I try my hardest and hitch Charlie’s shorts up to my navel, but they just keep slipping down. I don’t know where my skirt is, can’t remember how I got to his house, and I definitely don’t remember a damn thing between then and when I woke up.

I decided to just sneak out of his house and deal with it later.

It’s for the best anyway.

Just as I put my hand on the doorknob, a loud banging comes from the door.

“Charlie! CHARLES! WAKE UP! Feed the dog CHARLES!”

Charlie’s mother scared the piss out of me. I clutch the doorknob like a life raft and pray to the Good Lord Above that she doesn’t try to enter.

Charlie stirs awake, sits up in bed, takes one look at me, and mumbles a quick greeting. I blush and avert my eyes when he starts to get up from the bed but then I see he has clothes on.

His gaudy looking shorts from last night sparkle as he walks to the bathroom, opens it, and comes back out with a plastic bag. He drops it on the wooden floor and a smell comes from it.

“Your skirt. You got beer and vomit all over it,” he said in disgust.

“I have never been so happy to see vomit all over my clothes in my life,” I say.

“What? Girl, what are you on about,” he asks me.

I waddle over to his bed, still holding up his gargantuan shorts and sit on it. I turn hot all over as he pesters me to speak, and I finally can but I can’t look him in the eye.

“Sir. I woke up this morning with different clothes. And you had no shirt on,” I said quietly. “I was about to sneak out and deny everything.”

“’Aint nothing to deny. You’re confused ‘cause you read too many of those silly romance books,” Charlie said.

He laughed his weird horse laugh, and I covered my face, as if it would erase my bad decisions from last night. He sat next to me, and the bed creaked down a little. I lean on his shoulder, and he puts his arm around me, and draws me close.

“Annabelle Lee, if any man ever takes advantage of you one night while you are drunker than a skunk I will be in prison by the morning,” he assures me.

“I’ll visit you every chance I get,” I reply.

“You better!”

I feel so childish and insecure when Charlie explains what happened. I figure maybe I’m just being paranoid- the hangover ‘aint helping much neither.

Charlie’s mom ain’t helping much when she opens the door and sees us together, hugging up on each other.

She makes some sort of choking noise, and then quickly slams the door.

“I told you not to come in without knocking Momma, I ain’t a child no more,” Charlie shouted.

“Charlie, stop!”

“I don’t walk into her room and tell her about her life!”

“Charles she’s your mother,” I say in exasperation. “Go tell her nothing happened.”

“No, you do it.”

“Get me some pants and I will.”

Charlie finds a pair of pants that can fit me, and a shirt as well. It’s a pair of gym shorts from high school wedged all the way in the back of his closet, dying in the dark until I rescued it. The shirt is from the top of his “clean” pile, and I pray to the Good Lord Above that it is indeed clean, but I doubt it.

After getting dressed I come down the familiar, old squeaky steps and enter the kitchen to meet Charlie’s parents. The kitchen is nice and warm, the smell of bacon is everywhere, and the cute yellow and white tablecloth is still there.

Nothing has changed.

Charlie’s father raises his eyebrows when he sees me, and his mother says nothing. I take a seat at the table and try not to sound guilty. Yet I do somehow sound guilty for a crime I did not commit.

“Good morning,” I say.

“Good morning, Anne. You want some coffee,” Mr. Wolf asks me.

“Yes please, sir.”

He passes the coffee carafe and Mrs. Wolf gives me a mug of my own.

“Charlie was very kind last night,” I announce.

“Oh, was he now,” Mr. Wolf asks.

“Yes. Took me home when I had a little too much to drink. ‘Shoulda known better.”

Mrs. Wolf seems pleased at the news of Charlie and I acting as one should. Mr. Wolf has had enough gossip for now, and he putters off to feed the dog and fetch the mail.

Once he’s gone, Charlie’s mother is a whole new woman.

“Are you sure you and Charles-“

“Yes, I am sure,” I nod.

Mrs. Wolf puts the stove on low and sighs. She gives me the knowing look, the look that all women give each other when they are about to say something that should not travel.

“I fear for Charles soul in that town,” she tells me. “Especially with all those communists there.”

“I’m sure he can fight off anything that comes his way,” I reply.

“Charles is strong. That is for sure. But he, like all men, are weak in another way.”

She stretches out the words, and I hope she is not trying to tell me what I think she is, because this is a lot before 9 AM.

“Even in Edelweiss he is not safe,” Mrs. Wolf says. “That…Nick. I know what he is, and I don’t like it.”

“What is he!?!”

Mrs. Wolf has an interesting, a bit of a scary smile on her face. She makes the same face all the old women at church make right before they tell the entire town and Jesus someone else’s personal business.

“I want to say a temporary bachelor, but now he’s with Evangeline. Poor thing,” Mrs. Wolf says.

She takes the bacon out, keeps the fat, and now starts on making eggs. I try to help her clean as she goes and she smiles, approving of me, all thoughts of my indecency out the window.

“I want to believe that I saw something else the other night,” Mrs. Wolf said. “It was back before he left. The night before, to be exact.”

“What did you see?”

