Peachy, p.15
Peachy, page 15
I listed to the side, my eyes like dinner plates. “That’s why you were so … happy. When I came back. Chances were, I wouldn’t.” I suspected that’s why Cleo came to greet me first, she made my return more likely, but I didn’t want to lessen his confession by saying it.
He nodded.
I should be angry with him. His influence on my life was astronomical. But seeing him here, the way he looked at me now, with such adoration, I just couldn’t manage it.
I poured the last drops of the wine into our cups, hoping pathetically that if he drank enough, he would want to kiss me again.
He tilted his head to drink and smacked his lips. I remembered the feel of that mouth. He would answer honestly, if I only asked him…
“I need to clean out my house. Maybe after the burial,” I yammered in cowardice.
He stared at me earnestly, nearly glaring, until the silence was full to bursting. I felt transparent in his eyes. It was a relief when he finally said, “Sure, we’ll help you. Are you ready to move back in there?”
He said move back in as if I were actually living with him. I didn’t feel like my mother’s house was really mine, and Ben’s had started feeling more like a home this weekend.
“Are we both going to keep sleeping on your couches?” I asked, ignoring the fact that his couch was far more comfortable than my little bed.
His brows squirmed in postulation. He took several quick bites of his sandwich. I kept forgetting I was holding my own meal in my hands and followed his example. The food truly was wonderful.
Ben stared off into the darkening sky as if I had asked him a complex philosophical question. “You can stay as long as you’re happy. But there’s only one room.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, with one pear slice wedged in his hand. He pointed it at me like a finger. “Your house has two rooms.”
“Yes, it does.” I replayed his words inwardly. “Thank you for noticing.”
Ben snorted at my dumb expression. “You’re welcome.” He bit into the pear, sugary juice stuck to his lips, glossy in the setting sun. They were the sweetest pink. He had one freckle on the outer edge of his bottom lip, his tongue ran across it. I felt my lips pucker softly in response. Oh, dear.
He said, “Cleo wants to stick close to the two of us. It’s hard for her to live so far away. And my house isn’t a permanent solution. She needs to give my goddamn bed back. She has her own after all …”
Ben was the most important person in my life. It was easy to picture him within whatever space I inhabited. Cleo was more difficult to picture there, but even though we had only spent one day alone together, I cared for her. If I hadn’t enjoyed my isolation so much, I’d probably jump at the opportunity to have a roommate.
“No pressure. The couch suits me fine,” he assured, rolling his shoulders dramatically.
I frowned as I reexamined the effort Ben had put into this evening. There was nothing said here that couldn’t have been brought up in front of Cleo, that couldn’t have been brought up by Cleo. And she would have done one hell of a job convincing me, I’m sure. None of this was why he brought me up here, alone.
“Why did you kiss me, Benny?” I asked, shaken by my own courage. I swallowed hard, as if every pear I ingested was blocking my airway.
He scooted towards me, using his feet to drag himself. Every second he remained silent was like a splinter. I was riddled with holes by the time he cupped my heated face in his deft hands. He moved his thumb across my cheek.
“Because I’ve wanted to kiss you for the last thirteen years.”
The impact of what Ben said hit me like a snowball to the face. The chill zipped through my skeleton, rattling my core. I had wanted him to tell me that, or something like that at least, in my most secret of fantasies since I was seventeen years old. Looking at him stung my eyes like smoke. This wasn’t reality. Looking down, I dug small moons into my knee, asking my pain for assurance.
Ben’s thumb touched the corner of my mouth, his other hand tilted my chin up. “You were driving me insane, just like you always do, but,” he stroked my lip as he continued, “I don’t know. You were just too close.” My mouth hung open like a flytrap and he poked the corners of it whimsically, remembering our kisses. “And it’s hard not to get swept up in the moment when a lady responds with such … enthusiasm.” He held his tongue between his teeth and leered at me.
My cheeks burned under his fingers and my defensive nature reared its ugly head. “Well, I guess being groped on a countertop made me think it was okay.”
