country club, she’d immediately pictured the big dining room where members ate dinner every night. She had not even thought about the pool where the incident happened more than a full decade earlier.
“This is the pool, isn’t it?” Nicholas asked as they stood near the bar, holding the glasses of diet soda they’d gotten just seconds ago.
Diet soda. Charlie had felt the pressure to order a drink at the bar, but she didn’t want to stand around holding a bottle of water. A soda would at least help her look like she fit in. What had surprised her, though, was that Nicholas had ordered the exact same thing. It was like he wanted to show support, and that was the way he did it.
It made her smile.
“Yes,” she said. “This is the pool.”
She could hear the nervousness in her voice, although she still felt that boost of confidence she’d gotten at lunch. Still, it sucked to be back here after the incredible day they’d had. They’d toured her old hometown and enjoyed a mid-afternoon ice cream at one of her favorite childhood restaurants. It had, without a doubt, been the best day she’d had in as long as she could remember, just relaxing and enjoying a day off with a man who made her laugh and smile.
“Closure,” she said on an exhale, doing her best to pep herself up.
Shellie, Jamie, and the small cluster of people who seemed to stick with them everywhere they went were standing at the far end of the pool. They might as well have been on the other side of the world.
“Maybe I should just go ahead and get this over with,” she said, speaking mostly to herself.
“Sure. Do you want me to come with you? I can hold your drink if you guys start throwing punches.”
She smiled, then shook her head. “Not with that group of people around. I need to get Jamie and Shellie off to themselves.”
“Done.”
Without explanation, Nicholas headed across the pool area, weaving his way around the groups of people gathered from one end to the other. Charlie considered running after him, but the last thing she wanted to do was make a scene while trying to stop Nicholas from making a scene.
But he didn’t do that. He walked up to the group gathered with Shellie, said something, then turned, with Shellie and Jamie both obediently following. Charlie’s heart doubled its rate, and she took deep, cleansing breaths to calm down.
“Hi!” Shellie said in a very enthusiastic voice.
She didn’t say Charlie’s name, which was odd. She seemed awkward about it, too, like she was tiptoeing around something.
“Hi, Shellie,” Charlie said with the confidence she’d been lacking last night. It emboldened her. Even though she felt like her heart might pound right out of her chest, she realized she still could present herself as though she was in charge of this entire interaction.
“You look amazing,” Jamie gushed. “I love that dress.”
Charlie looked down at the long, lace cocktail dress she’d bought after shopping for three weeks for the perfect thing to wear to this. Her instinct was to thank Jamie for the compliment, but then she remembered what she’d thought as she’d stood in front of that fitting room mirror, trying on dress after dress and scrutinizing each one to determine if it would have them whispering her nickname behind her back.
“You called me bones.”
The words came out before Charlie had time to really even think them through. They just spilled out, like her body couldn’t contain them anymore. When she dared to look up, she found both Shellie and Jamie staring at her. Shellie looked over at Jamie, who returned the look with a frozen smile. There was confusion vaguely detectable in Shellie’s eyes, but Jamie just looked stunned.
“Here, at the pool, when we were teenagers,” Charlie explained. “You were sitting over there—well, there was a lounge chair next to a lifeguard stand back then. It’s different now. I was doing my summer babysitting job, and you were over there loudly talking about me.”
Shellie’s smile had fallen, but Jamie was looking at Shellie again. Charlie couldn’t tell if they even knew what she was talking about.
“I’m sorry,” Shellie said. “That’s horrible. Are you sure it was us?”
“That doesn’t sound like us,” Jamie said, not sounding very convincing. There was a slight hesitation in her voice, and Charlie would bet she was thinking that it did sound like them. Because it did. Charlie watched as they bullied classmates numerous times over the