“We won’t be out late tonight,” he said once we were driving through town.
“Okay.” I tried not to sound too disappointed.
His hand reached over and squeezed mine. “I want to ease you into this. I don’t want to scare you away.”
Something tingled down my spine. I couldn’t put a name to the feeling. There were too many mixing together for one to stand out. Fear? Maybe. Irritation? Possibly.
Anticipation? Definitely.
“You sound pretty confident. How do you know you haven’t already scared me away?”
He pulled up to a red light and turned to give me a very serious, very heated look. “It’s okay to be a little bit scared, Liz. We’re just getting started.”
I nearly snapped my neck turning to look out the window. “You’re so full of yourself,” I croaked.
His chuckle filled the car and wrapped around my skin. Oh, boy. I took a deep breath and let myself stay present in the moment.
If I thought about this too much I would fall apart.
But here, in this moment with Ben, I felt more alive than I had in a very long time.
He pulled up to one of the nicest restaurants in town and handed his keys to the valet. We let the waitress lead us to our table. When we were seated we glanced over the menu quietly.
Nerves jumped around inside of my body. I had only ever really dated one man in my life. There had been guys in high school, but it had never been like this.
And when Grady and I had started dating we were so young. God, it felt like a lifetime ago.
So now, on this date, with this older man, I had no idea what to do or say or think. I felt the tension start to creep back in and my muscles lock up. My breathing stopped functioning properly. I was a mess.
I tried to hide behind my menu, staring at it but not seeing a damn thing. His fingers appeared on the top of it and pushed it down so he could see me again.
“Liz,” he said in a deep rumble. “It’s just me. Nothing has changed.”
“Okay,” I squeaked.
He took my hand again and rubbed his thumb over my palm. “It’s wine night, alright? It’s just you and me and a bottle of wine. We’re just talking. You’re just being you and I’m just being me and we’re just going to have a conversation that will make us both smile. It’s going to be the best part of my day, just like all of our other ones. And I’m really hoping it’s going to rank up there on yours. Maybe? Right after the kids?” He closed one of his eyes, scrunched up his face and gave me an adorably hopeful expression.
“Maybe,” I agreed on a shaky laugh.
His face relaxed and he broke into a grin. “I like you, Liz. I’ve liked you for almost as long as I’ve known you. And every time I spend time with you, I just like you more. You’re an incredible woman that I can’t imagine not seeing every day, listening to your stories, listening to you laugh… listening to the bad things and the good things. I know this freaks you out. And it should probably freak me out too. But it doesn’t. It feels right. You and I feel right. So stay with me for just tonight. I promise to return you home in one piece, both inside and out. Can I have this? Just tonight?”
“Yes.” The word left my lips in a confession of feeling. Yes, he could have this night. Yes, we did feel right. And it did freak me out, but I couldn’t make it stop.
A soft smile played on his lips, “Will you tell me about your day?”
I looked into his dark eyes and felt myself center again. I felt tethered to something again. “My day? Oh, it was so boring. It started off with Jace dumping a whole box of Fruit Loops onto the table and then moved on to getting a call from the cable company. Apparently I’ve forgotten to pay them the last two months and then it ended with Lucy getting Cheeto prints all over the first dress I tried on tonight.”
“Well, at least that’s something to be thankful for.”
“Why is that?”
“Thanks to Lucy, I get to see you in this. I don’t know what the other dress looked like, but I am pretty happy with this one.”
I resisted the urge to throw my napkin at him. “The other one was super slutty. Boobs everywhere.” I waved a hand in front of my minimal cleavage to demonstrate.
His eyes darkened as he smiled at my joke. “Now you’re being cruel.”
“I thought this was a regular wine night. I’m just trying to stay in character.”
He stared at me intently for a long moment before saying, “I’m glad you said yes.” He let that settle over me while he flagged down the waitress to bring us some wine.
We spent the rest of the evening laughing and talking over good food and great wine. Ben was right; there was no difference between here and at home. I enjoyed him as much as I always did.
I was surprised when he pulled into my driveway and I didn’t want the night to end. I had imagined racing from his car, barricading myself in my house and avoiding him for the next four months.
But he had made this night amazing and so casual that I hardly noticed it was anything more than one of our usual nights in my kitchen.
It wasn’t until he walked me to the door that I truly remembered that this was a date. At the restaurant there had been a table separating us. And even though he would put his hand on my back when we walked to or from the car, he always did that so it wasn’t anything new.
On my porch, he lingered.
This was new.
And my nerves noticed it immediately.
I looked up at him, trying to decide what to do and how to end the night. “Thank you, Ben. I had a lovely evening.”
“I’m glad,” he murmured and stealthily took a step forward. “I had a nice time too.”
“The food was great.”
He ignored my trite comment. “You’ll do this again with me?”
I forced myself to hold his steady gaze. “Ben, I don’t-”
He had no patience for my refusal. One of his hands wrapped around my hip and jerked me against his hard body. His mouth descended on mine before I had a chance to panic.
