Release the Stars (15 page)

Eric held up his hands in surrender. “Fine.”

An apology would be nice, Charlie wanted to say, but thought it wasn’t the best time for such a remark. She supposed she could see why he believed Ava with him made more sense than Ava with Charlie.

Eric sat, leaving one stool between himself and Charlie. Ava stood behind the breakfast bar and poured coffee.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but could we perhaps talk privately?” he asked, looking directly at Ava, pretending Charlie wasn’t there. “We have a history, Ava. I don’t want to lay it all out in front of someone who has no business with… us.”

Ava did roll her eyes now. “I don’t know what you thought you could accomplish by coming here, but, so far, you’ve only managed to deeply offend me. Keep saying things like that and there will be more at stake than
Knives Out
.”

Charlie couldn’t see Eric’s face—and she was indeed starting to feel like the third wheel—but she did notice how his posture stiffened.

“I’m just trying to understand, Ava.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, but Charlie had no trouble hearing. “Only last weekend, I believed you and I were getting back together, and now… this.”

His words jarred Charlie. She and Ava hadn’t had time to talk about anything. And now this man was sitting in Ava’s kitchen, literally positioned between them. She’d been able to easily push back her fears of Ava leaving her for a man because of Ava’s grand gesture and the mind-blowing night they’d shared, but that ability was starting to crumble. Ava and Eric could have shared exactly the same sort of night. No wonder the guy looked so utterly distraught.

“I should probably go,” she said, now that her instincts were working again. Charlie pushed herself away from the counter. “Let you guys talk.”

Eric visibly relaxed, while Ava’s posture tightened. “No, Charlie. No,” she said.

“I have some stuff of my own to deal with, anyway.” A familiar flood of anxiety washed over Charlie. She tried to breathe her way through it, tried to reason with herself, but the sight of Eric, who was now facing Charlie fully, some kind of sparkle in his eye that hadn’t been there before, was enough to make her flee.

Charlie fished her phone off the counter. Did she have a bag somewhere? She must have. Her keys weren’t in her pocket. She also didn’t have her car.

“I’m serious, Charlie.” Ava walked over to her and put an arm around her shoulder. “I need you to stay.” Her gesture wiped that sparkle right out of Eric’s eyes. “If anyone should go, it should be Eric.”

Eric arched up his eyebrows as if to say “Really?”

“You owe me more than a tepid cup of coffee, Ava. And you know it.” With that, he slipped off the stool and, with his wide, loud manliness, bristled out of the kitchen and then out of the house.

As soon as he’d left, Ava sagged against a kitchen counter. “Way to kill the romantic vibe. I’m sorry about that, Charlie. That was not part of my plan.”

Eric’s arrival had set off several warning signals in Charlie’s sex-sedated mind. Obviously, Eric had feelings for Ava. A position Charlie could easily understand and sympathize with.

“What happened last weekend?” There was a good chance the answer would ruin the very last of the romantic atmosphere, but Charlie had to know.

“A moment of weakness.” Briefly, Ava covered her face with both her hands, as though trying to rub something away. “A huge mistake.”

“Did you, huh, sleep with him?” Charlie’s stomach rumbled with nerves.

“Does it even matter, Charlie? I mean, you didn’t want to see me anymore.”

“So you slept with Eric?” That old nagging feeling was chipping away at Charlie’s common sense and she couldn’t stop it.

“If you’re going to start comparing… I urge you to remember that I had someone at the auction last night who kept me up to speed about
everything
.”

Charlie appeared to be suffering from selective memory. Everything that had happened before Ava had made her phenomenal final bid seemed erased from her mind. But, of course she remembered making her own winning bid on Josie, the fraught conversation they’d shared backstage, and how that had given way to careful banter. In Charlie’s mind, that in no way compared to sleeping with a man, but she had to keep her cool about this.

“What are you going to do about that, by the way?” Ava’s hands were on her hips matron-style. “When are you going on your thirty-five-hundred-dollar date, Charlie?”

“I’m sorry. Point taken.” Charlie did her best to control her fears, but deep down, the thought of Eric and Ava reuniting didn’t sit right with her. Now that Eric had come breezing into Ava’s house, flexing his muscles, Charlie couldn’t get the image out of her head. Eric looking at Ava the way she had last night. The same images that had inundated her brain for months after Jo had left her for Christian. Even though she was standing in Ava’s kitchen after a night of unbelievable passion, suddenly she could very clearly remember the reason why she had run away in the first place.

