Exes with Benefits

by Williams, Nicole

  Kind of like Grandma always used to tell me—do it today. Say it today. Don’t wait, because tomorrow is an illusion.

  I didn’t realize how slow I was crawling until I checked the odometer. Fifteen miles per hour. That might have had something to do with the fact I’d just turned down the same road I’d sped away on one muggy August night another life ago.

  Blinking, I saw the same image of him chasing my old car. I saw him chasing me all the way to the Missouri border.

  Canaan. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since that night. It was almost like he’d never existed. Save for that gaping hole I felt in my chest from time to time when a memory of him broke free of the box I kept them locked in.

  Grandma had never talked about him when she visited me, and I’d never asked about him. I never had to ask her not to bring him up; she just knew. Having a front row seat to our relationship from the start, it was probably easy for her to understand why I couldn’t talk about him.

  I couldn’t talk about my parents either. Talking about things like that didn’t make them any less tragic; it only served to keep the tragedy fresh.

  The funeral home had offered to stay open for whenever I arrived into town, but I’d told them I’d wait until tomorrow to stop by. I wasn’t ready for all that came with that. Grandma had handled all of the funeral arrangements for my parents nearly twenty years ago. Still, their funeral was fresh in my mind, and I wasn’t eager to attend, and this time plan, another.

  As the car inched along, her house came into view. It looked exactly the same. Not even the flowers she had growing in the pots lining the porch steps had changed. Home. That was the feeling that washed over me as I pulled up to the curb, purposefully avoiding pulling into the driveway. Also purposefully avoiding looking in the direction of the building stationed behind the main house.

  That had been another life.

  I couldn’t get out of the car at first. It took me a good five minutes to work up the courage to swing the door open and set my feet down on Farmington territory for the first time in half a decade. After that, the rest came easier.

  Leaving my purse and overnight bag in the car, I moved up the walkway. The white house appeared extra bright against the deep blue sky, and the windows still shone like Grandma had stuck to her bi-weekly window cleaning routine up to the end. It was an inviting place—the kind anyone felt comfortable approaching. Exactly the way Grandma had been.

  As I climbed the steps, I couldn’t shove away the mirage of the five-year-old version of myself perched on them, tear-stained cheeks, feeling lost. I also couldn’t help picturing the young boy in a clip-on tie who found me.

  I didn’t go in search of a hidden key or hope my old one was still tucked in my purse. Grandma never locked her doors. She wasn’t worried about keeping people out. No, she was more concerned with wanting to make sure people had a way in.

  When I pulled the screen door open, I flinched as it suddenly popped off the hinges. At least the top and middle hinges; the bottom one stayed fastened. I stood there for a moment, my hand still fastened around the handle, trying to shake the premonition that this was a sign of things to come. Instead, I tried to focus on what to do to get the thing fixed.

  Grandma had a handyman for these types of things, but for some reason, I had a pressing urge to fix it myself. I didn’t need a handyman to fix a screen door. Never mind that I knew little to nothing about home repair. I was fixing this damn screen.

  After carefully positioning the screen so it wouldn’t tip, I opened the door and moved toward the laundry room where Grandma kept a basic toolbox. I didn’t pause to turn on lights or take in the home I’d essentially grown up in. No, I was on a mission to fix the screen I’d broken. Nothing else was more urgent, not even changing out of the shift dress I had on for something more “fix-it” geared.

  I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I exhaled as I stepped back onto the porch, my lungs straining more than usual. Instead of taking a minute to have a private conversation with myself about what in the hell I was doing, I set the toolbox down and riffled through the contents.

  I hadn’t slept in twenty hours. This was the first time I’d been back home in five years. I had a funeral to plan. I had people in Chicago to call and let know I’d made it here safely. I had a million things to do . . . but none of them felt more important than getting the screen door fixed.

  Sorting through the contents again, I decided to go with a hammer, what I thought was a wrench, and a roll of duct tape just in case. Moving toward the broken hinges, I realized I had absolutely no clue how to fix it. Or how to even begin the process.

