Before and Ever Since (9781101612286) (11 page)

“No, you didn't.”

“No, you didn't,” I echoed, smiling at her.

“Well, surprise, surprise,
Nana
,” she said, with exaggerated eyes at me.

“Huh, that sounds good,” Aunt Bernie said, turning around. “What's that about?”

“That's about a zillion calories in sugar and butter,” Cass said, bringing a chuckle from the other three women as she described the process.

It struck me as I watched her there, how grown-up she'd become while I talked to her about growing up. I was always being a mom. There she was amongst older women, talking about cooking and holding her own.

I snatched one of the to-die-for crackers and took a bite. “Oh, man,” I mumbled, not really thinking it was out loud.

“I'm telling you,” Cass said, reaching for two more. “I'm going to buy four boxes of crackers and do this to every one of them. I'm gonna gain fifty pounds.”

“Cass, you're a stick,” Holly said. “I think you're okay eating a few crackers. Just balance it with a piece of fruit.”

Coming from another stick,
I thought. Holly cut up an apple she'd managed to snag after two more forays through the fridge.

“I don't want fruit,” Cassidy said, holding her crackers to her like someone was going to take them away. The sight made me laugh.

“Well, if you eat that much starch, you're going to—”

Holly's health rant was cut short by Mom cramming a cracker into her mouth. “For once,” Mom said. “Don't pick it apart. Just enjoy it.”

Holly chewed in silence, giving her a defiant look.

“So how'd you hook up this gig with the barbecue place?” I asked my mom.

She shrugged. “I was there, noticed they didn't have it on the menu, and told them that no self-respecting Texas barbecue place leaves off potato salad.”

“So you volunteered,” Holly said, discreetly reaching for another cracker.

“Why not?” she said. “I enjoy it.”

“Since when?” I asked.

Mom shook her head as she checked the potatoes for softness. “There you go again, the poor little children that lived on gruel.”

“I heard there was occasionally water, too,” Cassidy said with a chuckle.

“Not free-flowing,” I said. “We were just allowed to lick the ice cubes sometimes.”

Holly snickered and Mom poked her in the ribs. I laughed, too, but looked at Mom a little differently after what I'd seen. She'd devised all these side jobs over her lifetime to bring money into the house, and somewhere along the way it had defined her.

Ben gathered up some of his paintbrushes and held them in one hand as he headed toward the back door, stopping to nod at us. “I'm gonna head home for a little bit, go grab some lunch.”

“You live here in town?” Aunt Bernie asked, starting what looked like a roux in my mom's skillet.

“Yes, ma'am, just down the road,” he said.

“Then you need to eat gumbo with us tonight,” she said.

Shit. I swear Ben was eating there more than I did.

“No, ma'am, I have to decline, but thank you,” he said, making me give him a double take.
I have to decline
? Such properness.

“Doing something fun?” Cassidy said, looking antsy on her stool. She never was one for staying in one place for long. “Maybe I'll go hang with you.”

I coughed up my Coke and it headed straight up my nose, making my eyes water. I reached for a paper towel, thinking of all the glamorous ways Ben had seen me so far.

“My goodness, Emmie,” Mom said.

“Sorry,” I sputtered.

Ben laughed. “Afraid not, Cassidy. Just spending a little family time of my own.”

“If you're seeing Bobby, can I bring you some paperwork by?” I asked, trying to talk through the burn in my throat. “Y'all need to sign the papers to negate the contract, and if you can take care of that tonight, I can get that processed.”

Ben nodded. “No problem. When do you want to come?”

A knock on the front door led to its opening and a head poking around the corner. “Hello?” Dedra Powers. “Can I come in?”

I swiveled my head to my mother. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Forgot she was coming by,” she said sheepishly.

I looked at Ben. “Right now would be perfect.”

