#lol yes to the cheesiest song being this para title

[charliehops]

what is love? / owen, charlie, jane + nate

The last time Charlie had seen Owen at the party was when he was telling her to fuck off. Despite herself, she had actually looked for him. She had never previously felt the need to look for him at a party, as he would come to her whenever he needed her, but with everything that had happened this past week with him being arrested, her having to be his alibi and the mind games they had played with each other, she felt she had to look for him. It wasn’t like she had any idea what he was going to do, but that was the thing with Owen – you never knew what he was going to do.

As she walked around the party, she realised the only thing that connected her to these people any more was Owen. She suspected he had gone for the night and wasn’t coming back, so her purpose at this party was not needed. She felt alone. Not lonely, never lonely, but she noted that without Owen, she would always be alone at things like this. She didn’t need to be here.

She had crept out the back door to have a much-needed cigarette. A group of people stood smoking, so she went out the back gate to get some peace. Midway through the cigarette, she could hear footsteps and as if thinking of the Devil caused him to appear, it was Owen. He was storming through the alleyway as if he had a mission. Despite herself, she smiled. Only briefly.

“I didn’t think you would be back, mi amor.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got business to attend to.”

He went to open the gate, but she applied a pressuring hand to his chest, stopping him momentarily. She searched his eyes and knew he was angry. Angrier than she had seen him in weeks, maybe months, and so she needed to know what was going on and if it affected her in any sort of way.

“What business?”

He sighed quickly, as if her very presence was inconveniencing him. She usually felt like an inconvenience to the people she kept around her, like Owen and her family, but this was different in some way.

He removed her hand in a pain-free, but forceful manner all the same. His eyes fired bullets into hers.

“You know when you told Amelia all about Nate… He’s fucking beats her up and she’s now covered in bruises.” His voice rose louder and louder with each word, so he was eventually yelling at her. “You and your fucking games.”  

She flinched ever so slightly, feeling flecks of spit flying at her.

She hadn’t known about Amelia and Nate when she told her. She wouldn’t have done it if she had known, of course she wouldn’t, but her head could only process one simple thing as he told her this. He had gone to see Amelia tonight.

“Oh my God…”

It was all she could say as the realisation dawned on her. Owen was still in his fucking fit of rage, so he wasn’t noticing that Charlie’s eyes were glossing over. She was listening and the words were hurting just a little, but the thing she was realising was what was making her about to cry.

“You just fucking used her in a stupid game with me. You didn’t even think that your actions have fucking consequences. You act like I’m fucking evil, but look at you, you’re a cold, heartless bitch -,”

“You like her.”

Charlie cutting off Owen in the middle of his sentence caused them both to just stare at each other in sentence. Owen was shaking his head at what she said, but Charlie knew. She knew before Owen even knew it himself.

He would think back to this moment as a ‘of course he did’ moment. He wouldn’t have done this for anyone else. Charlie knew that. Owen would eventually know that.

Owen was currently here yelling at his girlfriend for indirectly causing pain to a stranger. He would have been congratulating her on being a cold, heartless bitch if it was with anyone else.

Charlie nodded once, before looking upwards to blink a hundred times to stop herself from crying.

She was alone and lonely. It was a feeling she could allow for just a moment.

She looked back at him and turned her lips upwards to distract him from her teary eyes. He was probably just shocked that her tear ducts apparently worked.

“Oh, mi amor, how does it feel?” She asked, cupping his face in her hands to search his eyes again, finding they had immediately softened since she told him what he didn’t know yet. “To like someone? It must be very strange.”

Owen opened his mouth and closed it a few times. No answer was coming. She kissed him instead, realising she didn’t want to know about how she was so different to Charlie and why she could be loved in a way that Charlie would never know from him. It was better not to know the answer to some things.

Pulling away, she smiled in a way that only lovers coming to the end of their time would know. It was full of bittersweet memories and uncertain futures.

“I think it’s time for me to go.”

She removed her hands from his face, but at the last second, he caught one of her wrists.

He wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but it felt like the right time to say something completely ridiculous. Something about love.

But he stopped himself.

“I guess this was always going to happen, right?”

Charlie nodded, blinking a hundred times again for good measure.

In a moment of softness that didn’t feel forced, he kissed the hand he was holding onto before letting it go. She thought, that’s what loving someone else does. It teaches you to be soft. Her monster had softened and she wondered whether she’d ever understand the word.

She walked away then, knowing she was finally walking forwards, not backwards, and there was nothing stopping her from doing what she wanted now. She didn’t blink anymore, she let tears fall.

She was free.

                            ______________________________________

Jane was having a cigarette outside with some people she knew from college when she heard the yelling from just outside the gate. Everyone in the group giggled at the awkwardness of the situation, but Jane quickly realised who the voices belonged to.

Owen and Charlie.

This was most inconvenient for her and JJ. She needed them to remain on good terms. She considered things she was capable of doing to try and fix the situation. She could send Charlie flowers and pretend they came from Owen? That would work. In a world where Owen, of course, gave flowers out to people.

Never mind, back to the drawing board. It would probably be better to think about this when she was sober, she decided.

She waited until the voices died down, before tip toeing over to the gate and opening it just a peek to see who was there.

“Everything okay?” She asked, in a loud, overbearing voice, as if she was a Mum overhearing an argument between her daughter and their friend and just wanted to know what had happened.

Owen turned to little Jane’s face in the gate and shrugged.

