him, and he gave her a nod. There was no sign of J.J. around, but she had assumed they let Ryan off the plane first because of his crutches. She put her arms around him, and he tried his best to hug her back.

“Is it bad?” asked Charlie, helping him over to the chairs.

“I broke my tibia,” said Ryan, sitting down. “It was a clean break, but my season’s over.”

Charlie shook her head and said, “I’m sorry, Ryan.”

He shrugged. She could tell he wasn’t going to let on any time soon, so she left him to go wait for J.J. Olivia looked up at him, and he felt her staring at him. He looked over at her.

“I suppose you have something to say,” he said.

“I do,” said Olivia.

They were silent, and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He watched Charlie greet J.J., and they stood by the window for a while, talking.

“Don’t ever tell her that you love her,” said Olivia.

“Excuse me?” said Ryan.

“I know you still love her, but don’t you dare fuck up her life,” she said.

“You’re an intuitive young woman,” Ryan replied, “but you’re not so intuitive that you think that I’d break your sister’s heart again.”

“You never know,” said Olivia.

They watched Charlie and J.J. walking toward them. J.J. helped Ryan stand up.

“Fitz, we’ve been talking a little bit about this situation,” he said.

“What situation?” said Ryan. “My leg?”

“Yes, and I think it might be a good idea if you stayed with us until you’re off your crutches,” said J.J. “Charlie agrees with me.”

“I really don’t think that’s necessary,” said Ryan. “You’ve got enough going on at home already.”

“You said you’d only be on crutches for a couple weeks, right?” said J.J. “A couple weeks is nothing.”

“I really can’t accept,” said Ryan.

“You can’t go up and down the stairs of your apartment building with only one leg,” said Charlie.

“There’s an elevator,” Ryan said. “I’ll be fine, really.”

“Are you sure?” asked J.J. “You won’t be able to drive or anything, and I don’t think you should just be sitting in your house for a couple weeks.”

“Come on,” said Charlie. “Let’s get back to our house, and you can decide afterwards, okay?”

“I have a feeling you’re not going to let this go,” laughed Ryan, following slowly on his crutches.

When they pulled into the driveway at the house almost a half hour later, Charlie looked back at Ryan. He took a deep breath and smiled at her.

“Okay, you’ve got me convinced,” he said.

Charlie smiled and said, “Good. J.J. can get you settled. You just give me a list of anything you need from home, and I’ll go get it for you.”

Olivia stopped her as J.J. and Ryan went into the house. She looked at her sister and shook her head.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” she said.

“Olivia, he’s going to need help,” said Charlie. “It was J.J.’s idea, and I happen to agree with him. Ryan won’t be able to do anything by himself for awhile.”

“He spends way too much time here as it is, Charlotte,” said Olivia.

“You’ve been here for three days,” Charlie said. “How the hell do you think you know what goes on under this roof and when it goes on? I can send you right back to Andover. Nothing is stopping me.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Olivia stared into her sister’s eyes. “You’re just as scared for me as I am. I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life”-

“Sure as hell sounds like it”-

“-but you can be damned sure I’m not going to let you fuck up again.”

“Again?” Charlie hissed. “You think that everything you do is so fucking great, don’t you? That nothing is ever your fault and your life has worked out great for you? Look at you. Your life got difficult, and instead of calling the cops on this guy, you ran. I’ve made some fucking mistakes, Olivia, but one mistake I didn’t make was dating Ryan. I don’t regret a goddamned minute of it, up until the very fucking end. Yes, he broke my heart. No, I’m not still hung up on it like everyone else in my fucking life seems to be. So you have two fucking options tonight. You can stay here, with me and J.J. and Ryan, or you can get on a plane back to Boston and face your demons like a fucking adult.”

Someone cleared his throat, and Charlie looked over to see J.J. standing on the front step with a piece of paper in his hand. He glanced between the two sisters and handed Charlie the paper.

“Here’s Ryan’s list,” he said.

Charlie took it, looked at her sister, and said, “Thanks.”