Need Me

by Tessa Bailey

  “I did write it.” An image of Honey’s stricken face forced him to pause. “But it was a mistake. Ms. Perribow has done nothing wrong.” Nothing about our time together was wrong. None of it. Except the fact that it’s over. “If Peter thinks the student pursued me inappropriately, he was wrong, too.” Ben might have paid lip service to pushing Honey away, but he’d encouraged her in ways that counted. This belonged to both of them.

  “Is that possible, Peter?”

  Ben ground his teeth together when Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  Dean Mahoney sighed, picked up the letter again. “I like you, Professor Dawson. Your end-of-semester evaluations were the highest in the department. You have the fewest number of drops. I think you take the job seriously, as you should, and we need the new blood around here.” He shook his head, nearly blinding Ben as the fluorescent light glinted off its shiny surface. “But I can’t ignore this. Especially in the wake of Ms. Perribow missing classes over the last week. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. It speaks of a young girl trying to get your attention, as the letter you wrote implies. I appreciate you not wanting to cost a student her education, but I can’t ignore evidence when it’s right in my hand. That would be remiss.”

  “I’m resigning.” The words fell from his lips so easily. He’d only planned to transfer to NYU because of Honey, but now that it had come to this, he realized he would have done it anyway to protect her. To make things right, he would do anything. “If this is how Columbia treats their students, putting them on trial when they haven’t even had a chance to defend themselves, this isn’t the right place for me. Especially when they’re lucky to have the student in question within their walls.” He leveled the dean with a look. “Consider this my notice. I’ll be leaving at the end of the semester.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Dean Mahoney said. “You’re not being penalized here.”

  I should be. It should be me. Could he say what came next? It could backfire. It might not even work, but without the dean’s agreement to reinstate Honey as a student and restore her financial aid, a noose was tightening around his neck. “I am serious.” Ben leaned forward in his chair. “I’ll miss a lot of things about this university. The traditions, the people. The library.” And here Ben was, subtly insinuating that he had material with which to blackmail the dean of a major university. No going back from here. “Have you noticed how . . . polished . . . the floors are in the library, Dean Mahoney? I swear someone must stay after hours and shine them every single night.” He dropped his gaze to the dean’s gold wedding ring. “Miss Woodmere, perhaps?”

  Dean Mahoney went so still that the only sign of movement was red creeping over his bald head. If a pin dropped, it would have sounded like a bomb going off in the office. Instead, Peter cracked his knuckles, making Dean Mahoney jump in his seat and upset a cup of Bic pens.

  The older man’s fingers moved over the keyboard of his computer. “I’ll just take one more look at Ms. Perribow’s file before I make a final decision.”

  Tension seeped from Ben’s body, nearly causing him to fall off the damn chair, but right on its heels, the grief of losing Honey rushed back in where it belonged. He cleared his rusted throat. “Thank you. That’s all I ask.”

  HONEY SAT ON the floor of her childhood bedroom, staring at the Dixie Chicks poster hanging over her desk. She could remember putting it up the morning after she returned from the concert with her mother. Placing the tape carefully along the edges and corners, positioning it perfectly before smoothing it down. Stepping back and admiring it, allowing herself to giggle, since no one was in the room with her.

  There were memories overflowing in every room of this house. Comforting memories that she desperately needed right now, when she felt as if she’d crack down the middle if she moved. It didn’t help that two days later, her lips were still swollen from kissing Ben in her baseball field. Every time she washed herself in the shower, the lingering twinge between her legs brought images to her mind that had no place around her broken heart. She didn’t want to think about his breath rasping against her ear as he moved inside her. Or the way he tasted. The way he’d held her so tightly afterward.

  No. She wanted to keep on hating him. Hating him gave her one more excuse to stay here indefinitely. Rolling around in her pile of fond memories and reliving the past. Every inch of this house, this town, her family was written on her soul. New York had only just started to creep in. She missed her roommates like hell and knew they were waiting to welcome her back. She’d gone there mostly for school, and now school wasn’t an option. Ben had said he would fix what he’d done, but there was no guarantee it was possible. Even if he did work some kind of magic, did she want to go back?

