Free Can't Let You Go by Jenny B Jones Page B

date number six.”

Chapter Nine

    L oneliness was a funny thing.
    It could flood your mind with memories, thoughts, and countless what-ifs.
    It could also scatter all that away like a swift wind and leave you thinking of nothing but one person.
    Tonight I was thinking of one person.
    Charlie Benson.
    I sat on the back deck of my parent’s home, missing them and unable to stay inside that quiet house one more minute. Listening to the crickets and the tree frogs, I stared into the dancing flames of James’s fire pit. It was too hot to be lighting fires, but the crackle and snap soothed my ragged nerves.
    My feelings for Charlie made no sense. I had just broken up with my long-time boyfriend. Why wasn’t I sitting here moping over Ian? Yet I thought of him less and less with each passing day. I didn’t want to feel this Herculean tug toward Charlie, as if he held this magnet, pulling me in with a force I was helpless to stop. We had a history, so many moments as close friends and more. He had been my confidante in some of my life’s darkest hours. But he’d also wounded me more than once, throwing me over for someone better, prettier, girlier. I’d despised every one of those girls. And sure, I’d done the same to him at least once, but it wasn’t like I had a pattern of walking away, of seeking out blonder pastures.
    Charlie Benson was a risk. Could I really believe that he had changed in the last few years? I didn’t even know what I wanted to be when I grew up. The last thing I needed was to get involved and complicate my life further.
    “Is this a private bonfire or can anyone join?”
    I jumped at the voice, my breath seizing in my chest. “Charlie.” I laid a hand over my galloping heart. “You scared me.”
    “Sorry.” With a sheepish grin he climbed the few stairs to join me. He eased his tall body into the seat beside me, his long legs stretching before him. “I’ve been calling you for a few hours. I was getting a little worried you were getting into trouble with Maxine now that your folks were gone.”
    I leaned my head back on my chair and laughed. “She has a whole list of things for us to do now that I’m back in town. Some of them are even legal.” I picked up my phone and took it off mute. “I guess I still had the volume off from wedding dress shopping.”
    “Find anything?”
    “Frances didn’t.” I gave him the bare details of Frances’s dress travails, knowing the long version would just make his eyes glaze over. “We did find my bridesmaid dress.”
    “Is it awful?”
    “It’s actually pretty.” It was a bright coral full-length gown, Grecian-style, with a high waist, flowing skirt, and one wide strap that crossed my left shoulder. I really did like it, but Frances’s assurance I could wear it again was simply laughable. Nobody wore bridesmaid dresses again. They sat in closets and gathered dust and moth holes.
    “I bet you look amazing in the dress,” Charlie said.
    The boy did know how to turn a head. “Thank you. I guess this wedding is really happening.”
    “Accept it.”
    “I am trying.”
    “My brother’s a good guy.”
    “I’m sure he is. It’s just that it’s happened so fast, and nobody seems to be concerned about this.” My best friend was not frivolous or spontaneous. “And she’s about to start her PhD program.”
    “And my brother works with cars.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not being a snob here. I’m the first one in my family to have a degree—high school or college. But her brain is not normal; you know that. She’s Mensa. She’s Jeopardy champ material. She wrote a college text book her sophomore year, for crying out loud.” And sixty universities used it. “I can barely keep up a conversation with her. Is your brother going to be a good conversation partner when she wants to dissect Middle Eastern religion’s role on global affairs?”
    “Maybe what they have goes well beyond how good they might be on paper. So