“We should make the most of today. Next weekend I’m going on location to Texas for the show. I’ll be gone a few weeks,” Ava said.

Charlie tried to ignore the cold fist that wrapped itself around her heart. “Next weekend?” she asked, not able to keep insecurity from seeping into her tone. “With Eric?”

Ava closed her eyes briefly, making it seem to Charlie that she couldn’t believe the kind of love politics she had gotten herself into. “Yes, Charlie. He’s part of the show. So are a hundred other people.”

Charlie had the choice. She could be reasonable and give Ava the benefit of the doubt. She drew from the mindfulness exercises her therapist back in New York had taught her.
Count your breaths.
Think before you speak. Don’t say something you can’t take back.
So Charlie counted to ten while breathing in and out. Ava, in all respects, was way out of her league, but nonetheless, had made a move Charlie couldn’t possibly ignore.

“Are you going to say something?” Ava asked. “I believe I’ve made my position clear. I’m not going to keep on begging you to be with me.”

Charlie nodded. “If you’re going away next weekend, I’d better spend every waking moment with you until you get on that plane.”

Ava smiled wide. “You had me worried there for a second. I thought you were going all neurotic on me again.”

You have no idea, Charlie thought, while she walked into Ava’s embrace.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Do you own a strap-on?” Ava asked. They were lying in Charlie’s bed in West Hollywood. Ava had invited herself over for their last night together before flying off.

“Not at present. No,” Charlie replied, her stomach already aflutter. “I had one in New York. I have no idea what my ex did with it.” Charlie assumed Jo probably burned it.

“Oh.” Ava lay on her side, her hands tucked between her thighs. They were both naked.

“Why?” Charlie ran her hand over the back of Ava’s arm. Was that disappointment lurking in Ava’s voice?

“I just thought it would have been a nice farewell gift…” Ava curled her lips into a smile.

“For you to fuck me with?” After Ava had displayed that bossy streak in the bedroom during their first night together, Charlie was no longer under any illusions about who was the natural top in their relationship. Ava had all but tied her up. Charlie had no issues complying with any of Ava’s requests, although in bed with Jo, she’d usually been the one to strap it on.

“I was thinking more of the other way around.” Ava surprised her.

“Really?” Charlie asked.

“Is that so surprising?” Ava slipped her hands from between her thighs and caught Charlie’s with hers.

Charlie jutted out her bottom lip. “A little, I guess.”

“Why?” There was a chuckle in Ava’s voice.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. That’s just how it feels when I’m with you.”

Ava pushed herself up and rested her head on an upturned palm. “I wish you
could
explain. Will you try? For me?”

“See.” Charlie chuckled. “You thirty-five percenters don’t know anything.”

“I thought we had established I’d gone up to around fifty by now.” Ava put some mock-indignation in her tone.

As a joke over dinner last Sunday, they decided that Ava would go up one percentage point every time one of them reached orgasm. That was five days ago. While it was all well and good to tease, it didn’t entirely chase the doubts from Charlie’s brain. If anything, the fact that they had a running joke about it was telling enough.

Ava brought her fingers to Charlie’s belly and let them hover over her skin. “I also didn’t say I would
not
use it on you, Charlie. Don’t worry. I know what you want.”

Charlie felt like she’d had a personality transplant since sleeping with Ava. Not only had she had to come to terms with the fact that, yes, Ava had slept with Eric, and that they would be in Texas under the same circumstances that had brought them together the first time. Also, for Ava, Charlie turned out to be a total bottom. And she liked it. She didn’t want it any other way. More than anything though, Charlie hadn’t had enough alone time to obsess too much over her usual hang-ups.

When she wasn’t on set, she’d been at Ava’s—completely ignoring softball practice. She had three-and-a-half weeks to practice while Ava was filming on location. Liz, however, had expressed doubts about Charlie’s investment in the team.

“Then why do you want me to use it on you?” Charlie asked.

