Exes With Benefits

by Nicole Williams

  “You hate bean with bacon soup.”

  “Yeah, but your grandma doesn’t.” He swallowed. “Didn’t.”

  My chest squeezed as my emotions pendulum swung from anger to appreciation.

  “I thought you would have wanted to go out to dinner tonight instead,” I said to change the subject so I could get back to reminding myself why I couldn’t stand him.

  “Yeah, well, I figured you’d prefer to not go out in public. With me. To dinner.” He glanced around the supermarket like we were being watched.

  “Reason?”

  He gave me a look that suggested he couldn’t believe I had to ask.

  “People talk. Non-stop.”

  One of the guarantees that came with living in a small town. He had a point too. Since I was still catching up to what I’d agreed to, I wasn’t in a hurry for people to see us out together in what appeared to be a date-like situation. We’d dredged up enough talk when we’d made ourselves official back when I’d been the Wheat Princess and Canaan had been such a troublemaker, his reputation spread across county lines.

  I could only imagine how quickly the news would spread through all eighteen-thousand city occupants if word got out that we were back together five years later. Just imagining the buzz that would follow me everywhere I went gave me a headache.

  “You’ve put actual thought into this, haven’t you?” Damn my soul to hell, but I caught myself smiling at him. The kind of smile that wasn’t spun from disdain or mockery.

  His eyes flashed something that suggested I had no idea just how much thought he’d put into this whole mess I found myself in. “Thanks for noticing.”

  The doorbell rang at exactly seven o’clock. I was watching the clock. Not that I was anticipating his visit or anything—it was more a matter of bracing myself for the night.

  “Come on in,” I called from the kitchen, where I was wrestling out a few more pots.

  The screen door gave a quiet creak as it opened, then Canaan’s solid footsteps made their way inside. I pretended to be busy at the sink when I noticed him pause inside the kitchen doorway.

  “I’m already fucking up this date,” he grumbled, his eyes lingering on me while he deposited the bags of groceries on the counter.

  Scrubbing at the faucet with a washcloth, I felt my forehead crease. I wasn’t used to him admitting failures or faults. “Why do you say that?”

  “You dressed up.” His arm lifted in my direction as I gave myself permission to look at him. “And here I am in a T-shirt and jeans.” The corners of his eyes were creased as he studied me, his throat moving. “I’m just going to go change real quick . . .” His thumb hitched over his shoulder as he backed away.

  “Stay. You look fine.” I tried to give him the most cursory of glances but failed. Clean, snug white tee. Same story with the blue jeans. They hugged his thighs—and what rested above—just enough to jack up my internal temperature a few degrees.

  “That’s the problem. I look fine, and you are the definition of fine.”

  I found myself smiling as I unpacked the groceries he’d brought. “Your pick-up lines need some work.”

  “Not a pick-up line. Just the truth.” He winked when I shot a non-threatening glare his way. “You sure you don’t mind having dinner with me like this? I look like a scrub compared to you.”

  As I washed the produce, I caught myself staring at his jeans again. The general fly-region of them. He caught me staring too.

  Getting back to focusing on washing the mushrooms and zucchinis—which didn’t exactly help shift my focus—I shook my head. “I wouldn’t know what to do if you showed up all dressed up and fancy. I had to bribe you to get you to wear a button-down shirt to prom.”

  That memory, in all its vividness, seemed to run through both of our minds right then.

  “I remember that bribe. Well.” Canaan had this big, stupid grin as he sauntered up to the sink. “I still can’t look at a dark blue button-down shirt and not picture the way you looked up at me as—”

  “Could you open the pasta?” I waved the zucchini at the box of noodles, managing to splash him with droplets of water at the same time.

  “Pasta box opening is in my culinary toolbox.” He moved toward it, giving me a chance to shift the discussion to something else.

  “Earlier, you had that familiar black streaky look painted all over.” My eyes landed on his hands, which were scrubbed clean, but the beds of his nails still wore the dark stain. “Your dad’s shop? Are you working there now?”