•   •   •

I
STOPPED AT MY HOUSE TO PICK UP THE PAPERWORK AND
change my clothes. And find a hat. My hair was going to need a sandblaster later, but for the moment hiding it under a cute little cap was better.

I'd been through the house with Bobby's wife when they listed it, and while that was a little surreal going through it with her when I'd never even been there with Ben, it was just like hundreds of other vacant houses I'd walked through and noted and cataloged. With no furniture or anything to make a house personal, it's hard to visualize the people that did.

I never knew Ben's family. I knew Bobby about as well as anyone could, as he was even more private than Ben. He was two years older than me, so he barely registered my existence as Ben's friend in high school. Later, he kept to himself, and I hadn't even known he had a wife until after Kevin and I had been married for five or six years. We ran into them with their son at a Disney movie. Even then, he was polite but guarded, guiding them along as if lingering would warrant too much conversation. At the time, I had agreed since Cass was with us and I suddenly popped out of my denial bubble and remembered that he would be her uncle. It had been all I could do not to shove her under my coat.

His wife, Karen, had met me to do the walk-through of his mother's house, and I felt like she had become very like him. The way couples together over many years sometimes do, melding their characteristics. She was quiet and careful with her words, redirecting with a small smile when a question needed diversion. Then again, maybe she had always been that way, since I hadn't known her previously. Karen seemed very sincere, however; and when we all three met later to sign the contract, I could see the clear adoration for her husband in her equally dark eyes.

As I approached the house and parked in the driveway behind Ben's truck, I thought of how much better Ben had fared in the looks department. Where both of them sported the salt-and-pepper hair now, Bobby's had thinned considerably so it was see-through as well. But it wasn't just that. Ben's face still looked young, his body still taut. Bobby appeared soft, his skin lackluster. His two years on Ben could easily go for ten or more.

And then maybe also that was the softer life of marriage compared to a single man's need to keep fit.

I studied the front of the house as I approached, with its low-hanging trees and short-trimmed landscaping. The landscaping was new; the last time I'd been there it was overgrown and shaggy. What had been white siding with brown trim was now blue trimmed and power washed.

He opened the door before I reached the porch, stepping to the side for me to come in. I hesitated for a second, unsure if the action was welcoming and cute or just trying to hurry and be done with me.

“Was I stomping?” I said, covering the two steps to the small brick porch that was so common to the older houses of our neighborhood.

“Heard you drive up,” he said, pointing behind me. “Gravel works like a one-minute warning.”

I met his eyes and flashed on his meaning. Instead of saying anything, I just walked past him.

“Nice hat,” he said.

I ignored him, letting my gaze travel the room. It was different, seeing life in there. It wasn't set up as a bachelor's house like one might think. Dark mocha furniture flocked the dark red living room in front of me, on top of a thick braided rug that covered most of the original wood floor. Black-and-white photographs of trees were framed in what I recognized as black walnut frames. A long panoramic charcoal print of the dock at our river—before the restaurants took over—sat on his mantel, leaning against the brick like it was relaxing. To the left, an old wooden dining table sat with a single teakwood bowl of fruit in the middle.

When I'd walked through with Karen, it had been white walls and stripped bare, the old furniture long since sold or dispensed of. Ben had made it a home.

I turned to him slowly in surprise. “Wow.”

A smile tugged at a corner of his lips. “You expected futons and Walmart shelves?”

“You did all this?”

“I've had the furniture for several years,” he said. “But yeah, I painted everything before I moved in.”

“Oh my God, it's amazing,” I said, turning in a circle again. “It's so different.”

“It needed to be different,” he said, closing the door and heading to the kitchen. He gestured with a lean of his head for me to follow him. “It was weird at first, just being in the same walls, but I've made it mine now.”

I walked slowly, watching him. I glanced up the stairway as I passed it and noticed that nothing was white anymore. Not the walls, the steps, or the ceiling. Everything was some form of earth tone. A slow song from the eighties came on, and I chuckled to myself as I followed him.

