Three Little Words

by Jenny Holiday

  “Can I help?”

  He turned, surprised by the offer—and also by how much everything inside him rose up and shouted Yes! But instead he said, “You don’t have to. It won’t take long.”

  “I just…” she whispered.

  “What?” He wanted more than anything to lay a hand on her back but knew she wouldn’t want him to. They’d already given their friends enough to speculate about with their little “water fight with hugging” show.

  “I’m hungry, and I thought…I’d rather…”

  It was hard—it was almost impossible—but he refrained from interrupting, from suggesting phrases, from trying to help her get through whatever it was she was struggling to say.

  When the silence stretched just to the point of awkwardness, she said, “I thought maybe you could make me lunch.”

  Yes.

  “We could eat together, I was thinking. Instead of…” She was slowing down as they got closer to their friends. “Instead of with everyone else.”

  He realized that he hadn’t said anything, that the yes that had welled up inside him just then had not, in fact, been verbal.

  “I just…I like eating your food.”

  He was overcome for a moment by the request, the admission. He knew what it had taken for her to make it. And even beyond that, it flattered the hell out of him. She might as well be batting her eyelashes and feeling his biceps.

  He tried to make it not about his ego, but about what was best for her, but in this case, since the two things coincided so handily, he was going to give himself a moment to bask in it.

  “Of course.” His voice came out all scratchy. He cleared his throat. “You name it, I’ll make it for you.”

  * * *

  What was she doing?

  A day ago, Gia had been psyching herself up to tell Bennett that whatever was between them had to end.

  Because it did.

  She knew that.

  So why had she followed up that intention by cavorting with him in the ocean and then inviting herself to lunch?

  Because he looked really good in swim trunks was the answer—that’s all it was.

  Anyway, she was here now. She looked around as Bennett laid a steak onto a cast-iron skillet. She was getting familiar with restaurant kitchens, this being the third one she’d been in this week. She liked them—they were energizing bordering on manic in the same way a runway show was backstage.

  Lalande’s friend owned a café on the beach a couple miles from the hotel, and as she unpacked the groceries they’d picked up, she couldn’t help but compare it to Lalande’s, and to Bennett’s place in New York.

  “This place isn’t very well organized,” she whispered. Unlike in Bennett’s kitchen, where all the ingredients were clearly labeled and stored in rigorously organized containers, the work surfaces here were scattered willy-nilly with herbs and other stuff she couldn’t identify.

  “Good eye,” he whispered back. “There’s definitely more of a laid-back air here than is my preference.”

  After making some small talk with the chef-owner, they’d been given a corner in which to work and a section of a refrigerator, and left alone.

  Bennett opened a bottle of tea as he tended to the steak. When he’d asked her what she wanted for lunch, she’d deferred to him, telling him she’d like whatever he made. That she trusted him.

  The astonishing thing was, she did. As she watched him unpack a grocery bag and unroll a sleeve of knives—he’d brought his own—she realized she had very little anxiety about what was about to happen. He would make her something. It would be delicious. She would eat it. Maybe not all of it, but that would be okay. He would understand.

  He was making them steak salads. He pulled the small, lean filet mignon off the pan and set it aside to rest. He’d already prepared two plates with lettuce and some chopped grilled asparagus that he’d nicked from the restaurant.

  “You’re not getting my best here,” he said as he whipped up a dressing. “This is grocery store meat, so keep that in mind, and did you know that the vast majority of the world’s olive oil is tainted? Cut with cheap vegetable oil and dumped on the North American market. So unless you have an importer and you can trace the whole supply chain, you’re probably getting vaguely olive-flavored garbage.”

  He was nervous, she realized with a jolt. He was usually so confident, so it was strange to see. He wanted to please her, which wasn’t going to be hard, because as amazing as his food was, it wasn’t actually about the food.

  It wasn’t about the food.

  That was an astonishing thought. Maybe that was why she was here against her better judgment. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with how good he looked in swim trunks. Maybe it was just that she’d told him her secret, and he had not made a big deal about it.

  He’d just made her lunch. A low-key lunch, to steal a word that had become a joke with the girls.

  “It’s going to be great,” she said as he slid her a plate. She was talking to him, but also to herself.

  He’d dressed his own salad but served her dressing in a ramekin on the side, so she could control how much went on the salad. That little gesture perfectly exemplified why she’d wanted to come here with him.

  He took care of her. Automatically. He knew the small things that would ease her way, and he just did them without commentary or judgment.

  It made tears prickle behind her eyes.

  It was also not something she could allow herself to get used to.

  She picked up the steak knife he’d handed her and sawed off part of the steak. She hadn’t had steak in years, defaulting to getting her protein from chicken breasts or egg whites.

  “Oh my God.” There was a crunchy, salty crust on the steak—it had been perfectly seared—that gave way to a tender, flavorful center. He’d sprinkled some kind of fancy cheese on the steaks—just a bit, but its pungent tanginess worked perfectly with the meat without overpowering it. “If this was subpar grocery store meat, it boggles the mind to think what you can do with steak that’s up to your standards.”

