This Is 35

by Stacey Wiedower

  * * *

  Thursday morning, Erin woke with Ben's alarm at six-thirty and lay in a sleepy haze while he got up and headed for the bathroom.

  Over the steady thrum of the shower, she debated going back to sleep, the part of her that was exhausted from sixteen straight days of intense work followed by yesterday's long, bumpy flight from LAX warring with the other part of her which didn't want to miss a single rare second of the time she got to spend with Ben these days.

  She dragged herself out of bed while the shower was still running and pulled on her short, pale pink robe before padding into the kitchen to make coffee.

  When Ben came into the kitchen, he was fully dressed in slacks and a tie, a starched white lab coat slung over one arm. Erin turned from the sink and handed him a mug of coffee, straightening his tie and stretching up to kiss him on the lips.

  "What are you doing up so early?"

  He turned and noticed that she'd set the table for breakfast with cups of organic Greek yogurt and pieces of buttered toast on the blue earthenware dishes they'd received as wedding gifts. She would have liked to include fresh fruit, but since Ben had done the grocery shopping while she was out of town, supplies were meager.

  "Wow," he said, eyeing the spread. "You're feeling domestic this morning."

  She shrugged. "I'm only here for four days. I'm going to take whatever I can get of you."

  She'd stepped away to slide back her chair, but he reached out and grabbed her, pulling her toward him and in the process sloshing coffee over the side of her mug. Luckily the drops hit the floor and not his nice clothes. Erin giggled and set the mug down, licking a drip of the hot liquid, thankfully not too hot, off the side of her hand.

  "I'll get that for you." Ben took her hand and kissed the spot where she'd just licked, his other hand tugging at the ties at the waist of her robe. "Here, why don't you give me something to think about all day." The robe fell open in the front, revealing that she was wearing nothing underneath. He slid his fingers inside the robe and around, cupping a butt cheek with one hand. He gave it a pinch.

  "Ben Bertram," she said, jumping and swatting his hand away. She reached for a paper towel and mopped up the coffee drips, not bothering to retie her robe. She liked the idea of this being the picture in his head all day. "Are you trying to miss your meeting?"

  His expression altered, and he glanced at the clock on the microwave, making Erin wish she hadn't brought it up. Then his forehead smoothed, and he pulled out his chair. "I've got a few minutes." He eyed her up and down as she walked to the table from the sink after throwing away the paper towel. "Maybe you'd better close that up again, though, or I really will be late."

  Erin smiled and refastened her robe as she joined him at the table. "Three times last night not enough for you?"

  He was already chewing a giant hunk of toast. "I'll never get enough."

  He said it with his mouth full, making her laugh. "Sexy," she said.

  He grinned and took a sip of coffee, swiping his mouth with his napkin.

  "I do what I can."

  They ate in silence for a few seconds. "What are you doing while you're home? Are you still working or taking a break?"

  "Mainly I'll be sitting around here, waiting for you to come home to get into this robe." She loosened the top a little, revealing some cleavage, and winked at him. He groaned.

  "Should I call in sick?"

  "I wouldn't complain." Erin popped her spoon into her mouth and licked the yogurt off slowly.

  "You're diabolical." He grinned at her and then sighed. "I wish I could. This grant application is due a week from Tuesday, and it's got to go through about fourteen layers of corporate approval first."

  Playtime's over. She echoed his sigh. "Yeah, I'm working this week, too. I've got to play loads of catch-up on the site, plus I've got a column due to Yvonne tomorrow afternoon that I don't even have an idea for yet." Erin wrote a monthly lifestyle column called "Living Out Loud" for Glamour. Since launching her freelance career and landing the gig with YOLO, she'd been asked to do guest pieces for several publications, both one-offs and regular features. She'd done a few relationship spots on TODAY, where she'd first appeared as a guest while in the midst of completing her 30 First Dates list. She was also a regular on Wake Up DFW, the metroplex's local morning show.

  How were they ever going to fit a baby into this crazy, busy life?