  He turned on the burner where the pot of water was resting and set the noodles nearby. “Actually, I run it now.” His words sounded carefully selected. “Dad had a stroke a couple of years ago—lost all function in his right side.”

  My fingers stopped scrubbing the mushrooms. “God, Canaan, I’m so sorry.”

  Canaan’s dad, John, had always seemed like this massive, indestructible character. Almost like he was Odon incognito, with his two equally-as-invincible-seeming sons. Or one now, and even he didn’t seem as invincible as he once had.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “He’s still able to live at home. Has a caretaker come in to help with stuff, but he’s good. You know, considering.” Canaan slid down the counter to where I was still working on getting produce washed. “I said I was going to cook you dinner. I’ve got this.”

  When he tried to nudge me out of the way, I held my ground. “Yeah, but it’ll be easier if I help.”

  He seemed to give that more consideration than it warranted before he tore a few paper towels free and dried the veggies I’d cleaned.

  “I’m really sorry. About everything. I know running the shop wasn’t the life you wanted for yourself.”

  Canaan had always liked cars—he’d even been a gearhead—but he hadn’t wanted to go into the family business. He’d had grander plans of making a name for himself in a big way, seeing his name opposite some famous fighter, leaving it all inside some Vegas ring.

  His arm kept rubbing against mine from how close we were standing. I should have subtly stepped aside; instead I stayed right where I was. “I thought it wasn’t, but it turns out, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I wasn’t under the hood of a car. Dad was right all along—it’s in my blood.”

  “How happy does that make him to hear that?” I asked, filling his hands with clean mushrooms.

  “So happy the right side of his mouth almost smiles.”

  When I caught him grinning at me, I laughed. “Ironic how life turns out, isn’t it?”

  “Ironic, maybe. Devastating, usually.” For the first time since coming back, I watched the dark drift into his eyes.

  “How are you doing with all of that? I know it was six years ago, but . . .”

  Canaan turned to go back to the stove, checking on the water. “Like you said, it was six years ago. It’s in the past.”

  “We were in the past, but you’re obviously still holding on to something of us from back then.”

  “You’re alive. There’s still something to hang on to. He’s not.” Canaan disappeared from the kitchen, the screen door sounding right after.

  Shit. I shouldn’t have said anything. I knew better back then, and I should have known better now. It wasn’t a topic he ever had or ever would want to talk about. What had happened, happened. Asher was gone, and Canaan had a point—no amount of talking would bring him back or change things.

  After turning off the sink, I was rushing into the living room when Canaan shoved through the screen door again. He had something other than groceries in his hands this time.

  “I might show up to a date looking like a fool, but I know better than to forget to bring the woman I’ve suckered into spending a night with me flowers.”

  “Spending the night? Spoiler coming—you’re not sleeping over.” I took the flowers though, trying to rein in my smile so it didn’t give away that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten flowers.

  “Who said anything
about sleeping?” Canaan’s tone left nothing to speculation, which earned him a sigh. “Joking. Unless you’re serious, in which case, so am I.” He laughed when he saw the look on my face.

  I followed him into the kitchen in search of a vase. “You claim you’ve changed, but you’re still just as exasperating as ever.”

  “Just for you, Maggie. Just. For. You.” He tipped his head at me as he washed the lettuce. When he twisted off the base of the head of romaine, I shouldn’t have admired the way his forearms flexed so much. When he finished with that, he pulled a bottle of wine out of a paper sack. “Red okay?”

  I fussed with getting the bouquet arranged in the vase. “Are you having some?”

  He stopped screwing the cork into the bottle. “Um, no. I got it for you.”

  “So you’re planning on getting me sloshed all by myself so what . . . ? You can have your way with me?”

  Canaan’s mouth twitched as he got back to working on the cork. “Am I that transparent?”

  “When it comes to the aforementioned subject? One thousand percent see-through.”

