"We are not talking about Rob or his suits right now," I said, trying—failing—to stifle a shocked laugh. I hadn't thought about Rob over my knee. Didn't want to think about it. "And you have no reason to quote-unquote hunt him down. He's a nice guy and I like him and that should be all you need to know about the situation."
Ben pretended to gag. "First the fizzy water and now this. Why the hell are you hanging out with him, honey?"
I shifted to face him fully. "Why did you buy this house if you hate remodeling?"
He bit into another sandwich. I wasn't counting but it seemed like his third. "Is this one of those situations where I have to answer your question before you'll answer mine?"
"No," I cried, laughing. "This is one of those situations where we're not talking about Rob because my relationship with him is none of your business."
"Oh, but me buying this house is your business?" he countered.
I grabbed my work gloves off the grass and smacked his shoulder with them. "Yes! I'm here working on this damn house. I deserve to know why you're doing this."
Ben shrugged but didn't respond, turning his attention back to the sandwich in hand. After several quiet minutes, he said, "My fucking grandmother."
I almost choked on a chunk of apple. "Excuse me?"
He didn't look at me when he said, "My fucking grandmother. I bought this little place because I thought I could fix it up and she'd like it better than the shitbox retirement community she was living in. I had a bunch of guys from the firehouse who were helping me out at first and things were going good."
They must've been the ones who'd handled the plumbing because it was the only element of this project that wasn't a disaster.
"But she died," Ben continued. "My grandmother fucking died and now I have this money pit of a house on my hands and I hate everything about it."
His words were an ice bath and I felt tears prickling my eyes. Oh, hell. Here I was, yelling at this poor guy about subfloors and tile and permits, and he was grieving a fresh loss.
"Oh my god. Ben," I said, touching my hand to his forearm. "I'm so sorr—"
"Don't say it," he snapped, wagging a finger at me. "Don't tell me you're sorry. I don't want to hear it." He looked over his shoulder, staring off toward the gardens as he knuckled a tear from his eye. "Your turn. What's the deal with the suit who may or may not be a douchebag?"
"He's not a douchebag," I said softly. "Rob is—" I stopped myself, not certain how I wanted to describe my relationship with Rob. "He's a nice guy who is going through a rough patch right now."
Ben glanced toward me but kept his gaze low, not meeting my eyes. "Does that mean you're friends? That's it? That's all that's going on?"
"It means we're hanging out." I shrugged. "I like it. He's funny and interesting and—"
"And he's got a lotta cash," Ben interrupted.
"That's not part of my mental calculus," I replied. "Nor has it ever come up in conversation."
"Still don't like him," Ben said under his breath.
"That's good," I replied. "You're not the one hanging out with him."
"Not for nothing but we basically had a three-way lunch date," Ben replied. "We should do that again. It was entertaining."
"You know," I said, pointing at him with my apple core, "you make that sound like a threat."
Ben gathered up the empty cans and tinfoil, still avoiding my stare. "Nah. I don't make threats. Just promises."
Chapter Fourteen
My date was edgy.
He'd read the wine list cover to cover, set it aside. Straightened his tie, the tablecloth, his water goblet. Then he reread the wine list, scowling and shaking his head like the pages insulted his origin and ethnicity. When he was finished with that exercise, he glanced around the restaurant. This wasn't the type of place I frequented so I didn't know what he was looking for.
If anything, I was busy dying by degrees because we were at a new swanky-fancy restaurant in the Back Bay and I was wearing a jersey knit dress. Probably hadn't spent more than ten dollars on it. It still qualified as a simple black dress thing but that wasn't the point. I hadn't realized we were going somewhere swanky-fancy, but I was delighted I'd changed out of my knee-high yellow rainboots beforehand.
"Would you like to share a bottle of red?" Rob asked, his pointer finger pressed against the wine menu. "Do you…do you like red?"
As far as conversation went, this was a major improvement. Since meeting him at this restaurant, he'd only managed to ask how I was doing, how my day went, and now, if I wanted to go halfsies on some Bordeaux. That, and all the scowling, straightening, and side-eye glances he'd been shooting my way.
