by Grey, R. S.
She texts back right away.
Madison: Oh, great!
Madison: Also, maybe I should clarify that this is my personal phone number, not my work number.
Another text pops up right after that one.
Madison: I can get you the number to my work phone at the library if you’d rather have that?
Why in the world would I want that?
Ben: This is fine.
A little bubble pops up to show she’s typing a reply. It disappears. Then another one pops up in its place. It disappears too. She’s obviously overthinking whatever she’s about to tell me. If she were here in person, I’d shake her and tell her to spit it out.
Finally, a new message appears.
Madison: Okay, great. I just didn’t want to make things too personal if you’d rather leave them professional.
Another text immediately follows that one.
Madison: I feel like I’m not coming across well via text. Does my tone seem weird to you?
Andy walks into my office then with a cup of coffee in hand. He’s whistling under his breath, much too happy to be in the office this early on a Monday morning.
“Who’re you texting?” he asks once he sees my phone in my hand.
“I’m not texting. I’m checking my emails.”
“Okay, first of all, you’re smiling, so I know you’re lying. Second of all, why would you check your emails on your phone when you’re sitting at your desk with your computer right in front of you?”
I glare at him and make a point of dropping my phone, turning my attention to my computer, and going straight to my email.
“Do you need something?” I ask brusquely.
He helps himself to the seat across from my desk usually reserved for clients, crosses one ankle over his knee, and gets comfortable. He’s smiling at me. His blond hair’s a little disheveled. His socks are brightly colored and striped. He’s getting on my last nerve.
I want to tell him to get out of my office, but he speaks up first. “I wanted to check in and see how things went on Friday. You left early.”
My phone vibrates and we both stare at it.
“Need to get that?” he asks, eyebrows raised tauntingly.
“It’s fine,” I say, turning back to my computer.
He sips his coffee, eyes narrowed on the window behind my head as if he’s just enjoying the morning sunrise.
He has work to do. We both do.
My phone vibrates again, a reminder that I didn’t open the last text message.
Andy clears his throat and with a near growl, I grab the phone like I’m angry at it.
Madison: You know what? Forget I said all of that. Ha ha. Also, I’ll stop texting you now. You’re probably very busy at work.
I fire back a quick response.
Ben: I texted you first, remember? Also, I don’t have a client meeting until 9:00 AM.
I’m staring down, waiting for the little dots to pop up again. She clearly doesn’t subscribe to the standard rules of texting as evidenced by the fact that she texted me three times in a row before I replied. Now, nothing.
The dots don’t appear. I lock my phone, unlock it, open my texts again. Nothing new has come through.
Then something finally does.
Andy: Hi.
I resist the urge to laugh. I really do hate the guy.
When I glance up at him, he’s smiling over his cup of coffee, phone in hand, pleased with himself.
“Anything you’d like to share?” he asks, feigning innocence.
“Nothing.”
“I saw you disappear with Madison at the party.”
I open my desk drawer, drop my phone inside, and then slam it closed. “I was in the bathroom.”
“For thirty minutes?”
I shrug. “Bad fish.”
“We live on the coast—there’s no such thing.”
“Andy, I’m not going to talk to you about her.”
“Oh I know. I’m just over here wondering why that is.”
I’m saved from having to reply to him when my secretary, Mrs. Cromwell, walks in with an armful of files.
I work straight through the morning and then meet my dad for lunch at the club. I don’t see him as often as I should, especially considering how close we live to one another. I think it’s easier for both of us to have some distance. The last few years have been hard, and I don’t think either of us has quite adjusted to the reality of our situation: it’s just the two of us now.
He met my mom when they were teenagers and they got married young. She was with him through college and law school, and she helped him build his practice to what it is today. He’s one of the top litigators in the state and has no plans to retire any time soon.
We look a lot alike, and though his hair has turned gray and he wears glasses now that his eyesight isn’t as sharp as it used to be, he’s still a handsome guy. He could date if he wanted to, but I know he won’t.
“Tell me something good,” he says after we finish our meals and the waiters are clearing our plates.
I lean back in my chair. “The firm’s really taking off. I think we’ll need to hire—”
He laughs and the skin around his eyes crinkles. “Outside of work, son.”
Right. That’s all we talked about through lunch.
I wipe my mouth with the linen napkin and fold it neatly across the table, stalling. “The house has really come together. The landscape architect you recommended put the finishing touches on the back yard last week, and with the pool, it’ll be a nice spot for entertaining.”
I’m not sure he means for me to see his disappointment, but it’s there in his subtle frown, in the way he nods but doesn’t offer a reply.
He scoots his chair back from the table after signing the bill, and we walk in silence toward the door. Once we’re outside, standing shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the valet to bring around our cars, he speaks about the subject we usually do our best to tiptoe around.
“I’ve been hoping you’d come to terms with your mom’s passing on your own, but it occurs to me that I might have failed you in that department.”
We’re both staring out at the manicured golf course, unwilling to turn and meet the other’s eyes. We don’t talk about this, at least not often. If he’s bringing it up, it’s with a hell of a lot of courage.
