by Fiona Lowe
“I think I’ll trade wolves for riding a vintage Harley,” Todd said happily. “What do you think, Lisa?”
“I’m all for it.”
Al turned the steering wheel, taking the right fork in the road. “So that’s three then, eh? Excellent. We can have a picnic.”
“You’re not able to come?” Lisa asked Ella.
“Oh, Ella can come. She just won’t,” Al said before she could open her mouth. “She thinks bikes are noisy and dangerous so she’ll stay home and do something real safe like climb on her roof and clean out her gutters.”
“You do that?” Lisa asked in a stunned tone. “I think riding a motorcycle is a lot safer than climbing on a roof and it’s definitely way more fun.”
Ella glared at the back of Al’s head, furious at him for making her look like a killjoy in front of others. “I’ll come but only because Al’s picnic food will probably poison you.”
Al gave a good-natured laugh. “Hell, I was going to buy lunch but if you’re offering to make your beef subs, Ellie, that’s even better.”
Right then, she knew Al Swenson had just played her.
* * *
It was Saturday night and Amy had never seen Whitetail so busy. Although the trucks and cars that filled all the parking spaces on Main Street looked familiarly modern, the people walking on the sidewalk did not. Everyone had gotten into the spirit of the evening and it was like taking a step back in time to the roaring ‘20s. Lindsay and Keith had even set up a mock speakeasy in the foyer of the movie theater, serving drinks in teacups and asking people to cloak their guns.
She was looking around for Ben, who’d texted her earlier saying there’d been a problem at the garage and he was staying longer to help out Al. He’d promised to meet her here. His height usually made him easy to find but tonight, in the crowded small space, she couldn’t see him anywhere.
“Amy!” Melissa waved and made her way over, looking very glamorous in a red beaded flapper’s dress and with a long, black cigarette holder between her fingers. “Doesn’t everyone look wicked awesome?”
She noticed Melissa’s gaze linger on Scott who was talking to Keith. “Wow, who knew Scott could look so debonair out of jeans and a polo shirt?”
“Hmm,” Melissa murmured before seeming to shake herself. “He’s just getting into character. The movie pianist always wore white tie and tails.”
Amy glanced down self-consciously at the costume she’d patched together using a combination of her own clothes, a shirt of her father’s and some bits and pieces she’d found in the Rasmussens’ cloakroom. “With my parents visiting and Janey’s gown, I didn’t have time to make a dress.”
Melissa smiled. “I think what you’ve done is very inventive and very Marlene Dietrich. You look great.”
“Thanks.” She just wished her curls weren’t constantly trying to dislodge her fedora.
Keith’s voice boomed down the microphone, cutting across the chatter in the foyer. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to take your seats but don’t worry, the usherettes...” He paused while Lindsay and another woman wearing a short skirt and balancing a big tray, curtsied. “...will be coming around and selling ice cream cones, popcorn and candy cigarettes.”
People started moving into the cinema, all talking excitedly about the upcoming silent movie but still Amy couldn’t see Ben anywhere. She checked her phone for a message. Nothing.
“Are you coming in, Amy?” Melissa asked, drifting toward the doors with the crowd.
“You go in. I’ll be there soon.” She cut back through the crowd and out onto the sidewalk, looking both ways up and down and across the street for Ben. She saw two couples hurrying toward her but no one else. Disappointment sat on the top of her gut like oil on water.
She had the evening all planned. They were going to snuggle up on their own in the very back row of the old cinema in the seats everyone had told her to avoid because they were really uncomfortable. Then, under the cover of darkness, they were going to make out. She was determined there’d be some fondling involved. Her fondling Ben to be exact, because up until now, that had never happened. Whenever they were having sex and she got close to experiencing the sensation of holding him, let alone getting her mouth to him, he always changed positions and she lost the opportunity. Sure she slid the condom on him but the moment it was on, he caught her hand in his.
She knew she probably should tell him what she wanted—or to be more precise, what she thought she wanted because she’d never actually given a guy a hand job or a blow job. Although she’d come a long way sexually since meeting Ben and he seemed to get a kick out of her relative inexperience, she still wasn’t comfortable initiating a discussion.
Just thinking about it made her all quivery, agitated and excited but nothing could happen unless Ben arrived. She took another glance up and down the street before stepping back inside. Should she just go take a seat and tell Lindsay where she was sitting? After all, that would give the usherette a chance to use her flashlight and direct Ben to her just like in the olden days. No, that wouldn’t work. Lindsay would just direct her to the seats farther down the front.
Come on, Ben. As she checked her phone again, she heard Keith say, “You bet, Ben. I guess you were looking for a flapper but Amy’s standing right over there.”
She turned around and there was Ben, standing in front of her wearing a white open-neck shirt, a chocolate V-neck sweater, jodhpurs and long leather boots. A felt cap sat on his head and a pair of goggles rested around his neck along with the obligatory sling.
“Oh, how fantastic,” she squealed in delight. “You’re a 1920s biker!” Emboldened by the fun of being in character, she pulled out a silver hip flask with one hand and stretched out her other to Ben. “Hey, bad boy, do you wanna come make out in the back row?”
