The next photo was a close-up of Charlotte and an older woman that I thought might be her mother. Their cheeks were pressed together, and their smiles were wide. The caption read Because of you, I am.
The next photo was of her and a woman about the same age standing on the beach, wearing bikinis and big straw hats while holding up drinks with umbrellas. Damn. Charlotte had some body—a lot of curves for a tiny girl. She wasn’t stick thin like Allison. And unlike Allison, who had perfectly plumped, round, fake tits, Charlotte had full, natural, feminine breasts. I might’ve zoomed in on that shot for a while, wondering how much softer they’d feel in my hands.
Fuck.
This was a bad idea.
I clicked back to my own Facebook page to escape getting sucked into the little blonde vortex any further. Only there wasn’t much to see there. The last pictures posted were of Allison and me out on a boat last summer. I remembered when she’d taken that last shot on my phone and admired it. We looked happy. At least I thought we did at the time. What a goddamn fool I was. I gazed at her like she was the sun causing the warmth on my face. Little did I know, I should’ve doused myself in sunscreen because I was about to get burned.
I blew out a deep breath. Why hadn’t I posted anything since then?
Then again, what the hell would I post? Me at the office at eleven o’clock at night? A picture of takeout Chinese for one? Maybe a shot of my dog and me? Oh, that’s right. Allison took him, too, when she packed the rest of her shit.
I couldn’t stand to look anymore. I began to close my laptop but stopped myself and instead clicked back to Charlotte’s page. She had a shitload of recent pictures. Not knowing what I was looking for yet unable to stop searching, I clicked for the next picture, then the next, then the next.
A shot of Charlotte in the arms of some guy caught my attention. They were all dressed up, and his arms were locked around her little waist as they kissed. She had one hand wrapped around his neck and the other was holding out her hand to the camera with her fingers splayed wide. My eyes dropped to read the caption, I said yes, before returning to the photo to examine the rock on her finger. She wasn’t wearing that ring anymore. Maybe Little Miss Crazy and I really did have something in common after all . . . other than we both liked her in a red bikini.The next morning, I went in search of coffee downstairs in the hotel. I stopped short, spotting Charlotte inside the small gym, and watched through the top of the glass door. What the hell is she doing? She was alone in the tiny mirrored room. Only she wasn’t exercising. She was sitting on one of those big exercise balls, bouncing up and down, while watching the television hanging on the wall and chewing on a Twizzler.
I shook my head and chuckled. God, she’s so nuts.
When I opened the door, her head whipped around to look at who had walked in, and it must’ve thrown off her balance. She bounced up and then hit the corner of the ball with her hip, causing her next bounce to land her flat on her ass on the floor.
Shit.
I walked over and extended my hand. “Are you okay?”
She smacked at her chest with her hand and spoke with a strained voice. “I just swallowed a piece of Twizzler down the wrong pipe because of you.”
“Because of me? How is it my fault?”
“You scared me.”
I arched a brow. “It’s a public gym in a hotel, Charlotte. People are going to come and go. That’s how facilities open to the public work. No appointment necessary.”
She clasped my extended hand and gave it a yank that was harder than necessary to get up. “God, you’re so condescending. Do you hear yourself?”
Standing, she brushed imaginary dirt from her clothes and hands. That’s when I got my first look at her outfit. I’d been so preoccupied watching her bounce up and down on that stupid ball that I hadn’t noticed it before.
“What the hell are you wearing?”
She looked down. “Betsy gave me this. They keep a stash of new clothes donated from local businesses for emergencies. You know, like when guests lose their luggage on flights and stuff.”
“Betsy?”
“The woman at the front desk who checked us in? She introduced herself to you and wears a name tag.”
Whatever. Charlotte’s outfit was interesting, to say the least. She wore a black T-shirt with the Applebee’s logo emblazoned across the front, coupled with a pair of men’s Gold’s Gym shorts that were rolled at the waist yet still fell to her knees. But the most intriguing part of the getup was her exercise footwear—white terry cloth slippers that were four sizes too big, with “Holiday Inn” written across the front.