“Wow, that's an old one,” I said.

He turned and walked backward, holding out one hand. “Dance?” My face must have registered humor or shock because he laughed. “I won't bite.”

I might
. “I don't think so,” I said, laughing, but his words about being tight and controlled niggled in the back of my mind.

His eyes went neutral again. “Of course not.” He gestured around him. “What do you think of the new kitchen?”

I looked around at the gleaming granite and dark, rich wood cabinets, recalling the all-white and Formica nonevent it was before.

“It's gorgeous,” I said. “Why didn't you ever let me come here?”

The words fell out of my mouth without thinking, and he turned around as I spoke, looking as surprised as I felt. I blinked, wishing I could take them back.

“Why didn't you ever let me in your house?” he countered.

I scoffed, ignoring the heat rising up my neck. “You were always at my house.”

“Not inside,” he said. “I never met your parents, you never met mine.” He shrugged and pulled two waters from the fridge. “It's how our game worked.”

The old anger flared. “Game?”

He handed me one of the bottles, stopping just a foot from me. “It kept the lines neat, Em,” he said softly, fizzling my anger like a match in water. Something in his voice made me ache for him. For what we once were.

“Until we blurred them,” I said, my voice sounding raspy and raw to my ears.

The smoldering look in his eyes was the old Ben. The one that once knew all my secrets and loved me anyway. He blinked the moment free and broke eye contact, looking back toward the kitchen as he raked fingers through his hair.

“No one ever came here,” he said, walking behind the island bar. “We didn't want anybody here.” He held out a hand for the file I'd forgotten I had. “So what was the deal with the Realtor lady at your mom's?”

I cleared my throat, the temperature and subject change knocking me off balance. I laid the file on the smooth cream-and-brown granite and turned to the page in question.

“Old history,” I said.

“So am I, but you don't run off when I arrive,” he said, thereby yanking my gaze back to his.

I started to point out the difference, but then wondered if there really was one. “Good point,” I said, sliding the paper to him. “One of you climbed off my husband and screwed me over. The other one climbed off my roof.”

His eyes narrowed. “So he didn't change,” Ben said, effectively ignoring the comment regarding him. “I wondered about that.”

“No,” I said. “He didn't.” I pulled the pen off the folder and handed it to him. “Evidently, neither did you.”

“Me?”

“You know what?” I said, laying the pen down. “You and Bobby deal with this and bring it back to me when you're done.”

“Where are you going?” I heard him ask from behind me as I made a beeline for the door.

“Home,” I said, remembering even as I said it that I had to go back for Cassidy. “Damn it,” I muttered.

“What are you so angry about?” he asked, making me turn around.

He kept walking so I did, too, backward. “This push-pull thing you do,” I said. “I don't understand it, and I'm tired of it. I'm sick and tired of avoiding the one thing I really want to know.”

I felt the hardness of the door press against my back, and he kept moving forward. I sucked in a breath and lifted my chin to appear defiant as he put his hands against the door on either side of my head and looked down at me from so close I could feel his breath on my lips.

“Why you made the choice you did?”

He said each word slow and deliberate, matching a rawness I hadn't seen in his eyes since he'd been back. That, coupled with the sudden need to close that half inch between us, hit me in the gut with so much emotion that for a second I didn't make sense of the words themselves. When I did, I was confused.
Choice?

“What about what
you
chose?” I whispered, forcing myself to focus on his eyes and not his mouth.

A shrill ring broke the quiet and he clenched his jaw and reached into his pocket. His eyes never left mine, but I used the moment to put my hands against his chest and gently push him back.

“Hello,” he said, his voice cracked and rough.

I turned and let myself out, grateful for that phone call. Another thirty seconds at that proximity and I would have spilled my guts, forgiven him for everything, and tested out that rug.