He didn’t move and she realized he was staring at her. “What?” Her fingers automatically brushed her cheeks. “Do I have a smudge on my face?”
His usually smiling eyes narrowed to slits. “What the hell are you wearing?”
His words poured over her like the hit of icy water and all her insecurities floated fast to the surface. Fighting to keep them at bay, she tilted her chin and snapped her suspenders. “I’m a gangster.”
“Every other woman in that cinema is dressed like a woman.”
His quiet and deadly-low voice sent an uneasy shiver through her. “This is my costume, Ben. Melissa thought I was very Marlene Dietrich.”
“Exactly my point.” He grabbed her arm and hustled her outside.
Shocked at his rough-arm tactics, she tried to pull away. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” he ground out between clenched teeth.
“This isn’t nothing. We’re supposed to be having a lovely evening and you’ve pushed me outside.”
“There’s no way I’m making out with you dressed like that.”
“Fine.” She crossed her arms against her hammering heart that was overflowing with confusion and hurt. Memories of similar comments by other boys and men who’d been dismissive of her looks and clothes, slugged her. “We’ll just go and watch the film.”
He shook his head so hard, his cap slid off. “You don’t get it. I’m not going anywhere with you dressed like a man.”
She stared at him slack-mouthed. “Have you been inhaling gas fumes this afternoon?”
Without a word, he spun on his booted heel and strode down the street.
“Ben!”
He kept walking so she ran after him and this time she grabbed him by the arm. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I’m going home.”
“You’re walking five miles because I’m not wearing a flapper’s dress? Can you hear how crazy that sounds?”
“Whatever.” He tried to shrug her hand away.
She held fast, pulling back. “It’s not whatever. Even when I hit you with a flashlight you made more sense than you do right now.”
“Let it go, Amy.”
The threat in his voice wasn’t lost on her but neither was the pain that vibrated behind it. “You’ve just ruined what was supposed to be a lovely evening and I don’t understand why.”
The streetlamp illuminated the planes of his face, making them appear stark and hard when she knew they could be soft and tender. He let out a sigh. “I’m not stopping you from enjoying the film.”
“Oh right, you tell me I’m unattractive and you refuse to be seen with me, but I’m to go watch the movie anyway?”
Ben hated the catch in Amy’s voice and, worse still, he hated the fact that he’d been the one to put it there. Seeing her in that suit had brought the past back so fast he had whiplash, but that wasn’t her fault. Now she was standing in front of him like a vulnerable child and it was all his fault.
Shit. What a mess. He tried to appease her. “You’re beautiful, Amy, you know that.”
Her enormous eyes stared at him, filled with hurt and anger. “The thing is, Ben, most of the time I don’t know that, and just when I dare to believe it something like this happens.”
He wanted to touch her, hold her but that fucking outfit was doing his head in. “I’m sorry. Of course I’m happy to be seen with you.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “Ben, I have an IQ of one-twenty and I can understand most things but you are not making any sense tonight.”
He started walking again. “It makes sense to me and that’s all that matters. It’s my issue, not yours.”
Red curls bounced everywhere as she marched beside him. “Oh, no. You don’t get to play that card again. Strike two and you’re out.”
Hell. He immediately remembered saying something similar back when he’d first kissed her to silence a question. “I think that’s strike three and you’re out.”
“You’re Australian,” she said accusingly, “you’re not supposed to know about baseball. Stop changing the subject.”
“Just pointing out a fact. I thought facts are important to lawyers.”
“It’s not going to work, Ben. You won’t distract me.”
He saw the in-control lawyer—the woman who was sure-footed in her area of expertise—and he knew he could no longer avoid telling her. Before now, he hadn’t told anyone. Granted, his family and friends knew but he hadn’t told them either—he hadn’t needed to. They’d been there to witness the implosion of his wedding. More than anything, he wanted to be able to hop onto Red and ride out of town, ride away from this like he’d been doing for months but he couldn’t even start the damn bike, let alone ride it.
They’d reached her car and using her key lock she beeped it open before facing him. “This is what’s going to happen, Ben. We’re going to drive to a place of your choosing and then you’re going to tell me what it is about this costume that has upset you so much.”
“You’re going to have to take it off first.”
“I’m serious.”
A long sigh shuddered out of him. “So am I.”
* * *
Amy sat on a couch in the master bedroom sitting room watching Ben pace back and forth in front of the bay window. He’d been silent on the way home and she hadn’t pushed him to talk, but now she’d kept her end of the bargain—she’d changed out of her costume—and it was time for him to keep his.
“Ready when you are.”
Ben stopped abruptly and stared at her through hooded eyes. “I’m never going to be ready.”
“So choose a place to start. What was it about the suit that set you off? Was it the color?”
He ran his hand through his hair. “Black isn’t a color. It’s a tone.”
She decided not to respond to that because he only wanted to distract her. Instead she tucked her legs up under her and pulled a throw rug over her to ward against the chilly evening air.
With his back to her, he gazed out into the starry night. “Lexie borrowed my suit occasionally and wore it to costume parties. I used to tease her that she looked better in it than I did.”
