“Mr. Dave, would you like to be my grandpa?” Jilly asked, her head tilted to the side with her hands on her hips. The smile that spread across Dave’s space was impossible to ignore, and it touched Elise in a way that she didn’t expect.
“Well, of course!” he said with a chuckle as Jilly ran into his arms and gave him a big hug. And it was at that moment that Elise realized she was rebuilding her family. It was a different kind of family, filled with people she hadn’t known very long at all, but it felt whole and full.
***
The sun was setting behind the trees that surrounded the campground, but Dave had invited Jilly to watch a pirate movie at the community center. Barb had gotten tired after dinner, so Elise didn’t want to interfere with her rest time.
She decided to take the rare opportunity to walk down to the beach and get some quiet time. She loved her daughter with everything she had, but quiet time was not something she got a lot of these days.
Soon, she would have to make some decisions about the upcoming school year. Would she take Jilly back to Atlanta and look for a small apartment? Would she stay in Seaview so she could look after Dave and enroll Jilly at the local elementary school there? So many decisions that she was going to have to make alone, and that was hard because she didn’t always trust her own decision making skills.
The streaks of orange and yellow across the sky looked like a painting done especially for her by God. There weren’t many people left on the beach at this time of the evening. Most were back at home - or their campers - cooking some dinner, but she had eaten early so Jilly could see the movie.
The sound of seagulls making their way home for the evening was becoming music to her ears, and the salty ocean air invaded every pore of her being as she found a flat, dry spot just next to where the tide was rolling in and out. She dipped the tips of her toes into the warm water and sighed. Beach life was pretty good in her eyes. Even when money was tight and the worries of life were weighing down on her shoulders, something about being at the beach made her believe that she was on vacation.
She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the waves coming in and out. They were so steady and stable. The ocean never stops, she thought. It’s dependable, and it never disappears. It’s just there.
And then it happened. One of those life changing moments again.
“Elise?” As soon as she heard his voice, she knew exactly who it was. She didn’t have to turn around, and she would have known with one hundred percent accuracy that Ben was standing behind her.
She took a deep breath and slowly swiveled her body around, looking up at his face against the orange sky. His hair had been cut since the newspaper picture, but it was still a good bit longer than she remembered. His face was not completely clean shaven as he had some stubble - a five o’clock shadow is what her mother called it - around his jawline. It was actually a very nice look on him, but she would have never admitted it.
What was more shocking to her at the moment was how manly he looked. He wasn’t an adolescent or even a college boy anymore. He was a man with masculine features. A strong, square jaw. Muscles rippling underneath his light blue t-shirt. And there was a deepness in his voice that made her shiver a little when she heard him say her name.
“Ben?” she managed to breathe out. She couldn’t stand, and he looked immensely uncomfortable in her presence. It was like they were two perfect strangers for a moment, but then he started to smile. Oh, and what a smile it was. One she had longed to see for years.
“My goodness, I thought I’d never see you again,” he whispered just loud enough that she could hear over the waves. He knelt down beside her. “You’re as beautiful as ever.”
For some reason, the wonderful sentiment didn’t set well with Elise. At all. Anger started rising up from the pit of her stomach, and she wasn’t sure where it was going - except that she knew it wasn’t going anywhere good.
“You jerk!” she yelled as she pushed him backwards with one big shove until he fell on his rear end.
“Hey! What’d you do that for? Why are you always pushing me?” he said as he struggled not to end up flat on his back.
“Are you kidding me? You think you can just waltz up to me after all these years and tell me I’m beautiful and not expect me to push you over? You’re lucky I didn’t punch you!” she said as she stood up and started walking toward the campground. She wasn’t even sure why she was walking away since she had been dying to see him for weeks now, but something inside of her wanted to escape from the moment.
“Elise, stop! Please. Come on. I know you’re confused…”
“Confused?” she said turning around swiftly, her teeth gritted. “Hmm, I wonder why I would be confused. It’s not like my best friend from childhood just up and decided to abandon me one day!”
“It wasn’t like that, Elise. You just don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand? How can you expect me to understand? We went through everything together. We promised to be friends for life and then one day you just disappeared on me. And then I find out you would rather live as a homeless person than reach out to me. How am I supposed to understand?” Elise was suddenly mentally exhausted and slid down onto the sand, her feet pressed firmly against it and her arms resting on her knees. She hung her head. Ben looked at her and then walked closer and sat down in front of her about three feet away.
“If you would just give me a chance to explain. Please. And then if you want to run the other way, I’ll understand. After all, my life didn’t quite turn out the way either of us had planned.” There was a sadness in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before, and she truly didn’t want to see again.
