by Ren Benton
“And you’ll cope somehow because you get shit done, no matter how overwhelming life gets.”
Tally felt like she’d spent most of her life smashing her face against life’s fist, with nothing to show for it but bruises, but that doggedness had convinced Stella to give her a job and earned this generosity. Taking a chance didn’t pay off every day, but when it did, it was life changing.
If she could earn this while thinking she deserved nothing, what would life give her if she actually applied herself to doing better? “Thank you, Stella. Not just for the money.”
“Let’s not have a chick-flick moment.”
Tally broke out in a grin. “Come on. One time. Just to see what it’s like. I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”
“Now it sounds illicit. Fine. Come on, then.”
A hug ensued. It was awkward, neither of them adept at arm placement or squeeze strength or duration.
It felt good anyway. Tally hoped demonstrations of affection — giving and receiving — would get less uncomfortable with practice.
She hoped she could earn a chance to practice.
Chapter 39
Ben intended to give Tally all the time she needed.
But thirty-two days after storming out on her, he stumbled into a snake pit otherwise known as a marathon of Dance Moms, and during the sleepless hours between the resultant nightmares and dawn, it occurred to him that if she did want to talk to him, she wouldn’t be able to divine his phone number from the smoke-signal technology available in Westard and wouldn’t turn to his mother for assistance — and if she did, his mother would likely be offensive enough to make her reconsider any further involvement with the Fielder family.
His resolve held for most of the morning, but after a meeting during which Will stomped on his foot to bring his attention back to the investors sitting across the table from them, he limped to his office thinking it would be better for his physical, mental, and professional well-being to renege on the give-her-time vow.
Not to push her in any direction. Just to let her know how to get in touch if she ever wanted to.
If she hung up when she heard his voice, that would settle things once and for all.
He closed the door to his office and dialed a number he’d programmed into his phone weeks ago in anticipation of his resolve failing. Where else would she be during daylight hours but at the bakery?
“Stella’s. How can I help you?”
He frowned at the phone. The voice on the other wasn’t Tally’s. “Who is this?”
“Julie Diaz. What can I do for you?”
He rubbed his forehead smooth. No cause for panic. Tally was busy and Julie grabbed the phone for her. It was great those two had made up. “Hey, Jules. It’s Ben. Can I talk to Tally?”
There was a lengthy pause. “You don’t know yet?”
“Know what?”
“I forget the grapevine doesn’t grow past the fence. She’s gone, Ben.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Please say on a coffee break. Or a long-overdue vacation.
“Got-the-hell-out-of-Dodge gone.”
He sank to the floor to keep his plunging organs in their approximate anatomical positions. “Do you know how I can get in touch with her?”
“I know how I can get in touch with her. I’m not passing out her number to every guy who asks for it. I can tell her how she can get in touch with you when I talk to her.”
He gave Julie three phone numbers, two email addresses, and the mailing addresses for home and the office and made her repeat all of the information back twice to make sure she wasn’t bullshitting him about writing it down just to blow him off, and then a customer came into the bakery and she hung up to do her job.
Her job. Not Tally’s.
He positioned the phone on the floor and stared at it as if it had betrayed him by letting him make that call.
He remembered this feeling from twelve years ago. He was glad she’d escaped. Proud of her for shaking off the tether binding her to that place. Certain she’d thrive.
Sure, it hurt like hell to be left behind again, but the important thing was that she would at least fight for herself. She wouldn’t leave with him, but she would leave.
He had been the only sour part of the proposition.
He’d thought he wanted her to be happy, but judging by the acid gnawing through his gut at the news she’d decided to pursue that goal without him, he’d only wanted her to be happy with him. He’d done the same thing with his mother: Let me take you away from all this so I can feel good.
They had both seen right through his “generosity” to what a selfish prick he really was.
He ignored the knock on the door.
Undeterred by the lack of welcome, Liz entered, took one look at him slouched against the wall, and closed the door behind her. “Honey, you cannot look like that around here. Everyone will think the world is crashing down around us.”
He almost said, Isn’t it?, then laughed at himself for being melodramatic. The sound was hollow, distant, and died young.
The world wasn’t ending. An important part of it was just moving on without him.
He tilted his head to look up at Liz. “You’re a woman.”
“If you believe the rumors.”
“Why am I repellent to your kind?”
“Did you hit your head? Is that how you ended up on the floor?” She combed through his hair searching for signs of trauma. Finding none, she gave his skull a light tap. “You’re a chick magnet. You get every woman you decide you want.”
Rejection upon initial approach had never been his problem. Retention was where he dropped the ball. “For a minute and a half.”
“Thank god.”
“You want me to be alone forever in case it doesn’t work out between you and Will?”
“I want you to be alone long enough to appreciate what matters about being together. I’d rather see you alone for a while than with another wrong woman to avoid being alone. You’re like a little kid scared of the dark, grabbing any light you can find, even if it burns your fingers.”