CHAPTER

9

I
HAD TO GET MY HEAD RIGHT.
I
REPEATED THAT MANY TIMES
in the car and thought hard about making that a voice recording to play while I slept. I was slipping, I could feel it. The draw, the chemistry, the pull of history—all of it conspired to dull the edges that needed to remain sharp and painful.

A really good twitch would have had Ben and me lip wrestling earlier. And I would have been a willing participant. No tightness, no folded arms, no second thoughts, no anything holding me back. Being that close to him again made me temporarily forget all the reasons I shouldn't be that close to him.

Holly's car was gone when I made the curve to Mom's house, so I assumed she'd had enough or made her escape when I did. Dedra's was gone, too, and that's really the only one that mattered to me. I'd made peace with Kevin's ways years earlier, knowing fully well he'd never be faithful to any one woman. I didn't have to worry about it anymore, and we were able to have an easy kind of coexistence. But it was Dedra's face that never left me. Her lack of remorse or moral code. For some reason, every time I saw her, I still saw the expression on her face in the mirror behind the bed as I walked in. I still saw the catty twist of victory in her eyes and mouth as she unblinkingly met my stare and rode my husband in my bed.

There were other women. I even knew who some of them were, but I didn't witness their indiscretions personally; and they all had the good grace to either avoid me completely or apologize profusely. Dedra, on the other hand, was an arrogant bitch that insisted on staring me down and grinning like a Cheshire cat at every possible opportunity, and I never stopped wanting to pull out every one of her bleached teeth.

I walked in through the garage, an easier feat with sneakers on, and saw Mom and Aunt Bernie through the back door of the laundry room. They were walking around the perimeter of the backyard, pointing at this and that and discussing something with interest. It hit a soft spot in my heart to watch the two of them together, and I found myself feeling glad Aunt Bernie was there.

As sometimes annoying and abrasive as she could be with her take-charge ways, my mother always seemed to get a charge out of her being around. It was like a little hidden part of her personality came out every time Aunt Bernie came into town. Something that was just them. Kind of like me and Holly, I guessed. We didn't have much in common or always see eye to eye, but there was some kind of bond there. Sort of. I was pretty sure I'd miss her if she moved away. I know my yard would.

I walked in the back door, calling Cassidy's name, but no husky little voice answered. Then my cell buzzed, and I clicked it to read a text from her.

Hey, I got called into work . . . they suck . . . Aunt Holly drove me home.

“Well, okay then,” I said to myself. “Go home or go upstairs?”

My room was calling me, and to be honest, there was something I'd wanted to do ever since that flashback I'd had, watching mini-me go out on the roof.

I headed up there, looked around at the real work that needed doing, and then walked to the window and lifted it. I hesitated a second when I did, kind of waiting to see if weird whirling things were going to suck me back like the last time, but nothing happened. So I finished raising it the rest of the way, leaned out to look around and ensure I wouldn't fall to my death, and then stuck my leg through.

It wasn't as graceful as it once was. Instead of the one fluid movement out the window that I so vividly remembered, there were several stages of scoot-and-grunt that I was grateful no one was around to witness.

Once out there, I stretched and looked toward my tree. Or what I'd always called my tree. Not so much from the ground. From down there, it was just a tree like the others, but up there, it was a canopy that wrapped itself around my little world like my own private cave. Being fall, there weren't the leaves that made it really private, but I still felt the familiar tinges of warmth and belonging that I'd always felt there. After all the years that had passed since I'd been up there, it amazed me that it still touched me that way. Especially since the last time I'd been there was when I'd waited all day for a man that never came.

I went to my favorite spot. Where the flattened gambrel roof of the garage butted up to the house, and made a perfect seat with a place to lean up against. I sat with my knees drawn up and closed my eyes. I thought my life was so complicated back then, with my frequently errant boyfriend and my family's seemingly ever-present financial struggles. The only thing that had always felt normal and constant was my friendship with Ben. All that seemed so tame and inconsequential in the light of adulthood and divorce and a so-so career and a house with a personal agenda.