As Elise took in a few deep breaths, she started to calm down. She began to really look at Ben, finally sitting in front of her. She owed it to him to at least listen. Actually, she owed it to herself because she knew she’d spend the rest of her life confused and wondering what happened to him. She decided in that moment to at least listen to what he had to say and then make her decisions from there. She could always be angry later.
“Fine. Explain. What caused you to completely abandon me when you promised to be my friend forever?” she asked in her snippiest tone.
“I did it for you.” That one small sentence did more to confuse and frustrate Elise than just about anything had ever done. For her? What on earth did that mean?
“You’ve got to be kidding me. You did it for me? When did I ever ask you to go away and not come back? You were my rock. You were my best friend. I loved you!” And then the tears started to slowly fall from her eyes. Ben sighed.
“I hate it when you cry. It’s one of my least favorite things in the world. Look, Elise, I don’t expect you to really understand this but I’m telling you the truth. I did it for you. I knew how much you counted on me and depended on me and I knew I would hold you back in life. If I stayed around, we would’ve kept doing the same thing we were already doing, and I couldn’t do that to you. I knew that I wasn’t going to go all that far, but you could. You could get out of that town and make a name for yourself. And you did. You became the reporter you always wanted to be, and then you became a wife and mother. I felt like my presence in your life was dragging you down.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How could he think that? She had needed him all those years. She had needed his input and his presence in her life. He’d been her backbone, her source of strength in so many times of need.
“Ben, if that’s true then why didn’t you just say something to me?”
“Be honest, Elise. If I’d told you what I was doing, would you have let me? You would’ve hunted me down to the ends of the earth. The only way that I could make it work was to just disappear and make you think I was angry or didn’t care about you anymore. It was the hardest thing in the world for me, but I felt like it was ripping off a Band-Aid for you. Once you got over the initial pain, you’d go on and live your life - which you did.”
�
��This makes no sense to me. You let me go because I had big dreams? You ought to know that I was going to go after my dreams whether you were there or not. But I sure would’ve enjoyed having you with me.”
“I always planned to come back, but things changed. I wanted to give you the space you needed to succeed. Then life got in the way…”
“And just how did life get in the way?” she asked, arms crossed.
“Well, for one thing, you got engaged and married. You had a kid. I wasn’t going to interfere with that.”
“We were just friends, Ben. How could it have interfered with that?”
“Just friends? Really?” For the first time since she’d known him, she was utterly confused. Weren’t they always in the dreaded “friend zone”? Hadn’t he always said that?
“You always said we were just friends,” she said softly.
“I was a kid, and I didn’t want to lose the best friend I had in the world. You were my rock, El. You were everything I had, and letting you go was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Living on the streets was nothing compared to losing you.”
“Are you saying you wanted to be more than friends?” she finally asked after taking a deep breath and trying to look unaffected by the conversation.
“Are you completely clueless, woman?” he replied with a sly smile. “Of course I wanted that. Since the moment we met, I knew I wanted you. But you were always too good for me. Too smart. Too talented. Too big for our small town. And I loved you more than I loved myself, so I had to do what I thought was best for you at the time.” He ran his hand through his thick, dark hair and sighed. “Looking back, I don’t know if it was the right decision or not, but what’s done is done.”
“I wanted that too, Ben. Things could have been so different…”
“Don’t say that. You had a beautiful life, and you made a beautiful daughter. This was how things were supposed to be.”
“How do you know so much about my life… and my daughter?”
“Did you really think I abandoned you?”
“You did.”
“No, I didn’t. I spent years checking up on you in various ways just to make sure you were okay. I cared then and I care now, Elise.”
“What are you saying, Ben?” she asked. He walked forward and reached down, pulling both of her hands up. He laced his fingers through hers and stared down at their joined fingers.
“These are the hands I remember from middle school. These hands held mine as we crossed the creek behind your house. These hands made cookies with me in my kitchen on rainy Sunday afternoons. These hands pushed me into a locker when I made a big mistake with Tiffany Sellers,” he said, smiling at her. “And these hands pulled me back in when she dumped me. These hands, these beautiful hands right here, wrote me letters in college and encouraged me to actually be something. And I was something, for awhile anyway. I wanted to be Elise when I grew up, but without these hands to push me along and pull me up when I fell, I realized I could never be you, Elise. But I wasn't about to hold you back either. You were - and are - destined for great things. Your dreams were always bigger than our small town, and I loved you too much to squash your dreams. You needed to fly solo, and so I did the hardest thing I've done in my life. I let you go.”