  Erin's brow furrowed at the unexpected thought. She sipped her coffee as Ben wiped his mouth and pushed back from the table, the legs of his chair scraping loudly against the terra-cotta floor tiles.

  She spooned the last bits of yogurt out of the cup before getting up to clear the table. Meanwhile, Ben pulled his lab coat over his clothes and grabbed his keys out of the bowl by the back door. He walked swiftly over to Erin and leaned down to give her a peck on the lips.

  "I'll try to be home by seven."

  She stifled a sigh.

  He headed for the door and turned to her with his hand on the knob. "Oh, and I forgot to tell you, but I'm leaving Sunday, too. I've got to fly up to Minneapolis to give a presentation at Lanakin Technologies, the manufacturing company that wants to work with us on the Lester therapy trials."

  "Oh. What time do you fly out?"

  "Around three, I think."

  Erin frowned. She'd booked a red-eye to maximize their time, and she wasn't leaving till nine-thirty. But that wasn't Ben's fault. "OK," she said. "You're giving a presentation alone?"

  Ben had the door halfway open, and his left foot was already on the top step leading outside. "No," he said. "It's me and Liang, the Johns Hopkins lead." After a short pause, he added in a reluctant voice, "And Melody's going, too."

  Erin started, not expecting that. She hadn't been goading him, but she couldn't hide the dismay in her expression.

  Ben's head was the only part of him that was still inside. His eyes pleaded with her. "I've really got to go," he said. "This is no big deal. Trust me. I'll see you tonight."

  "I do trust you," Erin called after him, hoping he'd heard her as the door closed with a creak and then a loud click.

  * * *

  Sunday afternoon after Ben had left for the airport, Erin sat in her quiet living room and contemplated her 35 by 35 list. She'd realized while updating the blog this week that she really needed to get a move on with the list. She still had half the list to go and barely over a year to do it. Plus she needed blog content. Her posts had been getting stagnant. She'd even resorted to reprising some of her older posts now that she was so busy with the show.

  She'd been waiting till she was "less busy" to focus on the list, but she was discovering that waiting until she wasn't busy meant not doing it at all. There was no longer such a thing as "not busy." When she attempted to give one thing up—like a regular magazine gig, for instance—two new things appeared to fill the space. Not a bad problem to have, but it didn't go well with her list ambitions.

  She'd worked really hard back when she'd drafted the list to put the items in a logical order to complete chronologically. For example, she didn't place two list items back to back that required major travel. Because she'd had so long to complete the list, she hadn't shied away from big goals. But she'd tempered them with smaller, more achievable goals. And her next list item fell into that latter category: No. 19: Start a screenplay.

  It was the perfect goal to work on as she headed back to California for another three-week stint. She could brainstorm on the plane and write in the wee hours of her insomniac nights alone in the condo—so big for one person that her footsteps literally echoed. She wished Ben could come out to stay with her this time, but he didn't think he'd be able to get there at all during postproduction. He promised to try.

  He'd been gone less than an hour, and already his absence felt like a gaping hole in the center of her chest. If she thought too hard about how long they'd be apart this time, she had trouble breathing around the hole. And she could tell Ben felt the same way. When he'd left for DF
W, he'd squeezed her so hard she truly couldn't breathe.

  Thinking about him boarding a plane alongside The Nemesis affected her breathing too—it made her want to hyperventilate. She wasn't sure why Melody bothered her so much. Maybe it was because Melody had introduced Ben to his ex-girlfriend Catherine, the woman who'd almost prevented her and Ben from coming together. Or maybe it was because from the very first time she'd met Melody, Erin had sensed she had a thing for Ben—even though Melody was already engaged to Ryan at the time, and Ben and Erin were just friends.

  Melody couldn't be trusted. Erin couldn't explain it beyond women's intuition, but her skin crawled as she visualized Ben sitting beside her on the plane. Hopefully they were on separate flights.

  Hopefully they were staying at separate hotels.

  "Aaaaggghh." She was driving herself crazy. She picked up the Apple TV remote and scrolled through the Netflix options to find something to pass the hours before her flight. She stopped at Breaking Bad and clicked on season one, episode one. She and Ben had talked about wanting to watch this show for ages but hadn't found the time. Somehow, putting it on made her feel closer to him.