His rough, demanding intensity pulsed around me, but his mouth moved sweetly, gently, as if he were savoring every single second of this.
Soft lips against soft lips, his tongue swept out along my lower one and then I found myself opening for him, letting him taste me completely. I kissed him back, unable to make coherent thoughts or think of anything beyond this moment.
My heart pounded ferociously in my chest. My hands slid up his vest and wrapped around his neck. His other hand pressed against the small of my back until we were chest to chest, tightly held together.
He kissed me for a very long time, longer than any first kiss I had ever had. He didn’t seem to want to stop. He would nibble on my bottom lip and then delve his tongue back into my mouth.
I gasped for air and sanity, but he filled every breath and sense.
Finally, just as our kisses became frantic and our touch more desperate, he slowed down. He ended our make out with the sweetest, lingering kiss. He pulled back just a little but rested his forehead against mine while his breathing steadied out.
“I have wanted to do that for a very long time.” His words were worshipful whispers.
I started trembling. I couldn’t form words or share the same sentiment. I had never thought about kissing Ben.
Not once.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promised.
I nodded, still unable to speak.
He let me go and I groped for the door handle. I couldn’t look at him as I fled inside the dark house. I shut the door behind me and flicked the deadbolt over. My back slammed against it and reality came crashing over me.
I started sobbing; it seemed there was nothing left for me to do. The cries came straight from my heart, soul-wrenching sobs that were so deep they didn’t make any sound at first.
I slid to the ground, completely bereft.
What had I done?
I betrayed Grady. I betrayed him.
I sucked in a ga
sping breath and whatever barrier had been left completely dissolved. My cries were loud now, ugly and desperate. I held my hands over my face and wept while my soul shattered apart.
Emma came running into the room completely frightened by my breakdown. “Oh, Liz,” she gasped when she found me on the floor.
I felt her arms wrap around me so tightly it hurt as she slid down next to me. She held me against her chest like a small child, rocking me back and forth. Her tears mingled with mine and she mourned with me even though she couldn’t begin to know what a horrible person I was.
When I had finally settled down some, she asked, “Was it horrible?”
I shook my head as more tears started to fall. “It was wonderful,” I confessed.
“Then why are you crying?”
“Because it was wonderful. And because he kissed me!”
“You didn’t want him to?”
“No,” I shook my head and my face scrunched as hot tears poured from my eyes. “I didn’t want him to stop.”
She finally understood my inner conflict. She pulled me into her arms and I stayed there as both of us cried for the husband I’d love and the husband I’d buried.
Emma couldn’t possibly understand all of the emotional turmoil that beat on me, that stirred up my insides and ravaged my heart. But she knew that this hurt me. That it both killed me and somehow sewed me back together.
I didn’t know what to do about Ben or if there was even anything to do. The only thing I knew that night was that it had been one of the best of my life.
And one of the worst.
Stage Four: Depression
There has been this faint hope inside of me that while I work through these stages of grief, they would become easier along the way.
I pictured myself healing as I waged war with each stage, gradually building armor that would protect me from the hurt, heartache and despair.
That hope is a lie.
Grief doesn’t get easier with each stage. Grief becomes harder, more difficult to face, more consuming with each breath that I take.
I am adrift in a sea of confusion. I am lost in a desert of heartache.
I am broken.
And now I must face depression.
This is the last of the great miseries. I am supposed to find acceptance after this stage, but I don’t think it will happen.
I can’t help but believe I will be lost in depression for the rest of my life.
The only light I can find, beyond my children, is in Ben and he brings his own private agony that rips at my chest with claws as sharp as knives.
He is both comfort and pain. Both freedom and shame.
The relief I feel when I am with him is at odds with my private guilt. Guilt that I try to ignore.
Grady has been the only life I know.
But can there still be life in death?
If I chain myself to my dead husband, will I ever truly live again?
And yet how can I let go of a love and a man that still mean everything to me?
There is too much on my heart, too much weighing on my shoulders. Depression comes in fast and fiercely, without apology and without reprieve.
Depression leaves me feeling heartsick and hopeless. Ben is the only fresh air in my stale, stagnant thoughts. Yet I will eventually have to let him go too.
And then my depression will become twofold. Once for the man that I will always love, but can never be with again. And once for the man that I will have to choose to never be with in the first place.
It is agony to live like this.
I love one man and I am falling in love with another.
I am grieving and I am celebrating.
I find moments where I am truly happy.
But at the end of the day, when I am alone and left to my thoughts and my grief, I find that I am so very depressed. And that is the very beginning of me and the very end.
I am nothing but depressed.
Chapter Twenty
Five days passed before I saw Ben again. True to his word he had called me the day after our date. And when I hadn’t answered, he had texted asking me to call him back.
I hadn’t done that either.