  That made Canaan laugh. Which made my stomach feel all warm and unsteady.

  “Did you want something else to drink? I know Grandma has an emergency stash of booze somewhere around.”

  Canaan’s head shook as he yanked the cork free. “I don’t drink.”

  My head turned. “Like, on Tuesdays?”

  He gave me a funny look. “Like at all.”

  He looked serious. The kind of serious I’d always hoped to see on his face when I begged him to give up drinking.

  “For how long now?” I asked.

  His eyes met mine—and they looked surprised I didn’t already know the answer. “Since the day after you left.”

  I blinked at him. “Seriously? Not one drink since then?”

  Canaan watched me carry the vase of flowers to the table. “God knows I came close to it. Hundreds of times. I’d have the bottle in my hands—hell, a few of them even made it to my lips.” His eyes lost focus for a moment. “But then the image of you driving away from me that night—that look on your face as you said goodbye—would cross my mind and I’d find myself upending every one of those bottles into the sink.”

  My fingers stroked the velvety petals of the stargazers as I tried to ignore the lump forming in my throat. “I’m happy for you. I’m relieved actually.”

  He exhaled as he drew a knife from the butcher block to chop the lettuce. “Crazy, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “How the hardest lessons we have to learn are the ones that wind up costing us the most?”

  I paused long enough to consider my own experience with that lesson. “Yeah,” I said, watching him. “It sure is.”

  When he’d finished with the lettuce, he pulled a wine glass from Grandma’s cupboards and poured me a glass of wine. “Here. Just relax and sip on this. I’ve got dinner covered.” He waited until I was sitting before he handed me the wine.

  “I thought I was supposed to help you.”

  He moved back to the stove and dumped the box of pasta into the boiling water before glancing at me. His eyes made a slow journey down my legs, which I’d just crossed. “You are. Believe me.”

  I uncrossed and tucked my legs under the table, out of view. “This isn’t that kind of dinner date.”

  “What kind of dinner date?” He didn’t even try to sound innocent.

  “The kind that’s followed by ‘dessert.’”

  He pulled the dishtowel from the stove handle and flicked it my way. “But dessert’s my favorite part.”

  “That hasn’t changed either,” I mumbled into my wine glass.

  His reply was a chuckle as he went back to slicing and dicing.

  The rest of the dinner prep followed the same way. Canaan seemed to know his way around Grandma’s kitchen better than I ever had, and he managed to get the rest of the meal finished without any help from me. Other than whatever assistance my legs provided him.

  When I forgot about our history or why I was having dinner with him in the first place, I found myself having a genuinely good time. The kind I hadn’t experienced in a while. Things were easy between us when I wasn’t bringing up the past and he wasn’t steeping in alcohol. It was amazing how half a decade of maturity could change a person, especially when that person was Canaan Ford. The eighteen-year-old version of him, who’d been pissed off and ready to fight the world one person at a time, had morphed into a man who had mastered his anger. He’d learned that true strength wasn’t a physical display but a mental practice.

  I found myself focused on his hands more times than I should have, going from remembering the nights I’d spent tending to those scars etched above each knuckle, to remembering the way the rough pads of his fingers felt sliding down my back. I’d watched Canaan’s hands inflict seemingly inhuman force. I’d seen those same hands cup a robin with a broken wing without disturbing a single feather.

  “Another glass with dinner?” Canaan propped the wine bottle above my empty glass as he slid my plate in front of me.

  “Careful. Your evil plan is becoming more and more obvious.” I tucked my napkin into my lap, letting him pour me a second glass.

  “It never took getting you tipsy to get that from you before.” He tipped one last splash into my glass as he said it.

  “Key word being before.”

  He smiled at the floor as he came back to the table with another plate in his hand. Instead of setting it on the placemat I’d set at the other end of the table, he slid the setting down to where I was and slid into the chair right next to me.