The roof was where I went to sort things out, and I think that's why it called to me. I looked up into the nearly bare branches of the tree, where only a few die-hard green leaves still clung for their lives. Many a problem had been solved there, staring up into that tree. I wanted it to work its magic, somehow fixing the mess that had rolled into town in the form of Ben Landry. If he'd never taken that job with my mother, he'd have no reason to happen upon a curly-haired blonde and wonder if she was his. He could have stood next to her in the grocery store and never given it a second thought. But day after day of looking at her, talking to her, getting to know her, I just knew that somehow the puzzle pieces were going to click one day.

And not just for him. Possibly for her, as well. And then what the hell would I do? I closed my eyes again and prayed for clarity. For a solid answer.

“What are you doing out here?”

I jumped at the break in the silence, and head-jerked to the left, where Ben leaned out the window I forgot to close.

I sighed and glanced upward. “Not what I was going for,” I muttered.

•   •   •

O
N THE LIGHTER SIDE,
I
GOT TO WATCH
B
EN GRUNT HIS WAY
through the window like I did, getting one leg stuck so that he nearly crawled out. I put a hand over my mouth so he wouldn't see my amusement.

“Okay, why the hell would you want to do this all the damn time?” he finally said through his teeth as he blew out a breath and climbed the short incline to where I sat. “You always made it look like nothing.”

“It was nothing. You just must be out of shape.”

He glared at me before landing next to me, and as he did I felt the shimmy of déjà vu bubble up through my body. We were in the same spots we'd always had, side by side.

“So—you didn't say why you were out here?” he said, staring forward.

“No, I didn't,” I agreed, since I really had no concrete reason to give him and didn't want to just say
because it felt right
. “But why are you?”

He shook his head slowly, rolling it back and forth against the wood behind us. “No idea.”

I chuckled, and for that moment, there was an easy silence. The tension of before was lifted, and I wished it could stay like that. Friends again. I watched his profile for as long as I dared, remembering the shape of his face against the sky, with the air-conditioning unit as a backdrop. I'd seen that view so many times by moonlight, it was kind of odd to see it in the light of day.

I was aware of his closeness as we sat side by side and as I closed my eyes and rested back against the house, I could feel the heat at my shoulder.

“Do you remember this?” he said softly after a minute.

By the direction of his voice, I knew he'd been watching me. I forced my eyes to stay closed, insistent on not being a giant reaction to everything he said or did. Still, my heart sped up and I felt the goose bumps trickle down my back.

“Of course,” I whispered back, not intending it to really be a whisper but that's all that came out. “Spent more time out here than inside.”

With my eyes shut, I focused on my other senses. The way he smelled of soap and paint and something vaguely woodsy, the steady rhythm of his breathing next to me, and the mental image of his right knee propped up next to both of mine.

“Things always made sense up here,” he said.

“Yeah.”

I heard the wistfulness in my own voice and it made us look at each other. His expression wasn't angry that time, just—searching.

“This is where the magic happened.” He looked down, kind of sad, before looking forward again. “And I'm not just talking about
that
.” He jutted his head toward the ground. “Down there wasn't always a good place for me. Up here, there were no rules, no boundaries, no school crap. No parents,” he said, his voice thickening on the word. “We had no secrets up here. No lies.”

“We were the best of friends,” I said.

He turned to me. “We were the best of everything.”

His expression was so open and unlike anything he'd shown on his face since he'd been back that I had trouble making my tongue work. “I miss that.”

The look that passed between us was like a magnet, making it impossible to blink or look away. A pain of longing started low in my chest, pulling at my ribs, making my eyes burn.

“Sorry about earlier,” he said finally. “I didn't mean to get so intense. Guess you bring that out in me,” he added, grinning a little as he faced forward again, breaking the moment and lightening the mood.

“You don't need to be sorry.”

He tilted his head in a small shrug. “Well, but I don't need to be so demanding, either. The past is the past. We can't undo it.”