“I was with her for 47 years, Ben. The suffering there at the end was only for a short while. Ask me if I regret the 47 years because of how it ended. Go ahead.”
It’s too hard to swallow past the lump in my throat, much less speak.
“The answer’s no. I don’t regret a single damn day. If you want to keep your focus on that firm and that house, that’s all right. It’s your life, your only life, and you get to choose how you spend it. I just don’t want you to get to my age one day and regret…” He pauses and scratches his chin, buying himself time. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m rambling, aren’t I? Look, there’s my car. You’ll be free of me soon enough. Forget I brought it up, all right?”
He claps my shoulder twice and then steps forward to greet the valet. I catch his boisterous laugh and the few words they exchange, but my attention is still on the horizon.
It’s your life, your only life, and you get to choose how you spend it.
I reach into the pocket of my pants and pull out my phone.
10
Madison
I honestly didn’t expect to hear from Ben again. After the strange way we ended things on Friday, I sort of expected him to cancel his volunteer assignment at the library and avoid me at all costs. My email to him was my way of casually putting the ball in his court. Are we going to steer clear of each other from now on? Pretend we don’t know each other? Or is the “make me bad” plan still on?
So, you can imagine my utter shock when I saw his text message pop up on my phone first thing this morning. Hey, this is Ben. I just got your email. Saturday morning is fine. It felt strange and thrilling and wonderful and I repl
ied quickly because I was so excited, but now in hindsight, I realize I should have waited and played it cool.
His text was kind of curt, impersonal. One reply from me would have sufficed, but no, I had to let my fingers fly and send off half a dozen rambling messages before common sense finally kicked in and I nearly flung my phone at the wall. Reading our conversation back to myself only made matters worse. None of my texts make any sense. I asked him about my tone?! If he wanted my work number?!
He probably exchanges texts with actual supermodels, and I couldn’t manage to think of a single witty one-liner or teasing innuendo? I am deeply ashamed.
My solution to all of this is to just stop texting him altogether and shove my phone out of sight in my desk drawer. Well, kind of.
The pattern goes like this: I put a few books away, check my phone. Help a mom and her son find age-appropriate chapter books, check my phone. Set up for mommy-and-me story time, check my phone. I think I’ve checked it so many times, I’ve worn down the home button. It’s getting a little ridiculous, so when Eli comes down to retrieve me for our lunch break, I leave my phone behind and go without it. It’s nice, liberating. I sit in the restaurant and focus on my meal. Sure, my knees are bouncing under the table, and I seriously consider stealing Eli’s phone, logging into my iCloud, and checking my text messages—but I don’t! And that counts for something.
Fortunately for me, Eli doesn’t notice how weird I’m acting or the fact that my knee has bumped into his approximately 37 times. He has a lot on his plate. He and Kevin are trying to work with an adoption agency, and they’re hitting every single roadblock imaginable. The whole process is way more expensive than they realized. I feel terrible. He has actual problems. Even still, on our way back to the library, he finally remembers to ask me about Jake’s party.
“Was it fun?”
Keep it short, I tell myself.
Then, I proceed to tell him every single detail down to the brand of champagne I spilled on myself.
“Did your brother flip out when you disappeared?”
I let my head fall back against the seat and groan. “God, that was a fiasco.”
The minute Colten found me at the party, he yanked me right on out of there and insisted we go straight home. It didn’t matter that I had a pretty good lie for where I’d been for the past half-hour. First, I told him I’d accidentally spilled my drink on my dress and being too embarrassed to go back into the party, I’d gone down to the beach to have some time to myself. I thought that’d put the matter to rest, but it had the exact opposite effect. Colten told me in excruciating detail all the reasons that was a bad idea. Some guy from the party could have followed me out there. I could have bumped into a stranger on the beach and been _____. Fill in the blank with some kind of horrible thing: raped, stabbed, shot, kidnapped. I tried to point out that even though I recently had something bad happen to me, the crime rate in Clifton Cove is ridiculously low and the odds of me stumbling upon someone who wanted to do me any harm again are slim to none. He didn’t want to hear it, though. He told me I needed to take my safety more seriously. They haven’t found the guy yet. It wasn’t a joke.
Even worse, he got my dad involved.
The two of them rambled on about how I need to take extra precautions while the police investigate my case. I wanted to throw my hands up and tell them the truth: I was inside the house the whole time! Yup! I was inside, throwing myself at a guy you both hate who at best thinks I’m a weirdo and at worst thinks I’m pitiful. Now leave me alone!
After the incident, I’m not grounded per se because I’m a twenty-five-year-old woman and I did nothing wrong, but I did get an I’m disappointed in you glare from my father at the breakfast table the next morning. To break the ice, after I scrambled us some egg whites, I pushed a deck of cards toward him and suggested a few rounds of two-person Spades. By 10:00 AM, we were back to normal.
Let’s hope it goes as easily with Colten.
He’s coming over for dinner tonight.