I managed to avoid running into him over the weekend and into the school week. My kids kept me busy. Soccer season was in full swing for both of the older kids, and Lucy and Jace had started swim lessons. I had signed them up weeks ago, hoping we would be able to use Ben’s pool during summer.
Now the lessons felt like little digs at my heart, painful reminders of what I’d ruined between us.
I couldn’t face him again. I couldn’t look into his eyes and remember that kiss and not fall to pieces.
Worst of all, I didn’t want to give that up. Him up.
I wanted there to be more.
When I lay in bed at night now, I reached over to Grady’s side and felt the crushing weight of his absence. But then I would close my eyes and remember the feel of Ben’s lips against mine, the hard press of his body, the firm grip of his hands as he held me tightly to him, as desperate for me as I was for him.
My mind would spin and my thoughts would crash into each other. My heart couldn’t figure out where to settle, whether to feel guilt or elation, shame or joy. It was too much for me. I walked around those days with tears I could not stop and a sick feeling in my stomach.
I tried to convince myself that if I felt this ill about Ben, then I shouldn’t be with him. A relationship couldn’t be built on emotions as volatile as these.
But in the depth of me, in my very center, I knew that it wasn’t Ben causing this trauma. It was my refusal to acknowledge my feelings for Ben that had me tied up in knots. It was the suppression of my real feelings that made me ill and heartbroken.
I knew he would get tired of my avoidance. Ben wasn’t the kind of man that ran from problems. He faced them head on and like with everything else, he challenged me to do the same.
But I desperately hoped he would give up on me. I needed him to walk away and find someone that could actually give back to him what he wanted… what he needed.
Late Wednesday night, a knock at my door warned that the time had come to face Ben.
I sat curled up on the couch, a book lying listlessly in my hands. I had been planted there for an hour and hadn’t read a single word.
I looked through to the door, heart already pounding, breath already shortened. I couldn’t bring myself to move from the couch. How would I face him? How would I tell him I couldn’t do this?
My brain warred with my heart. My soul argued with my intellect. I knew what I should do, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was forcing myself to lose someone I cared about all over again, only this time there was no one to blame but myself.
When I agreed to his date, I had been so worried that I would ruin things with my awkwardness and emotional unavailability that he wouldn’t want to continue any kind of relationship with me. Not even friendship. But it had been easy to be with Ben. So easy.
And after that kiss… I knew that I was the one that would have to end things with him.
He had shown me a truth that I wasn’t ready to see. He’d revealed a part of me that I had denied for a long time. Those things scared me.
Terrified me.
He had become the friend I could always count on, but so much more than that. He had become the man that I needed. That I wanted.
I wanted more and being near him without having more would be torture.
He was my slow death.
He knocked again, harder this time. I couldn’t help but smile at his persistence.
I pulled myself off the couch and dug deep for courage. I was an adult. I was a grown woman with grownup responsibilities. I could face Ben Tyler.
My hand shook as I turned the door handle, calling me a liar.
He stood there with one arm bent at an angle against the doorframe. His forehead rested on his wrist while he stared down at his shoes. My heart squeezed, he looked miserable.
>
His eyes lifted to meet mine and I noticed he hadn’t shaved in a few days. The rough growth suited him and tugged at something low in my belly. I ached to run the palm of my hand over the stubble, wanting to know what it felt like against the pads of my fingers.
“You’re ignoring me now?” he rasped gruffly. His dark eyes flashed fiercely.
I shook my head immediately, denying his accusation. “No.”
He stood up to his full height and pushed by me into the house. “I knew this was going to be hard, Liz. But you could talk to me about it. You could tell me how you’re feeling. I could help you work through this.”
Fear turned to anger, “So we’re just jumping right into this then? I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking.”
“I know you’re fine. As fine as you can be,” he ground out. “But I’m not.”
His words punched at my resolve making my breath puff out of me. “Ben-”
“We’re right for each other, Liz. The other night… that was a damn good night.”
“Maybe… sure, it was a good date, but that doesn’t mean there can be more. I don’t even know why we bothered. We should never have tried anything beyond friendship.”
He ignored me, “And all the other nights before that one? Also damn good nights. Every time I’m with you, I feel it, Liz. I feel it here.” He pressed his hand to his heart and I swayed from the ferocious emotion swelling inside of me. “I know that I need to be careful with you. I want to be careful with you, but I need some of that same respect in return.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Return my calls, Liz. Tell me what’s going on. Share your thoughts once in a while! I am trying here, but I can only do so much on my own. You have got to help me out or we’re not going to go anywhere.”
“Ben, I can’t do this. You’re not listening to me! I don’t want this to go anywhere! You’re asking too much of me.”
“I’m not.” He stepped right up to me. His chest heaved with his frustration and something else… something I wasn’t ready to acknowledge yet. “I’m going to be gentle with you, Liz. We’re going to treat this delicately. I’m going to let this happen slowly, let us fall slowly. But I am not asking too much of you.”
The Five Stages of Falling in Love Page 19