What Comes After Dessert

by Ren Benton

  Dammit, she was still perfect, and he was still defenseless against her.

  That was their rhythm.

  Tally Castle wasn’t the first or the last girl he’d been a fool for, but she was the only one who made it happen by burning up all the oxygen so he couldn’t breathe around her, leaving him lightheaded and incapable of intelligent speech or action.

  He made his lungs inflate with the empty air, deflate, repeat in a facsimile of respiration that kept his affliction private and close to his heart.

  Why did his weakness to The Fortress have to be the one thing immune to change?

  Chapter 2

  Stella left behind an iPod containing the assortment of country and American classic rock one would expect to find in the possession of a woman of her generation in Westard — as well as an eyebrow-raising collection of Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, and Lil Wayne. Either Stella had a secret life moonlighting as a DJ at a strip club, or pole dancers weren’t the only workforce to whom Weezy signified time to get that ass to work.

  Tally couldn’t tolerate a soundtrack of grinding music for an entire shift, but when her energy was gone at the end of the day, the beat prodded her to go through the motions, just like old times.

  She kept the volume low so the thump of bass was the only distinct sound emitting from the speakers. Instead of scraping up the last sweaty dollar bills from a tapped-out audience, she scraped the day’s accumulation of flour from the seams where the floor met the walls and base cabinets. Every day for two years, she’d thought if she was tidier, every surface in the bakery wouldn’t be coated with flour at the end of the day. Every day for two years, no matter how tidy she tried to be, every surface in the bakery was coated with flour at the end of the day. Every night before she left, she cleaned from top to bottom, waging a futile battle against the inevitable.

  Stella’s cleaning instructions were to keep the counters clean and wet-mop the floor once a week. She said flour flew and Tally should be worried about how much of it she’d sucked into her lungs rather than how much settled into cracks in the linoleum.

  Tally couldn’t care less about the condition of her lungs. No one was judging the cleanliness of her alveoli.

  Most of the town thought she had taken advantage of a sick old lady on her way to a nursing home. There was no rational explanation for Stella to entrust a professional screwup with her business, her money, and her reputation.

  Tally couldn’t argue with her detractors. Even if she had a talent for defending herself, the truth was against her. She hadn’t lied about her qualifications or lack thereof, but she also hadn’t protested against the obviously poor judgment on Stella’s part. Competition was stiff for uneducated, unskilled labor. Every other employer within a fifty-mile radius had the sense to laugh her off the premises, and she desperately needed the income for big-city luxuries to which she had become accustomed during her decade away from Westard.

  Luxuries such as food and toilet paper.

  If they gave up the former, they could do without the latter, but when she pitched the idea to her dad, he used the receipts from her mother’s funeral to bat it down. In the short term, at least, living was marginally more frugal than starving to death.

  Starvation remained an option, however, if Stella came to her senses and fired her. The books were perpetually in the red. Most of the customers looked at her as if they’d rather lick the bottom of a garbage can than eat food she had prepared if she wasn’t selling it at a loss.

  Stella cackled at the weekly progress reports. Someday, her doctors would adjust her meds, she’d be less entertained by the ruin of her life’s work, and Tally would be out on her ass.

  She scrubbed harder. Nothing was as motivating as a reminder that no matter how shitty things were at any given moment, they could always get worse. When rock bottom arrived and the whole town was atwitter about how she’d finally gotten what she deserved, at least nobody would be able to say she was a slob.

  She’s a disgraceful excuse for a human being, but you could feed your baby off that floor between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m.

  She wadded the pyramid of grungy paper towels into a ball and sank it into the bag slouched by the back door. The only dirt that hadn’t made it into the garbage was on her clothes, in her hair, and glued to her skin. When she took out the trash, the place would be spotless until she returned in the morning and started spewing flour again.