He snickered at my reaction. “Come on, Frank. I’m only teasing.” He trailed a single finger up the side of my bare thigh. I shivered all the way down. “I have wanted to kiss you for the last thirteen years. Since I first saw you.”
My emotions were dizzying and all over the place, littering the forest floor. Ben was warm and funny and playful and creative. He could have so much, but he chose to have so little.
“What is your deal?” I asked. Ben pulled back, affronted. He dropped his lingering hands. “You can’t be this stupid. Why would you want anything to do with me? Friendship or otherwise? I’m not likable, or … or nice. I’m not trusting. I’m not—I can’t cook! I don’t know, I’m not good! I’m not good.” I was shouting by the end. I hurt my own feelings, but I wasn’t fishing for a contradiction, I just did not understand.
His affect was disappointed, almost pained at my admission. He held one of my hands to his mouth and kissed the skin of my palm. “Why would I want you to be any of those things?”
I’d been ready to argue, but instead was floored, totally. That was not the contradiction I’d expected, genuine or not. His words stopped my frenzy in its tracks, being so entirely unexpected. He admitted I was not, what had I said? Good. Trusting. He knew that. And still, he kissed me. I had never accepted or even considered that if Ben wanted a person with redeemable qualities, he was smart enough to spend his time with a person who had them. The reality was, he had spent the last six years with me.
He braced his hands on the ground between us. He drifted forward into the empty space and held, giving me time to retract. I watched his eyes. There was such movement in them, they shifted like living things. Lustrous, brown eyes. They stared at my mouth, and I wished I knew what he thought of it. He tilted down and his face hovered so close to me I felt the swell of my lips quiver against his. He pressed them together with the lightest pressure. The tenderness was so much more terrifying than the hunger.
Ben pulled away after one kiss. “Now, whether you’d like to believe it or not, you are in a vulnerable place right now. So …” He forced his feet beneath him and stood up over me. He offered his hand. I didn’t take it.
“Then why did you wait until this vulnerable time?” I spit the word out as if it were poisonous. I was annoyed and upset that he was so quick to step back. All I could see of him now was a dark shadow in the encroaching dusk. “It was even worse yesterday. Wasn’t it? That didn’t stop you.”
His offered hand dropped a bit, but he didn’t pull it back completely. It hung there in the air while his other hand rubbed his newly shaved head. “It’s not that I didn’t think about it before. But every time I came close it felt like … lying. You needed to know everything. About the magic. About the secrets, my age. The stalking, as you so generously put it.” He finally pulled his hand away and closed his eyes against the setting sun. “I told myself, once you knew everything, then you could make an informed decision, or whatever people say. I probably could have waited longer, longer than yesterday, but, I … um … did not.” He grinned, shameless. “However, I have a better perspective today. So.” He held his hand out to me again.
Trying to remain objective, I supposed that was fair. If he had crossed the romance line before I knew about him, finding out later would have been crippling. A smarter person would be careful with Ben, not fling themselves into his arms so wholeheartedly. He had lied. I was vulnerable. Probably.
I finally took his hand, then picked up the empty food containers and cups, setting them into a not-much-better pile on the ground. I bent down, bunching up the blanket into a messy ball.
“Frank?” Ben whispered. My skin prickled unfamiliarly with the sound of my name in his mouth. I waited for another snowball-to-the-face confession.
“Yes, Benjamin?”
“Your ass is out.” Ben reached forward and pulled the skirt of my dress to my thighs. He took the blanket ball from me nearly straight-faced, but his lips twitched at the corners.
“Fuck.”
We got back to Ben’s house after dark. Cleo isolated herself in the bedroom and didn’t welcome us home. I sat on the couch I normally slept on with Ben’s blanket rumpled up beneath me. Even if it was my small, stained bed, it would be nice to sleep in a bed again. And it might be nice to have Cleo, an established witch, close. I was stunned to discover that living in my own place didn’t appeal to me so much now.
