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Henry raps his knuckles on the window glass. The curtain on the other side opens and Charlotte peaks her head out, rolling her eyes at him. Still, she slides the window open and steps back, letting Henry climb in.
“Hey,” he greets.
“It’s really late,” she points out.
“You’re still up,” he counters. And still all dressed up from her date earlier. With Jack Swagger. With all the flirting and the giggling (since when did Charlotte giggle!) and the cutely feeding each other food. And then just…gone! The entire restaurant, just disappeared.
“I was about to get ready for bed,” she argues.
“Jack Swagger not staying the night?” he asks. He means it to be playful, but for some reason it comes out sarcastic.
Charlotte rolls her eyes. “He’s on his way back to New York, actually. Thanks to your dad.”
“It’s not my fault my dad has a face hawks like!”
“It is your fault we even had to have our date in the Man Cave!”
Henry scoffs. “That light switch was really hard to find,” he defends.
“Maybe if you ever listened to me—“
“Sorry I ruined your date with your secret boyfriend you’ve never mentioned before—“
“I’ve told you so many times and he’s not my boyfriend.”
Whatever stupid, unimportant, argument Henry was about to say with dies on his tongue. “Uh, what?”
She crosses her arms, staring at him. “What.”
“What do you mean he’s not your boyfriend? I thought you said you go out, like, all the time?”
“Oh, so you do know how to listen,” she teases. Henry rolls his eyes. “We just go out, like three times a year. They’re hardly dates. Ergo, not my boyfriend.”
“We built an entire secret restaurant in the Man Cave for ‘hardly a date?’” he asks for clarification. “I’m so lost.”
“Is there a reason you’re here?” she asks in the most accusatory, most Charlotte tone of voice, where with anyone else he might be offended but with her, he only pretends to be, scoffing in response. “Do you just like upsetting me?”
Okay, woah, out of left field there. “Char, come on,” he tries.
“No, whatever, it’s fine.” She waves him off and walks away, over to her closet. “Grab your gummy bears so I can go to bed.”
“Char.” He crosses the room to her closet, perhaps coincidentally right next to the gummy bear dish. “Char, come on.”
She turns around and faces him, raising an eyebrow. “What? I’m tired, I had a crappy date night, my kitchen burned down, I was almost attacked by a hawk, and I didn’t even get a goodnight’s kiss!”
Charlotte huffs, then scrubs a hand over her face. Tired, upset, maybe even…sad. He’s never really seen her sad, not like this.
Something inside him tightens, especially because it is his fault. Whether inadvertently or not.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly.
She looks up at him. And he doesn’t know if it’s the way her eyes meet his, or the way his chest tightened as he forced a smile all night while she spent all evening laughing and chatting with Jack Swagger, or just…something else. He doesn’t know why, but he’s never been known for thinking first.
He kisses her.
Henry kisses Charlotte. On the lips.
Something he’s never previously thought of doing before. Okay, maybe once. Or twice. And then that week where he kept having dreams about kissing her. and the one time they went to Johanna Grace’s seventeenth birthday party two months ago and all ended up in a circle playing spin the bottle and he secretly hoped for Charlotte — even though he told himself it was so they could just hang out in the closet for seven minutes and not get stuck with someone random.
Okay, maybe he’s thought of kissing her a lot.
Inadvertently thinking about kissing his best friend and actually, physically, kissing his best friend, then out to be so wildly different.
It’s softer than he expected, delicate and kind of sweet.
She shifts, almost like she wants to pull back, but then her hand rests on his shoulder and she leans into it, her lips moving against his. Softly, tenderly, almost shyly.
Charlotte pulls away first: her face, stuttering in her movement before taking a step back, forcing them back to real life.
Real life, where they just kissed.
Henry’s eyes fly open as it finally settles in. They stare at each other for a long, drawn out minute, neither sure what to say or what to do.
“Um…” Henry looks down at the ground. He messed up, he royally messed up. Friendship over. Life over!
Does this mean he likes her? Like, likes her likes her. Maybe he’s always, somewhat secretly, kind of liked her. And maybe he’s thought all these years that never in a million lifetimes could he be good enough to her.
A lot of life changing revelations in the past two minutes.
“Uh, wh-what was that?” Charlotte asks.
“Uh, you said you wanted a goodnight’s kiss?”
Charlotte rolls her eyes. “You’re an idiot.”
Charlotte does something crazy next. Instead of telling him to leave, or throwing in an ‘Ew!’ like she usually does, she grabs him by his tie, pulling him down and kissing him.
Demanding. Forceful. Way hotter than he ever expected or even thought Charlotte could be.
Her free hand reaches up and finds its way into his hair. His body moves on instinct, arms wrapping around her, pulling her in close, kissing her hard. And it just feels right.
Like the first kiss, though, it only lasts so long before Charlotte’s pulling away from him, stepping out of his embrace with a smirk.
Henry blinks slowly. “Uh.”
“You can go now,” she comments. She bundles up some clothes in her arms and heads toward her bathroom, leaving him standing in her room, brain utterly scrambled.
“Huh?”
“I’ll see you at work tomorrow,” She disappears inside the bathroom. “Bye!”
What just happened?