Charming Like Us (Like Us 7)

I’m about to offer greater reassurance—all that I have—when movement catches my eye.

Fuck my job.

I don’t know how to live with it. Definitely don’t know how to live without it. I slip Jack an apologetic look before I run towards a sorority girl in a striped bikini.

She’s left her friend group to approach Charlie.

I glance back at Jack.

He’s lifted up his camera to film my client—returning to work too—but so much tension lines his muscles. He keeps shifting his weight like he can’t get comfortable.

Rip out your earpiece, Oliveira.

Go off-duty, go comfort him.

I can’t.

Like everyone on SFO, I made an oath the day I signed up to be a bodyguard. To put someone else above Charlie’s safety breaks that soul-bound promise.

So I keep my pace and roll to a stop in front of the sorority girl. “Sorry,” I say cordially. “You can’t approach him.”

Her face falls. “He knows me.”

I’ve heard that one a thousand times, but she’s right. Charlie does sort of know this sorority girl. Her face is familiar from one night in the past, but her name isn’t hitting me. “You still can’t approach.”

She lifts her sunglasses up to her blonde hair. “What if I wanted to give him something?” She plucks an envelope out of her straw beach bag.

Charlie Keating Cobalt is written neatly in black ink.

“He needs to read this.” She waves the envelope in my face. I follow her gaze that darts to another bodyguard.

More security in California is why I have a radio.

Gabe Montgomery, the short stocky blond-haired temp I trained, loiters around Jack Highland. Arms crossed, permanent scowl, his intimidation is on point, so the sorority girl isn’t considering negotiating with him over me.

Eliminates that potential headache.

I explain, “I can give Charlie the envelope if nothing hazardous is in there, but you can’t approach him or talk to him.” Truth: Charlie doesn’t open his fan mail. He throws it away.

Her friends start packing their towels, books, and beach bags.

They better be leaving and not coming over here.

“Can’t you just ask him?” she snaps.

“I already have.”

I did the second we reached the beach. I reestablished his wishes, and he said, no one talks to me.

She bristles. “Really?”

“Really.” I have no creative retort.

The #FireJackHighland tidal wave that just pummeled Jack—it’s still crashing against me and ramping up my impatience, and I’m proud of myself for not raising my voice. For keeping my fucking cool.

De-escalation is the name of the best bodyguard game.

“Give this to him then.” She hands me the envelope. “Make sure he gets it. You probably don’t remember me, but I spent the night with Charlie once. So it’s that kind of important.”

She’s implying that she’s pregnant.

I don’t even bat an eyelash.

For one, I know way too much about Charlie’s sex life. He’s told me countless times, “I cum on women. Not in them.” I never talk about my sex life with him—Greenland was the first jolt of that between us—but Charlie will tread into TMI territory about his own.

I didn’t ask for more details, but he told me he helps clean them up afterwards, so if anyone claims he’s the father of their kid—it’s probably a trash bin declaration.

For another, the one and only time he’s met up with this sorority girl was too long ago for her to be pregnant with his child.

“Daniella!” her friend calls, trekking towards the parking lot with the other Zeta Beta Zeta girls. They’re leaving.

Daniella jogs after them, teetering in the sand.

I survey the area, lingering for a half-a-second on Jack—who should be my entire attention. He still films Charlie lounging on a chair sunken in the sand.

The fact that we’re both working should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. My job impedes us more. Between security meetings, temp training, and actually protecting Charlie, it pulls me in a hundred directions.

And in the past week, we haven’t found time together to have sex. Not since Greenland. And sure, sex isn’t everything in a relationship. But it’s something in ours.

I just keep hearing my failed short-term flings that I thought would last longer.

“You’re never around, Oscar.”

“You dipped out of seven dates early.”

“What’s the point in continuing this if you’re hardly available?!”

I’m waiting for Highland to realize he deserves more time and emotional support than I can give. And then the axe will fall, and we’ll be done when we’ve just started.

I trudge closer to Charlie and hawk-eye his surroundings again. Most people stay back from my client and snap photos of him on their cells, all at a distance. I already approached a crowd of college students in UCLA tees and told them to keep a twenty-foot perimeter. They were kind enough to comply with that, and they haven’t pushed it.

Once the sorority girls disappear out of sight, I tear open the envelope.

Protocol: check Charlie’s mail, even if he trashes it.