"Heyyy! Charles!" Charlie tried to remember the last time someone had just said his name in a normal tone, not this hale and hearty, "You're the coolest dude, ever," kind of voice. 

They sounded like the photogs he was so sick of.

And they all called him "Charles". 

But why wouldn't they? He'd never told them how much he didn't like it, how it felt so fake, almost fraudulent. Charles was the smooth talker, the actor in the shades with the security guards and tinted windows. He hadn't realized how much he detested "Charles" until that girl Jane had called him "Charlie."

Hearing his old name had taken him to the past, back to the relatively simple early days of his career, when he'd just been a punk kid from London who really knew how to sing. He realized when he heard her say it that he still thought of himself that way, that when he talked to himself, which was more and more often these days, he called himself Charlie. He'd liked being Charlie. 

He missed it.

He smiled widely and joined his friends on the terrace. He was on the roof of someone's penthouse in SoHo, and all of Manhattan glittered to the north, stretching away into the dark, while the buildings of the financial district rose to the south. It was almost too cold to be outside, but the host had provided numerous cone heaters where his guests could keep warm.

"Charles, my man!" 

"Hey, Ted," Charlie said easily. "How've you been?" Ted was a movie producer who'd been trying to entice Charlie to do a movie with them for nearly a year. Charlie had seen the script, and it was garbage. It didn't stop Ted from trying, though, every time he saw Charlie, which was unfortunately more often than Charlie liked. Charlie looked around. Was there anyone at this party that he actually wanted to talk to? Was even one of these people an actual friend?

It was mostly people from the movie industry now. A few years ago it had been mainly music people. The faces had changed, but the chatter, the liquor, the sex, it was all so much the same. As usual, the party was crawling with women, of all ages, women who seemed to want nothing more than to engage in some sort of sexual congress with one Charles McAllister. 

One of these women was particularly aggressive. She had pretty red hair that looked very unnatural, and breasts that looked very unnatural indeed. Her name was either Marlene or Darlene, he couldn't tell because her speech was a bit impaired. She had no issues with her mouth, though, as Charles found out when she yanked him behind some kind of air conditioning unit or something and fellated him until he was seeing stars in front of his eyes.

Jesus.

Marlene-or-Darlene rose from her knees, licking her lips and smoothing her hair down where he'd grasped it. She smiled at him and had him hold her phone up to her face so she could re-apply her lipstick in the dim light before heading back to the party.

"If you want something more, I'd be glad to go back to your hotel with you," she said with a smile.

She stuck pretty close to him until he excused himself to the bathroom, figuring she wouldn't be able to follow him in there. Hopefully, if he stayed in there long enough, she'd take the hint and find someone else to blow or whatever.

After he'd used the toilet, he leaned against the counter and scrolled through his Twitter feed just to kill time, and to increase the odds that Marlene-Darlene would be gone when he emerged. He saw a picture that made him stop and scroll back.

His glasses, the ones he'd given to Jane to wear at lunch today. They were sitting on a copy of Pride and Prejudice. The tweet simply read, 

"I want to give them back?"

Charlie smiled to himself. He'd forgotten all about them. He quickly sent a message. 

"How should we do this?"

While he was waiting for a response, someone knocked on the door. 

"Sorry, coming," he said, opening the door. 

Thankfully, Marlene-Darlene was nowhere to be found, and Charlie grabbed himself a fresh drink and sat on the sofa. Other than to use the bathroom, people weren't really coming into the house; everyone would rather be on the rooftop admiring the million dollar views of the city, so he was left blessedly alone. 

His phone dinged with an incoming Twitter message.

"You're the one who's complicated, you tell me?"

Charlie smiled at his phone for a few minutes, thinking, then sent back the following:

"Meet me at Columbus Circle at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon."

"I have class until 3, comedian."

"4, then?"

"It'll be tight, but I think I can manage. See you tomorrow."

Charlie sat and smiled at his phone a bit longer. He finally hoisted himself up and wandered back out to the roof, but whatever small desire he'd had to be there had evaporated, so he found the host and said his goodbyes as he texted for his car.

As he was headed back to the hotel he sent back a Twitter message to "janebc":

"This is something I haven't said in years, but is there any chance you'd give me your number? So I could just text you instead of doing the Twitter message thing?"