  Honey flopped onto her back. Adventure. The other reason she’d gone to New York. Wanting to live and have experiences no one else in her family could boast of. Look where it had landed her. Right back where she’d started. Only now it felt like she had a knife permanently stuck in her gut, courtesy of one gorgeous, complicated professor who’d finally overcome his writer’s block in the form of a letter that slandered her character. God. God, it hurt to think about.

  She’d tried out the big city, hadn’t she? No one could accuse her of laziness or wasting her potential. There were colleges within driving distance of home where she could get the same quality education. Right?

  Coward. You’re running.

  A knock on her door interrupted her pity party. “Honey?”

  “Yeah, Mom?”

  “Get on some pants if you need to. I’m coming in.”

  Honey sat up and pushed her hair out of her face. Her family had mostly left her alone since the scene with Ben. After her mother had patched up Elmer, he’d hung around on the porch for a while before taking the hint and leaving, too. She’d felt genuinely bad about that, since she was the reason he had a broken nose, but her own grief outweighed the politeness that had been instilled in her.

  She put on what she hoped was a brave smile for her mother, who took a seat at the end of the bed. “How long are you planning on staying here?”

  “Probably until dinnertime. Why? You need help peeling spuds?”

  “No, I’ve got your brother doing it. His legs are broken, but his hands most certainly are not.” Her mother leaned back on the bed. “And I wasn’t talking about this room. I meant Bloomfield. How long are you planning on staying here?”

  Honey dropped her gaze to the faded blue carpet. “Are you saying I’ve worn out my welcome?” She’d meant it as a joke, but when her mother stayed silent, her head came up. “Mom?”

  “The dean called this morning. They’ve reinstated you as a student and restored your financial aid.”

  Every cell moving in her body screeched to a halt, leaving her light-headed. “H-how? Are you . . . sure?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you if I wasn’t sure.” Her mother watched her closely. “As for how, I think you know Ben had something to do with it.”

  “I don’t want to talk about him,” Honey wheezed. Just hearing his name spoken out loud felt like a sledgehammer being taken to her ribs. How long would it be like this? If she went back to New York, she’d hear his name all the time from her friends, Louis, Russell. Just another reason to stay put. He’d made everything right, just like he’d promised he would, but it didn’t change anything. Didn’t change the horrible, run-down way she was feeling.

  “Well?” her mother prompted. “Why aren’t you throwing clothes into your suitcase?”

  Honey didn’t have an answer for that, so she just stayed perfectly still. Same as she’d been doing all morning. If she rattled any of the checked emotions inside her, they would all bleed together and erupt out of her.

  “All right, if you don’t want to talk, you can just listen.” Her mother tucked a stray hair back into her bun. “I never told you this, Honey, but I had my chance to get out of Bloomfield. Nothing so important as school, just a couple of my friends heading to Florida for
the summer in a rusted orange VW van.” She smiled, as if she could see it right in front of her. “I’ll admit it. I was scared. Scared to miss something back home. Scared of the unknown. Everything you probably felt moving to New York City. The difference is, you did it.”

  “I’m here now, though, aren’t I?” Honey forced past numb lips. “I didn’t last.”

  “This ain’t the same thing,” her mother said. “You actually . . . went out and found a place to live, tried new restaurants, made friends. Things I could only dream about.” A flush moved up her neck. “I waited too long to see the world. Made excuses to stay where I didn’t have to try. And now I’m scared to visit my own daughter where she lives. Can you imagine that?”

  Honey was shocked. “Scared? I don’t understand.”

  “You shouldn’t understand. This burden is mine to carry.” Her mother looked up at the ceiling, and Honey suspected she was trying to keep tears from falling. “I don’t regret a single second I spent here, raising you two kids, loving your father. But I should have gone to Florida in that stupid van for the summer. I should have seen something.”

