In Drunken Matrimony ✔️

Twenty Eight - No Reception

Oʟɪᴠᴇʀ

"Diabla," I knock gently on her door. There is little shame in admitting I've spent the last twenty minutes sat on the floor outside the spare room, back against the wall listening to my little sisters muffled cries. Some might go in and soothe them, but I prefer my balls right where they are. Everyone that knows Char knows that she opens up in her own time. Yet, now her cries have stopped, my arse is numb, and Elijah isn't answering his phone. "Charlie, are you sleeping?"

"No." A grumble comes from within the walls of the bedroom.

"Can I come in?" I ask.

"No." Is all she repeats.

Charlie knows that stubbornness is a streak all the Osborne's share, so perhaps that is why after a moment of silence, she changes her mind. "Fine." It is a good job really, because my hand was already weighing precariously on the door handle.

Helena is right. My sister is professionally capable of masking her emotions. If it weren't for the tell of her slightly swollen eyes and the blotchy redness spread across her nose, I would never have guessed she was upset. Especially when she plasters on that award winning smile. "I've listened to you crying for half an hour." I say before she can try to dismiss me.

The smile falls and she buries herself back down into her covers, taking to the foetal position, hair curtaining her face. "Creep."

"Is it time for me to run him over with my car?" I ask, perching myself on the edge of the bed. Despite her only been two years younger than me, she shuffles closer and nestles herself into my side like an infant. I stroke her tangled hair with gentle fondness.

"You don't even have a car." She mutters. I flick her ear with something opposite to gentle fondness.

She smacks my hand away afterwards, but she does not move from beside me. "I'll borrow Hallie's. Point is, what's happened? What could be that bad that it's rendered Charlotte Osborne to tears?"

"I don't even know," she sniffs, and I know it is to fight against the fresh wave of tears. "He shouted at me Oli - shouted. He's never raised his voice, not once. Not even when I threw pasta all over him."

I pause, not entirely sure what to say. It's particularly difficult, because I want to support Charlie, but I know she has a tendency to skim over the story where it paints her as something of the villain. Not that either of them are, but, a bull doesn't charge until someone waves red. "Char, and please don't take this the wrong way... but why did he shout? Did you say something, or do something, maybe?"

"Oliver, I swear it, this time, I really did nothing." A moment of silence. "Apart from break the hinge on his living room door when I stormed out." Slowly, she sits up, wiping at the betraying tears with the balls of her palms. "I just asked if we were going to see Tanya this weekend - she's got a new boyfriend, and she's been nagging for me and Lijah to meet him. And he was on his phone - like he always is these days - and says 'I'm busy'. Not 'we're busy', just him.

"So I asked him what he was busy with, and he just says," her voice drops as she poorly imitates her boyfriend, "'I have shit I've got to do Char, not this weekend.' And, yeah, maybe I did get a little suspicious. He tells me when he's going for a shit, Oli, and he can't tell me what he's doing all weekend? So I pestered him, asked what could possibly be so important that we couldn't go see his auntie and his cousin, and he just snapped, looked me dead in the face and shouted, 'will you just fucking drop it, Charlotte?'. So I shouted back, and we argued. Like, really argued. I can't even really remember what was said, but -" she shifts, choking slightly on her words as a strangled sob comes to rise.