  Maybe if I tried hammering the hinges back into place? A little super glue couldn’t hurt, right?

  I’d just started whacking the middle hinge back into place (kind of) when my body froze. It was a classic hot and humid Missouri summer day, but chills scattered down my spine. Five minutes after stepping foot on Farmington ground and the first person I run into was him.

  “I can fix it.” His voice echoed from behind me as his footsteps moved up the stairs. “If you’ll let me.”

  I didn’t turn around; I didn’t even let myself glance back. “You were always better at breaking things from what I remember.” When the hammer hit the hinge this time, it sounded like I was trying to demo the screen instead of fix it. “Thanks. But no thanks.”

  I waited a minute, hoping to hear his footsteps move back down the stairs. He didn’t move though. Of course he didn’t. Because that would mean I’d actually gotten what I wanted where Canaan Ford was concerned and I’d proven that a lost cause forever and a half ago.

  “What are you doing here?” I sighed after smashing the hinge one more time with the hammer, managing to pop it right back out.

  “When I heard about your grandma, I figured you’d be back. I wanted to be here whenever that was.” His deep tenor, the way he spoke each word deliberately, unhurried, made every muscle in my body seize. That voice had comforted me countless times. It was the same voice that had hurt me just as many.

  “It’s been five years. What makes you think you’re the one person I’d want or need to see when I got back?”

  The porch creaked behind me. “Because I’m still you’re husband.”

  My grip tightened on the hammer as I spun around. “You are not my husband.”

  He didn’t budge as I moved toward him, hammer raised. I stopped moving when the rush of anger receded long enough for me to take a good look at him. The handsome son of a bitch had somehow gotten even better looking. Like Canaan Ford needed to be any more attractive than he’d been as the arrogant asshole parading the halls of Farmington High. The things written about him on the girls’ bathroom stalls back then had either made me blush or made me see red. I could only imagine what the single women in the area were whispering about him now that the boy had become a man.

  “You’re staring.” Those wild gold eyes narrowed at the corners.

  “I’m glaring. Big difference.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Glaring. Staring. I never was very good at knowing where I stood with you.”

  My hand flew to my hip. “That’s because you were too drunk to recognize the sink from the toilet most nights.”

  His hand rubbed his mouth, not able to wipe the smile away. He was the very picture of calm, while I felt like I was close to committing a crime with the hammer still clutched in my hand.

  “God, I’ve missed you, Maggie.”

  “You’ve missed pissing me off and making me feel murderous? Because yeah, those are things I have not missed once since getting the hell out of here.”

  Canaan’s eyes left mine, taking their time roaming me. They slowed when he got to my legs. Canaan was a leg man. Where most of his high school brethren had been tits or ass aficionados, he’d always been about the legs. He’d said boobs and butts might be fun to squeeze, but legs were the gateway to heaven. My ex was a real poet.

  And why in the hell
was I thinking about what part of my body Canaan Ford had had a thing for?

  “I’ve missed more than that. A lot more,” he finally said.

  “Me holding a bag of ice to your face? Or me washing the blood stains out of your shirts? Or maybe me cleaning up your puke while you slept it off?” I could have kept going, but I stopped. The list wasn’t short.

  “Come on. We made plenty of good memories too. Way more than the not-so-good ones.”

  “You weren’t the one watching the person you loved self-destruct.”

  His jaw moved, right before he held his arms out and did a slow spin. “Does it look like I self-destructed?”

  I cursed myself when my eyes dropped to his backside as he spun. I was an ass girl. Or more accurately, a Canaan Ford ass girl. Everything else aside, the guy had the kind of butt a girl could go cross-eyed from staring at too long.

  “Well? Does it?”

  I looked away before answering. “It wasn’t for lack of trying, that’s for damn sure.”

