#if the picture is a pink drink you can assume it's a cursed charlie x elenore thing

[motownfiction]

this year’s love

Elenore sneaks out to see Charlie somewhere in the middle of the afternoon. She figures if she visited with one Doyle sibling in the morning, she owes it to the other one to spend a few hours with him, too. It’s not like Sadie’s going to visit him while she’s here. She already mentioned something about it to Lucy. Elenore pretends not to know why she thinks it’s her duty to visit him instead.

He’s all alone in the apartment. Carrie and Cordelia went shopping in Paramus earlier today, and they won’t be back until tonight. Charlie says that for as cosmopolitan as she is, Carrie gets strange hankerings for the suburbs every now and then.

“Do you remember much of it?” he asks as he finishes making her a cherry iced tea. “Living there, in the suburbs?”

Elenore takes the glass from Charlie’s hand and ruminates over a sip.

“I mean, sort of,” she says. “I remember we lived a block and a half away from a McDonald’s, a Burger King, and a Taco Bell.”

Charlie laughs like he wants to be wistful for something he doesn’t miss.

“Restaurant Row,” he says. “Don’t forget about the Pizza Hut.”

“Hey, I’ve been in New York since I was seven,” Elenore says. “That’s twelve years. I left out the Pizza Hut on purpose.”

Charlie smiles. He meanders over to the CD player in the kitchen and flips on whatever’s still loaded in there. Elenore recognizes the song.

White ladder / water and wine / don’t wanna feel tonight …

She makes a strange face.

“David Gray?”

Charlie nods, almost embarrassed.

“This one’s mine, I’m afraid,” he says. “Sometimes even I like what’s popular. Or, you know – what was popular before the turn of the century.”

Elenore nods (a little too flirtatiously).

“Well, look at you,” she says. “I’ve always wondered where we draw the line.”

Charlie’s face turns stark white, and Elenore pretends not to notice.

“Between what?”

“You know,” Elenore says. “Between when something’s popular and when it’s a classic. Like, tons of people like The Beatles, but they’re on classic rock stations all the time. And lots of people have read Jane Eyre, but my mom teaches it as a classic novel. So, which one is it? Is it popular, or is it a classic?”

Charlie laughs, and Elenore isn’t sure she knows why – not this time.

“I think those questions are a little above my paygrade,” he says. “Of course, depending on the night, Chicken McNuggets are above my paygrade, so I don’t really know what I’m saying, do I?”

Elenore grins, trying to be as silly as she can. She doesn’t know why, but it feels like her only defense.

Defense? Against Charlie?

She pushes her father’s voice out of her mind.

“That’s another one, though,” Charlie adds. “Chicken McNuggets. Are they popular, or are they classic?”

“Well, that opens up a whole other question,” Elenore says.

“What’s that?”

“Food. Is it popular culture, or is it something else? If we commodify sustenance, what does that mean?”

“I think it means you just gave way too much credit to Ronald McDonald.”

Elenore blushes and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. All the while, she can’t help but think that her mother would be so disappointed.

“Yeah, well,” she struggles, “I guess that’s what your first year of college will do to you. Get you thinking as absurdly and as theoretically as possible.”

Charlie chuckles.

“You know, some people would call those synonyms,” he says. “Absurd and theoretical.”

Elenore grins (again, flirtatiously – why can’t she just stop?).

“Uh-huh,” she says. “And what would you call them, Charlie Doyle? Synonyms or not?”

Charlie shrugs. Always underestimating himself. It makes Elenore go weak in the knees. After growing up in a family of overachievers who eat other overachievers for breakfast, it’s nice to spend some time with an underdog (or somebody who thinks he’s an underdog).

“I think I’d call them Carrie’s domain,” he says. “I’m just a piano player.”

She sighs, picturing herself and Charlie like they’re in Moulin Rouge. She shakes her head and tries to snap herself out of it – she’s too old for fantasies like this – but it doesn’t work. The longer Charlie locks eyes with her, the more she thinks in song and dance.

The David Gray CD switches to the next song. Probably the most popular track. Elenore’s not sure she cares. She’s always liked what she wants to like, no matter how many times it’s played on the radio. She thinks she might have gotten that from Sam.

“You know,” Charlie says, leaning across the counter and coming almost face to face with Elenore, “Carrie and Cordelia are gonna be gone all day and all night.”

Elenore laughs.

“That’s funny,” she says. “What could they possibly have to do in New Jersey?”

“Carrie’s got a real thing about hitting up Applebee’s whenever she’s there,” Charlie says, again with the forced wistfulness. “She says there’s something about ‘Eating good in the neighborhood’ when you’re in a real neighborhood. Not Times Square.”

“Does she also have a thing about shitty mozzarella sticks?”

“And Oreo milkshakes.”

Elenore smiles. She’s not sure if she’s doing it to be polite or if she likes the thought of Carrie enjoying something as simple as an Oreo milkshake. Of all her parents’ friends, Carrie has always been the most difficult to please. At least, that’s how Elenore always wanted to see it.

Charlie leans farther across the counter, and Elenore’s stomach is in a French twist. She’s frozen as he gently takes her hand. Her heartbeat overpowers the music, but she can still hear it.

When you kiss me on that midnight street / sweep me off my feet / singing, “ain’t this life so sweet?”

She wants to say something, but her mouth is so dry. Charlie’s not saying anything at all. He’s just holding her hand, letting Carrie’s absence hang in the air for Elenore to grab onto. He has a look in his eye that outside of the movies, Elenore usually only sees her father give to her mother. It’s the look Sean was supposed to give her. Sean, the man she was supposed to love. Sean, the man who stopped loving her. As Charlie holds her hand, Elenore can’t stop thinking about Sean. If they hadn’t broken up – if Sean hadn’t fallen in love with someone else, someone who’s better and smarter and more mature than Elenore – then Charlie Doyle surely wouldn’t be holding her hand this afternoon.

And why doesn’t she want Charlie Doyle to hold her hand? This or any afternoon? She used to write poetic journal entries where she wished for nothing more. She used to listen to that song by The Goo Goo Dolls and picture them gliding across a dimly lit dance floor. But it was different then. She was fourteen. She didn’t understand that he was a man, and she was a child.

She doesn’t see it until today, when he won’t let go of her hand.

Eventually, she wriggles out of Charlie’s grip (at least, it feels like a grip, in her memory) and breaks eye contact. David Gray still warbles in the background. She thinks she might have to destroy her copy of White Ladder when she gets back home (to see Mom and Daddy and Emma).

“I should go,” she says and hops off the kitchen stool.

Charlie begins to follow her out the door, and her whole body tenses. But she does not freeze. She has just enough Will in her to fight.

“But there’s so much left we can still do,” he says.

He sounds like a disappointed child. Elenore feels sick. She shakes her head and makes a claw out of her keys. Charlie seems like the type to avoid the claw of keys.

“I should go,” she says.

This time, Charlie doesn’t argue. Elenore half-heartedly waves at him and practically runs out of the building. She stops right before the front door and grips onto the handle as tightly as she can. Before she knows what’s happening, she begins to cry. Before she knows she’s crying, she begins to sob.

She tells herself she doesn’t know why she’s crying or what she’s feeling, but none of that is true. Elenore knows exactly why she’s crying.

In all her days, she’s never been so scared.