Most neuroses probably sounded like a good idea at the time. With the exception of post-Tally and post-divorce, he’d maintained pretty much the same pattern he’d established in second grade. If he didn’t have somewhere to direct his unrequited love for Crystal Castle, he’d be spending all his time drawing pictures of her and writing godawful poetry about her eyes.
Shit. Had he used every other woman in his life as a placeholder?
Nah. He’d used Julie as a mine for information about Tally, and he’d used Ellen as an anesthetic for a bout of nostalgia that tore open the scar on his heart Tally left him with.
No wonder none of them stuck around more than a year.
She sat in the chair behind his desk. “Around here, you have a clear vision of what you want, you work hard to make it reality, and you end up with something you’re proud of. In your love life, you take the easy way every time. You latch onto the first woman who will have you, regardless of what she’s like and what her intentions are, and you expect to live happily ever after because you plugged the hole in your heart with something. Never mind that it doesn’t fit and is a constant drain on your good nature.”
He associated the tone she was using with longstanding disapproval when his mother used it on him. “You didn’t like any of them?”
She squinted into the distance, considering her answer. “The bitch who took Dice to the pound had some nice boots. Otherwise, I’m drawing a blank about positive attributes across the board. I never saw one treat you like she appreciated your goofiness and your big mouth and your tunnel vision.”
That was asking a lot of any woman. “Those aren’t good qualities, Liz.”
“They are in you. Who are you if you’re not playful, tactless, and racing ahead like you’re on rails?”
“An adult?”
“Snore.” She opened a desk drawer and rummaged through the contents. “You sa
id at my wedding that no sane woman would marry Will, and if you’d tried to set me up with a scrawny, myopic guy fourteen inches taller than me with an encyclopedic knowledge of comic books and a pathologic fear of birds, I’d have been insulted that you thought I was that desperate. But I love that man. I buy him superhero boxers and think they’re sexy. I chase crows out of the yard when he’s grilling, like he’s in danger and needs a savior.”
He’d seen her do it with a Super Soaker. “Enabler.”
“Yes, I enable the man I love to be himself because I think his self is amazing. Not just the grownup businessman parts, but the whole package.”
“Don’t make me think about Will’s package.”
She found his stash and threw a fun-sized Twix at him, which he caught.
The Butterfinger that followed hot on its heels clipped him in the temple. “Ow. Those are hard.”
“Like my man’s package.”
“Dude. I was going to eat this.”
“Go ahead. Put it in your mouth.” She smirked and put her feet up on his desktop. “I’m saying, if sanity had anything to do with it, we’d all be alone. Love’s crazy, and the right kind of crazy will love your kind of crazy. The wrong kind of crazy will smash your TV and toss your flip-flops in the fireplace.”
“I forgot that one.”
“You’ve gotten used to the smell. Trust me, your sofa still reeks like a tire fire.” She helped herself to a Milky Way. “You need to be more selective. Fruit lying on the ground is bound to be rotten, mushy, dirty, and infested with bugs.”
So far, in one conversation, she’d referred to women as fire hazards, cardiac plugs, and rotten fruit. He hadn’t known she felt this strongly about the subject. “You want me to play Tarzan and climb a tree?”
“Tarzan got a woman because he got his ass up that tree and selected the best fruit.”
As Ben recalled it, Jane was the first woman Tarzan laid eyes on. Then again, if the first one was the right one, there was no reason to keep looking. “The one I worked to get left me. Twice.”
“To leave twice, she had to come back once. How did you get her back?”
He picked at a corner of the candy wrapper. “I don’t know. It was her idea.”
“How about that? Sounds like you do know.”
Her idea. Her terms.
The first eighteen years of her life, Tally lived under her mother’s rule. For the next twelve, she struggled with the fallout from that tyranny. Then he showed up and planned the next sixty years of her life without asking for any input from her.
No matter how noble his intentions, that would stink of control to her. Of course she’d bolted.
If he’d been more patient with her, less pushy with his agenda, he might have avoided alienating her. How many years would he have to wait to get a third chance?
Her future was in her hands, her choice to make, and he was getting his first taste of what it was like to be powerless and at the mercy of another.
It tasted like concentrated extract of bitterness.
He unwrapped the Twix but hesitated to use it to cleanse his palate. His mama raised him not to talk with his mouth full, and he had to say something. Tally was too important to him to be The Mystery Woman anymore. “Her name is Tally.”
“Good to know. Got a lock of Tally’s hair I can use in the voodoo doll if she doesn’t put you out of your misery soon?”
“Maybe I need to live with the misery for a while.” It wouldn’t kill him to be single for more than half an hour after having his heart broken.
“Maybe you do, but you don’t have to be miserable alone. Come over for dinner tonight.”
A smile teased at one corner of his mouth. “I’ll be okay, Liz. I don’t need supervision.”
“Good for you. I need somebody to keep my husband from hovering over me like a skinny buzzard for a couple of hours, and you are not going to deny a pregnant woman in favor of spending another night at home moping. Be there by seven or face my raging hormonal wrath.”