Ava continued to hold her fingers close to Charlie’s stomach without touching and Charlie’s clit strained wildly between her legs. A moment later, Ava let her fingers meet Charlie’s skin. She also shook her head. “Oh, Charlie. Why do you always need twenty reasons for everything? You got out of it easy earlier by cracking a joke, but don’t you think I know why you’re asking me all of this? You are so unbelievably transparent.” Ava’s finger danced around Charlie’s belly button. “Don’t you want to stop thinking for once? Just go with the flow and, I don’t know, try to trust me?”

Charlie started to say something in her defense, but Ava wasn’t done with her speech yet.

“I want you to fuck me with a strap-on because it would be a new experience for me, and I’m always up to trying something new.” Ava’s hand curved up the slope of Charlie’s breast. “Not because I need to be fucked with something that looks and feels like a penis before I go away for a month.” With that, Ava caught Charlie’s nipple between two fingers and squeezed too hard to be sexy. “You are so focused on one thing only, Charlie, I can read you like an open book.”

“Ouch,” Charlie yelped. It wasn’t Ava pinching her nipple that hurt the most.

“Sometimes, you radiate fear,” Ava said, while moving on to Charlie’s other nipple. “It’s not your most attractive quality.”

This comment made Charlie want to shrink away from Ava’s touch, curl up in a ball, and wallow in self-pity. But she really had nothing to feel sorry about, considering the fact that Ava was presently pinching her nipples.

“Maybe I’ll visit you in Texas and bring you a present.” Charlie wished she had a strap-on in the house right now.

“Please do.” Ava’s hand made its way down again. “But, until then, we’ll have to make do with this.” Her fingers skated along Charlie’s pubic hair. “It’s as though your level of arousal is proportional to how paranoid you are, Charlie. I’m beginning to think this jealous streak of yours is more like a fetish.” Ava slipped her fingers between Charlie’s wet folds, and she twisted them deep inside her.

“Fuck,” Charlie moaned.

“You can say that again.” Ava’s face contorted with concentration, before she looked away from Charlie and shuffled lower, all the while keeping her fingers busy inside of Charlie. She didn’t start easy with a few lighter thrusts, but fucked her as though demanding something urgent.

As soon as Ava brought her tongue into the game, skating it along her pounding clit, heat filled her veins. A climax rumbled through her like an earthquake, starting deep in her core and welling upward. Whatever point Ava had been trying to make, Charlie got it loud and clear. As she came down from a fuzzy post-orgasmic cloud, Charlie vowed to put a sock in her tiresome displays of jealousy.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“How many times have you FaceTimed?” Liz asked.

“Hm, only every day since she left,” Charlie replied.

“Jesus, Charlie. Give the woman a break. You’re smothering her from fifteen hundred miles away.”

“I’m doing my best, Liz.” Charlie suppressed a sigh. She’d wanted to dash home after the last scene of the day and chat with Ava online, but Liz had demanded they go for a drink.

“That may very well be. I’m just giving you some friendly advice, that’s all.” Liz sipped from her beer.

“Sometimes…” Perhaps Liz had the right idea. Since Charlie had waved off Ava’s car last Saturday, she’d felt like she’d been holding onto something invisible and unnamable. Like she’d been dancing on a tightrope and if she slipped off, something inside her would come loose. Seeing Ava’s face on her laptop screen on a daily basis seemed to be the only cure for the insecurities lodged inside her mind. “I feel like I don’t know how it works anymore. How to behave and carry myself in this new relationship. I have all this baggage and, excuse the poor metaphor, it’s weighing heavy on me.”

“You’re overcompensating because you’re apart. It’s normal. But it may result in you not giving your young affair enough breathing room to blossom.”

“It doesn’t help that I have a paparazzi parked outside my house these days.” Charlie stared at her half-empty glass of beer. Ava being away for a few weeks wasn’t so much the problem. Charlie had, at the very least, functioned properly before Ava had entered her life. She went to bed on time, obeyed the early morning chime of her alarm clock, ate decent enough food, and spent time on the treadmill. Now, because Ava had occupied a space in her life that she’d been so desperate to fill, her absence felt unbearable. Charlie drank the better part of a bottle of wine every evening, the curtains drawn—lest a photographer snapped a candid shot of her gorging on Pinot Gris.

“You’re welcome to stay at ours if it would help,” Liz offered.