  The door buzzer alerted her in its customary fashion to the arrival of business up front, sticking as if annoyance had ever enhanced the provision of customer service. The buzzer had been on her list of things to fix for two years, but something else always took priority. She could live with a noisy nuisance, but a leaky pipe under the sink or a broken belt in the mixer stopped production and had to be addressed right away. The crisis-free day when the buzzer rose to the top of the list had yet to occur.

  She arched her back and squeezed the ache there down to her knees, which expressed their thanks with audible pops as she stood. Coming back to her hometown with her tail tucked between her legs had prompted her body to begin aging in dog years.

  If only Howdy Hank had been there to give her the heads-up. Welcome home, pardner! Saddle up for premature joint degeneration and frown lines! Yee-haw!

  Skedaddling hadn’t been an option, but she could have eased into decrepitude with dignity instead of throwing a tantrum when the cowboy’s prophecy came to pass.

  She glimpsed a uniform-beige shoulder through the doorway and nudged at the frown lines with the back of her hand. She was too tired and grubby to endure being flirted with by Westard’s only semi-eligible bachelor under the age of seventy, but Shane deserved a reasonable facsimile of a smile. He got points for being one of a select few who had made no rude comments to her face since her inglorious return.

  The back of her hand sported a dark smudge, either picked up from or transferred to her forehead. She gave her hands a quick soap at the sink and swiped her face with the paper towel she used to dry them. It wasn’t worth finding a reflective surface to check her work when Shane wouldn’t notice if she had chocolate chips stuck to her cheeks. Like most men, his gaze seldom ventured above her clavicle.

  Her clenched teeth forced her lower jaw forward, which didn’t improve the quality of the smile she was trying to fake. She needed five more seconds to rehearse. “Swat that buzzer, will you?”

  “Sure thing.”

  She worked her mouth back and forth to loosen her bite, and the pop of her TMJ was masked by a businesslike smack, followed by blessed quiet.

  Another point for Shane — what little she asked him to do, he came through.

  Her molded smile softened to something a little more genuine by the time she stepped through the doorway. “Thanks.”

  “Any time.” Shane jerked his thumb toward another body she hadn’t seen from the kitchen — the body standing underneath the buzzer. “Remember this guy?”

  She seized like mistreated chocolate, becoming stiff, dry, crumbling. Someone would have to chisel her away, throw her out, and start over from scratch because she’d be no good for anything now.

  He had aged, too, but in the good way, filling out that rangy adolescent torso to better suit the height he’d shot up to in tenth grade, picking up a couple of laugh lines around eyes that remained the same hot summer sky blue. The pecan-colored hair was as adorably shaggy as ever and messy, as though fingers had recently used it as reins to steer him into a kiss. The panty-incinerating smile that provoked such attentions hadn’t cooled by even one degree.

  Yeah, she remembered Ben Fielder.

  Dammit, she remembered his taste.

  For twelve years, she strove to transcend embarrassment through immersion therapy, putting herself in one situation after another that allowed her to advance through every phase of humiliation and shame. For the past two of those years, she’d had overwhelming community support in the form of daily dirty looks, snide remarks, and crude witticisms written in the dirt on her truck. S
he had achieved a level of low at which, thirty seconds previously, she had no fucks to give about being seen even knowing she had grime on her face.

  Had she thought she was the master of her degradation? Such hubris.

  To prove she hadn’t yet succeeded in digging her way to bedrock, life brought in a backhoe to excavate new depths.

  She should have washed her face instead of baseboards no one ever studied as if there would be a test on the flaws. And her hair. Put on some lip gloss. And a clean shirt she hadn’t borrowed from her dad’s closet because she hadn’t made time in the last week to launder her own meager wardrobe.

  The silence grew too long and sharp edged to pretend she didn’t recognize him, so she did what she’d done every time Ben Fielder sucker punched her: she put on the stage smile cultivated to make the audience believe she was having a great time, wanted to be nowhere else, and wasn’t miserable at all. “Who doesn’t remember Ben? Everybody who gets out of Westard is legendary.”

