Fate Interrupted (17 page)

Brooke barged
through the swinging door and came around for a better look. “What happened?”

Evy wiped tears
from her face and plopped onto a wooden stool, her shoulders slumping as badly
as her features. “He got some girl pregnant,” she blurted, bursting into tears.

Brooke’s face
fell almost as fast as her husband’s.

“Me?” Ben gasped.

“Not
you, idiot!”
Evy snapped. “Dean!”

Ben swallowed
hard and wiped frosting on his Slipknot concert tee, a heavy frown stealing
across his face. “Dean?
How?”

“He had sex with
her! How do you think?”

Ben tipped his
cap back, a dumbfounded look warping his attractive features like a funhouse
mirror.

Brooke rubbed Evy’s
back and spoke in a soothing tone. “It’s okay, honey, take a deep breath and
tell us what happened.”

Evy shook her
head in frustration, like she didn’t know what had happened. “It was some girl
he hooked up with the weekend before we met and now she’s pregnant and I don’t
know how this could be happening but it is and everything is ruined!”

“Okay, okay” Brooke
said softly. “Just slow down and start from the beginning.”

Mascara ran down
Evy’s cheeks in inky streams. “Some girl named
Megan
is pregnant with his child,” she cried, slamming her fist
down on the stainless steel table and making Ben and his milk jump at the same
time. “I should’ve known better!”

Ben swiveled
toward Evy on his stool. “So hold up, you mean he slept with this girl
before
he met you and now she’s
pregnant?”

“That’s what he
just told me at my apartment. We were supposed to be having movie night.”

He dropped her cold
gaze and toyed with one of the black loops in his ears. “Talk about bad
timing,” he muttered under his breath.

“Oh honey,”
Brooke said with a motherly tone.

Evy pushed her
away and rested her elbows on the table. Her vacant eyes blurred the tattoos
wrapping Ben’s burly arms into colorful blobs. “And then he had the nerve to
tell me he loved me.”

Brooke’s pretty face
soured. “He didn’t?”

“He did.” Evy
wiped tears away, smearing black streaks across her cheeks. “And the worst part
is…I love him, too.”

Brooke and Ben traded
apprehensive looks.

“Oh, sweetie,” Brooke
cooed, pulling Evy into her arms and hugging her tight. “I’m so sorry,” she
whispered, stroking her hair like Dean used to do.

Evy buried her
face into Brooke’s neck and opened the floodgates, soaking her sister’s work
shirt. “What kind of man says that to someone when another woman is pregnant
with his baby?”

“A desperate
one,” Ben snorted, looking away when both women shot him icy glares.

“Now, let’s just
figure this whole thing out,” Brooke said, holding Evy out for a better look.

Evy’s breath
came in staggered hitches. “I’m sorry for coming here and dumping this on you
guys, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You came to the right place, little lady,” Ben smiled, patting her hand. “I’m
going to go check on the customers and I’ll be right back with something to
help.”

Brooke watched
him disappear up front and let out an exasperated breath as she sat down on one
of the wooden stools. The lights hummed louder in the quiet swooping down upon
the spotless kitchen like a plague of locusts. Brooke bit her bottom lip. “But,
technically, he didn’t cheat on you?”

“No,” Evy fired
back. “He didn’t
cheat
on me, Brooke,
but this is…almost worse. The man I love is having a baby with another woman.”
She set her jaw and backhanded a stack of cupcake wrappers off the table. “It’s
so fucked up!”

“Is this girl…
”

“Megan!”

Brooke cleared
her throat and started over. “Is
Megan
sure Dean is the father?”

Evy stared at
the dishwasher through blurry eyes. “So she says.”

“How can she be
so sure?”

“He said he used
protection but…” Evy buried her face in her hands and cried, unable to finish.

“Could she be
mistaken?”

“Who knows? All
I know is he’s a player and it’s come back to haunt me.” She pulled her puffy face
from her hands and turned to her sister with a pointed glare. “I told you, Brooke,”
she grumbled. “But oh no, you made me go out with him anyway. This is
all your
fault!”

Brooke’s jaw
dropped like a rock. Her eyes tightened into slits. “No,” she whispered
gravely. “You take that back.”

“Here we go!”
Ben said, coming back into the kitchen with a tray of beers and shots. He
stopped in his tracks, digesting the intense looks gripping their faces. “Is
this a bad time?”

“I’m sorry,” Evy
said faintly. “I-I didn’t mean that.”

Brooke’s eyes
welled up with tears. “I know you didn’t.”

Ben quietly
backpedaled out of the kitchen.

“Freeze!”
Brooke said,
nodding to the table.

He crept over
and carefully set the drinks down. “I’ve got just the thing for a broken
heart.” He rubbed his hands together like a wizard about to conjure up a magic
potion.
“Tequila and beer.
Works
every time!”

Brooke pressed
her lips together. “And when have you ever had a broken heart?”

Ben hiked his jeans
up by a chain connecting his wallet to a belt loop. “Seventh grade when Annie
Creighton picked Rusty Callahan over me to go to the school dance.”

“Oh God, here we
go again,” Brooke mumbled under her breath.

“I bought new
shoes and everything,” he sighed, taking his cap off and wiping a greasy sheen
from the five o’clock shadow sprouting across his shaved head. He pulled the
hat down so low his eyes were barely visible. “I would’ve eaten a shit sandwich
for her.”

Brooke and Evy
stared at him like he had just broken wind.

“
Alrighty
then,” he said, raising one of the shot glasses
into the air. “No time like the present.”

“Ben, this isn’t...”

“Fuck it” Evy
said
,
snatching up a shot glass and knocking it back
in a single gulp. Brooke traded a glance with Ben and he shrugged. They followed
suit, knocking the shots back and slamming the glasses onto the metal table with
a loud clang. Brooke’s face contorted with the tequila’s burn.