Ben lowered himself onto the loveseat across from me and hung his head back. The couch was too short for him by about two feet, and wrapped in a sheet, he had to be much less than comfortable. Of course, he never complained, the idiot. It was hard to argue with Cleo moving in with me if it meant he could get off that itty bitty thing. As I saw his large frame overtake it, I thought this might erase some of my debt after his paying for the burial. Karma currency.
“I don’t want to sleep in Pamela’s room. It feels … spooky to me now. I’m assuming Cleo would be happy if I stay away from it?”
Ben’s chin flopped forward, as he’d been dozing and I’d caught him off guard. He inclined towards me attentively.
“She would, yes. She’s made that evident with her behavior in my room!” He shouted at her down the hallway. But his smile was there, and I knew that he didn’t mind too much. “But we’ll do whatever is needed. Cleo could have my room here, if she wanted. She could sleep here.” He paused, letting that idea sink in before adding, “or she could have a room there.”
He couldn’t be asking to move in with me. I couldn’t handle that today. And if he were, well, I doubted we would be getting some cool bunkbeds.
The two of us had slept in the same bed before, but it was always because someone had fallen asleep watching a movie or drifted off after a long day. It had never been intentional.
Ben wasn’t my boyfriend. Thinking of him that way felt formal and strange and optimistic to the point of foolishness. Even without the expectations or the touchy romance, I was closer to him than I had ever been with another person. Sleeping with him—sleeping in the same bed as him—should not be a dramatic idea.
He was watching me, still and silent. I peered into those dancing eyes of his and Ben’s face instantaneously fell lifeless. His mouth hung, jaw slack. He looked through me. I was afraid, but before I could say anything he shook his head to clear it. His following smile was utterly radiant.
He said nothing as he stretched out, completely relaxed, on his makeshift bed. He’d seen something. Something he liked. Me, letting Cleo move in, perhaps? Or Ben, even? I lifted my lip at my astounding ability to fold. That didn’t mean I couldn’t change my mind …
“You really are too monstrous for that couch. Let me switch you,” I asserted as I gathered up his comforter.
“It’s too small for anyone,” he said, standing up and moving in close. He climbed over me acrobatically and molded his body to the back of the couch. He tucked his pillow I’d been using under both of our heads and spread his blanket across our knees.
Ben had touched my skin almost more than I could bear throughout our friendship, and I was now tucked into his arms. And I wasn’t pulling away. With his elbow bent around me and the other arm burrowed under my head, we were close. This was what I would call close.
He kissed the space under my ear.
“I hope you’re ready,” he whispered as we drifted off to sleep.
I woke up feeling warm and squashed. I didn’t understand immediately and felt the stir of claustrophobia, until I saw Ben’s tattooed forearm hanging over me, off the edge of the sofa.
It wasn’t the most restful night’s sleep I’d ever had. I usually enjoyed being very cold with a lot of space to myself. But I preferred this to that all the same. I traced some of my favorite tattoos along his arm: a starburst, a window, an eye. There was an unusual artistry to them, their stark contrast against his skin, their simplicity. I wondered how the healing process would go if he gave one to me.
The tickle of my fingers woke him, and he arched his back, pushing his chest into me. He blew strands of my hair out of his mouth and flattened the mountain of it down close to my scalp until he could see me. “Morning, Frank.”
He searched my hair with his hands until they rested against my neck. He draped them over my collar bones like silk, dipping and grooving along the ridges. He kissed my cheek quickly before swinging his leg high over my body and hopping to the ground.
“Best night’s sleep I’ve had in a while.” He beamed before he looked to the clock on the stove. “We have to be at the cemetery in two hours. I’ll start the coffee.”
I stretched my bones, twisting for weak cracks and pops once he was out of earshot, although if Ben was going to date me, he should probably get used to it.
I’d never changed out of Cleo’s dress. It was wrinkled and baggy in all the wrong places. I gritted my teeth hoping that a wash would shrink it back to its normal sausage-casing elasticity. It looked like I’d be wearing my black jeans and a t-shirt to the burial.
