Before and Ever Since (9781101612286) (14 page)

“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 easier 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.

His smile faltered, and he appeared to be fighting something. He brought it back though, and took a deep breath as he gave her a questioning look.

“Is this true confessions night?”

She tilted her head. “I think so.”

He stared into her eyes for a long moment, and then looked down at the shingles between them before meeting her gaze again and holding it. “Because you're all I've ever wanted.” I heard her deep intake of breath, and I remembered the feeling behind it. “And I can't believe I just said that out loud,” he continued, shaking his head with a little laugh and breaking eye contact.

She took his hand and interlaced her fingers with his, making him look at her again. “Want to know my confession?” she asked finally after a forever silence.

She let go of his hand and gently took the front of his shirt in her hand, pulling him to her until her lips were on his. She kissed him softly until he responded with kisses of his own, his hand traveling her face.

“Em,” he said against her lips. “What are you doing?”

“Confessing.”

His mouth broke into a smile. “I like your method.” His hand moved behind her head as he pulled her in for more. After a moment, he stopped with difficulty, both of them breathing a little faster.

He rested his forehead against hers. “There was a reason not to do this.”

“Mm-hmm, because you wouldn't be able to stop,” she said.

He ran a finger along her cheek. “No, because you're the real deal,” he whispered. I could have recited that line in my head, I still remembered it that well. “It wouldn't just be sex with you. You'd take my heart.”

The tears fell freely down my face. I wanted to go back. I wanted to put fingers in my ears and go “la-la-la” and not see or hear any of this again.

She touched his face and his lips and then wound her fingers into his hair. I couldn't see her eyes but I knew they were misty. I knew she was trying to say the words.

“And that's a bad thing?”

“Em, if we cross this line, I can't watch you be with other men,” he said. “I can't watch you go back to Kevin again.”

“I don't want anyone else,” she whispered against his cheek, and I saw him close his eyes as one tear squeezed out. He quickly rubbed it away before she could see, and my heart ached to know that. “And you already have my heart.”

I watched his eyelids flutter and his hands tremble a little as he pulled her face to his again, and kissed her slow, soft, and from what I remembered, agonizingly thorough. He pulled her body close, wrapping her up in his arms as he cradled her head and dove deep.

I wanted to leave. I didn't want to sit that close to myself and Ben as we made love. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, listening to their words, their breathing, their laughter over awkward angles and hard surfaces, the sounds of their kisses and soft moans when places were touched just right. Their confessions of love and how Ben wanted to see her face as he made love to her. Their build as they moved together to come at the same time, crying out, and then actually crying. I opened my eyes to find that I was, too.

“Oh my God, Ben,” she said, her voice shaking with tears as she wrapped herself more tightly around him.

“You're crying,” he said.

“You're shaking,” she responded.

He laughed and kissed her forehead as tears trickled from his eyes, too. “It's because it's you, Em. That was—I swear to you, I've never made love before. I've never—”

“Me, either,” she said, little sobs jerking her breaths. “I've never felt anything like that before.”

“Emily—”

“I love you, Ben.”

He dropped his head and held her tight. “I love you, too, baby.”

The words echoed in my ears, and it made me sit up. Was it coming? The ringing? “Please, God, let it be over,” I said. “There's nothing new here.” Tears streamed down my face as I struggled to my feet and yelled at the sky. “There's nothing new here! Enough, already!”

The jerk backward made me grope for the wall of the house as my vision went black and all the air was knocked from my lungs. I shut my eyes tight, hearing only the rush of the wind go past me until a giant intake of breath brought me back to the present.

•   •   •

“Shit!” I exclaimed, blinking my room back into focus as I found myself back on the window seat. I got up quickly, pushing away from the seat, and then reaching for my bed as my head spun, unable to catch up. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Mom?” Cassidy's voice said from somewhere near the door. I held my pounding head in my hands and kept my eyes closed. “Mom, you okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” I said as I sank onto the bed and tried to swipe at my eyes with shaking hands.

“No you're not,” she said, rushing to kneel in front of me. “What's wrong? What happened?”

I just watched the rerun of your conception.

“Nothing, baby, I just—” I looked up and saw Ben leaning against the doorjamb, a crowbar still in his hand from—whatever he was doing with a crowbar. Like he'd come running for something. My stomach contracted at the sight of him, standing there looking concerned, when my last image of him was making love to me—her—me. “I just tripped and landed hard on my knee, that's all,” I said, focusing on Cassidy again. “You know how wimpy I am about my knees.”

“But my God, you don't usually sob over it, Mom; are you sure you're okay?” She was looking at me intently. “Ben and I both heard you from where we were; we about collided in the hallway.”

I shook my head, taking slow breaths to get myself back under control. “I'm fine, Cass, it's okay. Go back to what you were doing.”

She looked at me with skepticism. “I don't know, Mom. Nana said you've been acting funny.”

“Funny?” I said. “What kind of funny?”

“I don't know—odd?” She raised her eyebrows to enforce the point. “Kinda like now?”

I put my hands over my face for a couple of seconds to get my gears realigned, and then I ran fingers under my eyes again and smiled. “Hopefully, I will never tell your children that you are acting odd. I'm fine, I just lost it for a second—when I fell. Please quit hovering.”

I stood up and pulled her with me, wrapping her up in a mighty hug at the end.

“Okay,” she said, not sounding totally sold, but headed that way.

“Okay,” I echoed.

I met Ben's steady gaze over her shoulder. The look in his eyes said he knew where I had gone, just as I'd known before I got there. He didn't want to talk about that one, and that just burned me up even more. Time had dulled the edges, but reliving that night cemented the hurt and betrayal all over again. How could he have declared such hardcore feelings as he did, and then walk away. Run away. Out of town, out of state, wherever the hell he went. How could he have left such an amazing love behind? Because
I had other plans
? Bullshit. I felt raw.

