Inside Outside Outside Inside (Sex and the City, Carrie/Charlotte, PG-13, for kangeiko)
Title: Inside Outside Outside Inside
Author: celeria
Recipient: kangeiko
Fandom: Sex and the City
Pairing: Carrie Bradshaw/Charlotte York
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2650
Summary: "Sometimes," Samantha said, "you need to do something a little bit ... out of character."
Disclaimer: HBO and Darren Starr and some other people own these characters, their apartments, and their shoes. Not me. If I did, they would be much more conducive to doing what I want them to do.
Timeline: Set right after 3x04 Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl ... and indirectly references other season 3 material.
Inside Outside Outside Inside
"I rather like it," Samantha said.
"You look cute," Miranda said.
"Sweetie, it's a good photograph," Carrie said.
"No, it's not," Charlotte sniffed, yanking the white wooden frame from Carrie's slender hands and dropping it on the floor. Fortunately a pile of empty bags from Carrie's last shopping spree was still scuttling around the base of a chair, or else the glass would have scattered across the floor. "I look silly."
"You do not," Carrie said, smoothing down a strand of Charlotte's hair, now loose and free again.
"Yes I do." Charlotte crossed her arms over her chest and sank into the chair, her face daring each of them to contradict her. Miranda rolled her eyes. Samantha marched off to the kitchen, apparently in search of alcohol. Carrie continued patting Charlotte's head like it was a puppy, knowing that it wasn't the photograph that had Charlotte so worked up and petting patiently until she told them. "I don't even know why I did that. I just … it wasn't me."
"Sometimes," Samantha said, returning to the living room with a bottle of wine under one arm and two glasses wrapped into her twisted fingers on each hand, "you need to do something a little bit ... out of character."
Carrie laughed.
"Samantha," Miranda said, "nothing is out of character for you."
"I know," Samantha said. "That's why I do things."
"Hello!" Charlotte wailed, "we're not talking about what Samantha does. Samantha does things all the time. We're talking about my - ridiculous - behavior!"
"Honey, I think you're exaggerating." Samantha worked on wrestling the cork out of the wine with a waiter's corkscrew, then gave up and passed it to Miranda, who sucked her bottom lip between her teeth as she worked on levering the cork from the bottleneck. "You got a hot photographer to take your picture, you went for it, and you slept with him. There is nothing wrong with that."
"Maybe not for you."
Samantha propped one hand on her hip as Miranda handed the bottle back to her. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Well … you know." Charlotte flushed, a wash of color that made it impossible for her to look as cranky as she wanted to. "I mean, you just told us that you slept with your assistant."
"Ex-assistant," Samantha said triumphantly, pouring the wine and passing glasses around. "I had to, you know."
"You had to sleep with him?" Carrie asked, grinning.
"No, I had to fire him. But then I had to sleep with him. After all, it would be illegal to sleep with him first and then fire him, wouldn't it, Miranda?"
"Yes, it would," Miranda said, taking a sip. "For free legal advice, just ask Miranda Hobbes. Or Jerry Springer."
"Jerry Springer is more psychology, I think," Samantha said.
"Charlotte," Carrie said, moving from Charlotte's hair to her shoulder, "I really don't think it's that bad. At least you were sleeping with a man and not a woman."
Charlotte's eyes grew big with scandal. "You slept with a woman?"
"Not slept," Carrie said, "but lip-locked in a good old-fashioned game of seventh-grade Spin the Bottle, yes."
Miranda's mouth dropped open. Samantha mimed discreet applause. Charlotte appeared to be having some trouble making her lips and tongue move at the same time. "What happened?"
Carrie shrugged, gave Charlotte's shoulder a final squeeze, and crawled a couple of feet across the floor to choose a wine glass, scattering dust bunnies under her knees. "It was one of those parties, you know, that young 'uns have, girls and guys who have all dated each other, and we. Well. We played Spin the Bottle."
Miranda took a decisive sip of her drink. "I can safely say that I have never played Spin the Bottle."
"Ahhh, but what about Seven Minutes in Heaven?" Samantha asked, smiling.
Miranda managed to look startled and suspicious at the same time. "I thought it was nine minutes."
