"Charlotte, how can you even think about parting from me when we were just deciding about a forever together?"
Sometimes Andy didn't know when to end a joke. Charlotte needed to really beat him up now to put an end to the nonsense, but that she didn't find the chance to do.
For two things happened at once.
Alex's balcony door suddenly slammed open with a mighty blow of devastatingly cold wind. Simultaneously, Tina fell from the hammock with an ear splitting scream.
Rita's shriek followed on tow. Perhaps Tina fell on top of the poor girl.
All the others jumped and gasped.
Andy had now selfishly abandoned Charlotte and was now clutching Sammy, almost trying to squeeze into the hug he had engulfed Nova into.
They could see Alex's balcony door from Charlotte's, constantly but lightly now slapping against the wall.
From the railing, Charlotte's eyes were stuck into the inky black that his open door offered. Only to a certain angle she could see inside the room, but it was entirely covered in darkness.
There was no one on his balcony. And Alex had said he wouldn't be home tonight. Yet Charlotte felt like there was someone, lurking in the inseparable shadows, watching her intently from the dark.
Her skin sizzled in thrill and discomfort. Her black hair flew about her face in random blasts of wind. She breathed in one lungful of cold air and a distinct, savory scent, oddly her insides warmed.
Charlotte took steps towards the railing which separated Alex's home from hers, she took them almost unknowingly as though hypnotized. And the more she neared his territory the most she was losing hers. Her friends' chatters among themselves behind her; someone—perhaps Tina—dragging her body from one side of the balcony to the other to get into more light; Rita's huffs and curses; Nova's whimper—all became distant. Only thing remained was the pull, the strange and powerful pull that dragged her towards a quieter place.
She had just rested her hands on the cold metal railing, her palm brushed across the smooth and hard surface, it was when suddenly the lights came back at once.
Charlotte jerked and blinked rapidly.
As her friends hollered in joy and relief with Andy almost throwing himself out the balcony, Charlotte whirled around.
Rita located her first. "What are you doing there?"
One by one everyone else turned to look her way.
"You were trying to hide, weren't you?" Andy accused, scowling. "To make a fool out of us, because you knew we were going to think you were abducted by a serial killer from right under our nose."
Scoffing, Tina began whacking Andy repeatedly. "I told you not to say such things, especially after sunset."
"Whoa, man, whoa!" Andy sprinted into the apartment dodging Tina's hands, but the girl was stubbornly stuck to his back.
Charlotte sighed as Nova squeaked getting out of Sammy's arms.
"I don't want to be out here anymore," Nova announced, voice quivering.
And as everyone went inside on cue, all silently agreeing, Charlotte followed them, she was the last in the line. She glanced behind her around her balcony and Alex's one last time before finally stepping into her apartment.
Almost two more hours later, Charlotte closed the front door as the last one of her guests left.
It didn't take her long to zombie walk to her mattress and drop into the inviting softness face first. Instantly sleep took over. There might have been a knock or two on the balcony door at some point, but Charlotte was too far gone to rise and open it, to allow who she would always allow in her world.
--
"I'm so so sorry," Charlotte apologized again.
The nerdy-looking girl with an odd shade of silver hair shook her head, looking embarrassed by Charlotte's apologies. "No, it's my fault too."
Charlotte smiled. "We should have looked where we were going."
The girl didn't say anything but smiled back awkwardly, pushing her glasses higher up her freckle-covered nose.
Charlotte had woken up this morning with great difficulty, it was an impossible task getting her eyelids to part but she managed it forcefully, using her fingers she'd peeled them apart. That was the moment her eyes took in the time glaring back at her from the phone in her raised hand. She would have fallen off the bed if she had one, so she just settled on crawling out of her mattress in a tangle of her comforter and bed sheet. She didn't have the time to shower or have breakfast, she decided to grab something to eat at the college cafeteria later after her class. She was storming out of the elevator to the ground floor when she crashed into the poor girl who was also coming out of the corridor at the left.
