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Her first thought when he shows up, two days into quarantine, is fuck no.
“Fuck no, Charlie,” she says.
He worms past her anyway, with a plastic bag full of clothes and cat food, clanking and rustling together in a truly awful harmony. “I don’t like it either, Dee, but we’re essential workers, you know?” he tosses the bag onto the couch and an avalanche of cans comes spilling out. “Anyway, I can’t stay with Frank. He’s definitely going to get Covid, if he doesn’t have it already, and I just can’t risk it. Who’s gonna eat all the cheese in the rat traps when it gets moldy?”
“You shouldn’t be doing that in the first place!” Dee already feels like she’s going a little insane. “Go stay at Mac and Dennis’s if you’re so concerned.”
Charlie’s face wrinkles as he pulls dirty pajamas out of the bag and lays them haphazardly across the back of the couch. “For two whole weeks? We both know they’re going to either end up banging or murdering each other.”
Dee has to concede that point, at least. “God, I hope it’s the second one. Okay, fine, you can stay here. But none of your usual bullshit, Charlie, I’m serious.”
“What usual bullshit?” he asks, taking a can of spray paint from the bag. “Dee, don’t be a bitch, okay? The world might be ending.”
Her jaw clenches. She tells herself it’s only two weeks.
Of course, it isn’t, because God hates her, or doesn’t exist, whatever--it’s all the same to her. Charlie bops back and forth between her place, the bar (always returning covered in grime), and making sure Frank hasn’t dropped dead (“He’s asking for Chinese motor oil now!” “I don’t care, Charlie!”). They bicker over food, TV, the shower, music, the bed; one night, Dee’s voice goes hoarse from screaming.
“The couch is hurting my back, Dee! Why can’t we just switch?”
“Because it’s my bed, Charlie, and my apartment!” She gets in under the covers, throwing them around her pointedly. “We can share the goddamn thing if it’s that big of an issue.”
“Share the bed?”
“Don’t give me that look! You share a shitty futon with goddamn Frank every single night.”
“Fine, okay. Just don’t try banging me, okay, because we all know what happened last time.”
“Oh, Jesus, Charlie! I said I was sorry about that.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Oh.” For a second there’s a pit at the bottom of her stomach. Then she switches off the light. “Fine, do whatever the hell you want.”
After a minute, she feels the mattress dip on the other side. Charlie kicks around for a minute, nearly clocking her in the leg, and then stills. She had buried that night down deep with all the others, only it was different, wasn’t it? It was Charlie.
Whatever. In a weird way, she’s glad it’s him here with her now over anyone else. She would kill Dennis within days, she would kill Mac within hours, and she doesn’t even want to begin to think about living with Frank. She’s not sure how Charlie’s managed it all these years, except for the fact that he seems entirely content stewing in his own filth.
“Charlie,” she hisses. “Are you awake?”
He grunts.
“Charlie!”
“What, Dee, goddammit! What?”
“I’m sorry!”
“For what? Waking me up?”
“No, about the night we slept together! Jesus.”
He goes quiet. Dee waits, even though she wants to claw her own eyes out.
“Oh, okay, thanks,” he says finally. “I’m sorry too.”
She shifts. His back is to her.
“Why are you sorry?” she asks.
“Like, that it wasn’t good or whatever. Can we go to sleep now, please?”
Dee turns over and faces the wall. She remembers the times in high school when Mac and Dennis would turn into Macanddennis, some creepy two-headed creature, Charlie trailing along in his own world. She remembers the times, few and far between, when she would find him alone in her parents’ kitchen, or half-asleep in the basement, and for just a minute or two they were friends. She hates how fondly she thinks back on it.
Charlie’s breathing evens, and Dee falls asleep.
.
Their routine reaches a peak. They try the mask thing, which fails spectacularly, and then the godforsaken pelt scheme gets underway. They’re still fighting, of course—Charlie’s yell reaches octaves previously unknown to man—but there’s something concrete to pour their energy into now; by the end of each long, claustrophobic day they’re so worn out and drunk that nothing seems worth it to fight about anymore.
