July 2085: in between days, part 5.5

Charlie Roseland is 20. Ingrid Thompson is 22. Laney Thompson is 26. 

Soundtrack, "In Between Days" by The Cure

Thursday, July 27, 2085: 11:30 pm


Ingrid left two car-loads of people downstairs and went to see if her sister liked the idea of having company. Seeing as how Laney wasn’t even dressed, it didn't look promising.

“You okay? Are you sick or something?”

Laney moved, finally, to resituate her head on the pages of her book. “No, I'm okay.”

“Did something happen at work?”

“No, nothing ever happens at work.”

“Then what are you doing? Reading through osmosis?”

Ingrid snickered at her own joke, but Laney just stared on, blank and unconcerned, occupied and sort of dazed.




“Do you care if I have some friends over?” Ingrid asked.

“How many?”

“I don’t know, four or twelve or twenty-five?”

“I don't know, Iggy. I don’t want to get dressed.”

“It’s okay. I’ll take them up to the roof. What are you reading about?”

“Huh?”

“The book. Is it a happy story or a sad one?”

“Oh.” Laney picked up her head for a moment to look at the pages, crumpled slightly by her cheek. “I don’t know yet.”

—

They had all grown tired of the summer fair, but the night was too warm and too lovely to end so soon. Charlie was tired of summer, in general, and he was ready for it to be over. But Ian finally showed up, so while Charlie was tired, frustrated, bored, and a thousand other things, he figured he would stay. Being bored with friends was maybe better than being bored on his own, even if just barely.

Ingrid stood on a tennis table, seeming without any concern whatsoever that she might fall off and crack her head on the concrete. Ingrid never knew what she’d be doing tomorrow or next week or next year, and there was something intriguing about that to Charlie. He wanted to stop noticing where she was and what she was doing all the time. But he couldn’t, and he guessed that she wanted it that way.

When Ingrid found that nobody was paying any attention to her, she shouted. “Charlie! Beer pong! Charlie!”

Charlie waved a little, but didn’t go over.


“The beer is warm,” Charlie said.

“But it’s free,” Ian countered.

Charlie didn’t want to drink the warm beer, even if free, and so he just stared at it feeling like the squarest twenty year-old guy who ever lived.


Ingrid stopped shouting and climbed down off the table. “Hey, Charlie.”

“Hay is for horses.”

“Ha. I think we have some more in the fridge. Colder ones. You wanna help me carry it up?”

Charlie shrugged. “Sure,” he said.

—

Laney hadn’t moved from the couch since Ingrid saw her last, but at least she was sitting now. Ingrid decided the blank look in her sister's eyes was not so much sad as it was completely occupied and wistful.

“Hi,” Laney said to them, but didn’t turn her head.


“What’s wrong with your sister?”

“Hmmm...” Ingrid guessed that it was the Greek dreamboat who had transferred into her department a couple months ago. He was all Laney ever talked about. “Most likely... a smoldering crush on a hopelessly unavailable man?”

Ingrid shot a twisted smile at Charlie, which made him flinch. She laughed and reached past him to line up bottles on the counter.


“Hey, I want to show you something in my bedroom.”

Charlie hesitated. “I bet you do.”

Ingrid laughed. “Hell, give me some credit. I’ve never had to trick a man into my bedroom. But I really do want to show you something. Honest.”

She led them both into her bedroom, flicking on a lamp that flooded the room in five-thousand combined watts of light.


“It's uncanny! He looks like you, don’t you think?”

“Who is he?”

“Some dude I made out with for two months junior year. He had this little crinkle between his eyebrows that reminds me of you. Funny though, I just had this picture on some old roll of film for so long. I only just developed it. I hardly even remembered who he was, but then I did. He had the best eyebrows—like yours—strong, moody, intense. You know, good in light and shadows.”


Charlie wasn’t listening. She didn't mean to bore him, and she certainly didn’t mean to make him uncomfortable. In fact, Ingrid wanted nothing more than to make Charlie very comfortable in so many ways. She watched that funny little crinkle between his eyebrows fold and deepen with so much worry. “What do you want, Charlie?”

It wasn’t so ridiculous a question, but he frowned at the wall like it burdened him to even think about it.

“If you didn’t have to worry about doing what was right,” she said, “or what you should do, or what people expect you to do, or whether you’d hurt someone’s feelings, what would you do? If you could do anything in the world?”

“I’d go to Florida,” he said, after barely a thought. His face flushed with surprise at so much sudden certainty, and then a tiny flicker of a smile. “I’d get in my truck and drive to Florida and do what I should have done two months ago. I should have talked her out of it.”

There was a feeling inside that Ingrid could only guess was what people called heartbreak. And ouch, that wasn't fun.


She sighed. “Go do it then. Go talk her out of it.”

“Really? Like, right now? At twelve-forty-five in the morning?”

“Sure, why not? You haven’t had that much to drink. You have gas in your truck.”

“I don’t have any time off work.”

“So what? It’s just a stupid job. Call off.”

“What if she’s not ready? What if she’s mad?”

“Then she’s mad. At least you won’t have to wonder anymore. At least you’ll know. Carpe diem, Charlie. Seize the fucking day.”

“Huh.” He thought about this. His face brightened and a funny, smart-ass smile overtook his face.


“Thanks,” he said, taking hold of her hands.

She shrugged. “For what?”

“Just thank you. For hanging out this summer, for carpe diem, for everything.”


He leaned to her cheek, pressed his lips to her skin. His breath tickled her earlobe, but that wasn’t the kind of ‘thank you’ kiss Ingrid wanted.


So she stole a better one, taking his face into her hands and his warm lips between hers. He tasted every bit as delicious as she thought he would, because he let her kiss him. He didn’t stop her. He even kissed her back, cautiously but not cold, mildly exploratory and ultimately about a thousand miles away. She let him go.


“Sneaky,” he said, stepping away from her.

“Yeah, I know.” She pushed him toward the door. “Go on. Get out of here. Go get your girl.”


When Ingrid came back out of her bedrom, Laney had stretched out on the couch again, not reading. “How’s the book?” Ingrid asked. “Is it amazing? Is it everything you hoped it would be?”

“I don’t think it’s a happy story. I’m pretty sure it’s not a happy story. I’m scared to find out how it ends.”

“Bummer. Are you gonna read it anyway?”

“Probably,” Laney said. “I need to know, right? I mean, you can’t not know how it ends.”

Endings suck, Ingrid thought. “Maybe it doesn’t matter how it ends. It’s the journey, not the destination, or some junk.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” Ingrid said. “It’s probably not true anyway. It’s just something people tell themselves when they didn’t get what they wanted.”

—