He looked at me funny. “Because she knows what she wants.”
I laughed. “Really? How on earth did you get all that?”
“She talks,” he said matter-of-factly. “All the time,” he added with a laugh. “By the way, your mom’s party is day after tomorrow in case no one has told you yet. I’ve heard the plans more than once.”
“Yes, I knew that,” I said.
“She may not know what she wants education-wise, but she’s smart about life. She sees the world—really sees it. Not just what she’s told to see.”
I nodded, feeling clammy all of a sudden. He’d just described himself at that age, and he was too smart to not figure that out soon.
“Yep, she’s a one-of-a-kind all right,” I said, and I tossed the little remainder of my cone in a nearby garbage. I pushed out my chair. “Well, I’m going to head back home.”
“Okay.” He sat back in his chair, looking like he was staying awhile. “It was good to see you.”
“You, too.”
I stood to go, but the problem was that I couldn’t seem to actually follow through. He had that look going on. That pin-me-to-the-wall, root-me-to-the-floor look, where he mastered the phenomenon of not blinking. I gripped the cold metal chair instead and thought about kissing him. Why the hell not. That’s where my head kept veering off to anyway, the way he sat all slung back with his clothes clinging to him just right.
“Are you not talking to me again?” he said, his face showing no emotion.
I blinked myself back to reality. “What?”
“I’m just curious, so I know when to leave you alone,” he said, rising to his feet in one slow movement. “When you start answering questions like a robot, that seems to be the time.”
I sighed. “There isn’t a grand plan for what I’m doing, Ben,” I said, hoping I sounded world-weary and sophisticated. “And I’m standing here talking to somebody; I thought it was you.”
He laughed, but not a happy kind of laugh. “I’m guessing you’re avoiding the house so it doesn’t suck you backward. You’re avoiding me so I don’t”—he leaned toward me—“suck you forward. Life’s just easier that way, isn’t it?”
“You know, you’re one to talk about avoidance.”
My roots had been released, and I turned on my heel and headed for my car. Quickly, before he could catch up and glue me to my car with his tongue again.
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“You know damn good and well what it means.”
“So you keep telling me.” I kept walking. “See you tomorrow,” he called out.
“We’ll see.”
That was weak and we both knew it. I might have been strutting away like I had Dedra’s haughty little pumps on, but in reality I had Emily Lattimer Lockwood’s sneakers on, the ones with holes in the toes.
• • •
MOM’S HOUSE LOOKED FANTASTIC. LIKE WHY-WOULD-YOU-EVER-want-to-leave kind of fantastic. The den all done up in the earth tones, with no crappy paneling, made it look almost like a new house. Well, a new house with the old carpeting, but that would have its day as well. It looked empty without Mom’s chair and the big old couch that was supposed to be there, and I wondered where she and Bernie were hanging out. I guessed the kitchen.
The cabinets had been given just a simple piece of trim around each door, giving them a whole new look. The windows all had snazzy new trim and fresh paint. The downstairs bathroom had new brushed nickel faucets and some new shelves that weren’t there before.
Ben had been busy.
“You like?”
His voice directly behind me as I admired the new showerhead massager startled me so badly I had to grab the wall to keep from taking the shower door out. His rumbling laugh sounded warm as I turned around, and the smile in his eyes that went with it made me falter.
“Told you I’d see you today,” he said, pulling some of the smile back.
“It’s night.”
A fact I thought I’d planned out well. Facing the house, avoiding him. So much for that.
“Yes, it is,” he said, crossing his arms. “It’s been a crazy day. You?”
“Something like that.”
“And now you’re here.”
“Well, I thought I’d stop avoiding uncomfortable situations,” I said. “Face it all head-on. You should give it a try.”
On that note, I tried to step around him, which in the tiny bathroom required me to put my hands on his arms to move past. I looked away from his face as I did, but I heard him take in a slow, deep breath as our bodies touched, which was quite remarkable considering how loud my heart was beating in my ears.
“Mom?”
That one I heard, as I exited the bathroom with Ben on my heels, and Cassidy gave me the funky eyebrow.
“Having a cozy moment?” she said, a wicked grin on her face.
“Want a Christmas present?” I responded, widening my eyes to signify moving on.
She laughed. “Hey, Ben.”
“Mr. Landry,” I said, laying a hand on her shoulder.
“We passed up Mr. Landry a ways back,” Ben said in my ear as he passed, sending a trickle of goose bumps down that side of my body.
“Yeah, once you’ve squeezed large furniture through small doors together, you hit the first name basis,” she said. It was almost flirty. And I was almost sick.
“So what brings you here this late?” I asked, changing the subject. “Mom’s not here, she and Aunt Bernie went shopping.”
“Oh, that—can’t be good.”
“No, I’m sure it won’t be,” I said. “But then stranger things have happened lately, so who knows.”
Ben turned and gave me a subtle look when I said that, then headed back down the hallway to Mom’s room. I guessed her room was getting the makeover next.
