How weird.

  "Oh, no," he said, putting on his tough voice, trying to set himself straight and Charlotte, too, hopefully. "No, no, no, I don't do crying, Charlotte. It just... no. Not me."

  And then, he heard it. An outright sob.

  Good grief, could this get any worse? His capable, competent, kick butt business partner was wearing a dress, makeup, and really tall shoes and crying. She was being a girl.

  Which was a shame, since she was really great at being a guy.

  But... well, he wasn't a jerk. Well, okay, so he was a jerk. But this was Charlotte, and she was crying. She probably needed to talk about what she was feeling and...

  "Oh, boy," he sighed, thinking about the arduous task of talking about feelings and sharing emotions. Bleh. All while he had a business to run.

  But it was Charlotte. He could suck it up and be empathetic for her. (Because it would help her do the taxes faster and then he could probably talk her into looking into some other accounting issues. Talk of feelings would lead to better productivity, more money, more money...)

  That wasn't all of it, though. Of course not, not when he was feeling just as upset as she was.

  "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.

  "No," she sobbed. "I never want to talk to anyone about tonight. I just want to die."

  Dramatic much? And if she didn't want to talk, why was she still talking?

  "Horrible, awful," she continued on, gasping now because she was crying so hard.

  "Okay, so clearly, you need to talk," he said.

  "No," she sobbed. "No... I can't..."

  She could. Because she was. On and on and on.

  "Oh, come on, Lottie, just --"

  "Don't call me that!" she hissed, taking her hands from her face and clenching her teeth at him.

  Well, that was better. Anger sure beat tears.

  It gave him an idea.

  "I get that you're upset, even though I have no idea why," he said, running back towards the house and grabbing something right out of the garage. A baseball bat. That would work. He rolled out the trash can, too, knowing how this kind of thing would go.

  "Well, yeah," she said, and the tears kept coming.

  "Oh, no, you're angry, not sad," he said, handing her the bat. "Hit something. It'll make you feel better."

  "That won't solve anything, Eli!" she said, sobbing.

  Heaven help him, she was falling apart. Pretty soon, she'd be useless. A pile of quivering tears and emotions and feelings. Oh, with the feelings.

  Not during tax season, woman.

  "Come on, Lottie!" he yelled. "Hit something!"

  The name was enough of a trigger. She swung the bat right at his head, missing him by inches.

  "Whoa!" he yelled. "Not me! The garbage can! The garbage can!"

  And she glanced at it. For a moment, he thought she'd tell him again that this wouldn't help. She was a girl, after all, and hitting things wasn't therapeutic for them like it was for guys.

  Or was it?

  Charlotte hauled off and began destroying his indestructible garbage can with his favorite baseball bat, still crying.

  And screaming.

  Good grief. He looked around, wondering if his neighbors would call the police as Charlotte lost her freakin' mind in his driveway.

  Just as he was certain it couldn't get any worse, she tripped over those impossibly tall shoes and nearly fell over. He brought his arms up to catch her, but she righted herself at the last minute, kicking off the offending shoe with gusto.

  She stood there for a long moment, the bat still in her hands, her breathing heavy, and the tears still coming. He watched her cautiously, uncertain of what to say or do.

  She was still holding the bat, after all.

  "Hey," he said, trying to put a calm edge to his voice, approaching her slowly, just like he would if she was some scared animal ready to bite his head off. (Which seemed an apt comparison given what she'd just done to the garbage can.)

  "Hey, Herbert," she said, the sadness back in her voice.

  More of this, then. "Are you okay?"

  She didn't give him an answer. She simply sat on the curb in her fancy dress, put her arms around her knees, and laid her head down.

  Not okay. So clearly not okay.

  Eli took a breath, watching her from a distance, then closing the gap between them as he joined her on the curb.

  "You know, it's warmer inside," he said after a long moment of silence. "And I can't hardly see you in the dark out here --"

  "Good," she mumbled from beneath her arms. "I'm glad you can't see my stupid face."

  Stupid face. Not even.

  "You don't have a stupid face," he said. "Nothing about you is stupid. It's one of the most annoying things about you, actually. That you're almost always right --"

  "Oh, but I was wrong tonight," she swore, looking up and taking a shaky breath.

  "Tonight," Eli repeated. "Did the fancy party not go well?"

  His mind, of course, went to the proposal. How could Charlotte have been wrong about a marriage proposal? How could she have been wrong about "the plan" and all?

  Oh... maybe she'd told Tyler no. Maybe she'd broken up with him!

  Eli couldn't pinpoint exactly why this thrilled him (maybe because Tyler was annoying and had a stupid face, huh?), but he had to bite back a relieved breath, especially as Charlotte raised wounded eyes to him.