  A ramshackle motor home screeched across rocky desert terrain on her TV screen, and two and a half hours were gone before Erin realized it. She went straight from episode one to episode two and clicked pause halfway through episode three, hating that her dash to the airport meant she had to stop watching. She'd heard people say it was a great show, but nobody had told her it was as addictive as meth itself. It left her craving more.

  Ben will love this. Maybe he can watch it in his hotel room, and we can stay caught up to each other. She thought it over for a half second and then shook her head. Fat chance of that. As soon as they were both on their own and immersed in work again, there was no way their schedules would mesh well enough to make that happen. They might not even have time to talk about which episodes they'd watched.

  "Oy, quit feeling sorry for yourself, Erin."

  Grateful she hadn't left any laundry or packing till the last minute, Erin hustled her stuff out to the car. As she was turning her key in the dead bolt, though, she had a thought. She turned the lock the other direction and darted back into the kitchen where she yanked open the junk drawer near the dishwasher and came out with a pad of Post-its and a black Sharpie. Glancing at the clock on the microwave, she muttered, "Yikes, yikes, yikes," and then dashed off her note.

  She sprinted to her bedroom, where she and Ben had left the bed unmade, kissed the paper, and stuck the bright pink note on his pillow: I love you SO much, and I MISS YOU TERRIBLY. He wouldn't see it for another two days, but at least he'd have a tiny surprise from her when he got home.

  She darted back through the house, slammed the drawer shut, locked the door, and ran to her car, thinking the five-minute delay had been totally worth it.

  * * *

  Erin arrived in L.A. around one a.m., and by the time she'd gotten her rental car, made the drive to Santa Monica, and pulled into the underground parking garage of her building, it was after two.

  She fell into bed and actually slept deeply despite the bright sunlight that streamed through the condo's floor-to-ceiling windows, which were nice during the day but awful in the first couple of hours after sunrise. Her body's circadian rhythms were shot to hell from all the cross-country travel, changing time zones, and differing periods of sunlight.

  The jet lag trapped her in a fuzzy vice all day long. She was so wiped that she left the studio a few minutes before five—the place was full and buzzing and restless, and she was first to bail. On her way back to the condo, she called in an order of ramen from a tiny dive off Ocean Park Boulevard, half a mile from the beach and outside the tourist strip. She'd just settled onto the couch with Breaking Bad queued up and paused on the TV screen and the takeout bowl of ramen balanced on a big turquoise plate on her lap when Ben called.

  "Hey," she said, slurping up a long noodle.

  He laughed. "What are you eating?"

  She answered around a bite of broth and spinach. "Ramen."

  "You must be in heaven, all that Japanese food." Erin's adoration of sushi was legendary. Ben often teased that she'd eat it for every meal if she could.

  "I want to get out and try some of the places I keep hearing about, but with the hours I'm pulling, it's not easy to be a tourist."

  "I get it," he said. "I just ordered room service."

  Erin slurped another noodle. She closed her eyes, savoring the briny flavor of the broth on her tongue. She used the elongated, black plastic spoon from her takeout bag to pick up the marinated egg and nibble off a bite. "You didn't have a work dinner?" she asked after chewing and swallowing.

  "Not a dinner," he said. "We had a long lunch with the clients, and then Liang and I met in the hotel restaurant after things wrapped up this afternoon. I just got back to the room about ten minutes ago."

  "What time's your flight tomorrow?"

  "I think I leave here around nine-thirty. Oh—" He paused, and she heard a shuffling noise. "You just reminded me I haven't checked into my flight yet." He put the phone on speaker, and there was more shuffling, and then he clicked off the speaker and said, "Eh, I'll have to do it after we get off."

  Erin swallowed another bite of egg. "How was The Nemesis to travel with?"

  She imagined she could hear him frown through the phone line.