“Aunt Bernie’ll have her in green eye shadow, Mom. Blue fingernails!”
I laughed. “Not in the same outfit. So what are your plans?” I asked as I played with her curls. She leaned her head over as she’d done since she was three, an instant easy woman for anyone to play with her hair.
“Well, first I’m stealing some time with Tandy,” she said with baby talk words for the dog, who wagged her tail from her bed. Tandy didn’t bother with barking at the door anymore; it had become too much of a revolving door for her to keep up with. “I’m waiting for Josh to meet me here and we’re gonna go up in the attic and dig through some boxes.”
“Wow, doodlebug, you really know how to live it up.”
She giggled. “I know, right? But hey, he offered.”
I shrugged. “Can’t turn that down.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Get the rest of the boxes out of my room, and box up the stuff still on the shelves and the dresser.” Another thought pinged. “Oh, you had books for me, Ben said?”
“Yeah, they’re still in my trunk; want me to go move them over?”
I threw her the keys and headed upstairs, glad that Ben was working downstairs. Glad that Cassidy was working two floors above him and had no reason for endless chitchat. I felt a sense of sadness when I entered my old room that I hadn’t felt before. Like everything was about to be left behind. I’d heard people talk that way when selling their houses, like the walls were alive and soaking up their memories, and they were leaving them behind. I always thought that was an off-the-wall sentimental notion, but I was feeling something like that right then. I suddenly didn’t want to pack up the books that had tided me through many a grounding, when all I could do was curl up on my window seat and read. I didn’t want to take down the Madame Alexander dolls my dad had bought for me when I was little, or the hand-blown glass clowns that stood side by side on my dresser.
My gaze fell on the window, and it seemed eas
ier somehow to go there. Not outside—I wasn’t going outside again—but just to sit on that seat and look out at the night. I sat and pulled my knees up to me, thinking of what group of items I would hit first, but the second I laid eyes on the roof, it started.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” I said, gripping the windowsill.
The wind rushed in my head, the blackness seemed to pull me out that window no matter how I tried to fight it—I even tried to stand up to break it before it started, but I couldn’t feel my legs. I didn’t want to go this time. I wasn’t curious, I didn’t want the show I knew was coming. As the tightness squeezed the breath out of me, I realized with crystal clarity what Ben meant when he said he didn’t want to hear about it. Because I knew where I had to be going, and suddenly more than anything in the world I did not want to relive it.
When the air rushed back into my lungs and I jolted forward like someone slammed on the brakes, I wasn’t really on the window seat anymore, but out on the roof where I’d been the last time.
“No fair,” I said. “Breaking your own rules!” I didn’t know who or what I was saying it to, but I threw it out there anyway.
And as I expected, the voices coming from the tree were getting closer. I could hear the laughter and giddiness as two people emerged over the roofline. Ben wasn’t alone that time. I was with him. Climbing up that tree in a party dress that clung to me as I dripped river water. Ben pulled himself up on the roof, his black button-down shirt sticking to his wet skin like it was painted on, and then he hauled me up with him.
Laughing and trying to be quiet, they half walked–half crawled across the roofline to retrieve the secret blanket. I watched them, hugging my arms across my body, already feeling the burn behind my eyes. I couldn’t think of her as younger-me anymore. She was me. It was too vivid a memory to think of it as watching; it was going to be relived.
It was my twenty-first birthday.
• • •
“Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that,” she said, flopping on her back on the blanket, only a foot from me.
Only a foot from me. It was going to happen within sneezing distance of me and I could not leave. The thought was bizarre. Even weirder was the crazy thought that crept into my head about time and if something was happening now, did it happen then, too? Did I sit here and watch myself the first time? Oh my lord, what if I’d had an audience then, too.
“I can’t believe you did that, either,” Ben said, shaking his hair so that water slung across her. It was shorter than in earlier years, but not as short as now. He sat beside her, then landed sideways, propping his head up with his elbow. He had filled out since the last time, his shoulders were broader. He was a man.
“Hey!” she said, whopping him across the middle with the back of her hand. “You were right there with me.”
“Yeah, but I’m a hooligan,” he said, dropping his head in laughter. “I can’t believe that old man actually called us that.”
“I’m just glad he didn’t call the police.”
“Yeah, you’re all of age now,” Ben said, poking her. “You’d go to jail for indecent exposure.”
She fidgeted and adjusted her dress, which looked out of whack. “I’m all crooked now,” she said, giggling. “I couldn’t get everything back on right, being all wet.”
“Well, feel free to take it off,” he said. “I mean, you’ve already done it once.”
She put her hands over her face. “Oh, man, you’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?”
“Never,” he whispered, close to her. “And don’t act all holy, chickadee, I know you looked, too.”
“Well, you took so damn long, I couldn’t help it.”
Ben laughed. “Yeah, yeah, try that again. I didn’t take that long, I had to hurry and get in the water.”
“Why?”
He grinned. “You don’t want to know.”
