I like the situation and what feels like an ebb and a flow to the interaction, from the hostilities to the cooling and then a hesitant rewarming.

Critique: “…she took it and smiled a little,” should really be it’s own sentence (what you now is a ‘comma splice’). The paragraph that starts, “It was probably too forward…” was confusing, I think due to the the bracketing sentences having “I” as the subject while you have (I think) the other person as the non-indicated speaker.

Nice overall feel that could just use some cleaning up to make for a smoother read.

Point taken about the commas. Apparently the kind of intentional comma splice that I did is only allowed if you’re famous! (see Wikipedia article on comma splice, citing Samuel Beckett, E. M. Forster, and Somerset Maugham as permitted practitioners). I might dare to try it again in a decade if my (as yet unwritten) great novel sells well!

As to the confusion, I’m sorry about that, however I though the colon made it clear that Charlie is the speaker in that para. Let me know what you think.