He waited for a response for the rest of the drive back to his hotel in Midtown, and still hadn't gotten a response when he was ready to take a shower and go to sleep.

Jane wasn't waiting to hear from him, apparently.

He got an answer just as he was getting into bed, no message, just her phone number. He sent her a text right away:

"Just checking to see if you gave me your real number haha"

"Dude, I'm going to see you tomorrow! How would I explain it if I gave you a fake number??"

"Oh, good point, didn't think of that!"

"You realize that I now have your number too?? This could be interesting."

"You wouldn't!!!"

"No, but only because you were so nice and polite to me at lunch today."

"I *was* a bit rude, I suppose...I'm sorry."

"No, I understand. A person like you probably gets used to ppl always being very accommodating."

"That's a polite way of putting it."

"How would *you* put it, then?"

"Ppl always have their noses so far up my arse it's amazing they can breathe."

"HAHAHA. I thought the current English parlance was 'bum'?"

"Hmm. On a girl it would be a bum, I suppose. I'm manly, I have an arse, you see?"

Charlie got back a row of laughing smileys, which made him laugh.

"Thanks for making me laugh so hard I woke up my cat," she texted.

"Ooh, show me a snap of the kitty, pls?"

He got back a picture of a black and white cat, sitting across some rather knobby knees, and legs in knee socks that looked like they had the Powerpuff Girls on them.

"V v cute and adorable. The cat's nice, too."

Charlie's phone was silent for so long he began to worry that he'd offended her. Just as he was getting ready to come up with an apology text, he received one himself.

"Sorry, didn't mean to show my gams. That's usually something I reserve for close family."

Charlie quickly checked to make sure he understood the meaning of "gams", then texted back:

"Why would you say that? I happen to LOVE the Powerpuff Girls!!!"

"Oh yeah? Which one's your favorite, then?"

"Um, Petal?"

"HAHAHAHAHA. You mean Blossom?"

"Yeah, she's the one!"

"Why?"

Charlie's sister used to watch the show, and he quickly ran through the lyrics to the theme song in his head.

"Because she's the commander and leader!"

"Very good lol. Okay, gotta get some sleep, killer test tomorrow morning in Advanced Calculus. See you, Charlie."

"Good night."

Charlie settled down to go to sleep, feeling oddly elated. Maybe it was because of the mind-blowing orgasm he'd had on the rooftop in SoHo?

He didn't think so.

He kept thinking of those skinny knees, protruding above those ridiculous socks. He fell asleep smiling.

********************************

Over in Redmond, Jane plugged her phone in to charge while she slept, debating whether or not to tell Camilla.

She'd just spent the last half-hour texting with Charlie McAllister.

She'd been talking to a boy. Granted, it was via the medium of writing, but still. Jane had many, many boy friends; this was a small town, and she'd gone to school with the same one hundred fifty kids nearly her whole life. Plus, Bear had all of his teammates over all the time, and she talked to them.

But still.

This was fucking Charlie McAllister.

Or Charles, if you wanted to get all technical. In her mind, however, he would always be Charlie. In fact, she was pretty sure she'd called him "Charlie" at least once while they'd been texting.

She'd been texting with Charlie McAllister.

And she was going to meet him in the city tomorrow to return his sunglasses.

Jane was actually a bit torn about this last development. Part of her wanted to keep those very expensive, very nice Yves Saint Laurent sunglasses. They belonged to him. And she had Camilla for provenance if necessary, who'd back her up when she said whose they were. Not that she wanted to advertise or anything. That would just be a surefire way to get them stolen. 

She mainly just wanted to wear them and know they were Charlie's.

She'd felt horribly guilty when she'd found them on her head in the car. And returning them would be a small price to pay to see him again.

Without Camilla.

She wasn't going to tell her best friend that she was meeting the most popular teenager in the world in Manhattan tomorrow. She was just going to go.

Jane tried to tell herself not to get too excited. Just because he found her an amusing verbal sparring partner for the duration of a publicity lunch, and an entertaining texting-friend for a half-hour before bed didn't mean he was interested in anything else.

He liked her cat, Heathcliff. And her socks. And oh holy fuck she'd accidentally sent him a picture of her ugly, ugly knees.

Jane rolled over and closed her eyes.

It felt weird not to be telling Camilla. 

But it wasn't as if she were lying or anything.

Definitely not.