“Yeah,”

He pushed open the gate, therefore discarding Jane to the side, and began to walk into the house.

Owen was about as easy to talk to as talking to a collection of rocks and Jane used to collect rocks when she was a very small child and sometimes talked to them, so she was talking from experience. She would need to be more annoyingly direct.

“Uh… I mean, you and Charlie are fine, right? Everything’s okay?”

Owen turned around in annoyance.

“We’re over. It’s over. Is Nate still there?”

“Nate?” Jane asked, unable to keep up the conversation. “I think so, I mean, yeah? But you and Charlie… over? What do you mean?”

But Owen was hardly listening now and was opening the back door. Jane screamed.

“Owen!”

He stopped and sharply turned around, balling up his fists.

“Charlie said as long as you’re together she won’t do anything with what you told her about JJ. You… you just have to get back together with her. Until JJ is in the clear. Otherwise she’ll fuck everything up, she already knows a lot. Imagine what else she’ll find. Owen? Owen, please?”

Her head went back to what Keira had said to her about fighting your own battles and Jane was doing a lot for JJ. Here she was again, pleading on his behalf. She felt pathetic, she felt like JJ’s life was just as important to her as her own life was and it exhausted her. He was exhausting her.

Owen took just one step closer to her.

“Look, I don’t give a shit. Charlie and I are done; I’m not changing that for JJ. I’m doing what I can, but JJ needs to start doing his own shit to get out of this, right? You’ve already done enough; I’ve certainly done more than fucking enough.”

He stomped away into the house and Jane wished she could walk away from all this now. She could have an easy life, flirting with a girl she liked, or trying to flirt, and just be done with all this, but she knew she couldn’t. She was too far in this now, too far in love to turn away from it now. How much further past exhaustion could she go for JJ? She was about to find out.

                                        __________________________________

Owen confirmed Nate was still at the party and then went out the back, found a shovel in Jane’s garden and went back out the gate. He texted Nate to say he had gear and had a special discount tonight for loyal customers. He waited at that gate for him to arrive.

His head was less full of rage directed at Nate after the distractions of Charlie and Jane tonight, but that should maybe terrify Nate a bit more, because now he was going at this with a calculated anger.

Charlie told him the reason he was doing this tonight and in a way it made sense. She didn’t even know about the kiss, so what would she say about that? He wanted to tell her that if this was him liking someone, then it felt like whatever he did for Amelia, it would never be enough. He didn’t know if that was it was supposed to feel like and he couldn’t even be sure this was because of him liking Amelia or if it was just the fact that he couldn’t deal with any other women getting hurt by men, but what he did tonight would never be enough for her.

Something still tinged at him about Charlie. It was always heading down this path and if he didn’t have the confusion surrounding Amelia and what he needed to do with Nate, then he knew he wouldn’t have just let her walk away. She wasn’t supposed to be allowed to walk away, but maybe he had experienced some weird sense of growth?

It was a weird question to even have as held a shovel in his hand.

He heard footsteps coming towards the gate and he gripped onto it a little tighter.

“Hey, hey,” Nate said, shutting the gate behind him.

Owen pinned up against the gate with the point of the shovel, pushing all his weight and energy into it.

“Woah, woah, what the fuck is going on?”

Owen smiled without humour, pushing a little harder with his shovel.

“I know what you’ve done… been doing to Amelia, your girlfriend?”

“What? What are you talking about?” He had panic in his eyes and Owen liked to see it. He pushed harder so it was more effort for him to speak. “Whatever she said, she’s lying, you know -,”

“You beat up your girlfriend.”

“No, I would never hurt her, that’s – that’s -,”

Owen pushed harder and higher up his body, so he could barely hear what Nate was trying to splutter out.

“Sorry, Nate, I can’t quite hear you?” He said, cupping one hand to his ear for comic relief.

“I – I…”

“Now, I want to make it very clear to you what’s going to happen.” He pulled the shovel down, so it was still shoved up against Nate’s chest, but so he could stand incredibly close to Nate’s face. “You’re never going to touch Amelia again, you’re going to be done with her. If I see you near her for anything other than ending it with her, actually, no, you can do that on the phone, you don’t go near her. If you do, I will find a way to publicly list you as being one of my clients, I will make sure you are done for possession, I will make sure you never go to fucking university, I will make sure your parents know what a fuck up you truly are. And if that doesn’t sound like much of a threat, I would look over your shoulder every time you’re walking home at night, because I’ve got guys who’d want to beat a cunt like you up for fun. I don’t even have to pay them. Does this sound fair to you?”

Nate was spluttering and spitting, unable to answer the question quick enough.

“Yeah, yeah, okay.”

Owen hummed.

“I don’t know if I believe you, so let me give you a taster.”

He removed the shovel only to hit him hard with the back of it to his side, so he fell to the floor. He grabbed the front of his shirt in a balled up fist, so he could punch him in the face, making sure his face would bruise. He then threw him down and kicked his chest a few times so he was wheezing on the floor.

“Am I clear?”

Nate coughed up blood and nodded weakly.

“Good. Let’s see how you like being the bruised one.”

He walked over Nate’s body and started his walk home.

Nate would be found there fifteen minutes later when two partygoers decided to make out in the alleyway.

Rumours went around about who got Nate in this state and some people said they saw Owen come back to the party for a strange few minutes and it was around the time Nate got hurt, but it was just a rumour.

Owen loved rumours.

#lol yes to the cheesiest song being this para title #owen #jane #para #nate #what is love