  For one brief, brilliant moment, she allowed herself to hope he wouldn’t remember her. She was far from the only girl in town who’d had her tongue on him, and she hadn’t practiced on anyone else before fumbling her way around him — even then, she’d been the uneducated, unskilled labor.

  If she had any money, she’d bet it all she was the only girl in town pleading to be unmemorable.

  The backhoe roared back to life and excavated a grave in which to bury that hope. “You left long before I did, Tally.”

  Not long before. He’d been destined for training camp soon after graduation. She left the day before so she didn’t spoil her streak of missing every school event since kindergarten.

  But if he could forget historical details, she could pretend to do the same. “Did I?”

  She was a legend, as well, but the stories told about her were cautionary tales to frighten children into respectable behavior: Learn a trade or get some scholarships, or you’ll end up naked on a stage like that Castle girl, and don’t think I’ll let you move back to this house when your tits start to sag.

  She cranked up the corners of her smile until it threatened to crack her face. “What can I get for you gentlemen this evening?”

  Shane ogled the triple rows of cookies displayed in the case. “Got any cookies left?”

  She bent her head to inspect the inventory she knew was there as an excuse to move her face out of the scorching twin beams of Ben’s regard. “All of them, in fact. I shouldn’t have bothered.”

  “Slow day?”

  Someone had been away long enough to forget the days in Westard had only one speed. “Same traffic as usual, but just about everybody’s on the same pay cycle. This far from last payday, bread is the responsible thing to buy. And eggs. Lots of people wanted eggs today.”

  The menu for the rest of the week would have to be adjusted to account for the egg shortage, but she would figure that out on the drive home.

  God forbid she ever got to use those five minutes to relax.

  Ben scanned the paltry selection of produce that had taken over one of the display cases. “This is the market now.”

  “She’ll even deliver you a pizza if it’s on her way home.”

  The hot spot on her face let her know she had Ben’s attention again. She ignored him while she made sandwiches out of pairs of cookies with fat marshmallows in the middle and popped them in the microwave for ten seconds. Sorry, pardner! Casa Fielder is a good four hundred yards off my route. Buy a tomato and a loaf of bread and use your imagination.

  The microwave beeped. She pressed a hand down on each cookie sandwich so the softened marshmallow squished to the edges, wrapped each in a parchment diaper, and placed them on the counter. “Knock yourselves out.”

  Shane grabbed one and retreated to his corner. The cookie vanished in two bites, accompanied by vague, appreciative noises.

  That’s what the sex would be like. One, two, grunt, done.

  Pressure built behind her sternum, a giggle or whine or perhaps a scream trying to escape over the wall. She had considered the possibility, if Shane’s divorce was ever final and if he asked and if she had enough heart left at that point to try, that they might get together, but she had never given any thought to what that would actually be like.

  Until now, when he was in range for a side-by-side comparison with Ben.

  The standard against which all men would forever be judged stepped up to the counter. She backed away until the metal storage rack behind her dug into her thighs. If she’d thought this through, she would have thrown the damn cookie at him. Her arm was shit, but it would have been a short pass with no interference. He’d been an all-state wide receiver and punt returner with a spot on the good-hands team. If he could catch an onside kick, he could grab a cookie out of the air without getting anywhere near her.

  But she hadn’t thought quickly enough, so there he was, and he didn’t retreat, so she had a close-up view when he ran his thumb around the edge of the cookies to line them up, sucked a bit of marshmallow goo off his thumb, and took a slow, precise bite, perfect white upper teeth sinking into the warm, pillowy treat as if he didn’t want to bruise it.

  His eyes narrowed. His focus homed in on her.

  A chill rippled through her from top to bottom, leaving the territory marked by its passing uncomfortably warm by comparison. She knew that look, had seen it many times in response to less-PG pleasures. That look let her know she’d done something good, but not quite good enough to make him close his eyes and forget where he was and with whom. Not good enough that he’d fail to notice her next, inevitable mistake.