Her heart ached for him and for herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you of her.”
He tapped the window seat gently with his foot. “You don’t remind me of Lexie in any way at all, which is what I need, but that fucking suit did.”
He turned around, his face taut and strained and for a moment she wondered if she should cause him any more pain by making him tell her. He pulled at his hair. “I hate it, but somehow I managed to live with a woman for three months and have no clue she was gay.”
Amy heard the shame and embarrassment in his tone and it took her a moment to digest the actual words. “She’s a lesbian?”
Ben nodded slowly, his eyes filled with shadows. “Got it in one.”
Of all the scenarios she’d run through in her head over the past couple of weeks as to why Lexie would have broken off the engagement, she’d never got anywhere near close to the truth. “And that’s why she stood you up at the wedding?”
“Yeah.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “It was hell of day all around. One I’ve spent the past year forgetting.”
Her heart ached for him. “Except it keeps coming back, doesn’t it?”
“When I least expect it.” His green eyes flickered with hurt and pain. “Shit, I’d have been happy to get hitched in a registry office and go to the pub afterwards but Lexie had insisted she wanted the full-catastrophe white wedding with all the bells and whistles. She kept saying, ‘let’s make it count. Let’s show everyone how amazing we are together. Let them dream about what gorgeous children we’re going to make.’ So there we all were, one hundred and fifty people in the Melbourne Botanical Gardens on a beautiful autumn March day, sitting in white chairs listening to a string quartet and waiting for the bride.”
Amy pictured Ben standing in his tuxedo in front of an expectant crowd and she bit her lip. “And she didn’t show?”
“Oh, she showed,” he said bitterly. “She arrived wearing a black suit. Her bridesmaid wore the wedding dress.”
A blast of fury blew through her that had absolutely nothing to do with Lexie being gay but everything to do with the way she’d humiliated Ben. “That’s horrible. Why would she do that to you?”
He scrubbed his cheek with his palm. “She swears she didn’t set out to do it, and I believe her now but at the time it was... Crap, there are no words to describe it. For a moment I thought it was another one of her crazy pranks. Instead, it was the culmination of what I now know was always going to be a train wreck. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself for months, needing to believe it, because it’s all so fucking complicated. One day I think I understand it and have it straight in my head, and the next I don’t.”
His voice deepened, filled with something close to acrimony. “I blame Sian for the very public way Lexie came out. I swear it was her idea.”
“Sian?”
“The bridesmaid. Or to be precise, the bride.”
His bitterness slammed her so hard she rocked. She wanted to rush over to him, hold him tight and tell him—She had no clue what to say as a thousand questions spun in her head so fast she felt dizzy. “I don’t understand. If Lexie thought or knew she was gay, why did she even accept your marriage proposal?”
He flinched. “She didn’t. I accepted her proposal to me.”
“Oh.” Amy was struggling to keep up with his story. She couldn’t imagine having the guts to risk asking any guy to marry her when there was a devastating chance of hearing a no.
He gave her a wry smile tinged with resignation. “Lexie’s tenacious and she usually gets what she wants and she decided she wanted me. Or at least she thought she wanted me but it
turns out it was for all the wrong reasons.”
Amy had the distinct feeling she was sliding down a slippery slope. Every time she thought she understood, it slid from her grasp. She could only imagine how Ben must have felt—was still feeling. “How did you meet her?”
He blew out a long, protracted sigh. “Lexie’s an engineer like me and we met at an iron ore mine out in the Pilbara in Western Australia. It’s in the middle of nowhere surrounded by blistering heat and red dust, and ninety-nine percent of the staff is male. I loved the work but it’s not something you want to do forever. I had a close mate, Mark, who was working up there with me and we’d both decided at the end of the contract, we were heading back east.”
He seemed to stare off into space for a moment before clearing his throat. “Four days after that conversation, Mark died in a freak accident.” He grimaced as sad memories clouded his eyes. “He lost his footing on a mining truck and fell the equivalent of two stories.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “That sounds horrendous. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. You’re not supposed to die at twenty-nine. That’s the age when you’re starting to think about settling down. Making a commitment to someone and moving forward with your life. Hell, that had been the plan and Mark lost the chance.” He open and closed his hands a few times. “Three weeks after Mark died, Lexie walked onto the site with a bright yellow hard hat on her head, dust rising from her heels, and she made a beeline for me. She said, ‘G’day, we’re having dinner together in the mess tonight.’
“I laughed but like I said, Lexie’s nothing if not determined. And she was fun. She changed my life at the mine and turned it on its head. We did some crazy and outrageous things together and she lifted my grief. When she proposed six weeks later, I accepted. ‘Why wait,’ she said, so the wedding was planned for eight weeks after that. There was just enough time for my stunned parents to help us organize it from four thousand kilometers away.”
His emerald eyes implored her to understand. “I know it was fast but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was starting my grown-up life with a woman who made me laugh, wanted marriage, kids, the whole nine yards. I kept thinking how lucky I was that what I wanted had fallen into my lap.”