“I was finding it hard to sleep and looked out my back window. There I saw Nicholas and Charles sitting outside, using the old telescope. It looked harmless until I saw Nicholas lean over and….”

Mrs. Wolf made a look of disgust and I tried to make the most shocked face possible I could muster. I worry I am overdoing it, but it seems my acting is finally improving because she seems to believe it.

“I won’t say anything to Pastor Grant if you’re here and something happens,” Mrs. Wolf said. “I most definitely would not.”

She would. I can feel it in my bones.

“You’re telling me to seduce Charlie,” I ask her dryly. “That man has no interest in me whatsoever.”

“Don’t, don’t say that,” she replies. “He is a good man. And look at you! You’re gorgeous.”

She gestured to me while I wiped my hands on his old shirt and was not feeling gorgeous in that moment. I was starting to see why Charlie was so scared of telling me.

He knew his mom’s reaction, so he assumed the worst in me.

I grab the ends of my shirt and try not to cry. Charlie is rejected without even knowing it, and I don’t want to be the one to tell him.

His mother is well-meaning. She does love him. She loves me too. She hugs me tight and promises me she’ll talk me up more to him. She tells me that she wishes she was as beautiful as I when she was my age.

Mr. Wolf returns with the newspaper, and I walk off before he can see me crumple like an old napkin. I walk up the stairs and, on my way, I see Charlie.

I stopped him, took his hand, and took him to his room.

“Why you got that look on your face,” Charlie asked.

“Your mom knows, Charles.”

He didn’t need an explanation of what she knew. He just wanted to know how.

“She said she saw you and Nick the night before you left for Las Estraalas. Said she saw y’all outside.”

Charlie has a new look on his face that I have only seen once before. During the summer of 8th grade, he broke Josh Hasley’s window on a dare, and of course he was caught. He had the same face, the International Face of Fear, no translation needed.

Amazing how a man can be a foot taller and weigh twice as much than his mother and still be afraid of her.

He is now the one covering his face in shame and remorse on the bed, and now we have traded places because now I’m the one comforting him. His hair is still wet from the shower and is getting everywhere, but he doesn’t care.

“Charlie it’s gonna be okay,” I tell him.

“Anne she saw us having sex I-“

“CHARLIE!”

I smack his arm, and he grunts and complains repeatedly as I smack his arm over and over again.

“She told me she saw y’all kiss. Charlie, what the hell?”

“Oh. Oh okay, that’s not so bad,” Charlie says.

The International Face of Fear is now gone and I want to smack his face.

“Charlie, you can’t just give it up like that, you gotta make him work for it,” I tell him.

“I am still not having girl talk with you.”

“Fine. I’m just saying, why do it with someone you ain’t sure you’re never gonna see again!”

“I am not being judged by a girl that lost her virginity in the tenth grade,” Charlies replies.

“Butt stuff don’t count. Everyone knows that. I’ve only done butt stuff.”

“Lie to yourself all you want but you ain’t pure neither,” Charlie says. “Stop lecturing me and do something if you care so badly.”

“You’re right.”

Charlie looks uncomfortable again because I am no longer arguing with him.

Weird man.

“Charlie, ask your momma to let me stay here until New Year’s,” I tell him. “You said you’re gonna be here ‘till then, right?”

“Uh…yeah?”

“Well, just pretend that during that time, all of a sudden you’ve just…noticed how much I’ve changed… and matured.”

“You look the same.”

“Good Lord, Charles, ask me out, make it public! Half the town already thinks we’re engaged!”

I groan in frustration and lie on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. A mechanical pencil is stuck in the ceiling, and I try to remember a time when it has not been there.

I can’t.

“Lying is wrong,” Charlie said.

“Yeah but, think about it Charlie. You wanna be famous, don’t you? Right?”

“I- ”

“You want to do country music, right? You need an image to uphold. I need an image too.”

“I just. I didn’t go to Las Estrellas to become stuck. I don’t want to.”

“Then what are you going to tell your mother? What are you gonna do when she tells another lady in town that you’re single?”

Charlie lies on the bed with me, and he also inspects the ceiling pencil, possibly going through the same thought process as I.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“I hate you,” Charlie says.

I turn towards him and come in close for a hug. He holds me to his chest, and I smell his 17-in-1 body wash. He holds me tighter and I start to wonder if my intentions of being his fake girlfriend aren’t pure.

“You always get every man I’ve ever wanted, Anne. Even myself,” Charlie says. “Are you happy?”

“No.”

“And why not?”

“’Gotta take me on a date first,” I mumble into his chest. “Make a proper woman out of me.”

He laughs his horse laugh, and I know he is all better.

“By your logic Anne, I am in fact, still a virgin.”

“Oh, gosh. You’re dirty, you know that?”

I smack him with a pillow while he continues laughing. I strike him faster, but it only seems to make him laugh harder. I pause as a thought sinks into my skull.

“Which one of y’all is the girl?”

“Get out of my room you stupid, girl.”

“Make me.”

It is now my turn to be attacked by the pillows. It is an unfair fight. He tickles me and I try not to scream, but I do, when his mother opens the door, and sees him on top of me.

She closes the door.