by Ivy Sinclair
Ben waggled his eyebrows at her, and Julia almost spit out her chowder. He was at just the right angle that Julia could see his face, but Clary could not.
Clary raised her eyes to Julia. “There something funny about that?”
Julia shook her head. “No, nine a.m. Got it.”
Then she saw Mike slide his arm around Clary’s shoulders and look over her shoulder. “What’s on my to-do list?”
Suddenly, she wasn’t hungry anymore. For one whole minute, she had managed to forget the mockery that trapped her there. That was when she felt the warm hand on her knee again and a soft squeeze. She turned her head and found Ben’s blue eyes twinkling at her.
“Clary has been driving the entire town crazy with all her planning. Folks are grumbling that maybe she isn’t the sweet sister after all,” he said with a drawl.
He was trying to distract her. She just had to make it through dinner, then she could escape to her room. She had two choices. She could continue to be miserable, or she could play along. “I was always misunderstood,” she said slowly.
“Misunderstood? I bailed you out of the city jail three times before you turned eighteen,” Jack said, finally joining the conversation.
“Those weren’t all my fault,” Julia said, pretending to be hurt at the insinuation. “Whenever something went wrong around town my name always ended up attached to it.”
“I wonder why that was?” Ben asked, tugging at her hair. “Hard to hide with that carrot top.”
“Hey!” Julia exclaimed. “We can’t all be blond haired, blue-eyed Gods, ya know.”
Ben looked her over from head to toe. “Flame haired goddesses are much harder to miss. That’s why you always got caught, and I didn’t.”
Julia laughed despite herself. She found that she liked the idea that Ben thought she was a goddess.
“You remember that time that Jules thought it would be a good idea to sneak into the carnival after hours and ride the rides for free? Man, I got grounded for a month after that one,” Mike said.
Instantly, Julia’s laughter stopped. The pressure on her knee returned. Without saying a word, Ben was cautioning her to hold her tongue. Julia swallowed the words that threatened to fall from her lips. She took a breath. “I wasn’t the one who lost all his money playing ‘Shoot the Clown’ hoping to win that giant panda bear. If you hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have tried to console you by offering up backstage carnival passes.”
That night happened the summer before Julia and Mike started dating. She had to remember that they were friends for over a decade before they started dating. She had happy memories with Mike in them that had nothing to do with their romance. She had to pretend that senior year never existed.
“I didn’t know that backstage carnival passes meant breaking into the place!” Mike countered.
Ben rolled his eyes. “And somehow you managed a 3.5 GPA in school?”
A roll went sailing through the air and hit Ben squarely in the forehead.
Clary burst out into a fit of giggles. The sound was infectious, and soon the four of them were lost in uncontrollable laughter. Jack sighed heavily and kept eating his chowder. Julia knew it was silly, but the laughter somehow broke through the tenseness in the room.
“You remember that time that Clary followed us into the cemetery and threatened to bust us for trespassing?” Ben asked. “Man, she was so freaked out but so indignant at the same time that we were disturbing the dead.”
“I was just following Julia’s lead. She said that she read about some ritual that would bring good luck and fortune for the rest of our lives,” Mike said.
“I was thirteen!” Julia laughed. “Obviously I had plenty of time to become an expert in both witchcraft and fortune telling.”
“Oh, I remember that phase,” Clary said. “You dressed in black from head to toe for like five years.”
“It was my Goth period,” Julia said.
“I almost died when you came to school with your hair dyed that hideous black color,” Mike said. “With how pale your skin was, you looked like death warmed over. Not an attractive look at all.”
Julia painfully remembered coming out of that phase and realizing that there was only way to fix her hair. She was forced to cut it all off. “Bald is beautiful.”
They laughed again, and Julia started to think that she would be okay. Mike was her past. She still felt the rub that her sister hadn’t been honest with her, but at the same time she couldn’t blame Clary for acting the way she did. If Julia had proved nothing else in her entire life, it was that she was a total wild card. Her mood swings were legendary.
The group settled into a more comfortable silence as they finished their meals. Jack pushed back from the table with a satisfied groan. “Clary, you have your mother’s touch. I am stuffed. If you all will excuse me, these old bones could use a little rest.”
“Not going over to Ms. Beasley’s tonight?” Clary said with a sidelong glance at Jack.
Julia swung her head to her father in amazement. Then she remembered what Ben said earlier about Ms. Beasley. “Something you need to catch me up on, Dad?”
She watched a flush rise in Jack’s cheeks. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”
“Ms. Beasley is Dad’s plus one at the wedding,” Clary said under her breath.
“Dad!” Julia exclaimed. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
Jack reached over and put his hand on hers. “Norma and I are friends. Don’t listen to your sister. She’s incorrigible.”
Then Jack stood up and waved to them as he quickly exited the room.
“Wow, I didn’t think Dad would ever date again,” Julia said as she looked at the seat that Jack just exited.
When Julia and Clary’s mother died, Jack fell into a state of deep depression. Julia remembered being scared to death that she was about to lose another parent, either because her father went crazy with grief or because he decided he wanted to join their mother in death. Even at nine years old, Julia understood that her father’s life seemed to end along with Libby’s. Trying to recover from that kind of loss would feel impossible.