"What was it like?" Charlotte asked, looking caught between horror and amusement.
Carrie considered, tipping her head. "It was fine," she said at last, taking a drink and rolling the alcohol over her tongue. "The weird thing wasn't the kiss, not really. It was being with all those twentysomething kids and wondering, God, was I like that? Were we?"
"Natasha's a twentysomething," Samantha pointed out, eyeing Carrie with studied nonchalance.
Carrie laughed. "Not that kind of twentysomething." She kicked off her shoes and set down her glass so that she could lean back on her elbows. "Even if she can't spell 'there.'"
Miranda threw her head back. "What is education coming to these days?"
"See, even Big's doing something out of character these days," Samantha pointed out. "He got engaged."
Charlotte scoffed. "He should be engaged to Carrie."
"Okay, okay, enough." Carrie held up her hands. "We're not going down this road again. I don't want to be engaged to Big. There's a reason I'm not engaged to Big."
"And Miranda," Samantha went on, "Miranda just moved in with Steve."
"I let Steve move in with me," Miranda corrected. "There's a difference."
Carrie shook her head. "Oh no there isn't, missy. You and Steve have moved in together," she finished gleefully, ignoring the look on Miranda's face.
Charlotte folded her hands in her lap and gave Miranda an angelic smile. "I think it's very sweet."
Miranda threw a handful of crumpled tissue paper at Charlotte. "You would."
"So, honey, you need to calm down," Samantha said, pouring another glass of wine for herself and offering the bottle in a counterclockwise circle. "You acted like a man once. It's not going to kill you."
"But I don't want to act like a man!" Charlotte burst out. "I want a man to act like a man! I want to get married! I want a husband and children, and I can't unless I find a man who doesn't sleep with other men sorry Carrie," she finished in a rush.
Carrie shrugged elaborately. "Hey, I said the same thing."
Miranda, who normally had the least patience for Charlotte's princess-like fantasies, scooted across the floor on her knees to top off Charlotte's glass. "Charlotte," she said, pouring until the wine formed a sleek meniscus just below the rim of the glass, "you are going to get married. We all know you are. You are going to find someone great, and he'll ask you to marry him."
"Or," Samantha added, "you can call on your newfound manliness and ask him."
Charlotte looked scandalized, then buried her face in her arms. "I can't do that!"
"The point is," Carrie said, "you've got time, sweetie. No one said you have to get married tomorrow, or even this year - "
"I did!"
Samantha tilted her glass between her fingers, then raised it to Charlotte, who still had her eyes hidden in her shirt. "What you need to do, honey," she said, "is to let go of some of those … expectations."
"That doesn't make sense," said Miranda, who had made a living based on forcing the world to conform to her expectations. "You can't live your life expecting nothing."
Samantha smiled like the proverbial cat. "Maybe not," she said. "But there are so many more surprises that way."
* * *
Two bottles of wine later, Miranda pushed aside a pile of empty shoeboxes and glanced at her watch. "I've got to get home," she said, squinting at her wrist. "Steve's there and I feel - well, you know, bad about leaving him alone."
"Oh, honey," Samantha said, "he's not a dog."
"Well, no," Miranda said as her three friends watched her face color, "but, you know, I want to get home and - "
"Fuck?" Samantha suggested.
"No, say hi before he falls asleep, and - "
"Fuck?" Samantha repeated.
"No, it's just - he moved in with me - "
"So you could fuck more often?"
"Will you please stop that?" Charlotte grumbled.
"Anyway, I'll see you all tomorrow," Miranda called over her shoulder as she gathered her things and made for the door, her strides purposeful, if a little wobbly. Carrie, Charlotte, and Samantha waved and blew kisses. Over the years they'd stopped trying to figure out, during their goodbyes, the next time they'd see each other. Either they would tomorrow or they wouldn't, but it made it easier than having to take ten minutes to verbally trade pages from their Day-Timers at the end of an evening.
"I should go too," Samantha said, getting to her feet reluctantly. "I told Matt we might get together for a quick fuck tonight."
