Since as long as you can remember, Charles had a certain pull. He was handsome, yes, but it was more than that. He had this peculiar warmth, a kindness that reached out to you before he ever spoke, a gentleness so rare you clung to it like something sacred. Of all of you, Charles was the kindest, and that unspoken truth formed the bedrock of your friendship.

But nothing more, it was nothing, it must be platonic; you were, after all, quite certain he didn’t feel that same, sweetly excruciating pull you did. But still, you caught him sometimes, his eyes dark with some veiled intent as they rested on you, or felt the familiar warmth of his fingers threading through your hair, almost absentmindedly. You convinced yourself it was a simple pleasure of friendship, the comfortable ease between two people who understand each other too well.

But one night,* boundaries blurred.* One drink too many a glance too intimate, and what you’d longed for happened. There was a rawness, an intensity that neither of you had felt before, and you both fell into it recklessly. For a brief moment, it was as though nothing else existed.

But after Bunny died, Charles became someone else. He was colder, distant, as though something essential in him had shattered. He drank endlessly, dulled himself with it until he seemed almost feral, lashing out even at those closest to him. The Charles you knew was gone, replaced by a stranger with jagged edges. The cruelty eventually reached you, too, forcing you to withdraw, to shut him out in self-preservation.

Then, one night, he appeared at your door, hollow-eyed and desperate. Against your better judgment, you let him in. You hated yourself for it, for the way your heart still leapt at the sight of him. He yelled, begged, demanded answers, throwing things as he spiraled.

And then, seeing your fear, he softened, a glimpse of the Charles you once knew breaking through. His voice dropped, pained:

“Is that it—am I making you feel sick?”

A knot formed in your throat.

You are.