Julia felt Libby’s loss keenly. Being younger, Clary didn’t fully grasp the enormity of what happened or what it truly meant. If Julia had to point to one event in her life that shaped the direction of what was to come, she would say it was Libby’s death. Somehow she grasped that life was short, and adhering or conforming to rules and ideals that didn’t fit wasn’t worthy of her time.
As a teenager, that attitude had gotten her in trouble more often than not. As an adult, it catapulted her further in her career than any of her peers and put her on a path that seemed guaranteed to lead to her dreams.
She looked at Mike under her lashes. He was intent on trying to grab Clary’s planner, no doubt intending mischief. If she had stayed in Benton Hill, she knew that there was a chance that she would have given into the pressure of marrying him. His mother couldn’t wait for it, the town expected it, and her dad showed no other opinion other than to follow suit. The only person who thought it was wrong was Julia. Then she corrected herself as she felt the presence of the man next to her. Ben didn’t think she belonged with Mike either. She just didn’t know that until three days before graduation.
“I put her up at the head table with Dad,” Clary said as she finally managed to outmaneuver her planner from Mike’s hands. “Is that okay, Jules?”
Julia blinked in confusion. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Dad vehemently denies that there is anything romantic going on between them, but everybody in town knows that he’s over there almost every night playing cards or…whatever.” Clary flushed in embarrassment. “It would look weird if I put her at another table, but to put her up front with him implies a certain solidarity to their relationship.”
“So what you’re saying is you don’t want to call out that your dad has a regular booty call unless he’s serious about her?” Mike asked.
Clary sma
cked his arm. “Could you be more vulgar?”
That was nothing, Julia thought. She remembered that Mike’s mind was often in the gutter, and he wasn’t afraid to say whatever he was thinking. Then she cleared her mind of those thoughts. “Did you tell Dad that was what you were planning to do?”
“Yes,” Clary said. She still scowled at Mike.
“Then I wouldn’t give it another thought,” Julia said, scooting her chair back from the table. “Jack Bell can deal with whatever gossip comes out it. If he didn’t want to sit next to her, he would have told you to move her.”
Julia took her dishes to the sink and then started to clear the table. With her hands busy, her mind quieted. She wanted to enjoy it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Memories of the past overwhelmed him. The days of running all over town with Mike and Julia seemed so long ago, but with the three of them together again it felt as if it was yesterday. The happiest moments of his life had Mike and Julia in it. It wasn’t hard for him to remember though when he realized that those moments changed from having three in it to having two. He knew that he was in love with Julia the summer between their eighth and ninth grade year of school. After that, he was acutely aware of her, and Mike was an annoying distraction on the periphery.
Ben wasn’t so blind not to notice that shortly after Julia’s Goth phase, her interest in Mike noticeably changed. She jockeyed to sit next to him at lunch, and walk next to him on the way home leaving Ben to trail behind. Ben’s opinions were easily dismissed while Mike’s off-handed comments received biblical weight. Julia started dressing differently whenever she knew that Mike would be around.
Mike, for his part, was stupidly oblivious. It was only after he dated half the cheerleading squad and was on his way to becoming the star quarterback that he seemed to realize there was a beautiful, moonstruck girl living next door to him who liked him. Ben had known for years by that time. His own feelings had only grown over time, but it was obvious to him that Julia saw him as just her best friend.
She seemed intent on torturing him. She had no qualms about inviting him into her bedroom, changing tops and pants in front of him on a regular basis, all the while chattering on about Mike’s latest conquest on the football field. She touched him and moved around him with little regard for how her soft skin brushing against him might arouse an altogether different reaction from him. Julia treated him like a eunuch, and he endured it so that he could always be close to her.
As if a reminder that history can repeat itself, Julia leaned in to take the bread basket off the table and picked up his plate at the same time. Her chest grazed his arm and his heart sped up at her closeness. Suddenly the room was uncomfortably warm.
“Ben, let’s let the woman folk finish cleaning up. How about you and I have an after dinner drink on the patio,” Mike said with a mock English accent.
Ben rolled his eyes.
Clary’s nose crinkled, and he could tell that she was alternating between reprimanding him for being such an oaf, or letting him go so that she could spend more time with Julia. Ben knew that the latter would win out. Clary was too much of a control freak to waste time on reprimands when she could be rehashing every minute detail of the wedding festivities with a new audience.
Ben figured it would do him good to have some distance between him and Julia as well, so he nodded to Mike who grabbed a bottle and two glasses off the liquor cabinet in the corner. Mike’s answer to every uncomfortable situation was alcohol.
“You ladies know where to find us if you need us,” Mike called over his shoulder.
Ben wondered what Julia ever saw in him. Mike was the epitome of the small town jock, and now, five years later, he leveraged his high school achievements into a small scale political campaign. Ben still couldn’t believe that Mike was lobbying to become the town sheriff. Mike had been on the police force only two years, but he seemed confident that his reputation would carry him through to victory. The idea alternatively comforted Ben and terrified him.