"The ex-assistant Matt?" Carrie asked, raising her eyebrows. Samantha had definite criteria for who got second and third dates in her own Day-Timer, and Carrie, who had more or less absorbed that criteria over the years, was pretty sure ex-assistant Matt didn't qualify.
"God, no. That gorgeous stock trader I ran into at the club the other night." Samantha smiled as she gathered her purse and coat, then stopped, her face falling as she pulled it on. "Actually, maybe his name wasn't Matt. Maybe Jack." She slung her bag over her shoulder. "Or Pat."
Carrie laughed. "Try not to say his name."
"That's what I do best." Samantha primped for an imaginary mirror. "Are you all right? Does Charlotte need some help getting home?"
"I think she's fine," Carrie said, although she wasn't sure that Charlotte, who was now curled up with her eyes closed and her hair spilling over the edge of the chair, was fine. She knew that Samantha wanted nothing more than to dash out into the evening with no entanglements, such as a drunken friend. She also knew that Samantha would stay if Charlotte really needed her. "It'll be okay," she added, getting up to walk Samantha out. If worse came to worse, she'd stick Charlotte on the couch and hand her a toothbrush in the morning. "Have fun with Matt." She paused. "Or Jack. Or Pat."
"I'll tell you all about it," Samantha said, winking. Carrie knew that Samantha meant it. It was one of the things Carrie loved most about her - and the thing that also made it hardest to go back to certain restaurants for a second brunch.
Carrie closed the door behind Samantha and turned back to study Charlotte and the chair, neither of which had moved for about ten minutes. "Charlotte?" she asked, gathering up the glasses, now stained with puddled wine and lipstick, and the two bottles - one empty, one nearly so. "Charlotte, honey, are you awake?"
"Awrrhhkkk."
"Do you want to go home?"
"Hnnnrmmmm."
"Oooookay." Carrie plopped her hands on her hips and glanced around. "How about we put you to bed." She was nowhere near tall or strong enough to carry a stack of shoeboxes, never mind Charlotte, but fortunately Charlotte got to her feet and shuffled into Carrie's bed with relatively little encouragement, although she did stay draped over Carrie's shoulder like a large sack of wet potatoes. Charlotte rolled onto her side, breathing inelegantly, while Carrie changed and washed up, watching her bedroom and the bundle of her half-sleeping friend in the bathroom mirror.
In the soft new darkness of her room, the shape of a friend in bed was very different from that of a lover. Carrie didn't worry about the stubble on her legs or the sticky Chapstick on her mouth or accidentally twisting across more than her half of the bed. She was more worried about Charlotte waking up in a tizzy because she hadn't brushed her teeth or moisturized or changed out of her clothes. "Charlotte?"
"Carrie?" Charlotte's voice was still as thick as an icy margarita, but at least her words were clearer now.
"Are you okay?"
"Nrrrrrrrr." Now it was muffled, like she'd turned onto her side. "Carrieeeee. When'm I gonna find a husband? No one wansta marry me."
"Sure they do." Carrie turned to face Charlotte and touch her hair again. "You'll meet someone in the … the most random way possible, and he will turn out to be a prince. A handsome prince."
"When?"
"Soon," Carrie said, praying that she was right, mostly because she didn't think she could take much more of this.
"Oh." Charlotte sounded remarkably lucid, like she was contemplating that. "But where's he now?"
"Not here," Carrie said. "So go to sleep."
Charlotte quieted down, and Carrie kept running her fingers along the tumble of her tangled dark hair until she was sure Charlotte was asleep, and then - "Carrie?"
Carrie stifled a sigh. If this was what it was like to have children, she hoped never to have any. "Yes, Charlotte?"
"Where's your husband?"
"I don't have a husband, remember? Just me. Go to sleep."
"Big," Charlotte mumbled, and at first Carrie had no clue what she was talking about. "You got Big."
"I don't got Big," Carrie reminded her, tucking a strand of hair behind Charlotte's ear. "Natasha's got him. I'm just the ex-girlfriend now." She rolled square onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. "I finally ended that and what does he do? He runs over to Paris and gets engaged. She's beautiful. She's twenty-five. She probably doesn't mind when he tells her that he has to go work in Paris for months. She's probably so good in bed that it doesn't matter that she can't spell."