“That’ll make
your dick hard,” Ben wheezed, chasing the shot with a long drink of beer.

Evy arched an
eyebrow at him.

He swallowed.
“What? You want some weed too? I’ve got some in the office,” he said, thumbing
to the small office on the other side of the wall.

Evy slid her
shot glass across the table, staring at it through somber eyes. “Go get the
bottle.”

***

Evy
laughed until she cried, setting her beer down on the edge of the table and nearly
falling off her stool.

Ben caught her just
before she fell while Brooke repositioned the beer bottle dangling perilously
close to a nasty fall.

“That didn’t
really
haffen
, did it?” Evy slurred, chewing a
mouthful of red velvet cupcake. She wiped white frosting from her nose and
smeared it across her cheek.

“It did,” Ben
replied, belching loudly.

“
Don’t be a pig
,” Brooke reprimanded.

Evy rested a
heavy elbow on the table and cupped her chin. “Why didn’t
yufe
tell me about that before?” she asked loudly, her elbow slipping off the edge
of the table.

Brooke caught
her arm and steadied her before she hit the ground. “Because it’s not exactly
something I’m proud of,” Brooke answered, shooting daggers at Ben, who held up
his hands in defense.

Evy took a pull
from her beer, her bloodshot eyes bouncing from Brooke to Ben. “You were dating
Brooke’s roommate?”

Ben nodded with
droopy eyes.

“And she caught
you two doing it in her walk-in closet?”

Ben took another
hit off a half burned joint and held it in. “Yep.” He passed it to Brooke who
waved him off.

“So what’d you
do?” Evy asked, blowing hair out of her face.

Ben exhaled a
rolling cloud of smoke that smelled like a dead skunk. “It was a Halloween
party so I tried to get her to join us.”

Brooke slapped
his arm. “Benjamin!” she scolded, turning back to Evy. “He did not.” She exhaled
a lengthy breath and stared at a large mixer through faraway eyes. “It was so
embarrassing,” she said bleakly, shaking her head. “Poor Mandy was just
standing there in her Little Red Riding Hood costume, staring at us in absolute
horror while Ben’s boner bobbed in the air.”

Ben shrugged. “Hey,
why bob for apples when you can bob for boners?”

Brooke hit him
with a cold glare and Evy howled with laughter, pointing at him with an accusatory
finger covered in frosting.
“Boner Ben!”

Ben chuckled, toying
with one of his earrings. “You should’ve seen the look on Mandy’s face. I had
dressed up as
Leatherface
and covered myself in fake
blood and it was all over both of us when she opened that door.”

Brooke dropped
her forehead into her palm, a sheepish grin covering her face. “I thought I had
just gotten my period.”

Evy threw her
head back and laughed even harder. “You two are terrible!”

Ben licked his
fingers and put the smoking joint out with a light sizzle. “Hey, it was your
sister’s fault for dressing up as a sexy Wonder Woman,” he replied, tucking the
joint into a pack of cigarettes.

“Why is
everything always my fault? I didn’t even know you were her new boyfriend. I
thought it was the guy dressed up as Captain Hook.”

Ben laughed. “Mandy
was anti-weed anyway, so we were doomed from the start.”

Evy screwed her
face up. “Then why did you go out with her in the first place?”

Ben’s face
sobered. “
Cuz
she had huge tits.”

Brooke let out a
defeated sigh. “And that’s how I found my husband and lost my roommate on the
same night.”

Evy shook her
head, staring at her sister with a drunken grin smeared across her messy face.
“You’re such a home wrecker.”

Ben pulled a
cigarette from the pack.
“
Homo-wrecker
?”

“I said
home wrecker
!” Evy snapped, her body
convulsing with a sudden hiccup.

“Don’t even think
about lighting that in here!”

Ben stopped with
the lighter’s flame inches from the end of the cigarette dangling from his
lips. “Oh, but
it’s
okay to smoke weed in here?”

“Cigarette smoke
lingers,” Brooke said, going through the swinging door into the darkened café
they had closed for the night two hours ago.

Ben tucked the
lighter into his jeans and released a long breath. “Hey listen, for what it’s
worth, Evy, it sounds like Dean was a hapless bystander in this whole thing.
That’s just my opinion but it seems like he’s as much a victim in this as you
are.”

“What?” she
gasped.

He held up a hand
with the unlit cigarette clutched between two fingers. “Dude went in strapped
and things went south. He hadn’t even met you yet and, like most people, was just
out doing his thing.” He glanced to the door and lowered his voice. “I mean, I
used to bang some really crazy chicks before your sister came along.”

Evy wrinkled her
nose and held up a hand. “Okay, I don’t need to…”

“Hell, I
probably got an entire village of kids I don’t even know about out there.”

“Stop.”

“All makes and
models, too.”

“I get it, Ben.”

“I’m just
sayin
that sometimes, when alcohol is involved, things can
get a little weird. And you know me, when there was less than an hour of bar
time left I stopped
gettin
picky.”

Evy shook her
head.
“Way
tufe
much info.”

“My money says
this Megan chick is just
tryin
to hold him down to get
some more of that giant cock.”

Evy inhaled
sharply and slapped his bicep. “Ben!”

He held his
hands up in surrender, intertwining tattoos forming a photographic mosaic across
his arms. “What? I heard about it.”

 
“You are so vulgar! Is this is your idea of
cheering someone up?”

“No, this is,”
he smiled, pulling a fresh joint from his pack of smokes.

 
Evy took a long drink of beer, peering at him
out the corner of a puffy eye. “Anyway, I seriously doubt anyone
issat
crafy
,” she slurred.