  “You still can.” Honey swiped at the moisture in her own eyes. “It’s never too late.”

  “Well.” Her mother humored her with a smile and fussed with the hem of her shirt. “Have you ever read that sealed letter I sent you off to college with?”

  “No.” Honey glanced at her backpack, propped in the corner. “I was saving it for a rainy day.”

  “This is as rainy as it gets, baby girl.” Honey’s mother stood to leave, but she stopped at the door with her hand on the knob. “I should hate Ben for making my daughter cry. Yes, I should. But I just can’t, and I hope that doesn’t make me a bad mother.” She shook her head. “I just remember the way he looked at you, and I can’t bring myself to hate someone who sees exactly what’s there. Like he wouldn’t change a single thing about you if he could.”

  It took Honey a moment to move after her mother closed the door behind her. The ache in her chest was too great, so overwhelming. Eventually, she gathered the willpower to crawl across the room and unzip her backpack, pulling out the sealed letter from her mother. She took a deep breath, turning it over in her palm, tapping it against her knee. Finally, she tore open the sealed edge. What she pulled out wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. She’d always thought she’d find a school-lunch-type note, something encouraging. Instead, she found postcards. From Florida. Dozens and dozens of them, sent from familiar names, friends her mother had had all her life.

  Wish you were here. We went jet skiing today. . .

  We can see the beach from our deck. It goes on forever. You should have come!

  Honey couldn’t keep the dam from breaking any longer. As tears blurred her vision, she recognized what her mother’s intentions had been. In her own way, she was telling Honey not to give up. To go live her own life so she wouldn’t have the same regrets later. It was damn effective, she’d give her mother that. She started to nestle down into the carpet, postcards spread out around her, but she caught sight of a framed picture on her wall and sat up again. Two men with grudging smiles flanking a much younger version of her at the diner as she sipped a chocolate milk shake. The day she’d negotiated the town’s little league merger had always been so fresh in her mind, but it had been blurred by all the new. New days and nights and sounds and people. Good, new experiences. But she’d let the old slip away. Let herself forget that she wasn’t the type of girl who laid curled up on her bedroom floor and forgot to get the hell up. Honey Perribow took what life offered and made it work for her. Nothing—especially not a man—was going to beat her or steal the new away. She’d been raised to fight for it.

  Honey rose to her feet and turned in a circle, taking a long look at her bedroom, committing it to memory so she could draw from the strength she felt there if she ever needed it again. Then she pulled the diner photo off the wall and placed it carefully in her suitcase.

  Time to go home.

  Chapter 20

  HONEY HAD DROPPED his class.

  Ben dropped into a wobbly chair at the Longshoreman, shaking his head when Russell started to pour him a beer from the frosty pitcher. “Water,” he murmured instead. It wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to drown himself in every available liquor so he wouldn’t have to remember what it felt like to stand in front of his class and not see her. But he needed to feel every ounce of agony, or he’d lose another connection to her. Being miserable because of Honey was better than not feeling anything, and that’s exactly what excessive drinking would achieve.

  They’d agreed back in Kentucky, before a fucking tornado had landed down in the middle of their happiness, that she would drop the class. That they would continue on as they had been, keeping a low profile around campus for the remaining months until he officially started at NYU. He wasn’t deluded enough to think that’s why she’d followed through. It had been three days since he’d left Kentucky and she still hadn’t come back, even though they’d undone her expulsion and restored her scholarship. His efforts had come too late and hadn’t been enough.

  Louis walked into the bar still wearing his work suit and collapsed into the chair beside Russell, shoving his fingers through his hair. “Hey. I’m shitty company today. Pretend I’m not here.”

  Russell poured beer into a plastic cup and slid it in front of Louis. “Once again it appears I’m the glue holding this crew together.” He threw them both a disgusted look. “Allow me to point out when all this bad shit started happening in your lives. When the girls showed up.”