"Is everything all right, Rob?" I folded my hands in my lap. I hadn't seen him since that afternoon at the bakery café and he'd been traveling for work the past week so his texts had been few and far between. When he'd arrived back in Boston last night, he'd insisted we meet for dinner. I'd agreed right away because I'd wanted to see him too. "You're not yourself tonight."
He started to respond, his lips parted and his brows knit as if he was about to impart something profound. But then he snapped his mouth shut and pressed both palms to his eyes.
"I'm having a hard time with the fact you're hanging out with the firefighter," he said from behind his hands. "It's really fucking with me right now."
I rolled my eyes and took a swig from my water glass. This would've been the perfect moment for wine to appear. I had to deal with Ben complaining about Rob over the weekend and now I was dealing with Rob complaining about Ben. In all my fantasies about being the object of dual affection, I'd never once accounted for the time and energy I'd put into project managing that affection.
And it wasn't even dual affection, not really. Ben was an epic flirt and nothing more. He talked a big game and he had swagger for days, but much like his home improvement prowess, I didn't think there was anything behind any of it. He was grieving and his periodic displays of possessiveness were likely a strange product of that. He wanted to hold on to anything he could. It broke my heart.
Rob was a different story. He liked challenges, I was sure of it, and he interpreted my refusal to let him blindly fuck away his ex as just that. He wanted me because he couldn't have me—not the way he wanted. He liked it when I called him on his games and pushed back on his bullshit, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't like it too. There was something about Rob that clicked with me. Andy insisted it was my need to fix him but if there was anyone in need of fixing in this runoff, it was Ben.
"Why is that?" I asked. "Why is it an issue for me to help my neighbor with a project at his house when A, I'm good at that work and I enjoy it and B, it's not about you?"
Rob folded his forearms on the table with a sigh. It was a ragged, broken noise that suggested this conversation—this specific topic—was causing him a measure of agony. "You're going to make me talk about my baggage and my shit. Aren't you?"
Men. They had the nerve to insist women were the fairer sex. The ones who couldn't see through the haze of their hormones. The wildly emotional ones. The ones who couldn't be trusted with parking, credit cards, front-line combat, nuclear codes.
Fucking men.
Not that it was worth my worry in the first place but I wasn't fretting over my t-shirt dress anymore.
I motioned to the table, the restaurant. "Is there something else you'd rather do tonight? Because I don't need any of this. I don't need to name-check the cool new place on my Instagram or with my friends. But I do need my dinner date to put up or shut up when it comes to the issues he flags on the regular. So, Rob"—I peered at him—"what's it going to be?"
He tilted his head. It was only a few degrees but it shifted his entire countenance from sulky to seriously sexy. "Since you asked, there is something else I'd rather do," he said, his gaze fixed on my lips. "I'd do it right here if we had the place to ourselves."
Okay. Yes. That was seriously sexy but it wasn't working on me. I wasn't the kind of lady
who could switch from totally annoyed to totally turned on with one well-placed head tilt.
"Since we don't have the place to ourselves and I'm waiting on this water to turn into wine—a Pinot Grigio, if you please—why don't you explain why you're being salty about something that requires no salt whatsoever?"
The waiter chose this moment to stop at our table and babble on about the backstory of each dish and its ingredients. The carrots were cruelty-free, the bacon knew its grandmother, the chef had trekked all the way to the Malabar coast to handpick the peppercorns. It was a whole big thing. Through it all, Rob and I studied each other in another round of Look at all of our issues and the curious ways in which they manifest themselves. There was Rob with his inability to reveal the inner parts of himself without tremendous cost and there was me with my inability to abide any amount of secrets or shadows because I expected the worst was headed my way.
We ordered two bottles—red and white—and I could almost hear my mother asking, "What? You're planning to drink that entire thing by yourself? You better not plan on walking the dog too. Not unless you want your picture on the front page of the newspaper because you've been kidnapped and killed."