  "The fancy party was fine," she sighed. "His family did it right. All that money they have, a buffet spread out like it was, actual musicians on the lawn, playing for us, and these white tents... it was like a wedding reception."

  The mention of a wedding had her tearing up again.

  The tears.

  He only knew one way to stop them.

  "Well, that sounds like a beating," he said. "And with you dressed like that. Fancy pants and all."

  "I'm wearing a dress," she said, narrowing her eyes at him. "I'm not wearing pants, you idiot."

  Critical Charlotte. There she was. Eli was more comfortable with her.

  (And he'd noticed the dress. Obviously.)

  "You can get arrested for not wearing pants, you know," he noted. "Public indecency and --"

  "Shut up, Herbert," she sighed.

  He smiled at this... and felt his smile slip away as another tear slid down her cheek.

  "Charlotte," he said softly, surprised by the emotion in his voice. "Talk to me." He leaned in closer to her, trying his best to be supportive, to look the part, to mirror what he was feeling, wanting to be there for her even if he had no idea what he was doing.

  She seemed to appreciate it as she looked up at him and gave him a sad frown, scooting closer to him.

  "Well," she said, wiping her nose right onto the sleeve of his shirt (there was the Charlotte he knew), then leaning her head right onto his shoulder, "I made a fool of myself."

  "I doubt that," he said, pulling her closer, his arm around her waist. "Did you have too much champagne and dance on one of those buffet tables?"

  "Even better," she said softly. "I waited until it was super quiet and really serious, with all of Tyler's family watching us, and I told him I'd marry him."

  Oh. Well, this was bad news.

  Except... well, the way she was acting actually did suggest that it was bad news. The worst news ever.

  She'd accepted his proposal, agreed to marry him, and was now yelling about how she was wrong.

  What in the world?

  Women.

  "I don't get it," he said, meaning many things with this.

  "I told him I'd marry him, but he never asked," she said, looking up at him with humiliation in her eyes.

  Oooooohhh.

  Sure enough, there was no ring on her hand.

  Eli felt another unexplainable rush of relief at this.

  "Wow, just announced it all to the group like that, all of Tyler's fancy pants family and all," he said, imagining it. Quiet, reverent Lottie -- the kind that only came out around Tyler -- boldly telling everyone that she was going to marry him. Tyler -- annoying, irritating, stupid face Tyler -- looking at her in shock.

  "Well, he's stupid," Eli said simply.

  "Why is that?" Charlotte asked, a sob still there in her voice. "I'm the one who thought he loved me. I'm the one who was so obsessed with this plan to marry him that I freakin' imagined that he asked me when he didn't!"

  "Maybe he would have, eventually, if you hadn't blurted it out like that," he said diplomatically. "But he's stupid because he didn't say, the minute that was out of your mouth, that it was the best idea ever."

  "Marrying me?" she asked, pulling away from his side to stare at him as she began to cry again. "That's like the worst idea ever. Now especially, no matter how he ever felt. Because I'm an idiot."

  "No," Eli said, pulling her back into his arms where she continued to cry. "He's the idiot. Who wouldn't want to marry you, Charlotte?"

  "Tyler wouldn't," she sobbed.

  Which is why Tyler had a stupid face. Eli was about to affirm this again (because it could only be helpful for Lottie to hear it another eight thousand times tonight, right?), but she kept right on talking.

  "He got us all together to tell us that he's going to the mission field, and what kind of terrible person does that make me, crying because he's going... because he clearly never intended to take me with him?"

  "Did you want to go with him?" Eli asked, looking down at her. "Missions... is that something you want?"

  She bit her lip in between gasping breaths and managed a barely audible, "No."

  Eli smiled at her. "Then, isn't this a good thing? Everything working out like this?"

  "No, this isn't a good thing!" she shrieked, very nearly in his ear as he held her close.

  "Well, there went the hearing in my left ear, Lottie," he said. "It's a good thing you signed us up for that health insurance plan because I think I'm going to need a really expensive specialist to repair what you just damaged --"

  "Oh, the insurance! Work!" she shouted, her hands to her face.

  Enough with the shouting. He moved away fractionally.

  "What about it?" he asked, his hand to his left ear. (Seriously, his ear was ringing now!)

  "I don't have a job lined up!" she said. "Eli, I turned down the job in Houston because I thought Tyler would be here! Not in the freakin' Middle East --"

  "The Middle East?" Eli interrupted. "Is that where --"

  But she kept on.

  "And I thought I'd be married to him, so no matter where he went, I'd go, too, and find a job where we went or not, you know, because I was going to start having children right away --"

  Well, this was interesting news.