Carrie's mind was so full of Big, who once occupied the very space in this bed that Charlotte was scrunched into now, that at first she didn't notice Charlotte reaching out to her, squeezing her hand and arm, and then rolling and kissing Carrie, first on the corner of her mouth, like she couldn't find her bearings in the dark, and then on the lips, so that the sharp, tangy aftertaste of wine mixed with the leftover peppermint of Carrie's toothpaste. "Oh," Carrie said, shocked and confused and overcome with desire to giggle this away. Charlotte tasted like alcohol and desperation, but also like something crisp and classy and familiar. She was so different from the girl named Dawn, who had been married to someone who slept with someone whom Carrie had slept with - or something like that - and this was so different that at first Carrie had no idea what to do.
Apparently Charlotte didn't either, because her tongue and lips stilled over Carrie's, still breathing a mix of minty, wine-filled air. "Oh," she echoed, and then edged away, back to her side of the bed. "I was - oh God, I - that's not the way things are s'posed to be!" she wailed finally. "I am so ridiculous lately!"
"Or … masculine," Carrie teased, scooting away from Charlotte. She giggled into her palm. "Maybe you're more like Baird Johnson's photograph than you think you are."
"But I don't wanna be."
"Why not?"
"Because." Charlotte sighed impatiently, like she was explaining something to a small and not-very-bright child. "How is my husband s'posed to find me if I look like a man?"
Carrie thought of Sean and his friends, women and women and men and men. They would have laughed at Charlotte's question because they would have told her that it didn't matter. But to her friend Charlotte, Carrie knew, it did. "Well, Charlotte," she said finally, "maybe you're supposed to go running out looking for him."
There was another deep pause while Charlotte either considered that or started snoring. "Maybe you too," she said finally.
Carrie took a breath and wiped the last taste of wine off her lips. "Maybe I am," she agreed.
Charlotte finally shut up for several long minutes, and Carrie was pretty sure she was finally asleep before she said, "Charlotte?"
"Hrmmm?" Charlotte's voice was soft and sleepy.
"It really is a good photograph."
end.
Author: celeria
Recipient: kangeiko
Fandom: Sex and the City
Pairing: Carrie Bradshaw/Charlotte York
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2650
Summary: "Sometimes," Samantha said, "you need to do something a little bit ... out of character."
Disclaimer: HBO and Darren Starr and some other people own these characters, their apartments, and their shoes. Not me. If I did, they would be much more conducive to doing what I want them to do.
Timeline: Set right after 3x04 Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl ... and indirectly references other season 3 material.
Inside Outside Outside Inside
"I rather like it," Samantha said.
"You look cute," Miranda said.
"Sweetie, it's a good photograph," Carrie said.
"No, it's not," Charlotte sniffed, yanking the white wooden frame from Carrie's slender hands and dropping it on the floor. Fortunately a pile of empty bags from Carrie's last shopping spree was still scuttling around the base of a chair, or else the glass would have scattered across the floor. "I look silly."
"You do not," Carrie said, smoothing down a strand of Charlotte's hair, now loose and free again.
"Yes I do." Charlotte crossed her arms over her chest and sank into the chair, her face daring each of them to contradict her. Miranda rolled her eyes. Samantha marched off to the kitchen, apparently in search of alcohol. Carrie continued patting Charlotte's head like it was a puppy, knowing that it wasn't the photograph that had Charlotte so worked up and petting patiently until she told them. "I don't even know why I did that. I just … it wasn't me."
"Sometimes," Samantha said, returning to the living room with a bottle of wine under one arm and two glasses wrapped into her twisted fingers on each hand, "you need to do something a little bit ... out of character."
Carrie laughed.
"Samantha," Miranda said, "nothing is out of character for you."
"I know," Samantha said. "That's why I do things."
"Hello!" Charlotte wailed, "we're not talking about what Samantha does. Samantha does things all the time. We're talking about my - ridiculous - behavior!"