"My name's Charlotte, by the way, just moved in last month," Charlotte said helping the girl pick up her books.
"I—" the girl stuttered which seemed habitual. "I'm Linda." She glanced back motioning towards a certain door from the line of doors along the long corridor on the ground floor. "That's o—our apartment. W—which floor is yours?"
"Fourth floor."
No sooner had Charlotte said that, Linda's smile dropped, and her face lost color.
Charlotte raised her brows in question, confused by the girl's unexpected reaction.
At last, Linda just said, "Oh."
That's it?
Charlotte was just about to ask Linda what was wrong but then Happy Dias, the landlord; the actual owner of all the flats was coming bounding towards them.
"Who do we have here?" Dias said between his broad grins. "Getting to know the neighbors, are we?" He glanced briefly at Linda and a silent conversation might have passed in that brief moment, for Linda suddenly and quite hurriedly said "bye" and that she was getting late for school.
Charlotte watched the girl's retreating back as she left, walking past an awake Carlos—for a change. For some reason Carlos was looking in her and Dias's direction, his gaze was discreet but she still caught it.
All the pieces of evidence were highly suggesting towards Charlotte's theory that something was truly wrong with her floor, the fourth floor.
"I want the electricity lines fixed as soon as humanly possible," Charlotte told Dias firmly. "Lights just keep going on and off all by themselves. The balcony door needs to be fixed too" From her voice rang warning, Happy Dias better fix all the problems soon.
Dias's smile only broadened—to a point that it looked painful. "All will be well. Don't you worry, my dear, I'll fix everything that needs to be fixed."
He better.
--
Sammy was a bit cranky when Charlotte went to the cafeteria with Tina stuck to her side to join their friends after Ian Flinn's lecture.
"What went up your ass?" Charlotte asked.
Tina grumbled from beside her, "I'm asking him the same thing."
Apart from Charlotte and Tina, others in their close circle of friends weren't studying psychology. Therefore they had so many things to share whenever they could get together.
Sammy just harrumphed in response.
"Is it because of Nova?" Charlotte asked.
The look on Sammy's face said it was.
Tina threw up her hands. "Here, we've got in our group a bloody pedophile."
Sammy glared at Tina, and Charlotte sighed before telling him, "I hope you know what you are doing, Sammy, and I hope you know to choose what's right over wrong. Nova is a cute girl to fall for, that's a certain thing, but you must see that she's so young and perhaps more inexperienced than she's letting on. And you trying to constantly get into her pants would just scare that poor thing away. Try backing off and start respecting her choices."
There was pin-drop silence for a couple of seconds before Tina burst out into clapping along with giving a standing ovation. "Bravo, Char, bravo. Go be the next mayor, you lava-spitting wonder-woman, Tina's proud of you."
Charlotte just sat with blank face, her concentration on Sammy who looked highly embarrassed. She just hoped he would finally be on the right track and choose what's honorable—be a man, not a monster.
--
On her way back home, Charlotte took the longer route back home to drive by the park which had enchanted her so much during her visit that evening. She parked along the side of the road but didn't get out of her Sedan. She just sat there, the window rolled down, staring out at the peaceful cluster of greenery and fireflies. She let the constant and rhythmic song of cricket bugs and night birds envelope her for some time. Then she brought out her phone and made a phone call to her mom and got her daily dosage of calm.
Charlotte came back to her apartment with a smile stuck to her face. She had already brought pasta takeout as her dinner, not feeling like cooking after a day of long hours in college and the library.
After freshening up she put a new bulb on her balcony, standing on the cushioned chair to help her reach up.
Humming, she spread a mat on the balcony floor and took her dinner and cutlery there. She'd thought it would seem like a picnic under the starry skies, a change from everyday routine.
"You want some?" she asked not looking up from her pasta. From the corner of her eye, she'd been aware the whole time of the outline of a familiar male form in the dark corner of Alex's balcony. The more time passed the more the sight of his became clearer as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of his balcony. He had one long leg spread out before him, his muscular arms were loosely crossed over his chest, his face unmoving and perhaps his eyes were staring at her—at least she hoped they were.
