Runaway

I. The Great Escape

He called me at my favorite time at night—ten ten, a double dose of my lucky number. From the moment I picked up, I could tell something was wrong. All he told me was to pack my bags. We were skipping this town.

“But I’m house-sitting,” I weakly replied. The boxes in my room sat wide open, swallowing all of my words unsaid.

He laughed.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

And then he hung up.

I always expected these things with Charlie. He was spontaneous and that part of him was undeniably beautiful. A late night adventure had never been a bad thing, but he had never told me to pack a bag before, insinuating that this wasn’t our normal kind of adventure. Nothing had sounded so permanent before.

I did what I always did when it came to Charlie.

I dove right in.

~*~

True to his word, he was at my door in nineteen minutes and thirty-six seconds. He didn’t like it when I counted time like that—I could see it in the flash of his eyes, a flash of desperate sadness when he heard me holding onto the minutes like that, because that was when he knew that something was really wrong—so I didn’t mention his promptness, or how my mind was about to explode from all of the thoughts circling through it. He was smiling at me now, so eager, and I didn’t want to see the way that smile would fall, giving way to his inner torment, knowing that I was unhappy.

I couldn’t say anything to vaporize that smile.

I loved Charlie. With all of my heart, I cared for this broken boy. He was standing in front of me with a crooked smile, a daring look in his eye, his emotions contagious. A worn out pair of jeans and a plain black t-shirt, tight enough to show the developing muscles underneath but not enough to look small, clung to him in a way that would have made my mouth water if it was any other night but tonight. He was taller than me but not more than a head, running his hands through a mess of brown hair on top of his head, hair that always looked untidy and unkempt, as if he had just rolled out of bed and only managed to run his fingers through it. It fell in front of those hypnotic blue and green eyes, the colors bleeding together like a kaleidoscope. His face was kind but could turn cocky at the drop of a dime if that was who he needed to be. Charlie had many faces, a child actor since age eight, a gifted liar since birth.

My favorite face was the one he reserved for me.

The smile was all it took. One look at that smile with his eyes on me could have blown me straight off of my feet and into the middle of Oz. It was like magic, the kind like fireflies dancing in the night sky. And he reminded me of a night sky, with the way he moved, the way his eyes lit up when I walked toward him like I was now, reaching up to push his hair out of his eyes, but it just fell back in place the moment I moved my hand away. He smiled down at me, and I could see the chip he had in his right front molar. I loved that he wasn’t completely perfect.

I loved the way he looked at me because it showed that he loved me, too. And maybe that would be worth it.

“Did you pack?” he asked me, grinning widely. “I would prefer it if I didn’t have to pick out your clothes myself, Bumble Bee.”

“I’m packed,” I huffed, rolling my eyes at him and puffing my cheeks out at the nickname he knew wore on my nerves. He smirked a little, noticing my displeasure, but he didn’t say anything. I let him pass me by through the front door, let him come inside, and the moment I thought he was going to bypass me for my bag was when he closed in and kissed me, making me giggle. He grabbed my duffle bag with a wink, a big grin on his face.