"Honey, I think you're exaggerating." Samantha worked on wrestling the cork out of the wine with a waiter's corkscrew, then gave up and passed it to Miranda, who sucked her bottom lip between her teeth as she worked on levering the cork from the bottleneck. "You got a hot photographer to take your picture, you went for it, and you slept with him. There is nothing wrong with that."
"Maybe not for you."
Samantha propped one hand on her hip as Miranda handed the bottle back to her. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Well … you know." Charlotte flushed, a wash of color that made it impossible for her to look as cranky as she wanted to. "I mean, you just told us that you slept with your assistant."
"Ex-assistant," Samantha said triumphantly, pouring the wine and passing glasses around. "I had to, you know."
"You had to sleep with him?" Carrie asked, grinning.
"No, I had to fire him. But then I had to sleep with him. After all, it would be illegal to sleep with him first and then fire him, wouldn't it, Miranda?"
"Yes, it would," Miranda said, taking a sip. "For free legal advice, just ask Miranda Hobbes. Or Jerry Springer."
"Jerry Springer is more psychology, I think," Samantha said.
"Charlotte," Carrie said, moving from Charlotte's hair to her shoulder, "I really don't think it's that bad. At least you were sleeping with a man and not a woman."
Charlotte's eyes grew big with scandal. "You slept with a woman?"
"Not slept," Carrie said, "but lip-locked in a good old-fashioned game of seventh-grade Spin the Bottle, yes."
Miranda's mouth dropped open. Samantha mimed discreet applause. Charlotte appeared to be having some trouble making her lips and tongue move at the same time. "What happened?"
Carrie shrugged, gave Charlotte's shoulder a final squeeze, and crawled a couple of feet across the floor to choose a wine glass, scattering dust bunnies under her knees. "It was one of those parties, you know, that young 'uns have, girls and guys who have all dated each other, and we. Well. We played Spin the Bottle."
Miranda took a decisive sip of her drink. "I can safely say that I have never played Spin the Bottle."
"Ahhh, but what about Seven Minutes in Heaven?" Samantha asked, smiling.
Miranda managed to look startled and suspicious at the same time. "I thought it was nine minutes."
"What was it like?" Charlotte asked, looking caught between horror and amusement.
Carrie considered, tipping her head. "It was fine," she said at last, taking a drink and rolling the alcohol over her tongue. "The weird thing wasn't the kiss, not really. It was being with all those twentysomething kids and wondering, God, was I like that? Were we?"
"Natasha's a twentysomething," Samantha pointed out, eyeing Carrie with studied nonchalance.
Carrie laughed. "Not that kind of twentysomething." She kicked off her shoes and set down her glass so that she could lean back on her elbows. "Even if she can't spell 'there.'"
Miranda threw her head back. "What is education coming to these days?"
"See, even Big's doing something out of character these days," Samantha pointed out. "He got engaged."
Charlotte scoffed. "He should be engaged to Carrie."
"Okay, okay, enough." Carrie held up her hands. "We're not going down this road again. I don't want to be engaged to Big. There's a reason I'm not engaged to Big."
"And Miranda," Samantha went on, "Miranda just moved in with Steve."
"I let Steve move in with me," Miranda corrected. "There's a difference."
Carrie shook her head. "Oh no there isn't, missy. You and Steve have moved in together," she finished gleefully, ignoring the look on Miranda's face.
Charlotte folded her hands in her lap and gave Miranda an angelic smile. "I think it's very sweet."
Miranda threw a handful of crumpled tissue paper at Charlotte. "You would."
"So, honey, you need to calm down," Samantha said, pouring another glass of wine for herself and offering the bottle in a counterclockwise circle. "You acted like a man once. It's not going to kill you."
"But I don't want to act like a man!" Charlotte burst out. "I want a man to act like a man! I want to get married! I want a husband and children, and I can't unless I find a man who doesn't sleep with other men sorry Carrie," she finished in a rush.
Carrie shrugged elaborately. "Hey, I said the same thing."
Miranda, who normally had the least patience for Charlotte's princess-like fantasies, scooted across the floor on her knees to top off Charlotte's glass. "Charlotte," she said, pouring until the wine formed a sleek meniscus just below the rim of the glass, "you are going to get married. We all know you are. You are going to find someone great, and he'll ask you to marry him."