I swallowed a hysterical giggle at that, waving away Rob's curious expression. "It's nothing," I said. "Ignore me."
He shook his head. "Can't."
"All right." I gestured toward him. "Where were we?"
"You said something about salt. I have no salt?"
"You have a ton of salt," I replied, holding my arms out wide. "So much salt."
"No," he answered. "Not that much."
"You're saltier than the Great Salt Lake," I replied. "And the Death Valley Salt Flats."
"Combined? Or separately?"
I leaned forward, flattened my hands on the table. "Both."
"Are we talking that cool pink salt or lame-ass table salt?" he asked.
"Oh, as lame as it comes," I replied. "No one is grinding your salt into artisanal flakes or sprinkling you over chocolate or caramel."
"That's disappointing," he murmured.
"It really is," I replied. "You're a slab of salt, my friend. If I licked you, I'd need to chase it with an entire bottle of tequila."
He motioned to his torso. "All yours."
I waved him off and shifted my gaze to the tables around us. "I don't lick guys who can't manage their shit," I said. I didn't say, Not anymore. Thought about it. Kept that tidbit under my hat. "Or guys who think they can legislate how I spend my time or who I spend it with."
The waiter returned with our wine and went to great efforts to present each bottle, uncork them, pour a sample sip, wait for our approval—who the hell sent back wine?—and then top off our glasses. He tied cute little cloth napkin kerchiefs around the bottles and set each in a silver canister. It was a lot of damn effort for wine. I understood there were varying levels to this stuff but I was perfectly satisfied with my screw caps and pink Corksicle tumbler.
Rob held up his glass, waiting for me to follow suit. When I joined him, he said, "My ex cheated on me while I was away on business. Not just once. She cheated on me for two years. With my best friend. The guy I grew up with. I was going to propose to her, and I was going to ask him to stand up as my best man."
Staring at him, I blinked several times. Then I looked away, swinging my gaze from side to side in search of the space to absorb this information without him watching. That was some real shit, and from the two people you were supposed to trust the most.
After a wild-eyed pause too long to be anything but uncomfortable, I asked, "And we're drinking to that?"
He looked at our glasses, still held aloft, and his tight expression broke into a quick laugh. "No. Fuck no," he said. "I just…I hate saying that shit out loud. I hate that it happened. I hate that it happened to me. Sometimes, I hate that I found out because ignorance never fucked me up like this. Then I hate that I'm still fucked up over it and I can't leave town without…"
Rob set his glass down and glanced away.
"Without thinking the person you left at home is going to fuck you over again," I said. Goddamn. I hadn't known I was walking right into the snake pit on this one but here I was, stomping all over Rob's king cobras. "Even if it's irrational, you can't help thinking it." He nodded, still blindly staring across the restaurant. "If it helps, I'm fucked up too."
"You're not fucked up," he replied, hitting me with a half-smile. It was sad and sweet, and left me aching for him. "You're perfect."
My belly swooped. Circumstances aside, I couldn't resist a half-smiled "You're perfect." Nope. I wasn't too proud to admit it either.
"Not too sure about that," I said. "I can't leave my dog with a man I'm dating. Not even for five minutes. I'll call him to follow me if I leave the room because I can't deal with the possibility my dog will get hurt. It's been…hmm, what is it now, three years? Yeah, three years this summer and I can't leave my dog alone with a guy. Not without a full-blown panic attack."
Rob's gaze scraped over me as if he was trying to find my soft spots by looks alone. "Someone did something to your dog?"
I pinched my fingers around the stem of the wineglass and twirled the base against the tablecloth. "My ex stole my dog. Some other stuff too but my dog was the most important thing he stole. A bunch of my friends had to raid his place to get Gronk back."
"I love that you named him Gronk. Such a big name for a little dog," Rob said, that half-smile still in place. "Does he have that Gronkowski spirit?"