  He lifted the glass of water I’d poured him, waiting. When I raised my glass, he leaned in. “To us.”

  “There isn’t an us.”

  He clinked his glass to mine before I could lower it. “There will always be an us.”

  Choosing to keep my opinion to myself, I twirled some pasta onto my fork and took my first bite.

  My surprise must have been showing because Canaan shrugged. “Told you I’d figured out how to cook.”

  “Says the guy who had to ask what pesto sauce is.”

  He grabbed his bread and dipped it into the pasta sauce. “I’m a marinara sauce kind of guy.”

  “Yet you’re dipping your bread in pesto. And going back for more,” I added when he dunked his bread back into the sauce.

  “You like pesto, I like pesto,” he said, looking straight at me as though that should have been obvious.

  “I’m not sure that’s how a relationship is supposed to work.”

  “Neither am I. But I’m not ruling out the whole I-like-what-you-like approach.”

  I tore off a chunk of my bread and dipped it like he was. “It couldn’t be the worst approach out there.”

  “No, pretty sure I found the worst approach back when you agreed to marry me.” He read my expression before continuing, “You know, drinking myself into a nightly stupor, fighting over the most stupid, insignificant things, pushing away the woman I loved because that was the only way I knew how to protect her from the disaster that was me.” His eyes dropped as he scooted his dinner around on his plate. “That kind of thing.”

  We worked on our dinners in silence after that. I felt like I had so much to say to him, so many questions to ask, but before I could figure out what to lead with, my phone rang from where I’d perched it on the windowsill.

  “Sorry.” I slid out of my chair, glad for the break in silence. “I meant to silence it.”

  He waved it off, rising to clear our plates.

  When I saw the number, I froze. Just finishing dinner with my ex might constitute the worst time to take a call from my boyfriend.

  Canaan glanced at the screen as he set the dishes in the sink. He didn’t say anything, but something flashed through his eyes. It cleared quickly.

  “Take it,” he said, backing out of the kitchen. “Really.” He must have seen the confused look on my face. “I’m trying to win you back
, not drive you further away.”

  I scanned him for signs of anger as he backed away, but there were none.

  “What happened to you?” I asked, the phone still reminding me of its presence.

  “I lost the most important thing of my life one night.” He paused in the doorway, curling his fingers around the top of the frame. “That has a way of changing a man.” His eyes held mine for one moment, then released them before he turned to leave.

  The phone rang a couple more times, but I stood there, staring at the spot Canaan had just occupied, instead of acknowledging the space Reed currently held. Lost. I felt its presence again, though this time I felt better equipped to handle its sting. Maybe most surprising of all, I didn’t feel scared of it as I had before. Lost wasn’t a final resting place—it was a catalyst.

  The ping of a voicemail notification sounded from my phone as I left it on the windowsill, grabbed my wine glass, and wandered out of the kitchen. Canaan wasn’t anywhere inside, so I checked out on the porch. He was sitting on the swing, staring out at the night like they were having a conversation.

  “Quick call,” he said when he heard me push through the screen.

  “They generally are when you don’t pick up.” I hit the porch lights, letting night sweep in around us.

  The whites of Canaan’s eyes were the only lights I could see. “Don’t want anyone to drive by and see us together?” he guessed as I slid out of my heels and padded across the porch.

  “Don’t care who drives by or sees what’s up on this porch,” I replied, settling beside him onto the swing before he had a chance to scoot over. The familiar warmth and shelter of his body encapsulated mine.

  “Then why turn off the lights?”

  My gaze lifted to the sky beyond the roof of the porch. “So I can see the stars.”

  “The city lights make it hard to see the stars, even out here these days.” Canaan squinted into the night, this time looking up instead of straight on.

  “Yeah, but I’d rather have to squint to see the stars than pretend I’m surrounded by light that isn’t real.”

  Canaan scooted closer, barely, but I felt him shift. Then his hand found its way to mind, sliding around it like it was a reflex. “Yeah, me too.”