  The porch creaked when he shifted. “No. It wasn’t.” A flash of vulnerability lit in his eyes, but it was gone so quickly I could have imagined it. “I’m sorry for what I put you through. I thought I could protect you from whatever hell I dug myself into.” Canaan ran his hand through his messy auburn hair, leaving it even more untidy. “Instead, I just dragged you into it with me.”

  My hand holding the hammer fell to my side. When I opened my mouth to say something, nothing came. Was that what I thought it was? An apology? From Canaan Ford? I thought those didn’t exist. And what was that on his face? Remorse? Regret? Another flash of vulnerability? If he kept it up, I was going to ask for his driver’s license to confirm his real identity.

  “We were a couple of kids playing house. We should have known better than to think we could make a marriage work at eighteen.”

  “I wasn’t playing anything.” His eyes flickered to mine, fire burning in them. “You and me, that was the most real thing I’d ever known. I wasn’t playing. But that doesn’t change the fact that I fucked things up.”

  I found myself blinking at him, wondering if fifty years had gone by here in Farmington instead of the five that had passed in Chicago. In our relationship, Canaan and I had done a few things really, really well. One of those was fighting. We used to be able to go on for hours about the littlest thing. I guess that’s what happened when you stuck two people as stubborn and impulsive as Canaan and me together.

  “Does it look like I’ve suffered any long-term damage?” I asked, lifting my shoulders. “Besides, that’s behind us. Ancient history.”

  The way he cocked his brow made me doubt just how ancient of history he considered it. “And now that I’ve made another huge ass of myself going on about me, I’m going to do what I should have done the moment I opened my mouth and offer you my condolences on your grandma’s passing.”

  My head tipped. “Wow. Did you memorize that from a greeting card?”

  “Cut me a little slack here. I haven’t seen you in five years and I’m trying to apologize for a shit ton of things all at once. I’m flying blind here.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Really, though, I’m sorry about your grandma. I know how close you were with her.”

  I didn’t know what to say. What was the routine response one gave to someone “offering their condolences” for a loved one’s death? Suddenly, I was that young girl who’d lost her parents and didn’t know what to say or how to act when everyone in the whole world felt like they were apologizing because my parents had been going through the wrong intersection at the wrong time. Timing. It made all the difference.

  Avoiding the topic, I turned back to the screen to pretend like I knew what I was doing. “What have you been up to the past five years?”

  Canaan shuffled up beside me, adjusting the screen into place as I got back to whacking the hinges with my hammer. “Oh, you know. Saving small children from burning buildings. Fighting underground crime. Saving the world. That kind of thing.”

  Struggling with a smile, I kept pounding the hinges. Pretty sure I was only making it worse though. “Do you hang your cape here in Farmington still? Or did you move?”

  The skin between his brows creased. He must not have known about my unsaid agreement with Grandma that we didn’t talk about him. I knew she’d known what he’d been up to or where he’d gone, but she’d known I didn’t want that knowledge.

  “Please, like I could just leave all of this.” His long arm swept out toward the yard. “What about you? Where are you at now?”

  I stopped hammering. I was getting nowhere. “Not here. That’s where I am.”

  Canaan’s arm nudged mine. “I noticed.”

  The familiar push of energy rippled through my arm in waves. Five years, and his touch still had the same effect on me. Life was unfair—so goddamn unfair. I wanted to feel nothing. I wanted to feel less than that. Instead, I felt like an infatuated teenager who couldn’t get enough of the person standing to my left.

  “I can fix it.”

  “So you say.”

  He held his hand out for me, eyeing the hammer. “So I will.”

  I handed it to him with a sigh, but instead of using it to fix the busted screen, he set the hammer back in the toolbox. Squeezing past me, he adjusted the positioning of the hinges with his hands, gently sliding them around until they magically seemed to snap into place.

  My eyes lifted when I noticed his smug smile when he glanced back at me. “Don’t try to fix something with a hammer when all it needs is a little nudge.”