  That degree of good required more spit, tongue, suction, and hand action than she was comfortable deploying in the presence of a witness, so she remained as trapped by his stare as the scream — yup, definitely a scream — in her chest.

  Grains of sugar glittered on his upper lip. He ought to lick them off before she did something catastrophic to get rid of them.

  Like lick them off.

  He’d always had the most beautiful mouth. So pretty it made her stupid, and that had been before she knew how soft his lips felt against her skin. So stupid her thighs clenched together because of a few grains of sugar on his lip, as if lousy table manners were a turn-on.

  Just lick it, already!

  He grinned as if he knew precisely how bothered she was and why. “These aren’t Stella’s gingersnaps.”

  Stella’s were tasty but thin and crisp, as the name implied. Tally modified the recipe to maintain the molasses-and-spice flavor in a puffy, chewy form. In the great marketing tradition of sexing up everything, she renamed them Ginger Unsnaps, though she hadn’t shared the new handle with the fine people of Westard lest the whole town be overcome by a mass fit of the vapors. “Stella isn’t here.”

  “Then she won’t be jealous when I ask you to run away with me.”

  That cavalier remark lopped the legs off the imprisoned scream, forcing it to subside into a compact ball behind her heart. Her yearning to run away, to be with him anywhere he’d let her, had always been just a silly, childish dream that could never be.

  At least this time the wake-up call hadn’t included a proposal. The current offer wasn’t such an agony to refuse. “I can get a better deal for my coconut-pecan brownies.”

  Shane snorted. “You can’t get anybody to take you up on an offer today, can you, Ben?”

  “At least I have my hair to console me.”

  Of course she wouldn’t be the first one he’d made an offer to today, either. She never had been. He always saved her for dead last. “How many other women have you propositioned since you got back to town?”

  “Just Shania here, and I swear she means nothing to me.”

  “That’s not what you said when you were trying to get in my pants.” Shane swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, although Tally hadn’t noticed anything clinging to his lips. Then again, she hadn’t really noticed that he had lips. “Thanks for the cookie. Time to get bac
k to defending upstanding citizens from unsavories.”

  Ben waved the remaining half of his cookie. “Thanks for the tour.”

  Shane headed for the door alone.

  Ben stayed planted on the other side of the counter, not more than four feet away from her. Blue eyes watching her. Sugar clinging to his lip. Unbudging.

  Her voice came out high-pitched and strangled. “Don’t you have to arrest him for something?”

  “Not yet. Probably by morning.” Shane opened the door. The buzzer issued one muted bleat. “See you then with that gas, Fielder.”

  He walked out the door, and her heart accelerated as if he’d left her alone with a known serial killer.

  Chapter 3

  Alone at last.

  Ben had spent nearly half the years of his life competing for Tally’s attention. The vast majority of the trouble he got into from kindergarten through his senior year of high school was the direct result of attempts to get Tally Castle to look at him, smile at him, talk to him, even if it was to scold.

  When it worked, detention was a small price to pay. Especially on smile days. He was the grinningest delinquent detention had ever seen on smile days.

  It wasn’t belching the national anthem or walking down two flights of stairs on his hands or an equivalent feat of daring or idiocy that got her to kiss him, though. Not the first time, when they were seven and he’d sprung one on her, but the second time, ten years later, when she’d sprung one on him. He had vivid sensory recall of that first warm, soft press of her lips against his chin, then his lips. The dizzy rush as if he’d never been kissed before. The way she didn’t close those big, multicolored eyes, watching her target, gauging his reaction — which had been shaking like a hypothermic Chihuahua when the tip of her tongue touched the corner of his mouth.

  He remembered everything about that kiss except what he’d said or done to earn the privilege and those that followed. Either the heat exploding through his veins had incinerated the memory, or there had been no reason behind her change in temperature other than whim. He hadn’t questioned his good fortune much. As long as he’d known her, she turned slippery when questioned, and once she was in his arms, he wanted her to stay put.