Charming Like Us (Like Us 7)

“What? Kits?”

He pulls her down over his lap.

A golf ball flies at the cart and I lean back. It dings the frame and bounces off. My pulse skids. A few inches lower and that would’ve hit Sulli in the face.

“What the…fuck?” Sulli lifts her head slowly, cautiously. Hair falling out of a half-done bun. She’s staring at Akara’s lap.

I mean, her face was in his crotch.

I could laugh. I almost laugh, but her face is beet red. His chest collapses in a strange breathing pattern. He looks her over, then whips his head towards three drunk men with golf clubs.

“Sorry!” they laugh.

“FOUR!” one chuckles.

Akara is fuming. “Stay here, Sul.” He hops off the cart. “Hey! No one is playing golf tonight!”

Bougie bar-hop.

I can’t wait around for Akara.

“See you, Sulli.”

“Yeah…” She’s in a daze watching Akara confront the drunks.

I’m off running.

And I reach Hole 2 dripping sweat and trying to catch my breath. No one wants to hear me cough up a lung on footage.

Charlie loiters at the edge of a dark pond in the night. Temps stand off to the side, not interfering. I focus my camera on him.

He sips champagne, the bottom of his wrinkled shirt untucked from his dress pants. His gaze turns away. “Trying to upstage me?” he asks.

I back up about to capture the other person he’s speaking to.

Fuck.

It’s his twin brother. Dressed in a crisp suit, dark hair artfully styled, Beckett Cobalt saunters up to Charlie. I turn off my camera.

Can’t record Beckett.

Still, it took me forever to reach Charlie, so I might as well wait out this interaction.

“Believe me, everyone I’ve run into today has asked for you,” Beckett says into a smile. “You were cursed by the fucking devil at birth, I swear.”

Charlie smiles bitterly. “The one who wants to be alone is always wanted.” He finishes off his champagne. “Too bad I can’t be wanted by someone interesting.”

Beckett slides over that comment and acknowledges me with a nod. “How’s it going, Jack?”

“It’s going.” My shoulders ache under the Steadicam. “Charlie’s been a great audience. I actually prefer to socialize with him over the guests.”

And I do mean that.

The ladies and men who laugh in their clustered groups all appear glossed over with false bravados. Even Connor Cobalt, Charlie’s dad has put on an air of charm that has a layer of deception underneath its sincerity.

Charlie might be “a pain in the ass” as Oscar puts it, but he’s always himself.

“Charlie’s said the same about you,” Beckett says casually.

That surprises me—that Charlie would talk about me in private to his twin brother. Then again, I have been following him for weeks. I guess, I’ve become a part of his life in a way that I never have before.

A Secret about Charlie Cobalt: He told me that he’s the one who introduced Beckett to cocaine, and he’s regretted it ever since.

Charlie plucks another champagne flute off of a passing server’s tray.

“Jack!”

I turn at the sound of Oscar’s nineteen-year-old sister Joana.

Oh no.

I shoot Beckett a quick look that Oscar would nail-gun in his brain. Leave Joana Oliveira alone.

She jogs over, her silver dress hiked up with one hand, and her curls bounce with each footfall to the pond. She’s wearing a pair of Vans instead of heels, and she makes a concerted effort to avoid Charlie and Beckett as she stops in front of me. “Have you seen my brother?”

I shift to block Beckett. “Which one?” I ask.

“The one you’re dating,” she says. “Obviously.”

“Hole three.”

She’s about to leave, when Beckett glides around me and says, “Hi to you, too.”

Joana stiffens and then turns her gaze on him.

I tense.

FYI: I have never been in this position. This is my boyfriend’s baby sister. Yes, baby sister. I have seen her name in Oscar’s phone and heard him call her “baby sis” way too many times. I know he considers her almost like a daughter, and the fact that he hates—no, he loathes—the idea of Beckett and Joana together has my pulse on an adrenaline rush.

When it comes to these families, I’m used to not intervening on anyone’s behalf. I let security take sides.

I’m a filmmaker. I watch. I record. I stay back and let things play out. Oscar’s the one who’d fling himself between them.

My camera is off, and ethically, I have to keep it off for Beckett.

Instead of being Oscar’s fill-in, I decide to do what I’d do if his sister were my brother. I observe like an adult chaperone at a high school dance. Threatening.

And ready to intervene when necessary.

Joana starts looking around Beckett, stepping close like she’s trying to find something. She pretends to search behind him.

Beckett frowns and gracefully one-eighties to face her. “What are you doing?” He has that iconic what the fuck face that has been meme’d to death on Reddit.

“Oh sorry,” Joana says like she’s not sorry at all. “I was looking for the mattress that’s always attached to your back.”