It wasn’t that Mike was lazy or slow. He was actually very intelligent, but he had a tendency to focus on one thing to the exclusion of all others. Ben wondered if Mike had ever attempted to set that determination on Julia, if he would have succeeded in tying her to Benton Hill for the rest of her life. Instead, Mike became the star football player and jockeyed for the hearts of the entire town. To that end, he had won, and Ben had no doubt that he would win the election against grumpy old Sheriff Quinn with little effort. Mike was Benton Hill’s golden boy.
Julia had never been comfortable with the attention. Dating Mike their senior year brought its own challenges, and Ben watched the headstrong girl who didn’t take attitude from anyone change into a mild-mannered, please everyone fan girl. While Julia wasn’t the most popular girl in school, that distinction being owned by Sarah West, she had been popular by association and along with that came certain expectations.
That was how the conversation that fateful night in the car began with her.
“Jules, I know you aren’t going to like me saying this, but you’ve changed.”
“Changed? How?”
“Before you and Mike were together you were someone who took risks and didn’t care what anyone else thought. But now, you’re just like everyone else.”
He had been pretty certain that she was going to slap him and get out of the car. He had been shocked when, instead, she agreed with him.
“You’re right. I feel so lost, Ben.”
That was the moment he decided to tell her how he felt about her. It was a crazy, idiotic, selfish thing to do, but he felt Julia slipping further away from him every day. When she told him that Mike proposed, he knew that it was now or never.
It was Mike shoving the glass of scotch into his hand that pulled Ben out of his memories.
“Earth to Ben. This weekend is about me, remember?”
Ben clinked Mike’s glass and then held it up. “It’s always been about you, Mike.” Of course, his friend didn’t catch the irony of his words. Mike had been oblivious to everything. Julia’s original infatuation with him, Ben’s growing feelings for Julia, Julia’s discomfort with playing the part of the golden boy’s girlfriend, and finally the fact that Ben betrayed him by making a play on Julia to stop her from making the biggest mistake of her life. As much as Mike annoyed him though, he had to admit that Mike proved to be a devoted best friend throughout the years.
When Ben’s dad got sick, Mike offered to watch Maggie’s kids so that they could go the hospital to be with his dad. When his dad came home, and then his mom’s health started to falter, Mike stopped by the house several times a week to drop off a casserole that his mom made or to help out around the house. But the biggest thing was that when Ben and Maggie were trying to come up with the cash for the down payment on Bruiser’s Spot, Mike offered to help out in exchange for being a silent third partner.
Mike could be a self-centered jerk, but he was a jerk with a good heart. Ben knew that was the biggest reason that Julia struggled with his proposal. Mike wouldn’t have been a bad choice, but he was the wrong choice for her. Ben had known it from day one, but it seemed as if he was the only one.
Mike leaned against the porch railing and stared out at the growing darkness in the backyard. “Hard to believe that my whole life’s going to change in two days,” he said.
“Everyone’s life has to change sometime,” Ben replied. He took a sip of scotch and felt it burn down the back of this throat. His own life hadn’t ended up turning out like anything he expected either. He thought that he’d have graduated college by now and be headed to graduate school. He’d have left Benton Hill for school, but he always thought that he’d move back one day. He thought it was the perfect place to start a family. Whereas Julia had always been ready to escape Benton Hill, Ben felt that it would be home no matter how far life took him away from it.
“I just never thought that this is how mine would end up. It’s not that it’s bad or anything; it’s ju
st different. I mean, senior year I thought I was going to go to law school and marry Julia. Instead, I joined the force and ended up with Clary. Strange how fate moves your life around.”
Ben was uncomfortable with the line of Mike’s thinking. It wasn’t like his friend to be so introspective.
“You’re about to get married to a beautiful woman and pretty soon you’re going to be a dad. Come November you’ll be the sheriff of this sleepy little town and everyone will look up to you. Doesn’t sound like a bad life to me. Of course, karma’s a bitch, so you know you’re going to end up running around after some hellraisers like us,” Ben said, trying to lighten the mood.
“Those were the good ole days,” Mike said. “You, me, and Jules. I thought we were going to rule the world back then.”
“What’s the matter, Mike? You getting cold feet?” Ben meant the question to be flippant, but was afraid of Mike’s answer when Mike didn’t immediately reply.
Mike sighed heavily. “No, of course not. I mean, that would be silly, right? Clary’s the best.”
There was something unspoken at the end of Mike’s words. Ben felt his chest tighten. It had to do with Julia. He was certain of it. Julia’s reappearance was spinning up Mike’s emotions and memories at the worst possible time. That wasn’t good at all.
“Clary is the best,” Ben agreed. “You were damn lucky she said yes.”
Mike shook his head. “Enough about me. What about you? What’s going on with you and Sarah?”
Ben wanted to persist in making sure that Mike wasn’t thinking of doing anything stupid, but he knew better than to push. When Mike was done talking about something he was done. Naturally Mike was treading into territory that he knew annoyed Ben to no end. “There’s nothing going on between me and Sarah. Jesus, the whole town has the wrong impression about this whole thing.”
“Maybe it’s because half the town saw her car parked overnight at your house a month ago and told the other half.”