  "I really haven't seen much of her," he said after a few seconds. "She sat about ten rows ahead of me on the plane yesterday"—Erin felt a little lift of satisfaction—"and then we shared a cab to the hotel." The lift turned into a weight that sank to the bottom of her stomach. "But I didn't see her again until the presentation, and she wasn't in the debriefing with Liang." He paused. "She was mainly there to answer the bookkeeping questions. I think she might be flying back tonight."

  "Oh, well, that's good then." She felt considerably brighter, something she could barely even explain to herself. It wasn't as if Ben had given her any reason not to trust him. Maybe her own situation with Leo was making her paranoid.

  Speaking of Leo, he'd been in the bullpen today pretty much all day which was another reason Erin had flown out the door so early. She'd grown weary of trying to avoid him—though he really only seemed to bother her when he got her alone.

  She had to make sure that didn't happen again.

  Erin kept shoveling in her soup, finishing almost the entire huge bowl before setting the takeout container on the table in front of her, while Ben talked about the meeting and the therapy trial. She was so sleepy that his words began to blur together in her head. He was mid-sentence when she yawned audibly.

  "You going to bed soon?" he asked. "Isn't it pretty early there?"

  "Not even six," she said, glancing up at the sun's high spot in the California sky. Its rays slanted in at a hot angle through the room's high, triangular window.

  The living room of the condo was on the second floor, above the main level garage. The one-bedroom unit was basically a loft with an open-concept floor plan and open metal stairways that, coupled with the wall-size windows, made the individual rooms seem like floating Jetsonian platforms. The furniture was modern and colorful, a purple sectional sofa of some vague Italian design paired with a red side chair and a fake Noguchi coffee table. Between the kitchen and the stairway was a massive, open-backed bookcase filled with a bizarre mix of titles, primarily in other languages. The studio rented the space, but whoever owned it clearly hailed from Europe or the U.K., based on the reading choices and the elaborate tea setup on the kitchen counter. There was a French press but no electric coffeemaker, a fact that boggled Erin's mind.

  The best part of the condo was its outdoor spaces. Off every possible nook and cranny was a terrace—a long, narrow balcony off the kitchen, a smaller balcony off the upstairs bedroom, a party-size roof terrace shared with a neighboring unit. Erin hadn't taken much advantage of them during her first trip, but this time she was determined to spend some time each day outdoors�
��something that became impossible, or at least unbearable, during a Dallas summer.

  The weather in California was a dream.

  She wouldn't be enjoying it tonight, though.

  "Why don't you go ahead and go to bed?" Ben said. "Get over the jet lag. Start fresh tomorrow."

  "I should work." She yawned again, and he laughed.

  "Yeah, right." A muffled knock sounded in the background.

  "Ah, that's my room service," he said. "I'll let you go so you can work, then." He laughed again. "Sweet dreams, babe."

  "I love you." Her words were garbled by another yawn.

  "I love you, too."

  Erin's eyes were already closed. She didn't even hit end call. The phone slid off her shoulder onto the sofa, and eventually the TV—still paused on Breaking Bad—gave up waiting on her and faded to black.

  * * *

  Thanks to long, hectic days—no more ramen takeout before sunset and early nights asleep on the couch—her first week back in Southern California went by in such a blur that Erin barely noticed the gorgeous, sunny weather, let alone spent time enjoying walks on the beach or coffee (tea) on the terrace. But then Sunday morning at the start of her seventh day back in L.A., she got some news that stopped time, or at least slowed it to a snail's pace.

  Ben was coming.

  He was flying in that Thursday night and staying through Sunday, using a PTO day on Friday so he wouldn't have to work, though Erin knew he'd probably take calls and answer emails all day anyway. Her anticipation all week was so intense she had trouble concentrating, plus she realized she had a problem to work out before he arrived.

  Ben coming meant she needed to complete list item No. 21: Go to Disney, this weekend—while he was in town. She'd had no idea when she'd written the list that she'd be in Southern California right when the item came up—honestly, when she'd written the list she'd figured they'd go to Disneyworld, not land. But at any rate, the timing was perfect. Anaheim was a mere hour down the road. And getting a chance to do a list item with Ben made Erin almost giddy with anticipation.