A New York Romance Read Online Free

lips raised to reveal her teeth, the slightest movement of her eyebrows, and the light freckles on each cheek hidden under the fading makeup.
    “What’s wrong? You don’t know what you do?” she asked with a short laugh.
    “You would not believe me,” he said, wanting to tell her the truth. He always wanted to tell someone the truth, but he resisted. Not even his adopted parents understood him, nor his brother or friends. Charlie was simply quiet and odd toward everyone when they asked what he did or when he was forced to talk about himself.
    “Try me,” she encouraged him. “You can tell me anything. Just think of us as passing strangers and we’re never going to see each other again after this night. So you can tell me anything. I don’t even know your last name so I can’t tell anyone who you are anyway. What are you afraid of? You’re not a hit man or anything, are you? Or an escaped murderer?” she questioned him like this, although she was certain he was mostly harmless. There was something calming about his presence, though it was also a little strange. “Oh that’s right. You’re not even a man. I forgot.”
    “Well, okay. Let’s see,” he said, agreeing to reveal some of himself. “I don’t really have a job, not in the way you think of jobs. I tried to work before to fit in, but I just didn’t like it very much. It was too distracting to my real work,” he said.
    “Are you one of those religious people doing the work of the Lord?” she asked with a wide-eyed look of ‘I hope not’ on her face.
    “No, he does his work and I do mine,” Charlie smiled, “they are similar but they are not the same.”
    “If you don’t work, how do you get money to live off of? Were you born into a wealthy family?” she asked.
    “No, not exactly. You see, we all have the power to create whatever we want with our thoughts, but for me, my thoughts produce things very quickly because of who I am.”
    “Because of who you are? You mean because of the work you do?” she asked looking for a simple answer first to build upon. However, she was quickly realizing that she was not going to get a simple answer like a lawyer, a fireman, or even a drug dealer or someone who lives off the government. Perhaps he’s on disability with mental health issues, she thought to herself. Maybe he thinks he’s a superhero or something.
    “Well, like the bus crash today,” he began to say, then he paused.
    “What about it?” she encouraged him.
    “I caused it. I injured all those people,” he said.
    Julie stared into his grayish-blue eyes in a moment of thoughtless shock then said, “Yeah right.” She thought he was just making up a story, but she could not reject the seriousness of his face. What kind of story was this to make up anyway?
    “Don’t joke around about that,” she said. “It was a bus crash. It was scary. People got hurt.”
    “I’m not joking,” he said as she fidgeted in her seat, bit her bottom lip, and reached slowly for her purse.
    “What are you like a terrorist or something?” she asked, thinking of how she could get out of the dinner.
    “No, it is nothing like that at all. I saw you on the bus and I thought for a moment what it might be like to be in a relationship with someone so beautiful, just the two of us. Then the bus crashed and suddenly it was the two of us walking down the street.”
    “What? You’re saying you caused the bus to crash because you thought of us being alone together?” she asked, thinking it was perhaps the most disturbing yet romantic thing she had ever heard. The world ‘ beautiful ’ lingered in her mind longer than all the other words.
    “Yes, in order for us to be alone we had to be separated from the other people on the bus. If I hadn’t turned my attention back quicker, all those people could have been killed,” he explained.
    “That’s cute. Original too. Never heard anything like it,” she responded sarcastically. “Do you always make up crazy