  He grinned but waved away the compliment. “So what’s with the big pink Florida hotel as the wedding site? Wendy’s such a world traveler. Seems like a weird spot for their wedding.”

  “There’s a story there. Wendy was, like many girls, obsessed with princesses when she was growing up. Her dad gave her a Disney princess Pez dispenser a couple days before he died suddenly, and she sort of imprinted on both princesses and Pez dispensers. Mind you, she probably wouldn’t explain it like that, but that’s my interpretation of the situation.”

  Bennett cracked up. “That’s so…not Wendy. At least from what I know of her.”

  “I know, right? Apparently Noah won her heart with Pez dispensers. Anyway, when she found out, as a kid, that there was this big pink hotel on the beach in Florida, she always wanted to come here, which of course she did as an adult when she started doing all her globe-trotting. So when she and Noah decided to get married somewhere other than Toronto, she came right out with ‘I want a princess wedding at the Pink Palace.’”

  “Wow,” he said. “Maybe I need to take my attire up a notch. They said khaki pants and a white shirt for the ceremony, but they didn’t get specific.”

  “Nah, her dress is pretty casual, and so are the bridesmaid dresses.” Gia cocked her head, thinking about how nonfussy Wendy had been about the whole thing. “Which I guess makes no sense given what I just said about the whole princess wedding thing.”

  He shrugged as he cleared their plates and pulled out some bell peppers. “Someone once told me that all the best people are full of contradictions.”

  She smiled as she watched his talented hands make quick work of the pepper, transforming it into perfectly uniform little cubes. “Sounds like a wise person,” she joked.

  He stopped chopping. “She is.”

  Something in Gia’s stomach fluttered. “You want me to help?” She nodded at the peppers. “With the disclaimer
that the final product will end up looking like a kindergartener produced it?”

  “Nah. I’m just gonna prep a few things that will keep until Saturday. You sit there and do your thing while I do my thing.”

  “What is my thing?” she asked, still in the teasing manner that befitted their bantering.

  He put down the knife and cocked his head. “I don’t know. That’s what we need to figure out.”

  What was it about Bennett? He could shift the entire tenor of a conversation with a single sentence. He could look at her like he was seeing inside her, like he was shining light on stuff that had been in the dark for as long as she could remember.

  She also didn’t miss that he’d said we. That’s what we need to figure out.

  She’d been right to be wary of him. He saw her as a problem to fix. Like the homeless guy outside his restaurant.

  Oh, she was so messed up when it came to him. She was a moth attracted to a flame. He was bad for her, but she craved him. She wanted him to fix her—deep down, that’s why she’d suggested lunch in the first place, right? But it wasn’t safe to want that from a man. You gave a man too much power over you and before you knew it you were alone on a beach in Ibiza with a broken heart.

  She had no idea how to respond to what he’d said. She was used to testing guys. To confirming her sense that when confronted with the real her, they would find her lacking. But she usually conducted these tests by presenting herself in ways they wouldn’t expect—by taking off the model mask and showing up with dirty hair and no makeup. But he had already seen her like that, and he hadn’t blinked.

  But there was more than one kind of mask.

  So she went for the truth. He had a way of pulling the truth out of her.

  She looked right into his eyes and said, “I’m afraid if I eat, I won’t get work anymore.”

  He gazed evenly back at her and said, “I’m afraid if you don’t, you’ll get sick.”

  “What’s it to you?” She didn’t necessarily mean to sound confrontational, but at the same time, this was a test, right? This was the emotional version of no makeup.

  He didn’t answer her question. Asked her one of his own instead. “What if you just didn’t go back?”

  “What?”

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard him, or didn’t understand what he’d meant, just that what he was suggesting was so far from her reality that “What?” had been the only response she could muster.

  “You told me before that you didn’t have another job booked. That you’re on vacation for a month. That’s why you could dye your hair, right? What if you just…extend the vacation?”

  He’d finished with the peppers and had moved on to chopping a bar of chocolate, which seemed like an odd next item to chop, but she had no doubt he had a master plan. A masterful plan.

  “I can’t do that.”

  She expected him to argue, but he didn’t. Just handed her a shard of chocolate.

  She put it on her tongue. It wasn’t sweet at all. It was the darkest, bitterest chocolate she’d ever had.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bennett was starting to want things it wasn’t safe to want. He had lived alone for years, essentially since he left his parents’ house. Even when he was couch surfing and living on the streets, he’d still been, elementally, alone.

  And yes, he’d had girlfriends. He would have moved in with any of them, had things worked out—he’d always thought he would have, anyway. Thought that if the woman in question had been into it, they would eventually have progressed down that road of gradually escalating commitment. A few years of dating would be followed by cohabitating. Maybe getting engaged eventually, and of course engagements were generally followed by weddings. He’d thought of it like a video game. Complete level one, unlock level two. An orderly progression. Because when you committed to someone, that’s what you did.

  But Gia had him turned inside out. There was no orderly progression here. There were just these great lurching lunges, his heart dragging his shocked brain and body over markers that were going by so fast he couldn’t even get a sense of what they signified.