"Or," Samantha added, "you can call on your newfound manliness and ask him."
Charlotte looked scandalized, then buried her face in her arms. "I can't do that!"
"The point is," Carrie said, "you've got time, sweetie. No one said you have to get married tomorrow, or even this year - "
"I did!"
Samantha tilted her glass between her fingers, then raised it to Charlotte, who still had her eyes hidden in her shirt. "What you need to do, honey," she said, "is to let go of some of those … expectations."
"That doesn't make sense," said Miranda, who had made a living based on forcing the world to conform to her expectations. "You can't live your life expecting nothing."
Samantha smiled like the proverbial cat. "Maybe not," she said. "But there are so many more surprises that way."
* * *
Two bottles of wine later, Miranda pushed aside a pile of empty shoeboxes and glanced at her watch. "I've got to get home," she said, squinting at her wrist. "Steve's there and I feel - well, you know, bad about leaving him alone."
"Oh, honey," Samantha said, "he's not a dog."
"Well, no," Miranda said as her three friends watched her face color, "but, you know, I want to get home and - "
"Fuck?" Samantha suggested.
"No, say hi before he falls asleep, and - "
"Fuck?" Samantha repeated.
"No, it's just - he moved in with me - "
"So you could fuck more often?"
"Will you please stop that?" Charlotte grumbled.
"Anyway, I'll see you all tomorrow," Miranda called over her shoulder as she gathered her things and made for the door, her strides purposeful, if a little wobbly. Carrie, Charlotte, and Samantha waved and blew kisses. Over the years they'd stopped trying to figure out, during their goodbyes, the next time they'd see each other. Either they would tomorrow or they wouldn't, but it made it easier than having to take ten minutes to verbally trade pages from their Day-Timers at the end of an evening.
"I should go too," Samantha said, getting to her feet reluctantly. "I told Matt we might get together for a quick fuck tonight."
"The ex-assistant Matt?" Carrie asked, raising her eyebrows. Samantha had definite criteria for who got second and third dates in her own Day-Timer, and Carrie, who had more or less absorbed that criteria over the years, was pretty sure ex-assistant Matt didn't qualify.
"God, no. That gorgeous stock trader I ran into at the club the other night." Samantha smiled as she gathered her purse and coat, then stopped, her face falling as she pulled it on. "Actually, maybe his name wasn't Matt. Maybe Jack." She slung her bag over her shoulder. "Or Pat."
Carrie laughed. "Try not to say his name."
"That's what I do best." Samantha primped for an imaginary mirror. "Are you all right? Does Charlotte need some help getting home?"
"I think she's fine," Carrie said, although she wasn't sure that Charlotte, who was now curled up with her eyes closed and her hair spilling over the edge of the chair, was fine. She knew that Samantha wanted nothing more than to dash out into the evening with no entanglements, such as a drunken friend. She also knew that Samantha would stay if Charlotte really needed her. "It'll be okay," she added, getting up to walk Samantha out. If worse came to worse, she'd stick Charlotte on the couch and hand her a toothbrush in the morning. "Have fun with Matt." She paused. "Or Jack. Or Pat."
"I'll tell you all about it," Samantha said, winking. Carrie knew that Samantha meant it. It was one of the things Carrie loved most about her - and the thing that also made it hardest to go back to certain restaurants for a second brunch.
Carrie closed the door behind Samantha and turned back to study Charlotte and the chair, neither of which had moved for about ten minutes. "Charlotte?" she asked, gathering up the glasses, now stained with puddled wine and lipstick, and the two bottles - one empty, one nearly so. "Charlotte, honey, are you awake?"
"Awrrhhkkk."
"Do you want to go home?"
"Hnnnrmmmm."
"Oooookay." Carrie plopped her hands on her hips and glanced around. "How about we put you to bed." She was nowhere near tall or strong enough to carry a stack of shoeboxes, never mind Charlotte, but fortunately Charlotte got to her feet and shuffled into Carrie's bed with relatively little encouragement, although she did stay draped over Carrie's shoulder like a large sack of wet potatoes. Charlotte rolled onto her side, breathing inelegantly, while Carrie changed and washed up, watching her bedroom and the bundle of her half-sleeping friend in the bathroom mirror.