“It wasn’t all bad,” Charlie says one night, from the floor, apropos of nothing.
Dee tears her eyes away from the TV. He’s looking at the ceiling, beer in hand.
“What wasn’t?” she says.
“You know, the time we banged.” He makes a vague hand gesture, beer sloshing onto the carpet. She’s drunk enough not to care. Charlie gets up on his elbows. “Like, the making out part? That was awesome.”
He’s looking at her now. She feels it, strangely: the weight of his gaze on her.
“It was awesome,” she agrees, although she’s still not entirely sure why they’re talking about this. “Charlie, I hate to admit this, but you’re a good kisser.”
“Oh shit, really?”
“Yeah,” she snorts. “Trust me, I’ve kissed some real dickbags.”
“That’s true,” he says. “You’re kind of a whore.”
She chucks her nearly-empty can at him, more liquid splattering on the carpet. Jesus, when was the last time she gave a shit?
“Hey! I meant it as a compliment that time!”
“That’s not a compliment, Charlie!”
Three days later, he brings it up again.
“So, like, where do I fall on the list?” He’s standing in the doorway to her kitchen, eating salami slices and wearing one of the god-awful raccoon skin hats. He actually looks kind of handsome in it, or maybe that’s just the vodka tonic in her hand talking.
“What list?” She’s used to his non-sequitors now, picking up fragments of conversations they had days ago, some she can remember and some she can’t.
“The list! The make out list,” he says, like it should be obvious. “Where do I rank, exactly?”
She scoffs. “I don’t have a fucking list.”
“Okay, but like, am I a better kisser than, say… that Rex guy?”
“What?” He was—leagues ahead—but she’s not admitting that now. “I don’t know.”
“Well, we could kiss right now, and you could see.”
Dee hears herself make a sharp, choking sound. “Are you drunk?”
“No! Well, yeah,” he shrugs. “But I’m just, like - I just want to know!”
“I’m not fucking kissing you right now!”
He rolls his eyes. “Oh, the Queen, everyone! Queen Dee, won’t make out with the likes of me--”
“Your breath smells like meat!”
“Everyone bow to the Queen!”
“Shut up, Charlie!”
.
Dennis sends a video to the group chat she can only get through thirty seconds of before wanting to barf.
“‘Let me be your guy’?” she mutters.
Gay, she texts. Frank likes it. Mac sends a twenty-page essay on how exactly it’s not gay, even though he, a gay man, co-wrote it, and Dennis sends an eyeroll emoji. She’s not sure if that’s in response to her or Mac.
Charlie responds with a cowboy hat smiley, but she catches him frowning at his phone.
“Super lame, right?” she needles.
“Nah,” he says, mouth quirked half-up and half-down. “It’s a good song, actually. Man, I wish I had my keyboard here. I could…”
He falls silent. Again, she waits.
“I don’t know,” he says, picking up one of the fur vests that had gotten jammed in the sewing machine earlier, a big nasty tear down the side, “sometimes… Well, like you remember in high school, when they would sort of go off and do their own thing? I mean, I was always there, but…”
He trails off, flicking on the sewing machine and running the torn fabric through it with a steady hand. In a minute it’s patched up again. She sits down next to him.
“See, Dee?” He holds the vest up to her. “You gotta make sure the machine is set on the right needle depth. Otherwise you’re just gonna fuck up the… What? Why’s your face doing that?”
Dee purses her lips together so she doesn’t say something stupid, like Charlie, I really liked hanging out with you back then, or I’ve been thinking about kissing you since you asked me nine days ago. She’s pretty sure being cooped up for weeks on end is finally getting to her.
“My face isn’t doing anything,” she says, turning back to her own makeshift sewing station. “Stop lecturing me about goddamn needle depth.”
“It’s important, Dee! This whole operation could fall apart if you don’t start listening to me!”