She struck just the right balance between love, guilt, and intimidation. She was going to be an excellent mom. “Yes, ma’am.”
He flung himself into a new design project after that, coming up for air only when his cell phone rang.
“Where the hell are you, Fielder?”
He checked his watch — five after seven. “Sorry. Can I avert your raging hormonal wrath by bringing dessert?”
“There’d better be a ton of it.”
“Don’t wait dinner on me. I’m on my way.”
The bakery down the street supplied all the celebratory cakes for the office and the traditional Monday morning muffins. So far as Ben knew, it did not deliver pizza, sell zucchini and eggs, or offer unconscionably expensive ginger cookies glued together with melted marshmallows.
Judging by how crowded the place was and the hour, he wasn’t the only man late for dinner and in need of apology sweets. It would be quicker to grab something from the supermarket than to wait his turn at the back of the throng.
He had one foot out the door when a voice that haunted his dreams called out, “Number seventy-two, you’re up!”
The hair on the back of his neck stood at attention. He’d reached the point of heartache where the smell of yeast triggered auditory hallucinations.
He forced himself to look over his shoulder and confront the delusion.
Tally stood behind the counter, wide, multicolored eyes looking back at him.
The world crashed around him.
Chapter 40
A rack of pans clanged to the floor back in the kitchen, and Tally nearly jumped out of her shoes. It was a common sound around here, as was the laughter that followed, but it came too close on the heels of the shock of seeing Ben.
She wasn’t prepared for either.
The customer across the counter laughed. “Relax. I’ll protect you.”
She gave him a distracted smile, boxed his bourbon pecan pie, took his money, and told him to come again. He said he would, but she’d already forgotten his face by that time.
She tried to find Ben’s face in the crowd but didn’t.
She had been so frazzled between trying to make a good impression at her new job and making her apartment habitable, she hadn’t wanted to call and dump all her stress on him. Once things settled down and she was no longer teetering on the edge of panic and could act like a grownup who had her life together, then she’d planned to call and casually suggest they get together for lunch or coffee or whatever grownups did because they were too mature to have a friend pass a note that read: Do you still like me? Check yes or no.
The plan hadn’t include him walking in on her before she was ready.
Well, he’d walked right out again, so her lack of preparedness wasn’t an issue, was it? That was a punch in the kidneys, but she had a job to do and throw pillows to buy and she would be fine, dammit.
She dropped the previous customer’s number tile in the box under the counter and got back to work with slightly less enthusiasm. “Number seventy-three?”
Ben shouldered his way through the crowd and slapped the corresponding tile on top of the display case.
Don’t blink. “I thought you left.”
“Not a chance.”
He’d come in the door behind at least a dozen people. “What did you do to the guy who had this number?”
“Gave him twenty bucks and recommended flowers and a heartfelt card instead.”
Do. Not. Blink. “Are you that desperate for a cookie?”
“No.”
He was looking at her like they were the only two people in the world and he wanted everything between them laid out right that instant, but she was acutely aware of their audience. She’d do her damnedest to open up for him, but she wasn’t anywhere near brave enough to make it a public exhibition.
She whispered, “I have to work.”
He glanced sideways at the onlookers. “Give me one of everything sweet.”
Her boss
liked that she could talk customers into buying anything, but everything was outrageous. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
She moved to the far end of the case, grabbed a box, and started filling it.
“I talked to Jules.”
She crushed an eclair with the tongs. “You called?”
“Yes. I called.” The accusation was unmistakable.
She bit her lower lip. “I was going to call you.”
“When?”
“When I’m not on edge about moving and a new job and getting lost on the way to the grocery store and there’s a two percent less chance I’ll get hysterical.”
When her hands didn’t shake so hard she dropped the phone every time she considered making use of the number his mother had given her.
“Not that one.”
The tongs hovered over a tray of bear claws. What part of her explanation did he contest? “Which one?”
“You’re going to fast. Slow down.”
“Oh.” She pondered the selection and chose a pastry with an overly browned edge. He wasn’t going to eat all of this, anyway.
On second thought, she put it back and grabbed a pretty one. Ben never wasted a sweet.
“We could have compared notes. I’ve been hysterical, too.”
“Did you get your car stolen again?”
A puff of laughter escaped him, and the ferocity of his expression softened. “Dammit, Tally, I could have drawn you a map to every grocery store in a twenty-mile radius.”
“You could have done a lot of things for me. And I wouldn’t know if I could handle them myself or if I was just freeloading off of you.”
“Okay.”
He made this so damn easy, even after she made it harder than it had to be. Hard was familiar and comfortable for her. She was just beginning to understand everything didn’t have to hurt.
She trusted him to be one of the things that wouldn’t hurt her. “Is it? It seems pretty stupid right about now.”
“You’re here. I don’t give a damn about anything else.” He closed his eyes. “I swore I wouldn’t, but I have to ask. What is it with that shirt?”