The Architect

—CARLY—

Okay, fine. I didn’t really have an argument with my dad.

It was more like a… spirited discussion about quarterly growth projections that I strategically escalated into a door-slam-worthy exit. I needed an excuse. A good, solid, believable excuse to pack a bag and insert myself into Charlie Wayne’s personal orbit for an undetermined amount of time.

Don’t judge me. Or do. I don’t care.

I mean, come on. We’ve been best friends since we were in diapers. Our fathers, in a fit of bizarre, macho sentimentality, gave us matching ‘C’ initials like we were a brand partnership waiting to happen. I’ve seen him through chickenpox, his embarrassing middle-school poetry phase, and that time he tried to grow a goatee. He knows my deepest secret (I’m terrified of lobsters) and my most shameful memory (the 8th grade talent show disaster). We are, for all intents and purposes, cosmically intertwined.

And he is still, staggeringly, blissfully, oblivious.

Charlie is the smartest person I know when it comes to anything with a blueprint, a profit margin, or a sports stat. He can run global operations in his sleep. He has a memory for details that borders on terrifying.

But for some reason, he is completely blind to the colossal, neon-sign-flashing, twenty-year-long truth that is right in front of his beautiful, dumb face.

Me.

How I feel about him.

It’s pathetic, really.

I’ve been in love with him since I was approximately six years old. The precise moment was on the playground, when Tommy Finnegan tried to steal my juice box. Charlie, eight years old then and scrawny as a twig, stepped between us, puffed out his tiny chest, and declared, “You don’t take from my Carly.” Tommy pushed him. Charlie got a bloody nose. I got to keep my apple juice. He was my knight in slightly-grubby sneakers. I was a goner.

Twenty years later, it’s not better. It’s worse. I keep falling deeper, harder, more stupidly in love with him every single day. It happens when he flashes that stupid, lopsided grin that crinkles the corners of his eyes. It happens when he’s focused, rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt, forearms tensing. It happens when he’s asleep on my couch, looking unfairly peaceful. It happens when he argues with me about the best way to load a dishwasher, passion in his voice over soap pods.

I hate it. I hate the helpless swoop in my stomach. I hate the way my heart tries to crawl out of my throat whenever he’s near.

Love, am I right? The world’s most beautiful, debilitating curse.

Because Charlie? Charlie is a flirt. No, he’s THE Flirt. Capital F. It’s his native language. He charms the barista, the CEO, the old lady who lives down the hall. And with women he’s interested in? He’s a goddamn symphony of attention. He listens, he laughs, he makes them feel like the only person in the room.

But it’s a firework. Bright, breathtaking, and over in a flash.

His relationships—if you can even call them that—have the lifespan of a fruit fly. Because the man is deathly, clinically, philosophically allergic to commitment. He sees a future and he runs for the hills. He confuses intimacy with a trap.

For years, I played the supportive best friend. I nodded and smiled while he told me about some blonde from the yoga studio or some brunette from the art gallery. I swallowed the acid jealousy that burned my throat. I pretended my heart wasn’t a little bruised every time he mentioned a new name, a new date, a new overnight guest.

I got tired of it.

So I… intervened. Let’s call it proactive best-friending.

The flat tire? Please. A well-placed nail from my own toolkit near the curb where his dates usually park. The “fire alarm” for Amelia/Alicia? A perfectly timed anonymous call to her building’s security line from a burner phone. The splintered heels? A tiny, almost invisible drop of super-strong adhesive on the stiletto tip. A tragedy of fashion.

And Jenna’s “food poisoning”? Okay, don’t look at me like that. She didn’t die. She had a very mild, very temporary gastrointestinal upset. It’s not like I stalked her I*******m, saw her post about her severe shellfish allergy, and then may have suggested the Thai place knowing their peanut sauce has trace oyster extract. That would be unhinged.

I’m not unhinged. I’m strategic. I’m the Head of Corporate Strategy, for God’s sake. This is just… asset management.

I finally got tired of watching another woman who didn’t know he used to be afraid of the dark or that he sings Queen in the shower when he thinks no one’s home, get a piece of him I desperately wanted for myself. No more watching from the sidelines, nursing a quiet, hopeless ache.

So I decided to act.

The move-in was phase one. The hoodie last night? Phase two.

And in case you’re wondering? Yes. I intentionally spent the night in his bed. Why would I sleep in the perfectly good guest room when I could infiltrate the inner sanctum?

Why, you ask? Because Charlie Wayne is a creature of habit. If a girl he’s dating so much as leaves a toothbrush at his place, he starts plotting his escape. If he feels a woman is getting too attached, he ghosts faster than you can say “emotional availability.”

So I’m not going to be that girl. I’m going to be… Carly. His best friend. The one who is already there. The one whose presence is a given, not a request. I’m going to blur every line he’s ever drawn so slowly, so naturally, that he won’t see the boundary is gone until he’s already standing in my territory. I’m going to make him fall in love with me without him ever realizing he’s been caught.

That’s why, opening my eyes the next morning to the soft dawn light and the sight of his sleeping face—mouth slightly open, hair adorably mussed on the pillow—felt like a monumental victory.

It was quiet. It was domestic. It was continuous.

It was the first, flawless step in my long-term campaign to own the completely unclaimed, thoroughly oblivious heart of Charlie Wayne.

My Charles.

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To be continued...