My skin felt like it suddenly caught fire. “No, but we can explain it.”

He met my eyes and lifted an eyebrow. “Okay.”

But I knew in that moment that any explaining would have to sit for a second. The ringing had descended upon me, spinning around me like a moving wall of sound, the vacuum of air sucking in tight. I shut my eyes and inhaled the biggest breath I could, knowing it was about to get hard to do that.

“Shit.” I gripped his arm involuntarily. “Hang on, Ben,” I said, although my voice sounded like it was somewhere else. I dimly felt his hand over mine and heard the concern in his voice as he said my name. Asking what was wrong. I felt a touch on my face but that was for someone else. That was for the Emily that was still there.

“Just—give me a second,” I said weakly, then it all went black and I heard the rushing of wind and felt the bands of hell around my chest as they squeezed.

•   •   •

I lurched forward and popped my eyes open, gulping in the muggy air of another time on the roof, one by moonlight the way it was intended to be enjoyed. I looked around in a panic, reaching for the house by habit to make sure I didn't fall off. Not that I would likely be able to in my little—I tested it with my foot—yep, in my little bubble.

“The roof,” I said to myself. “Well, this could be anything.”

I wasn't alone for long. The noise to my left pulled my attention to the window as it opened and a bare leg came out. It wasn't mini-me that time, but a teenaged version of myself. I laughed out loud as I watched myself climb out in panties and a strapless corset bra, a small radio in my hand that was tethered to a cord I'd plugged in under the window.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Prom night? Seriously?”

I couldn't imagine what I had to learn from that night. I still remembered it pretty clearly. Kevin's indiscretions ended the night early, and I came home and stripped before hitting the roof, where the night could absorb all the crap in my life.

I watched myself in wonder, as seventeen-year-old-me turned on the radio and anchored it next to the house and pulled out the small blanket I used to keep hidden in a zip-up comforter bag under an eave. It was right by where I sat, and I could see my younger face in the bright moonlight, all taut and smooth. I wanted to tell her to wash her face every night and use moisturizer. Not that I qualified for hag potential or anything, but looking at the beginner version definitely showed the difference.

She laid out the blanket just three or so feet from me, facing the backyard, and sat down. She looked forlorn, sitting there with her hair all done up so pretty, little blondish brown curls falling down, in her underwear. And showing way too much ass, I decided, feeling a little embarrassed that I'd gone out there like that.

Right on cue, Ben appeared, scaling the tree like a monkey. My stomach contracted as I laid eyes on the beautiful boy I used to know. His crooked smile was arrogant and fresh. His body language was cocky, graceful, and sure, even climbing the shallow incline of the roof. He stood over other-me with an amused expression as she lifted one hand dramatically.

He leaned over and kissed it. “What happened to your clothes, Rapunzel?”

“Ha-ha,” she said, her hand going straight to her hair, where she started pulling out bobby pins one at a time. Tiny curls cascaded down as they were freed. She tossed all the pins and clips over the side and laid back, closing her eyes. I remembered that moment—being so pissed off and just wanting to strip away everything of the evening and throw it away.

Ben stood over other-me for a second, looking all sexy in his button-down Levi's and ever-present hoodie jacket with the sleeves pushed up, dark hair that any girl would kill for hanging to his shoulders. Then he sat down beside her and gave her body a long pan that I didn't remember because she never saw it.

“So, why are you out here in your underwear?”

“Because I couldn't stand to be in that thing anymore,” other-me said. It was surreal, hearing her talk, her voice closer to being mine but not quite yet.

“I thought you liked your dress,” Ben said, leaning sideways on an elbow.

“I did,” other-me said. “Till Kevin blew this night all to hell, like usual.” I saw Ben shake his head. “He spilled beer on me in the car, ditched me for most of the prom. I hung out with three other couples till they got tired of babysitting me and went to dance.”