I stroked Cassidy's hair and tried to shoot those feelings at him like daggers, but he didn't look guilty. Or defensive. He just turned away and walked back down the hall without a word.

Her phone buzzed, and as she dug it from her pocket, I saw the image of her dad. Which was followed by a sigh of disgust as she realized she couldn't ignore him with me watching.

“Hello?”

I went to the window and closed the blinds before anything else decided to yank me around. Without any more thought, I started grabbing the Madame Alexander dolls and laying them on the bed. Then as Cassidy's voice got increasingly edgy, I grabbed the desk chair and stood on it to pile book after dusty book into my arms. Four sneezes later, I stepped down carefully and dumped all the books on the floor. Cassidy was pacing by that point, her expression taking on its trademark glaze-over that always infuriated me to no end. When it involved me. With Kevin, I figured it was his problem.

It was about school, as usual. Her lack of it and his opinions on that matter. While I somewhat agreed with him, at least in the beginning when she'd dropped out after one semester, the horse was beyond dead. Two and a half years of beating that carcass had done nothing to change her mind about college, and had only created a canyon between them that his constant harping kept widening.

She finally lied about her phone going dead and cut the call short, pressing the plastic against her forehead afterward with her eyes closed.

“He makes me so crazy,” she said to the room. “I want to go run for days without stopping after I talk to him, just to blow the jitters off me. How the hell did I come from him?”

I gave her a small smile and rubbed her arm, mentally shaking off that question. “You know, you used to be inseparable. Always talking, always working on projects together.”

“And then I grew my own brain instead of branching off his, and he can't stand that he isn't calling every shot.”

I sighed. “I know, doodlebug. He just wants you to have everything in life you can have and not have to struggle.”

She twisted away from me, irritation making her itchy. “I'm happy with my life, Mom. I like what I do. It may not be out of a book or a diploma, but it's me.” She dropped cross-legged onto the floor and picked up books randomly, turning them to see their covers one at a time. “I like not having everything mapped out line by line, dot by dot. I live my life. I don't schedule it to death.”

“You also miss things that way, baby.”

She held out her hands, a book in each one. “What am I missing? I don't sit home and lay around watching TV. I go out every day and make a point to talk to someone new, do something new, take a new route to work, walk on the wrong side of the street—whatever. I may not follow the rules but I see my life in color. Not in bullet points on a calendar.”

Her cell phone buzzed again, and she glanced at it.

“Text from Josh, he's almost here,” she said, the sulk firmly implanted in her voice. I helped her up and hugged her before she walked away.

As hard as it was from the parent perspective, I envied her. She was making her life more challenging, no doubt, but—to be so comfortable with living day to day. To be so comfortable in her own skin and with who she was. I would have loved to know what that felt like.

•   •   •

I
FOUND SOME BOXES DOWNSTAIRS AND LOADED UP WHAT
I
'D
disrupted, feeling a little guilty about disturbing such a long- and deep-rooted location. I stayed far away from the window and any other revelations it felt it needed to show me. Every time I saw us making love in my mind, heard Ben's voice telling me he loved me, remembered the emotion and the tears, I had to grip my middle to keep it together. The raw, mean, jagged hole had reopened there and threatened to pull me in every few minutes.

I didn't want to see him again. I didn't care anymore what his reasons could have been. I'd been dancing around the subject because time had taken some of the details away, and I wasn't sure it was worth asking. Twenty years later, was it really relevant? I mean, outside the Cassidy factor that he wasn't even aware of.

After going down the home movie trail, I realized that nothing could fully justify his leaving. Not after the monumental connection we had that night. No love before or since had ever been that strong, at least for me.

No, it was best to just let it be. Let him finish whatever work he had left to do, and then he'd be back at his own house with no reason to see me again.

I was searching for my keys in the kitchen so that I could make a quiet exit when I heard the commotion at the front door. Or on the front porch, I realized as I rounded the corner and saw the door wide open and Cassidy and Kevin arguing.

“Damn it, Kevin,” I muttered.

I headed for the door and felt Ben walk out of the hallway behind me. And just the fact that I didn't even see him and could feel his presence—get goose bumps on my back because of it—completely pissed me off. By the time I got to the door, a whole four feet later, I was primed to join the fight.

“Seriously?” Cassidy was saying to Kevin. “God, Dad, let it go!”

She was bowed up and waving her arms in the middle of the porch, the tiny light above her making her golden head appear to glow. Josh stood to one side, leaning against one of the wooden posts, looking as if he wished the concrete would open up and suck him through it. Kevin stood on the bottom step, hands in his jacket pockets, looking worn out.

“Cass, you won't listen to me when I call you,
if
you even answer the phone.”

“I told you my phone was going dead.”

He held his hands out. “And so I came to you.”

“Why?” she said, turning in a circle and catching sight of me. “Mom, please tell Dad what I told you.”

“No,
you
tell your dad what you told me,” I said, leaning against the doorjamb. “Y'all talk to each other for once, not through me. But does it have to be in the front yard? Can you do it inside?”

“I have,” she said, raising her arms again. “Over and over. He didn't understand it any of the ten times I've repeated it.”

I pointed at Kevin. “Him, Cass, not me. Talk to him.”

“Oh my God, whatever,” she said, storming down the steps and past him, Josh on her heels. She turned around and walked backward, the dark absorbing her. “I'm telling you both—see, my words are flowing your way—I'm not going back to college. I'm not going to business school. I'm not going to sit down and write a life plan on career paths or opening a restaurant, or a bookstore, or a toilet factory. I am fine. Leave me alone.” On that, she got into her car, Josh scrambled to climb on his bike, and they were off like a speedy parade.