I’m a bad man.

I’m really bad at keeping secrets.

Tuesday morning, when I’m hung over, drinking coffee in the kitchen, and regretting my numerous life choices, I check my text messages.

I get a few from Charlie and weirdly he’s asking for advice.

I’m an accomplice in the crime last night.

I can’t tell him or else his leering eyes will turn into something worse. He’s built from all the years of outdoor work and could probably

bend me like a straw if I got him angry.

image [https://i.ibb.co/42TwVrn/text1.png]

I feel even worse.

I do something stupid.

I offer to help.

text2.png [https://i.ibb.co/6X3HKQj/text2.png]

Charlie takes forever to reply this time. I go through some of the boxes in the kitchen and start unpacking until I hear another notification.

image [https://i.ibb.co/MsSwj3T/text3.png]

I’ve never seen someone put several emojis like weird sign language after every text message.

We decide I can come tomorrow in the late afternoon, when it’s less hot and I won’t melt into a puddle. I look at my hands and realize

I was not built for hard labor, with my soft hands from years of desk work.

I tell myself this will just be another opportunity to learn about country life and I can finally start writing what I know.

----------------------------------------

I no longer want to write what I know.

I know too much.

Charlie and I are done for the day and were sitting inside an old barn next to a field of white flowers.

I’m sitting on an old crate and my entire body is screaming “Why did you do this to us?”

Charlie goes through a cooler in the corner and gives me a sports drink. I greedily gulp it and he laughs when I drink too fast and it

goes down wrong.

“Relax, it ain’t going nowhere,” he chuckles.

I grumble and try other ways to cool down. I take off my shirt and use it to wipe all the sweat off my face.

Charlie leers at me again and I get nervous. He stares too long and he catches himself and stops.

Is he some sort of prude? I can’t take my shirt off in front of him?

“I don’t know why you’re like this Charlie,” I say. “I’ve never done anything to you! I even came today because I felt guilty about the field.”

“You’re the one that did donuts in front of my house,” Charlie asks.

“No. It was Annabelle. I was just there for the ride.”

Charlie’s laugh booms throughout the barn and I’m no longer angry but confused.

“I don’t know why you’d think I’d ever be cross with you,” Charlie replies. “I could never.”

“I feel like you are with the way you look at me. I’ve never seen someone look at me like that before.”

“…really now,” Charlie says softly. “I’m sorry. I just…I just don’t know-“

The tone of his voice starts to shift and he looks a little...shy. He looks at the ground and I start to feel like a bully.

He sighs and starts to leave but I get up, and stop him to apologize. He gets up close to my face and I can feel his breath on me. Charlie is probably going to beat the shit out of me for ruining his yard.

I take a step back and accidentally bump into a bucket, it sounds louder than it should be.

“I don’t know how anyone has never looked at you the way I have,” Charlie says. “It’s a shame. I guess I’m lucky to be the first.”

He slowly leans in and I am frozen in place as it finally sets in what is happening.

Charlie kisses me.

He’s a good kisser and for some reason, this makes me upset.

I’m so shocked I just stand there, and I don’t know what to say or do when he pulls away.

Charlie decides for me as he brings me closer and kisses me again, deeper and I panic because he’s a good kisser.

Suddenly I hear a weird noise, bumping from the corner of the barn. I turn around, paranoid, swiveling my head from side to side.

“What was that,” I shouted. “Who’s there?”

“It’s probably just a raccoon. “Don’t worry about it,” Charlie assures me.

He tries to start kissing me again but I put my hand out, and stop him before this gets any weirder.

“I can’t. I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’m so confused.”

“I get it, so am I sometimes,” Charlie said. “I question myself a lot.”

“You? You’re insecure?”

“I mean I wouldn’t say that….I just don’t really know what I’m doing. You ever feel like that?”

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“Yeah,” I say quietly. “But that doesn’t make me cheat on my girlfriend.”

Charlie’s lip twitches a little and he seems a little disgusted.

“You think Annabelle is my girlfriend? Why does everyone think that,” he complains. “I ain’t never said she was.”

“But. You’re always together. And the way you looked at her at the bar too!”

“I met Annabelle before I could count to ten,” Charlie says. He grins and leans down to get another sports drink from the cooler.

“She’s my sister at this point. Nothing more.”

“Oh.”

He took a giant swig of his drink, put the cap back on left it on the ground.

Charlie has some amazing self-confidence because he gets close to me again.

“I wasn’t looking at her at the bar, silly. I was looking at you.”

“Oh.”

‘Oh’ is my new catchphrase because I don’t know what to say.

My brain is rattled with this information and everything makes much more sense.

Charlie leans in close and tells me he’ll call me later.

I tell him I don’t want him to call later.

“You didn’t seem so against it earlier, I think I even heard you moan a little,” Charlie said with glee.

“That’s nothing. I’m past all of this anyway!”

“What? Past all of what?”

“Well you know, I tried uh…this… during college for a while. It was nothing. Stopped all of it when I graduated.”

The more I spoke the more skeptical Charlie became. He nodded, soaking in all this information.

I kept talking about how I tried all sorts of things during college and this was no different.

“Okay sir,” Charlie says. “Whatever you say.”

He laughs again and I know he doesn’t understand. This isn’t happening again.

“I’ll call you later okay? I gotta get going to bed early. Tomorrow’s a busy day,” Charlie tells me. “Stay out of trouble!”

“What trouble?”

“You know. My front yard.”

“Oh.”

I grab my shirt from the ground, suddenly more self-conscious than ever, and tell myself that I will never talk to Charlie ever again.

I know I’m lying to myself because it’s impossible to avoid anyone in a town as small as Edelweiss.