I’m trying, she wants to scream, but she turns up the TV volume instead.
.
The night they return from a parking garage in Maryland, having entirely no idea of the events that transpired at the nation’s capital that afternoon, Dee’s had so many Diet Cokes her bones are vibrating. Charlie had shrieked at her to stop at every mildly interesting place they passed on the way home, which is how they end up with more oranges than anyone could ever need and an antique mirror she’s definitely going to throw out the window the minute he’s not looking.
“They’re really good for like, if you’re sick.” It’s one-thirty A.M. She doesn’t even know what he’s talking about anymore. “Like, they can cure scurvy, you know? And I don’t think you want scurvy, Dee, ‘cause your leg could fall off--”
“Okay,” she says, decidedly.
“Okay,” he echoes. “Okay, what?”
“Okay, let’s make out.” She lurches forward, like an impulse, and he catches her shoulders abruptly.
“Woah!” he says, calming a wild horse. “Dee, come on, we talked about this.”
“You asked me to kiss you!”
“Yeah, three weeks ago!” He exhales through his nose sharply. “I know I have like, a natural charisma, and you’re probably finding me irresistible ‘cause we’re spending all this time together--”
“Oh, Jesus, forget it.” She grabs the bag of oranges and stomps into the kitchen, letting them spill across the counter. She wants to smash them all with her bare hands, watch them bleed out onto the floor. When she turns around Charlie is standing by the table, chewing his lip. He’s looking somewhere over her shoulder. “I said forget it, Charlie.”
He steps forward. He’s still not looking directly at her, but his hands come up to meet her shoulders again, softer this time; she’s not sure if she can blame the caffeine anymore for the buzzing under her skin.
She already knows, but she still says, irritation creeping into her voice, “what are you--”
“Just,” he interrupts, equally annoyed, “don’t, yeah?”
So then she’s kissing Charlie Kelly, again--roughly, with reckless abandon, like maybe they both know this is it, the last chance they’ll have at this tiny, weird thing between them. Her back hits the sharp edge of the counter and there are oranges all over the floor, suddenly, where did they come from? She can only think about the time she caught him in her room when they were sixteen, screaming for him to get out. She thinks maybe she should have asked him to stay.
Later, in bed, she waits for Charlie’s breathing to even out. She wants to reach out and put her hand on the small of his back, but she thinks better of it. In the morning, she decides, she’ll tell him she’s glad they didn’t fuck this time. That she wants to be friends again, or whatever they were. But the morning comes and neither of them mention it at all.
.
Eventually, they return to the world. Mac and Dennis show up to Paddy’s with guitars and a thousand stories and Dee tunes them out immediately, Charlie hanging on to every word. Then Frank needs him to ditch some sludge in the river, again she’s not fully listening, and Charlie disappears completely. Their regulars are showing up now, and although she’s sure none of them are vaccinated she still serves them beer after beer, because that’s how things are. That’s how things have always been.
The day Charlie sets a firework off in the bar, after the annoying suit has gone and they’ve exhausted the Kayne songs they actually like, they’re all sufficiently wasted and Dee finally feels like she can put the strangeness of the last year behind her. Sometimes she still wakes up expecting Charlie to be snoring next to her.
Ignition (Remix) is playing now, for the third time. Jesus fucking Christ, she thinks. She turns and nearly collides with Charlie behind her, tipping the last of his drink into his mouth. They acknowledge one another briefly.
“Uh, you know, I didn’t mean to yell and stuff, earlier,” he says. It’s both an apology and not one. But that was kind of their thing, wasn’t it?
“It’s fine, Charlie,” she says, and hands him another beer. He raises it towards her, a small gesture of thanks, and a moment of understanding passes between them. It was different now, and yet it wasn’t.
Charlie returns to his seat next to Frank, and Dee watches them all, feeling, for one bizarre moment, grateful to be back in their company again. Then she pours her own drink, and goes to join them. She knows the feeling will fade. It always does.