I texted him earlier today, just to say hey, and he never responded. He’s still upset with me, and it’s probably because he knows I lied to him. I hate lying to him, but there was no way around it!
I can’t tell him where I was. I’m not ready for this illicit friendship with Ben Rosenberg to end, especially because when I return from lunch with Eli and all but leap at my desk drawer, I have a new text message from Mr. Off-Limits himself waiting for me.
Ben: I’ve been trying to think of what your next task should be…
I nibble on my bottom lip and reread it twice before the library phone rings and I remember I have actual work to do. Time gets away from me as the afternoon continues. The library is always the busiest after school lets out for the day. Families rush in to tackle homework and tutoring. Children run around, getting out their pre-dinner jitters. I’m pulled in one direction after another, trying to inform as many parents as possible about our spring literacy program. Children who read 100 books before May get to choose one thing from the prize cabinet: stickers, yo-yos, puzzles, board books. It’s cheap stuff, but it’s the idea behind it that’s so exciting, not to mention the little bonus I’ll receive if I get enough families to sign up. Needless to say, I shove books onto anyone I cross paths with.
During all of this, I don’t forget about Ben’s text message. Ha. No, no. A case of amnesia could not erase his words from my brain. The reason I don’t reply is because I don’t have a witty response, and I’ve yet to find the time to think of one. I run straight from work to the grocery store to pick up some last-minute items for dinner. I had to stay a little late to manage the chaos, and of course, the checkout lines are insane because it’s Monday and apparently everyone needs groceries on Monday.
I make it home twenty minutes before Colten is due to come over and my father warns me he’s working the night shift, so I’ll have to hurry if I don’t want to make him late.
My dad carries in the groceries and I unload them, noticing his pill case on the counter. I’m unpacking the milk and yogurt when I ask if he’s taken his blood thinner yet.
“Yes.”
“Statin?”
“Yes.”
“What about your aspirin?”
“All right, kid, you got me. I forgot the aspirin.”
I send him a searing gaze over my shoulder and he throws his hands up as if to say, What are ya gonna do?
“I’ll take it in a second. Now what are you going to make? I took that lunch you made me to work and those tater tots tasted off.”
“They should—they’re cauliflower tots.”
He reacts as if I’ve just admitted to poisoning him. Then he spots the pasta I’m unloading and his complaints increase tenfold. “What’s this? Looks like a science experiment gone wrong.”
“It’s veggie pasta.”
“Oh no. Now you’ve really done it.”
His ensuing groan is deep and heartfelt, but I’m not swayed.
I yank it out of his hand and shoo him away from the stove. “I’ll still cover it in spaghetti sauce and ground turkey. You said last week that you couldn’t even taste the difference.”
“I was humoring you!” he shouts from the other room as he flips on the football game.
This is our routine: I try to fix healthy food for a father who would rather fill his arteries with cheeseburgers and French fries, and he protests every step of the way. I’d be shocked if he ever sat down for dinner and actually wanted to eat what I made him.
Colten’s usually better about not complaining. He’s a fit guy, after all, so he enjoys my healthier options. This meal is his favorite, and it’s no coincidence that I’ve chosen to make it tonight. I’m still trying to get back in his good graces, which yes, I’ll admit is absolutely ridiculous because I really didn’t do anything wrong, but that’s the problem with our family. We’re a screwed-up bunch. We don’t have the normal brother-sister-dad dynamic. I see them almost every day. We’re in each other’s business. We bot
her and poke and pester because we care, and I’m not going to throw in the towel just because Colten’s a little overbearing. I’m going to push back, gently, and see if I can’t carve out some newfound freedom for myself. I’ll have to do it slowly. In fact, I should probably carve with a spoon rather than a shovel.
I’ve thought a lot about what I would do with more freedom. For one, I’d move out. I told Ben I couldn’t move out because of what rent would cost, but that was a lie…kind of. I have some money saved up, more so now that my student loans are paid off. I could probably find a one-bedroom apartment. I check my savings account a lot, dream about taking the leap. Actually, the last time I checked, I’d even have enough for a down payment on a very shabby, very rundown house if I played my cards right.
I laugh sardonically. The idea that I would ever do something as insane as purchasing a house is too crazy to even consider. I’m the girl who still lives at home, who hangs out with her dad on Friday nights. I’m the bookworm, the person easily forgotten by everyone outside of her own family.
The back door opens and Colten steps in wearing his uniform, looking very sharp and snazzy. He sees me at the stove and smiles gently. I’m surprised. I was ready for another stern talking to, but it appears he’s ready to make peace after all.
“Hey Colt.”
He lifts his chin in greeting. “Whatcha cookin’?”
I hold up the veggie pasta. “Your favorite. It’ll be ready soon. Dad’s in there watching the game.”
That’s all we say to each other, no apologies or drawn-out explanations, but I know things are back to normal now.
I put the pasta on to boil and am browning the turkey when I realize I still haven’t texted Ben back. I have a few minutes to spare, so I retrieve my phone from my purse, open my texts, and reread his words.