“And how was that your decision, Ben? Did you even think about how that would make me feel?”
“Of course I did. But I knew you'd get over it eventually. I knew some man would snap you up and give you the life you deserved. And he did, Elise.”
“Again, how do you know that?”
“Because I was there.”
“Excuse me?”
“I was at your wedding, Elise.”
“No you weren't. I would’ve seen you.”
“I was working with the catering staff. I was also disguised enough that you wouldn't have seen me.”
“Ben, do you realize how incredibly creepy that sounds?”
“Well, yes. I do now. But back then I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I wanted to see this Ted guy.”
“How did you even know?”
“I saw your engagement announcement in the newspaper. Actually, my mom did. She sent it to me.”
“Why didn't you just call?”
“By then I knew you hated me. And I didn't want to interfere in your new life. I'd let you go for so long that opening that can of worms again wasn't a good idea in my mind.”
“So I was just a can of worms?”
“Elise, don't twist my words. I always hated when you did that,” he said, sighing as he dropped her hands and crossed his arms.
“This is exhausting. Why did you come find me tonight?” she asked as she crossed her arms too.
“Because everyone I know in this town has met you and said you were looking for me.”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay after I saw your picture in the paper.”
“Is that it?”
She studied his face for a moment. “Yes, that’s it. I don’t think there’s anything left to say, Ben. Like you said, what’s done is done, right?”
He pursed his lips and gave a half hearted laugh. “I suppose so.”
“I really do wish you well,” she said. “I hope you find whatever it is in this life that you’re looking for.” With that, she turned and walked back to the campground. This time, he didn’t call out to her or follow. She was sure that was the last time she would see Ben Campbell.
Chapter 14
Elise woke with a start the next morning. She’d had a fitful night of sleep after seeing Ben, and now Jilly was going to be late on her last day of dance camp. Just great.
“Jilly, wake up, sweetie!” she called before she could even extract herself from the bed. As she slid open her door, she saw Jilly sitting on the sofa, bowl of cereal teetering in one hand, wearing her leotard and tutu.
“Good morning, Mommy,” Jilly said, barely taking her eyes away from the cartoon she was watching on the TV above the driving area.
“Honey, how long have you been up?”
“I dunno. Can’t tell time very well, Mommy,” she said laughing and rolling her eyes. “You looked sleepy, so I made my breakfast and got dressed.”
Elise was overcome with emotion. Was she such a poor excuse for a mother than her eight year old daughter had to take care of herself? How had she let herself get so distracted by Ben that she had missed making breakfast for her child?
Maybe he was right. He should have left her life so she could focus on things.
Or maybe she was once again being too hard on herself. She could almost hear Sandy in her ear saying, “Stop it! You’re a great mom!” Sandy was quite the cheerleader in her life.
She had to call Sandy. She’d know what to do about Ben. Although, hadn’t Elise already done it? She’d basically told him to go away and never come back… again.
Her attempts at sleep hadn’t been very successful, with thoughts of Ben and his life rolling around in her brain like loose pinballs. There were so many questions she had meant to ask, but her emotions had flooded her senses and stopped all logical thought.
She wanted to know where he’d been all those years. Had he always been homeless? Where was his mom? So much to ask, but did the answers really matter at this point? Maybe not.
“Mommy, am I going to be late?” Jilly asked as she put her bowl in the small sink.
“No, let me just change my clothes and run a brush through my hair, and we are out the door!”
***
Elise dropped Jilly off with five minutes to spare, and she felt like her very hair was on fire. Rushing around was something she was accustomed to back in the city, but she had gotten used to the slow pace of life in a small beach town.
Thoughts of Ben floated through her mind all morning as she tried to occupy her time with other things. She stopped a couple of local thrift stores, drove by the church and picked up some flyers and then made her way back to the camper. Being unemployed was getting to her.
The
funny thing was she had been perfectly happy being a stay-at-home mom back in Atlanta, but now that she was the sole breadwinner and living in a campground, she was longing for interaction with working adults.
Her old dreams of becoming a journalist long since faded, she thought maybe she should stop at the local coffee shop or florist to see if they had any part-time work. Any little bit of money would help her and Jilly finally get into an apartment or maybe even a rental house.
It wasn’t that she disliked living in the campground, a fact which was completely amazing to her. But she didn’t want Jilly starting school and having to tell her friends that she lived in the RV. It just didn’t seem right. Living in the campground was fun, but living there full-time was starting to get on her nerves.
Always There: Christian Inspirational Romance Page 13