When he stayed silent, she added, "I've enough to share."
"No, thanks."
She noted the edge in his tone.
Was he pissed off about something? She wondered.
Anyways, she decided inwardly, sighing, that she was not going to let him ruin her mood tonight. Because she was here with a plan, a plan that was generated by the talk she had with her mom just nearly an hour ago. Truly, her mom was one of the best persons in the world and one hell of an open-minded parent, in fact, both of her parents were incredibly open-minded. Of course, they had been hard on her and her brother in her teenage years and for a while, Charlotte had been resentful because of it, but at one stage—she understood. With growing age and wisdom, Charlotte understood her parents' point of view and she couldn't be more thankful.
Pulling away her concentration from Alex, she enjoyed her food alone.
When she was done gathering all the cutlery, Alex finally broke the silence. "Are you leaving for the night?"
Was it desperation in his tone?
Charlotte hid her smile.
Her mother's first suggestion had worked—"Ignore, if he starts being too stuck up. Eventually, he'll forget about himself because the biggest concern for him will be the fact that you're giving him the infamous cold shoulder." Charlotte made up her mind to bring her mother a fantastic gift on her next visit home.
"Do you want me to stay?" she asked in reply, with an easy smile as she finally turned to Alex who had also shuffled forward.
His face was now much more visible in the semi-light semi-darkness—the light was seeping to his from her balcony, and the darkness was his own choice. Charlotte guessed he had just given up on putting in new light bulbs after many had been ruined because the bloody Dias wouldn't even bother to fix the electricity issues.
He said after a small moment of silence as she waited patiently, "Bloody hell I do. Stay."
There, he had said it.
Charlotte finally let the smile she was suppressing spread on her face. She leaned back, rested her palms behind her on the mat to support her weight, and spread out her pajama-clad legs before her.
"But I'll only stay—" she said, looking a tad-bit playful—okay, a lot playful, "if you play a game with me."
"A game?"
"Yes," she bobbed her head up and down. "A game. So that, I can know more about you and you can know more about me."
"Don't we already know each other enough?"
"It's not enough," she said. "That you know very well. Come on, do you want me to stay or not?"
He came forward to rest his hands on the railing between them, looking down at her, blinking and flinching, as light illuminated more of his devastatingly beautiful face.
And her bulb flickered but thankfully didn't go off.
Charlotte inwardly sighed, making a mental note to complain to Dias again. But she quickly yanked her attention back to the now and here; to Alex. His deep brown pupils were, after all, looking back at her with anticipation. He was clearly interested in her game or maybe he was just interested in her staying, in any whichever way.
Because while songs can fill the void with rhymes and notes and major and minor chords, the lack of all these is still needed sometimes, to grasp what is buried deep underneath, to bring out the raw.
~
A/N:
Hello, everyone! This is an unexpected, early update, isn't it?
I wanted to write a little bit every day, but see, instead I ended up writing an entire chapter. Turns out I truly got into the story, and I'm a bit surprised myself the turns it's taking. I'm definitely more of a panster.
Charlotte has offered to play a game with Alex. Are you interested to know what game it is? Can you guess what it's going to be?
Things are going to escalate from here. As you can see Charlotte is slowly getting to know other people in her apartment building! ;) We need a cute kitten's evil laugh at this moment...
Hope you enjoyed the chapter and survived my lecture! Lemme know, huh?
Thanks to the lovely people who've been reading TMG, voting and commenting on it, and supporting this ghostly romance.
LiquiMolly, MariaCreation_, deepoceaan, itssanjhz, sumi96, CarpeDiem_365, orion623... love you guys!
Before you go, please don't forget to Vote and Comment! Fan/Follow to get notified when I update! Share the story. Also, connect with me on other social media sites--I'm on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Join my Facebook Group, and like my Facebook Page! All clickable links are on my Wattpad profile bio. :)
Lots of love and hugs!
Lara.