  He’d had sex with her on the second day he’d known her, for God’s sake. He didn’t do that.

  And now, worse, he wanted this. He wanted to cook for her and feed her little bits of food while he did so. He wanted her sitting next to him in the kitchen telling him stories about her friends. He wanted to listen to her confide her secret fears.

  He wanted to solve all her goddamned problems.

  And he was pretty sure he wanted it forever.

  He had to file that want away, though, because it was too big to think about. Its bigness was paralyzing.

  And it was dangerous. He couldn’t let her see these thoughts, these wants. If she could see inside his head, she’d get spooked and do exactly what she’d told him she did in these sorts of situations—run for the hills.

  So as they got out of the car back at the hotel, he decided to try to do what Noah had said, to show Gia how he felt without making a big deal about it. Extremely incrementally was the phrase Noah had used.

  And when Bennett looked inside himself for something that fit the bill, it was right there. A smaller, more immediate want that was no less powerful for its modest stature.

  He wanted to hold her hand.

  And, he figured, he could either overthink the hell out of the impulse or he could just do it.

  So fuck it. He did it.

  He jogged around to her side of the car, where she was still getting out, and grabbed her hand. That way, he figured, it was sort of like helping her out of the car, and then just…not letting go.

  When he didn’t immediately drop her hand after they got moving toward the lobby, her eyes widened. He’d surprised her. She didn’t resist, exactly, but there was a stiffening of her posture that he could feel through her hand.

  He didn’t care. He wasn’t letting go unless she did.

  So they walked into the hotel like that. He could tell she was nervous. She scanned the lobby, no doubt looking for her friends, not wanting to be seen with him like this.

  He got it. His heart was beating fast, too, like he was doing something a hell of a lot more transgressive than holding a woman’s hand. Not that he was afraid of being seen, not inherently, but he was afraid of what she would do if they were. She would pull back—not just from his hand, but from him. But he didn’t know how to “show her” how he felt without, you know…showing her.

  They stepped into an empty elevator, and she breathed a sigh of relief. He responded by doubling down, which, in the Incident of the Hand-Holding Transgression, amounted to changing their grip and lacing their fingers together.

  He punched the button for his floor—the fifth—which was lower than hers.

  She punched hers, which was fine, although irrelevant, because if he had anything to say about it, she wasn’t going there.

  The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. He still didn’t let go of her hand. He wasn’t going to make her come with him, but what if he just…stayed silent but tugged a little as he exited the elevator?

  She came with him.

  He turned his head and grinned at the lime-green walls so she wouldn’t see how profoundly not chill he was right now.

  He dug in his pocket for his room key and scanned them in, all without dropping her hand. It was hard not to blurt out everything, hard not to try to build a case for her not going back to modeling, for her being with him—or hell, even just one of the two—but he had to play the long game here. Choose his moments to make his points subtly.

  Not that dragging her to his room when his intent must be obvious counted as subtle, but Gia didn’t mind bold sexual overtures—they just couldn’t be accompanied by declarations or expectations. She had to be able to compartmentalize, or at least tell herself that’s what she was doing.

  “Do you have condoms?” she asked, the moment the door closed.

  He threw his head back and l
aughed. He had her so figured out.

  “I do.” He had optimistically bought some last night at the hotel gift shop after his chat with Noah. He led her through the room to the balcony, though. They were in no hurry.

  He was still holding her hand, and she pulled back against his grip, planting her feet like she wanted to stay in the room.

  Of course she did. She was here for one thing only.

  Well, no declarations, fine, but he was going to push her limits a little. Make her contemplate the goddamned view with him first. How was that for incremental?

  So he kept pulling until she rolled her eyes and came with him. He plopped himself down on one of the white wrought iron chairs and pulled her onto his lap. Wrapped his arms around her, rested his chin on her shoulder, and took in the vista. A majestic blue pool stretched out before them, and beyond that the sea. It was, objectively, beautiful, but all that blue made him think of her hair, which had grown on him. He reached a hand up and played with it a little, gradually moving his hands up until he was kneading the tight muscles of her neck.

  After a few seconds, she sighed and relaxed against him. He loved that, being able to make her physically relax.

  “You miss the ocean?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?” She laughed.

  “The ocean is magnificent and all that.” He let go of her with one hand just long enough to gesture at it. “I mean, no one is going to be unhappy with that. Except maybe you, Miss I Prefer the Forest. And anyway, New York is on the ocean. Some of the oysters we source at the restaurant are from Long Island. So technically, I still have access to the ocean. I think what I really miss is warmth. The warm, sunny beach, you know?”

  She nodded. “If you went back to Charleston, you could open your place on the beach. I bet even beachfront property there is cheaper than Manhattan rent. Still Cajun, but you’d have a more direct line to the seafood side of things. You could have a place kind of like your friend’s here.”

  He nodded. She was correct on all fronts. He could have that. There was nothing stopping him.

  “Except with a tidier kitchen,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice.