Living at 40 (Lakeside Cottage Book 1)

by L. B. Dunbar

  “Wouldn’t be the real thing if I didn’t try to cop a feel,” he teases back, returning his attention to both my lips and the weight of my breast in his hand. His palm presses upward, massaging before squeezing the globe tighter and pinching at my nipple.

  “Let me touch you,” he whispers, and I giggle again. I don’t recall make-out sessions like this as a teen, but perhaps that’s the point of our position. He’s building a memory. The way he’s kissing me tells me he’s taking this moment very seriously. He’s intent on absorbing every movement, every touch.

  “Only third base,” I mutter to his lips as if questioning him. His fingers release my breast and move to my kneecap. Slowly, he begins his descent. He bunches up the edge of my skirt, and shaky fingers coast up my inner thigh. His anxiety makes me giddy and a bit confused. We’ve been together for almost two weeks, having sex in numerous positions and speeds, but this has him uneasy and almost shy. I lift my hand for his cheek, and his fingers complete their cautious journey up my inner leg until his knuckles brush over the wet plait of my underwear. He hisses against my mouth, and I echo the sound. While I anticipated his touch, I’m startled by the tender brush and sudden rush of desire. Something is happening here, and I can’t get a read on it because I’m drowning in his kiss and his slow-stroking knuckles. Moving back and forth over the damp cotton, he’s teasing me in a way tears prickle my eyes. I need more from him.

  “Logan,” I whimper before his fingers curl around the barrier and gently stroke my sensitive folds.

  “Want to be needed but not needy,” he whispers. It takes me a moment to register what he’s saying. “Too bad I’m a greedy fuck when it comes to you.”

  With that, two fingers dive into me, and I respond with a quick gasp despite my desperation for his touch.

  “Capable of taking care of herself,” he mutters, once again quoting me as his fingers deliciously drag back and forth inside me. “But I want to be the one to take care of you. My fingers are the only ones that can touch you like this. Yours do not do it half as well as mine.” He increases the pressure while remaining torturously slow in the drag and dash of entering me. He also isn’t lying. While I can get myself off, his fingers do it so much better.

  “And you are more than a fleeting moment because I do not know how I am supposed to live without you after all this ends.” His words almost ache as they leave his lips and fall against mine, but his fingers have me dizzy, and his mouth has me spinning. I’m circling him in a sense. He’s the center of everything right now, and I don’t want to fall out of the orbit he’s created of himself.

  “Logan,” I cry softly to his mouth, on the cusp of something bigger than me. He’s brought me to orgasm so many times in the past few days, but whatever is happening right now is going to shatter me. As I crest, I balance on the edge, holding on to the thrill before the rush of release.

  “I will never be a prince, but I’d treat you like a queen.”

  With another gasp, I break from his mouth and fall apart, but he chases me, seeking to keep the connection as best he can with his fingers buried inside me and his tongue in my mouth. I’m drowning under him as wave after wave of release coasts over me. My legs tremble. My heart races, and all the while, he’s kissing me, thrilling me with his fingers and his tongue and his beautiful heart.

  My God, I love him. Tears prickle my eyes once again, and I don’t know how I can let this end. How can I walk away from him? How can I live without him?

  18

  [Logan]

  For the first time since we started this crazy venture, I don’t follow Autumn into her room but kiss her in the hallway outside her bedroom door before holding it open for only her. Her expression is puzzled. Her eyes seek mine with one question, but I simply shake my head, offering a weak smile. The beginning of the end is coming, and I need to pull myself away from her. Something happened while we were making out. Something inside me broke while my fingers stroked inside her.

  I felt myself slipping, falling, drowning in love with her and the desire to keep her. But that wasn’t what she wanted from me. I’d never measure up, and while I teased her with my ridiculous secrets about men, I wasn’t kidding.

  We were simple creatures, and all we really wanted was to be loved. We wanted to be the center of another person’s world, but Autumn didn’t want to orbit me. She wanted a baby. That little, beautiful human being we hopefully created would be her sun. A baby was what she wanted to feed her need to nurture without all the craziness of a man taking from her.

  The others were all fools.

  I was an idiot.

  Closing the door to my own bedroom, I fall onto the bed, heart heavy and head muddled from the wine, the taste of her on my tongue, and the scent of her on my fingers. She surrounded me in all the places it would hurt most, and I would take the punishment as it was the first time in years my heart thumped this hard. Making out with her was almost worse than making love to her. The patience to go slow. The desire to speed up. The contradiction was the thrill, just as it was with any woman—the contradictory sex—frustrating and fascinating. Despite all the confusing thoughts circling my head, though, I only wanted to think of her because too soon, thoughts were all I’d have.

  + + +

  Wine headaches are the worst, or so I thought until Friday night arrives. It’d been a day of rain and gloom, which adds to the lingering sense of ending. Autumn had to work, and I’d spent time playing board games with crabby kids and sore losers. Mason can be the worst when someone purchases Sears Tower in an older edition of the game Chicagopoly. After the kids have all gone their separate ways for bed or movies, depending on their ages, Ben asks us to meet him in the sitting area off the kitchen.

  I’m tired and want to call it an early night, climbing into bed behind Autumn and falling into her as we soak up the last hours of this vacation. I have no way of knowing if she’s pregnant or not. She explained to me how the timing was right, and we were playing a bit of Russian roulette in hopes something happens. Thinking of her with another man, working at becoming pregnant with someone else, makes me sick to my stomach. I don’t want her to move on, which doesn’t feel fair of me to ask. We made no promises to one another. I’m going back to Indiana on Sunday. She’ll stay here. Life will go on.

  “So, you’re probably wondering why I’ve asked you to hang out again,” Ben states, his voice uneasy as he rubs his hands over his upper thighs. He’s sitting on an overstuffed chair that holds two people, and Anna sits beside him. One hand of hers is stroking up his back, and another wraps around his wrist.

  While those words in that combination should mean nothing other than sounding too formal, there’s a quiver to Ben’s voice that has the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. He swallows, and I can almost hear the roll of his throat across the room where I sit beside Autumn. We sit closer than necessary for such a large couch. Her thigh presses against mine, and I want to wrap my arm around her shoulder, tucking her into my side, like Anna is doing with Ben in a sense. I fixate on how the wife of one of my best friends strokes up his back and tightens her hand on his arm. She’s staring at the side of his face, as if holding her breath, hanging on the precipice of what he might say next.

  “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m going to blurt it out and then go backward.” His voice cracks, and his lids blink a few times rapidly. He swallows once more before speaking. “I’m dying.”

  A deafening silence fills the room, and I’m not even certain I’ve heard him correctly. He must be joking, and I begin to smile, ready to say as such to him. You fucker, that’s hilarious.

  “Aren’t we all,” I snap, chuckling to myself, reining in my sharper retort. We’re forty. We’re entering a crossroads in our lives. Over the hill is what people used to call this time period.

  Heaviness falls among us despite my joke. Anna closes her eyes, and Zack sits forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. He swipes both hands over his mouth. Noticeably, two people not re
acting. One is Autumn who sits perfectly still beside me. With her thigh pressed against mine and her hands folded in her lap, white-knuckled and stiff, I know that she knows whatever the fuck Ben is talking about. She’s his sister. My head swivels from her tightly clasped hands to Mason, who also sits still with his head lowered and his fingers clutching the cushions on either side of his thighs. That fucker also knows what’s going on.

  “Am I the last to know?” I blurt, but Zack’s quick neck crane in my direction informs me he had no idea either. My heart races while my hands turn cold. “What’s happening?”

  “I’d been experiencing some stomach trouble, and I attributed it to stress. The doctor told me I was suffering from acid reflux, but the pain was getting worse, and I just wasn’t feeling right.” Ben’s expression pinches as he waves a hand over his midsection. “I kept ignoring it. Taking more antacids. I didn’t have time to slow down, as the doctor suggested. I worked out and sometimes thought maybe the pain was from intense ab work. Maybe I was pushing myself too hard.”

  Ben takes a deep breath, glancing at Anna as if she can confirm all he says, or maybe he’s looking at her as his strength, the center of his world, the woman who takes care of him.

  “I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.”

  Zack presses just the tips of his fingers over his lips while his elbows still balance on his knees. I remain slouching into the couch cushions as if they support me, propping me upright. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know enough about this disease.

  “The mortality rate is high. I’ve already had some rounds of chemotherapy, but it didn’t work to reduce or destroy the cancer cells. Typically, once cancer latches onto the pancreas, it isn’t letting go.” Ben bitterly chuckles, and I wonder if he’s quoting what he’s been told.

  “How long?” Zack asks, the question choked out of him.

  “They’re giving me less than a year.”

  “Fuck,” I hiss and notice Mason closing his eyes. I can’t look at Autumn. I can’t process that she hadn’t told me. My best friend is dying, and she didn’t mention it.

  “This is why you’re moving,” Zack states, calm, conscious, and controlled. He’s listing things in his head, sorting the reasons outside of our best friend having a life sentence on him. “But why here? Wouldn’t you get the best medical care in Chicago? This is a small town. This is a resort area.” His voice is slowly rising, struggling with the tension.

  “We discussed it.” Ben looks at Anna, finally placing a hand on her knee and squeezing. “And I don’t want the best medical care. I want the best life.” He turns from his wife to us. “I want to spend my time in a place that makes me happy. I want to come home.”

  It’s strange to think Ben considers Lakeside his home. He’s been living in Chicago almost twenty years, giving up his father’s business to start his own and be near the woman he loved.

  “Do the kids know?” I ask, recalling that moving in and of itself seemed like a big change. They were giving up the familiarity of a house, schools, and friends, but now they’d live in a new place, starting over, and eventually losing their dad on top of it. Instantly, I think of Lorna and my own mortality. I wouldn’t want to leave her behind, yet the natural course of life says I should go first. I will go first but hopefully not at forty. Hopefully not while she still has so much life to live. I want to be there for all of it. Dances and dates. Wins and losses. High school. College. Jobs. Love. Motherhood. I want to be a grandpa someday, and I realize I’m so far ahead of myself, and my friend will miss out on all of it. He’s going to lose everything, including his life.

  “They know I’m sick. An internet search could give them answers, so we had to be honest, at least with the boys. They know I don’t have much time. Mila only knows I have cancer, and it’s not contagious. We haven’t discussed death as much with her. We don’t want her to worry before it’s time.”

  Silence fills the room once more as Zack closes his eyes, fingertips still at his lips. Mason continues to stare down at his legs, and I’m scanning the room, still wondering what’s happening to us, to him.

  Is any of this real?

  “What can we do?” I finally ask, no longer thinking of myself. I scoot forward on the couch, balancing myself on the edge of the cushion. “Tell us how to help. What do you want from us? Anything. Ask it.” Two fingers double-tap at my wrist. Does he want my blood? Need a transplant? Want a . . . I don’t know what, just what can I do to stop this from happening to him? Ben Kulis is one of the best people I’ve ever known, and this cannot be happening to him.

  Only the good die young. It’s been said, and it has never felt truer than at this moment.

  “I just wanted you all to know, and it felt easiest to tell you all at once.” Ben clutches at Anna’s leg. “I want you to stick together as friends and help Anna if she needs it.”

  “Ben,” Anna whispers, but it’s Mason’s reaction that turns my head. He’s glaring at Ben while Anna lowers her eyes.

  “Be here for Calvin and Bryce when they need a man and help Mila when she needs a father.” He swallows hard once more, and I know what he’s thinking. He won’t attend another father-daughter dance or walk her down the aisle. He won’t be able to yell at her for leaving her cleats in the hall or watch her play another softball game. Will he be gone by next spring? Will it happen in the summer?

  “Is this why you asked us here?” I don’t mean the sitting area. I mean Lakeside Cottage. Are we here because he wanted to tell us he was dying?

  “Yes. I wanted to spend one last time being us and acting as if we’d never grow old . . . together. I just wanted to hang out and forget.”

  “Have you been feeling okay since we’ve been here?” Zack asks, and I recall each of our concerns about Ben looking tired and not drinking alcohol.

  Ben only shrugs.

  “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?” Zack snaps. “We wouldn’t have pushed so hard. We . . . we wouldn’t have interrupted your vacation.” Zack glares at Ben.

  “But this isn’t a vacation for us. This will be our home, and I wanted time with you guys before it might go . . . bad.” Ben pleads with Zack to understand.

  “What about your mom?” I ask. Ruthie is a hoot. She was devastated when Ben’s dad had a sudden heart attack and died. She and Old man Kulis were so in love. It wasn’t fair. In the natural progression of things, the parent goes first. I don’t know how Ruthie will survive this. How will Autumn?

  Spinning to face her, I snap, “You knew, didn’t you?”

  Her mouth falls open, but I turn away from her before she can answer. I can’t tackle this fact. I already know the truth.

  “My mom knows. It’s another reason we’re moving here. I want Anna and the kids closer to her, and I want to re-establish the business as best I can, so everyone is provided for.”

  “You sold your business. You’re moving here. You’ve given up on medical treatment—”

  “Not medical treatment,” Ben interrupts Zack. “I’m just not going to be aggressive in finding a solution that will strip away the time I have left.”

  I know enough that chemotherapy isn’t fun, but it could help even if Ben has already said the treatments haven’t. I understand not wanting to be all drugged up or sick all the time, but there must be something. God, let there be something.

  “So what? You just hang out here and . . .” I can’t bring myself to speak the word. The anger in my voice feels unwarranted, but I’m not able to help myself. I’m angry. I don’t understand. How did this happen to him?

  “Logan,” Autumn whispers next to me, but I turn on her.

  “Don’t,” I snap. Turning back to my friends, I ignore Autumn hoisting herself off the couch and leaving the room. This is her brother, but this is my friend. The man who took me in like a brother from another. When I no longer had parents and humor was all I had left, he assured me I’d always have a friend in him. He’d be my family. His family would be mine
. In the back of my head, it’s an explanation for why I didn’t respond to Autumn all those years ago. I can’t remember that moment, but my reasoning had to be that Ben was family. I couldn’t disrespect him by taking advantage of his sister. I hadn’t been friends with him as long as Zack or Mason, but Ben made me believe it never mattered. He’d always bring us all back together, keeping us a family.

  “What’s next?” Zack asks as if reading my earlier thoughts.

  “We just live.” Ben entwines his fingers with Anna’s, bringing their collective hands to his lips and kissing them.

  “Pretend nothing’s wrong?” Zack asks, flabbergasted. “How can you ignore this?”

  “I’m not ignoring it. I’m just choosing to embrace what I have left before it literally eats me alive.” Ben chuckles, but I don’t find the humor in what he’s said. With my own condition of diabetes, it’s not a laughing matter. Mason must agree with me because he stands and heads to the bar area just off the kitchen. Ice clanks against a glass, and a bottle glugs as liquid pours.

  “Bring me one of those,” I holler over my shoulder, not even questioning what he’ll bring me.

  “Make it three,” Zack adds.

  Anna presses a kiss to Ben’s temple, mutters something to him, and stands. Ben stands with her, cups her neck, and kisses her hard and passionate before us. Zack stares. I look away. A glass breaks near the bar.

  Anna pulls back and pats Ben’s chest before turning to leave the room, and Ben returns to his seat.

  We wait for Mason to return. He brings four glasses of amber liquor with him, dispensing one crystal tumbler to each of us before lowering the bottle under his arm to the low table before us.

  “I’ll drink yours if you won’t,” Mason tells Ben.

  “I’m counting on it,” Ben mutters to the glass, and Mason downs his first round. There’s always been a layer of animosity mixed with the love of friendship, but something is even more off than usual between the two of them.