In the soft new darkness of her room, the shape of a friend in bed was very different from that of a lover. Carrie didn't worry about the stubble on her legs or the sticky Chapstick on her mouth or accidentally twisting across more than her half of the bed. She was more worried about Charlotte waking up in a tizzy because she hadn't brushed her teeth or moisturized or changed out of her clothes. "Charlotte?"
"Carrie?" Charlotte's voice was still as thick as an icy margarita, but at least her words were clearer now.
"Are you okay?"
"Nrrrrrrrr." Now it was muffled, like she'd turned onto her side. "Carrieeeee. When'm I gonna find a husband? No one wansta marry me."
"Sure they do." Carrie turned to face Charlotte and touch her hair again. "You'll meet someone in the … the most random way possible, and he will turn out to be a prince. A handsome prince."
"When?"
"Soon," Carrie said, praying that she was right, mostly because she didn't think she could take much more of this.
"Oh." Charlotte sounded remarkably lucid, like she was contemplating that. "But where's he now?"
"Not here," Carrie said. "So go to sleep."
Charlotte quieted down, and Carrie kept running her fingers along the tumble of her tangled dark hair until she was sure Charlotte was asleep, and then - "Carrie?"
Carrie stifled a sigh. If this was what it was like to have children, she hoped never to have any. "Yes, Charlotte?"
"Where's your husband?"
"I don't have a husband, remember? Just me. Go to sleep."
"Big," Charlotte mumbled, and at first Carrie had no clue what she was talking about. "You got Big."
"I don't got Big," Carrie reminded her, tucking a strand of hair behind Charlotte's ear. "Natasha's got him. I'm just the ex-girlfriend now." She rolled square onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. "I finally ended that and what does he do? He runs over to Paris and gets engaged. She's beautiful. She's twenty-five. She probably doesn't mind when he tells her that he has to go work in Paris for months. She's probably so good in bed that it doesn't matter that she can't spell."
Carrie's mind was so full of Big, who once occupied the very space in this bed that Charlotte was scrunched into now, that at first she didn't notice Charlotte reaching out to her, squeezing her hand and arm, and then rolling and kissing Carrie, first on the corner of her mouth, like she couldn't find her bearings in the dark, and then on the lips, so that the sharp, tangy aftertaste of wine mixed with the leftover peppermint of Carrie's toothpaste. "Oh," Carrie said, shocked and confused and overcome with desire to giggle this away. Charlotte tasted like alcohol and desperation, but also like something crisp and classy and familiar. She was so different from the girl named Dawn, who had been married to someone who slept with someone whom Carrie had slept with - or something like that - and this was so different that at first Carrie had no idea what to do.
Apparently Charlotte didn't either, because her tongue and lips stilled over Carrie's, still breathing a mix of minty, wine-filled air. "Oh," she echoed, and then edged away, back to her side of the bed. "I was - oh God, I - that's not the way things are s'posed to be!" she wailed finally. "I am so ridiculous lately!"
"Or … masculine," Carrie teased, scooting away from Charlotte. She giggled into her palm. "Maybe you're more like Baird Johnson's photograph than you think you are."
"But I don't wanna be."
"Why not?"
"Because." Charlotte sighed impatiently, like she was explaining something to a small and not-very-bright child. "How is my husband s'posed to find me if I look like a man?"
Carrie thought of Sean and his friends, women and women and men and men. They would have laughed at Charlotte's question because they would have told her that it didn't matter. But to her friend Charlotte, Carrie knew, it did. "Well, Charlotte," she said finally, "maybe you're supposed to go running out looking for him."
There was another deep pause while Charlotte either considered that or started snoring. "Maybe you too," she said finally.
Carrie took a breath and wiped the last taste of wine off her lips. "Maybe I am," she agreed.
Charlotte finally shut up for several long minutes, and Carrie was pretty sure she was finally asleep before she said, "Charlotte?"
"Hrmmm?" Charlotte's voice was soft and sleepy.
"It really is a good photograph."
end.