Yesterday's Gone: Season One

from Derek’s deep freezer. He thought about mentioning his plans to grow his hair, but Bob had been in a decent mood today. No need to rock the boat.  
    Callie, who had been in the house reading, came out in blue fleece shorts and a gray tee shirt.
    “Look out,” she said, jumping in next to Charlie, causing him to go under and swallow a huge mouthful of chlorinated water.
    He came up gagging, and saw Callie laughing.  
    “Thanks,” he said, splashing water at her.
    She splashed back, and moved closer to him, then jumped behind him, and pushed him under the water.
    “Hey!” he said, coming up, and grabbing her shoulders.
    For a moment, time seemed to slow, and their eyes locked again, as they had in the parking lot. He noticed her nipples poking through her tee, could see the outline of her breasts, as the wet shirt clung to her. He quickly glanced away, but not before she’d noticed. She smiled, then dunked him again.
    He came up, this time behind her, and wrapped her head in a playful headlock. As their bodies touched underwater, Little Charlie was at full attention. As she tried to break free of the headlock, her ass rubbed against his cock, and he couldn’t help but think she noticed. She pulled away, laughing, as she pushed off of him and swam away.
    He went underwater, and closed his eyes trying to wish his embarrassing erection away.
    Baseball… Bea Arthur… that old guy on those bran commercials WITH Bea Arthur.
    When it was safe to come up, Callie was at the edge of the pool, Bob standing over her, chatting her up. Though he was clearly checking out her tits, Callie didn’t seem to notice. She was either the coyest of flirts ever or naive to what men were always focused on. Bob was just smooth enough not to get busted by Callie, but more than a couple of times, Charlie had caught him sneaking peeks. Each time, Bob would wink at Charlie or make a crude gesture.
    Bob said he was just encouraging Charlie to “tap that ass.” But Charlie couldn’t help but think Bob wanted to do some tapping, himself.
    Charlie felt sick, watching Bob joke with Callie while she giggled in waves.
    Is she flirting with Bob? Or is she so nice that she’s oblivious to his creepiness?  
    It wasn’t as if there were anything between he and Callie, though they had been getting closer — whenever Bob wasn’t around as the third wheel.
    While Callie was kind of a bad ass, she was also nice, funny, and kind of geeky. Not in a socially awkward way like Charlie, but in the things she liked — comics, video games, and sci-fi and fantasy books. All the same things Charlie liked. It was as if God, or whoever or whatever made everyone vanish, had picked the perfect girl to strand him with. He couldn’t help but think fate had brought her to him. Or perhaps, fate’s cruel sister, irony, to create and present someone so much like him, yet so much better looking that she’d never have anything to do with him.
    Charlie had been relegated to the “friend” role far too many times with attractive girls. If you fell into the friend zone, you never escaped. One girl (who was rejecting him at the time) told him, “A girl knows within 10 seconds if she’ll sleep with you. If you don’t make a great impression right away, you’ll never get with her.”
    Needless to say, Charlie had never made that kind of impression on any girls. He had too many things going against him. He was geeky and homely, with zits, and as more than a few girls had also told him bluntly, he was “too nice.”
    Charlie told himself that “too nice” didn’t really mean too nice . It was code for too ugly, or perhaps the girl was too immature to appreciate a nice guy. Girls his age seemed to like so-called bad boys. And given the number of young women even 10 years older than him seemed to be attracted to losers, he wasn’t sure when that infatuation with assholes ended. He hoped it was before they got old, or he was screwed.
    Callie didn’t seem like other girls, though. So he had to be very careful not to miss his one chance at bat. He had to make a good impression before she could put him in the friends-only zone. The way he saw it, he had a couple of things going for him. They met in an emotionally charged moment. He saved her life (a brave and selfless act). And, as far as they knew, he was one of the last two men on Earth, and the other was an old drunk asshole. Even if Charlie wore headgear, had uncontrollable explosive diarrhea, and