  I scooted back a few steps when his familiar scent fanned over me. It was an aphrodisiac. At the same time, it was toxic. “This coming from the fighter known throughout the state as The Hammer?”

  He held up his hands, turning them over a few times. No bruised knuckles three times their usual size. No dried slivers of blood either. “The Hammer’s been retired for a while now.”

  “Really?” I said, inspecting his hands another moment. “I thought you’d be fighting to the grave.”

  “Nah.” He was quiet, dropping his hands back at his sides. “I got out when I realized I should have spent all of that time fighting for something else.”

  “World peace, Caped Crusader?”

  He ran his thumb down the reattached hinges, staring at them with narrowed eyes. “The woman I loved.”

  My feet carried me back a few steps. Distance. Physical and emotional—it was a priority where Canaan was concerned.

  “You happy?” I asked, plucking at one of the azaleas in the planter close by, trying to distract myself from him.

  He turned, his eyes finding mine again. They held there. “I am. You?”

  I nodded my answer. “This is way quieter than I thought this would be.”

  His forehead creased. “Than you thought what would be?”

  I waved between us. “Seeing each other for the first time after five years. With the way we left things.”

  His shoulders moved beneath his white tee. “A guy can grow up a lot in five years. I’ve changed.”

  My eyes found themselves wandering Canaan again. He had changed. At least on the outside. If that change bled deeper was yet to be determined.

  “You want something to drink?” he asked, backing up through the door. When I paused to consider my answer, Canaan clarified. “I was thinking iced tea would go great with this hot weather.”

  “Iced tea and . . .” I said, predicting whiskey to be his answer. He surprised me when he replied.

  “Iced tea with lemon and sugar. That’s how you take it, right?”

  “Just sugar.” When he gave me a look that suggested he thought I was messing with him, I added, “There’s enough sour out there without adding it to my drink.”

  He lifted his chin. “Look who else has gone and changed?”

  “No more lemon in my tea. I even get up early in the mornings now . . . and like it,” I whispered, as though it were a secret.

  Canaan gave a mock
look of shock. “I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

  When a little laugh came from me, he stopped backing away. The way his brow furrowed, it was almost like he was attempting to memorize the sound of it. A moment later, he disappeared inside, the sound of his heavy footsteps moving toward the kitchen. “Iced tea with extra lemon coming right up.”

  When he was gone, an exhale rushed through my lips. After years of wondering what would happen if we ever saw each other again, now I had my answer. An easy conversation on Grandma’s front porch like no time or tragedy had come between us.

  Maybe he really had changed. It wasn’t impossible. Unlikely and improbable, but not beyond the scope of possible.

  My eyes flitted to my car. I’d only reconnected with him five minutes ago, but he was here, sober, and fresh from preaching an I’ve changed speech. And there was no time like now to do what needed to be done. My feet carried me to the car, but my heart felt like it elected to stay on the porch. No surprise there. My heart had always been weak where Canaan was concerned. Apparently the sickness still lingered.

  Which made digging that manila folder out from beneath my purse on the passenger seat that much more pressing. I couldn’t hang around any longer than absolutely necessary. I couldn’t be around him more than the bare minimum. Just long enough to finish what I should have years ago. Only long enough to say a less turbulent goodbye.

  Canaan was coming back outside with two glasses of iced tea as I climbed the stairs. Seeing him with that phantom of a smile, looking me straight on like there was no such thing as regret, made my throat close up.

  “Whatcha got there?” He held out my glass of tea—he still took his with lemon—as his eyes diverted to the folder clutched in my clammy hand.

  The formation of words was impossible given the current condition of my throat, so I held the folder out for him once I took my glass of tea.

  Taking it, he settled onto the top step, scooting over to make room for me. “A drawing?” He drained half of his tea in one drink then balanced the folder in his hand, like he was weighing it. “Little heavy for a drawing though.”

  Taking a seat beside him, keeping a margin of space between us, I set my tea down. “Just open it.”