(no subject)

[teenagerenegade]

He likes that they still make time for each other like this. It's one of those nights that Sabrina has had to sleep over at the store, so Charlie had invited Rosie to come over and hang out - stay the night, if she wants to. Kavinsky had cooked dinner and they'd hung out, and then Kavinsky and Newt had gone to bed and left Rosie and Charlie hanging out on the sofa.

"I might go and change into pjs," says Charlie, sitting up and stretching his arms over his head. "Do you want to stay? I can lend you something."

Comments

[forthsofar]

"Right," she says. "Like a vacation, where the most difficult thing to happen is the three of us trying to agree on...something completely ordinary. How long to spend at the pool, maybe, because that's definitely happening."

[teenagerenegade]

"We've...actually got two," says Charlie, with the good grace to look embarrassed. "I spent a lot of time in the inside one, but the outside one is bigger."

[forthsofar]

"Two?" she says, but even the little amount of disbelief in her voice is gone a moment later as she laughs. "Even better. The hardest choice we'll have to make is whether to start the day at the inside pool, or the outside one."

After giving him a final squeeze and taking a cookie from the stash piled on the table in front of him, she moves back to her side of the couch. "You know, I'm really starting to like this plan."

[teenagerenegade]

"Yeah, I...Wasn't joking when I said we had a lot of money," says Charlie, rolling his eyes. "It didn't all go away when my dad...You know...either. A lot of it was my mom's to start with. "What else do you want to do? Shopping? Fifth Avenue?"

[forthsofar]

"Right," says Rosie, giving the mention of his dad only as much attention as Charlie does, a weight that passes over them briefly before it's gone again. The thought of more is a happier one, anyway, and she takes the time to think, her lip snagged in her teeth for a moment. "Maybe a bit of shopping," she admits. "At least walking along and looking at everything in the windows. Tiffany's, especially. Other than that, I'd want to go to the Met and spend all day just...wandering. Seeing as much of it as possible, maybe getting lost for a bit."

It sounds silly, too dreamlike and romantic, and she laughs a little. "And I'd love to see something on Broadway. I had the records, My Fair Lady and The King and I and all the rest, but it's not the same as really seeing it."

[teenagerenegade]

"Oh, man, yeah," says Charlie, grinning. He'd always loved going into the city with his mom to see something. "I don't know what's playing right now, but I bet The Lion King and Wicked are still there. You'd love both of those, I think."

[forthsofar]

"I don't know anything about either of those." It's a kind of reminder how far apart in years she and Charlie are, at least where their lives before Darrow are concerned. She feels less self-conscious about it now than she might have once, but the reminders, when they happen, always take her a bit by surprise.

How quickly the world changes, everything familiar becoming old-fashioned before you even know it.

"I believe you if you think I'd like them, though. Of course." She smiles. "You know me better than almost anyone."

[teenagerenegade]

His relationship with Rosie, other than that one time, has always been more siblings than anything else. Growing up as a lonely only child, Charlie has relished learning what it would have been like to have had a sister all this time.

"I think..." He considers it for a moment. "Wicked. It's set in this place called OZ. Magical world, and it about a witch who just wants to be able to..." He pauses, looking for the right words. "Write her own story."

[forthsofar]

The Wizard of Oz, she knows, having read a few of the books years ago, but the story Charlie describes sounds like and unlike anything she can recall. It sounds exactly like the kind of thing she'd be drawn to even now--maybe more so, with everything she's learned and done and felt in the last few years. All the times she's tried, and sometimes failed, to shape the way her own story's gone.

Which Charlie knows, of course, better than anyone. "That sounds perfect," she says, her smile just a little wry at the edges. "Magic and everything."