  “Wrong.” Louis held up a finger as he chugged the frothy drink. “Roxy has nothing to do with this. She’s the best thing that ever happened anywhere in the world, and she’s going to bear my children. Right after I convince her to move in with me.” He gave Russell a pointed look. “This is work related.”

  “Don’t spare any details,” Ben said. “I need a distraction.”

  Louis heaved a sigh. “I’m trying to help those community center kids relocate elsewhere, but the city is reluctant to give them another lease, and private commercial spaces are too expensive.” He tapped his empty cup against the table. “They’re meeting at an outdoor park, but I can see the group starting to thin. They need more space. Resources. And there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Sorry, man,” Russell said. “Sometimes you can’t fix something, no matter how hard you try.”

  “A sincere comment from Russell.” Louis held his cup up to the light. “What is in this beer?”

  “You know, there is such a thing as being too clever, Louis.”

  Ben needed them to keep this up. To keep talking so he could try and focus on the words. As soon as he walked out of here, he’d be back where he started, but for now the banter was dulling the rougher edges. For the last few weeks, he’d been a shitty friend, and they hadn’t given up on him. So he would make an attempt to put his own motherfucker of a situation aside and return the favor. “You have something on your mind, Russell?”

  A dark blond eyebrow went up. “What?”

  Yeah, okay. That question had been pretty out of character for any of them. They tended to needle each other and drop personal information only when enough beer had been consumed to make talking about their feelings acceptable. They’d just gotten to the Longshoreman five minutes ago.

  Ben pushed up his glasses and immediately thought of Honey saying she found that sexy. Jesus, he missed her. Distract. Distract. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said to Russell, “but you’ve been acting kind of . . . sensitive lately.”

  Russell split an incredulous look between them. “How am I not supposed to take that the wrong way?”

  “He’s right,” Louis jumped in. “You’ve already got the shaved head, now you’re channeling Gandhi in two ways. What gives, man?”

  “It wouldn’t have anything to do with Abby, would it?” Ben asked into his just-delivered water.

  “Hey, just because you�
�ve both got your balls in a vise doesn’t mean I do.” When neither of them took the bait, Russell’s big shoulders dipped, head falling forward. “It might, maybe, possibly have something to do with Abby. That’s all you’re getting from me, though.”

  “Oh, come on—”

  “Fine. Twist my arm.” Russell signaled the waitress for another pitcher of beer before delivering them both a stern look. “Nothing we say here leaves this table.” Ben and Louis waved him on. Russell started to talk, but stopped. Then started again. “She’s out of my league.”

  Louis’s mouth dropped open. “Did you just admit that out loud?”

  Ben shook his head. “Who are you anymore?”

  “See, I knew you would react this way.” Russell sprawled back in his chair. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  Ben picked up a wadded-up napkin and threw it at him. “Keep going. Your pathetic condition is the only thing distracting me from mine.”

  “Oh, how comforting.” Russell tugged at his collar. “Look, here’s the bottom line. Abby is . . . she’s . . .” He blew out a breath. “She’s fucking Abby. Do you know how smart she is? Her mind is like one of those fancy calculators, but she doesn’t want anyone to know because she thinks it makes them uncomfortable.” His throat worked. “She’s so smart and yet she thinks I want to be her friend. Just her friend. And you know what? I’m not going to shatter that illusion for her. I don’t want to smash those rose-colored glasses. She’s perfect and I’d only fuck that up, anyway. So I’m her friend. Just her friend.”

  In what world did Ben think this would distract him? His sympathy for his friend was in danger of being eclipsed by Honey. No, it was done. There she was, stunning him speechless with a smile, arms stretched out above her head in the grass. “You’re right.” His voice sounded dull to his own ears. “If I could go back and even have Honey as a student—only—I would do it. It would be painful, but I’d do it. So I could at least be near her, the way you can do with Abby.” He cleared his throat. “It’s like she doesn’t exist for me anymore. It’s worse. So much worse. You’re doing the right thing.”