She looked genuinely confused and propped up sideways on her elbow to face him. “What?”
He laughed. “Nothing.” He looked at her in silence for a few seconds. “Happy birthday, Em. I hope it’s been a good one.”
“Best ever.”
“Even with dickhead out of the picture?”
“Because he’s out of the picture.” She scooped wet hair back. “It’s been two weeks, Ben. I told you I’m not going back to that cheating prick and I mean it.”
He gave her a look. “You have said that before.”
“It’s done this time,” she said. “I’ve wasted enough of my life with him. All the other girls in town can have him. If they haven’t already.”
He laughed. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not really funny.”
“Next subject,” she said. “Thank you for making me go party tonight when I just wanted to sit around and mope about losing my apartment. It was just what I needed.”
“What I’m here for. I still say you could have moved in with me and Bobby and saved yourself the parental drama.”
“Kevin would have flipped out—not that that really matters. But moving in with him was bad enough. If I did it again with another guy, my parents would disown me. And seeing you all that up and personal with women you’d bring home—I don’t know, that would have been weird.”
His eyebrows knitted together. “Why?”
She shrugged and then smiled. “I don’t know. Maybe because I never have to share you. When we’re together you’re always mine.”
He put a finger to his lips. “Shhh. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m always yours anyway.”
She shoved at him. “Ha-ha. But you didn’t think I could keep up with you tonight, did you?”
Ben held up a hand. “I stand corrected. You can drink like a sailor. And still not drown in a river.”
“And then climb a tree,” she added.
He pointed at her. “In a party dress.”
“Which you looked up; that’s why you wanted me to go first.”
He chuckled. “Sweetheart, I wanted you to go first so I could catch you if you fell. I just saw all your goods, back there at the river, remember? Looking up your dress would have been kind of like eating the chocolate and then drooling over the wrapper.”
She laughed, and he moved a wet lock of hair out of her eyes. Somehow, I remembered that simple gesture for years to come. Out of all the moves that night, for some reason that one stuck with me.
“Eating the chocolate, huh?”
“Yeah, there’s a metaphor for you.”
“I’ll never look at a chocolate bar the same way again.” She sighed and sounded happy. I knew she was. “Oh, man, I had so much fun tonight. And speaking of every woman in town—do you know how many people hate me tonight?”
Ben frowned. “Why?”
“For being with you,” she said, laughing. “I’d forgotten how bitchy girls can be. Every woman at every club we hit wanted to gouge my eyes out and step over me to get to you.”
“I could say the same thing about the men.”
“No.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “Women are evil. I had three of them tell me in three different bathrooms about what a good lover you are.”
Ben nearly choked. “What?”
“I’m serious! ‘His kisses make your clothes melt off’ or some such thing.”
He looked sincerely shocked. “No shit? What if we’d been on an actual date?”
She put a hand to her chest in mock indignation. “We weren’t on a date? You mean I got naked for you and it wasn’t a date?”
Ben laughed. “You got naked all on your own.”
“And you didn’t even need to kiss me. Damn, you’re good.”
“I can’t believe somebody said that.”
She waved a hand. “That’s nothing new, Ben. I
heard about your ‘talents’ all through high school. Girls always wanted to know if we’d messed around.
“And you said—?”
“No. Should I have lied?”
“I kissed you in the eighth grade at—”
“Carla Martin’s party. Yeah, truth or dare doesn’t count.”
They locked fingers and twisted the union back and forth, and my heart sped up as I knew it was coming. It was like watching a freaking soap opera that I’d already seen.
“So why is it you’ve never made a move on me?” she asked.
His eyebrows shot up. “Is that a request?”
She shoved at him with their joined hands. “Quit being a pig, I’m serious. I mean I know you don’t think of me like that, but—”
Ben laughed out loud. “Don’t think of you like that? Emily, I’m a guy. I think of every woman like that. Back there at the river?” He pointed off the roof. “I had to stay in the water because I had a raging wood.”
She slapped a hand over her eyes. “Oh my God.”
He pulled her arm down and made a face to make her laugh. “Yes, I think of you like that. But I—I have to be different with you.”
“Different?”
“Other women, I act on it. I get laid. I move on.” He shook his head and smiled but the smile was changed, sadder. I saw it now, but I didn’t know if I saw it then. “You matter, Em. I’d be toast.”
She chuckled. “You’d be toast? You’re saying I might melt your clothes?”
He fake-grimaced. “It’s never happened, but you could be the one to do it.”
She leaned in closer to him, flirty. “Sounds like a challenge.”
He smiled down at her and seemed to weigh out his words. “Careful there. That fire’s unpredictable.”
“Meaning?”
He leaned in to match her. “Meaning that with you—I don’t know if I could stop.”
CHAPTER
12
I remembered the heat that had gone to my belly and lower when he’d said those words. The feeling that invisible barriers had been broken.
“Why with me?” she asked softly.
Before and Ever Since (9781101612286) Page 16