I was almost obsessive with my personal hygiene routine in the bathroom that morning, in honor of my grandmother’s memory, or something like that. I washed my hair with shampoo and conditioner and exfoliated my dry skin with a eucalyptus scrub I found in the shower. Thank you, Cleo. I blow-dried my hair until it bounced in winding spirals and even put on some make-up: mascara and a light lipstick. Once I had my old black jeans on and a wrinkled black shirt over my head, the visible contrast between my head and my clothes felt sort of like I was wearing a top hat and sweatpants.
I met Cleo in the hallway after finishing in the bathroom. She looked characteristically remarkable in a form-fitting black satin dress, her hair piled heavily on top of her head. She assessed me with a disgruntled expression. “What happened to the dress?”
“I was going to wash it first.”
“Do you know how to wash that dress?” she followed up skeptically.
“Yeah, of course,” I lied before turning away toward the kitchen. I would read the tag on the dress before I popped in into the washer tonight, easy peasy.
Ben was standing against the counter, sipping a mug of coffee and reading the newspaper. It was fitting for Ben in a way, but it was always odd to see a person reading the paper and not a webpage. I wondered if he drove to a gas station and bought it or if he stole it from his neighbors. So much effort for either case.
He lifted his eyes as I ambled through the kitchen archway. He slapped the paper onto his countertop for me to see. It was Pamela’s obituary, small and unassuming next to the other grieving announcements.
“Pamela Marie Hughes …” I read aloud before scanning the rest silently. “She was sixty-four. I wasn’t sure.” The message was brief, listing the time and location of the burial. It mentioned her residence in Lehi, and my late mother and grandfather. The picture was several years old. They had downloaded it from her Facebook page. Pamela is survived by her granddaughter, Francesca Lee Hughes.
“Francescally,” I read my name.
“It’s got a nice ring to it,” Ben complimented.
He was dressed modestly in a black crew neck and the exercise pants he’d worn when I first met him. We would make for a very somber bunch today, and although the occasion called for it, all of us matching felt unnatural to the point of theatrics.
I pulled my favorite mug out of Ben’s dishwasher. It was white with a tiger painted underneath the word “Nashville.” I’d found it at a yard sale five years ago. Ben refused to let me take it when I had moved to the city. He wanted me to “keep it at home.”
I melted sugar at the bottom with a splash of hot coffee, added a bit of cream, and stirred. I then poured coffee to the brim. Perfection. I held my hand out silently until Ben gave his empty mug to me. Half an inch of cream at the bottom, no sugar, and I handed the steaming cup back to him. He stirred it in with a cinnamon stick.
Leaning over the counter, I worked on the crossword, and he worked on the Sudoku as we waited to leave. Cleo joined us in the kitchen after a while and poured herself a cup. She drank it black. Everything she did impressed me.
Once she had taken a delicate slurp, Ben addressed us both. “I see a few people at the burial today. I’m guessing they saw the announcement and decided to show. They’re probably going to want to talk to you,” he warned me gravely. “Can you be strong? Maybe be a little friendly to Granny’s mourners?”
I curled my lip and glared at him. “I think I can manage.”
Cleo snorted into her cup in disbelief. I glared at her, too. She didn’t know me well enough to snort.
“We should probably get moving then, don’t want to keep the party guests waiting.” He grabbed his giant sunglasses off the table, handed me my own pair, and led us to the car.
The town cemetery was high on a lonely hill, squished into the south-east corner of Aspen Ridge. There had been rumors about the hilltop resting place when I was a kid, and every rumor was that the hill was haunted. This mostly was due to a peculiar plastic Jesus statue standing atop one of the plots. Fervid children had told me that the eyes glowed red on some nights.
Ben pulled into a corner of the scant parking lot. It was essentially a patch of asphalt, as there were no yellow lines or curbs. Gabriel Perez was standing outside one of the few cars in the lot, a shiny black hearse. I didn’t like knowing Pamela’s corpse was stored so close. It would be just like her to listen in on our conversations outside.