  "I'm out of work!" she said, the sobbing starting up again. "I'm an idiot! An unemployed idiot!"

  He could actually fix this part of her problem for her. "Hey, you still have a job working for me," he said.

  This made her cry harder.

  Ouch. Well, that hurt a little.

  "But you don't pay squat, you tightwad," she sobbed. "That's why I was going to go work for a bigger company. You only gave me health insurance this year and only because I was the one who set it up."

  Truth.

  "Well, beggars can't be choosers, Lottie," he said. "Point taken, though. Maybe we can figure something out. A raise. But in the meantime, you have a job."

  "A job," she said, nodding, wiping her tears away with her fingers, taking a deep breath. "Okay, so that's going to work out, but..."

  But what?

  "What, Lottie?"

  "I didn't sign a new lease on my apartment," she said. "They wanted me to sign for a full year, and I assumed that... that I'd be getting married, and --"

  "When does your lease run out?"

  "New Year's." She looked at him with great embarrassment.

  She hadn't left a lot of room for wedding planning, then. "Did you think he was going to propose and... marry you in the next month?!"

  "I had hoped," she said, beginning to cry again. "Eli, I had so many plans. I was going to have a Christmas wedding. A Christmas wedding!"

  "You were planning the wedding before you even got the proposal?" he asked.

  "Not as specifically as some women do," she said. "I mean, Alicia has a whole board on Pinterest full of ideas."

  This was news.

  "She has a what on what?"

  "You should see it," Charlotte sighed, wiping her eyes. "She's going to have these adorable favors with Eli and Ali written in this fancy script on these mason jars full of mints."

  What?!

  "She doesn't even go by Ali!" he exclaimed, starting with that.

  "But it's going to be so perfect," Charlotte sniffled. "She just needs you to propose. Then, she'll get it all done."

  Insane. All women were insane.

  "Well," he said, trying to forget all this nonsense about Pinterest and wedding planning (mason jars full of mints?), "you've got a month to figure out something."

  "And I will, but I can't go back there tonight," she said. "I can't go back and potentially face him. I can't live there for the next month either. I'll see him all the time, and I..."

  Just can't.

  He heard it even though she didn't say it.

  And even though he could very nearly hear Alicia shrieking at the very thought he was having, he still thought it. (Hey, he was shrieking a little on his own. Mason jars full of mints! Eli and Ali! What in the world?!)

  He'd bought the duplex he was living in with plans to rent out the other side eventually. The plan was to one day move out himself and use the whole place as a rental investment, but in the meantime, he was making improvements to the place while he lived on property.

  He'd just about finished all the renovations to the other side and had been thinking about where to best advertise for renters.

  No need to do that now, though.

  Maybe. Possibly. Probably.

  "Charlotte, I haven't leased out the other half of the duplex," he said. "Haven't even found a tenant. Haven't even posted about it."

  The relief in her eyes was guarded... but it was there.

  "I can't live here," she said after a long moment. "You'd be my boss and my landlord."

  "That would stink," he confirmed. "But it beats living on the streets."

  "I'm not sure I could afford it, since my boss is a tightwad, and --"

  "Even more reason to consider it," he told her, "as your landlord would know your dire financial situation and could adjust the rent accordingly."

  She bit her lip again, tears in her eyes once more. "Why would you do that for me?" she practically whispered.

  Because you're killing me, crying like this. Because I want to make it all better. Because I like the idea of you being here with me instead of there with him.

  What was that last one about anyway?

  Eli simply shrugged, playing it off. "Because I want to go to sleep tonight, and the only way I'm going to get you to stop blabbering on and on about the most awful night of your life is by offering you a place to stay. There. Happy?"

  She opened her mouth to likely insult him, but he stopped her words before she could get them out.

  "You don't have to decide tonight," he said. "Just... just stay tonight. And make a decision about the long term once you're thinking more clearly, okay?"

  She nodded at this. "Okay," she murmured softly.

  "Come on," he said, taking her hand and pulling her along and into his side of the duplex, like she was too shell shocked to move on her own, which she very nearly was. "I'll get you some things. It's already furnished. Well, enough. Or maybe..."

  He was just about to offer to take the vacant side himself and let her have his place for the night. Much more comfortable than the cold, sparsely furnished side --

  "I'll be fine," she said, wrapping her arms around herself.

  She'd need something more comfortable to wear, too. Not that he had any problem with that dress, but...

  He made his way to his room, grabbing up his pillow and the blanket off his bed. Then to his closet to grab a shirt, over to the chest to get a pair of shorts.