"Oh, yeah," I replied, grinning at the thought of the former New England Patriots tight end. “Feisty as fuck. Except he doesn't know he's a small dog. He thinks he's just as big and tough as his namesake."
"That's amazing," Rob murmured. "But I hate that ex of yours. I want to fucking kill him."
"I hate that ex of yours. The ex-friend too. I'm not the murderous type but I hope some Black Swallow-wort takes over their yards. It's one of the most invasive vines in the region. Impossible to kill."
We studied each other, the moment stretching long and taut as we assessed the texture and shape of each other's war wounds. They were numerous, several as raw and pulsing as the day we'd earned them. And yet here we were, lining up for another battle as if we'd fortified ourselves enough to stay safe and whole this time.
"I feel like an asshole saying this but it's not you, it's me," Rob said. "I'm not trying to imply that you'd do anything like they did or that I don't trust you. This is all about me and I can't change it."
I could finally hear those words without feeling the urge to make excuses or apologize. I'd done it before. It wasn't me, but I was still sorry about the version of myself available for consumption. It wasn't me, but let me list all the reasons I could've been better.
This time, I offered no apology because I was as close to whole as any broken girl could be. Pieces of myself were gone, lost to previous relationships. Tough, leathery scar tissue filled the gaps and holes where my naïveté once lived.
"I know," I said. "And I know this isn't what you want to hear but are you sure you're ready to get over her with a meaningless fling?"
"It seemed like a good plan at the time," he said, his brow crinkling. A beat passed between us before a warm glow spread over him as if he'd stepped out from behind a shadow. "But this isn't meaningless, Magnolia. Nowhere near meaningless. Hasn't been since you demanded a dick pic, love."
Another belly swoop. This guy. He didn't stop with them. Even when he should. Because, come on. He was twenty thousand leagues under the sea with his trust issues.
"Then maybe you should make a new plan," I said with a shrug.
"Let's drink to that," Rob said with a laugh. He lifted his glass. "To new plans. The meaningful kind."
I reached for my glass, paused before raising it. "Does this meaningful plan imply you're no longer looking to fuck away memories of your ex?"
"I'd still like to do that," he conceded.
I pressed my fingers against the goblet's narro
w stem. "Are the terms the same?"
"I don't know yet." He reached across the table, clinked his glass against mine. "I can't make any promises."
"I don't want promises."
"Then what do you want?" he asked.
I brought the glass to my lips, smiling as I drank. "I don't know yet."
Chapter Fifteen
My date was scarfing donuts like it was almost hibernation season.
"You eat these," I started, gesturing to the Blackbird Donuts box between us, "and you don't gain a pound. Do you?"
Andy licked a dollop of blackberry jam from her thumb, a casualty of an overzealous bite into her third donut of the morning. She spared me a sheepish glance before returning to her pastry.
"I'd hate you but that seems pointless," I muttered.
"Completely pointless," she replied. "Who would you complain to about the men chasing after you if you didn't keep me around?"
"I never said anything about getting rid of you," I replied, glancing into the box. "I'm capable of hating you while keeping you as my friend."
I'd already had a vanilla old-fashioned with Blackbird's special vanilla bean glaze but now I was thinking about that Boston Crème Bismarck. I freaking loved Boston Crème and I would've chosen it if this bakery didn't make such incredible vanilla cake donuts. I would've gotten two but I also wanted to be able to function this afternoon and not fall into a carbs-and-sugar coma.
Andy nodded, saying, "Women are complicated."
"Only the human ones," I replied. "You, my friend, are not human. You're some kind of fairy or sprite. Tinker Bell, but goth."
She put her donut down, wiped her hands on a paper napkin, and held up her pointer finger. "I'll be right back."
I figured she was going for another dozen. Instead, she headed for the counter filled with cutlery, straws, and coffee complements. She grabbed a few things before giving the display case a meaningful glance. She was thinking about another dozen. I knew it. When she returned to the table, she produced a plastic knife and cut the Bismarck down the middle.
The Magnolia Chronicles: Adventures in Modern Dating Page 9
