To Do List (gretson)

Pop it

...

"C'mon, lovebirds, we're going to freeze, we gotta get to the subway," Joey tried to rush them, but they seemed elsewhere, and didn't really pay attention to them.

"Oh, my God, somebody, please, pop their love bubble!" May giggled.

"Carson."

That voice did pop their bubble. For Greta, it was the sound of a stranger calling her girl's name. For Carson, it was the voice of the person with whom she had shared a house for seven years without ever feeling like she was home.

Charlie was there. He held a small suitcase in his hands and he looked... cornered as if he had been caught in his own trap. He had gotten home and found her note, and he felt like he had the right to search her drawers, and her bag, and then to go into the search history on her iCloud account. He'd found out she'd bought a concert ticket, and also that she had joined Instagram, and it was so easy to find her from there... So he had gone there to do what he had done so many times before, all the times Carson had tried to make anything by herself, anything of her own... He went there to try and trick Carson into doing what he wanted, into feeling guilty about wanting something else.

Carson shivered just a bit, and it could be because of the cold, but it was probably because she knew how he'd react, he mistreated her every time he didn't get things exactly his way. She already knew the things he'd say, how he'd try to make her feel guilty and wrong and unworthy. But she wasn't scared of that anymore, Carson knew who she was and what she wanted.

"Charlie, what are you doing here?" she kept her voice low but sounded strong and sure of herself.

"I got home and you weren't there, I saw your note, so I checked your, huh, Instagram, apparently now you have one, and when I saw you were in New York I figured it was this Taylor Swift thing. So I took a flight here and came to pick you up and take you home," he answered.

His voice was low and soft. But Carson wasn't confused by it, she knew it was his way of getting her to listen to him. He'd try that and once he saw it wasn't working, he'd take her on a guilt trip.

"When did you get here?" She asked.

"An hour ago, I've been waiting here outside for a while already."

Carson knew he had seen Greta and her coming out together, looking like a perfect couple. He had seen the kiss too. But yet there he was, waiting to take her home.

"There's a cab waiting for us," he pointed down the road, "you have the car, we can go to your hotel or something, and take the car, I can drive us home," he continued acting as if nothing had happened.

"Drive us home..." Carson whispered, confused, "Charlie, did you just see what I think you saw?" She asked bluntly.

He struggled to form a sentence, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times before he could decide what to say.

He knew no life that didn't involve Carson and she'd been his for as long as he remembered. He had always had a way of convincing her he was right, of making her do exactly what he wanted, so he'd gone there sure he could easily make her come back with him. But he realized there was something different this time. This wasn't the same Carson he had convinced to agree on buying a family seven-seat car although she'd said multiple times she wasn't sure she wanted children. This wasn't the Carson he had pushed again and again until she agreed on paying loads more for that house with the barbecue area, although she didn't eat meat and hated a full house and although she'd preferred the smaller house with the small orchard in the back.

This was a different Carson and he didn't know how to trick this one.

"It's ok," he said at last. "I'll take us home, we'll be fine."