by C. L. Donley
“Yes, but it’s my vision for your house. I tried to capture certain things about you that… I liked. That you used to like.”
“Things you miss?”
“…Okay. Yes. Things I miss.”
The silence lingers as Cynthia swishes wine around in her glass. He should propose to her right here and now. But he has no ring. He can’t bear to do a single other half-assed thing regarding Cynthia.
“It reminds me of you, the house. The transformation. Not that you were a scary wreck that smelled like cat-piss before, but… you get what I mean.”
“No, I don’t, Ben,” she egged him on with a grin.
“Everything that was beautiful about the house then is beautiful about it now. No matter if it’s glamorously made over or smells like old grease, and wears ugly, oversized chef’s uniforms. That’s what I mean.”
Cynthia’s heart aches as she looks at Ben, the one stupid thing in her life that she childishly whines about not being able to have, to this day. Life has been so uncommonly hard. She just wants him, and it’s not fair. It’s not fair. She’s about to say the words aloud.
“Maybe I should keep it,” he suddenly says. It snaps Cynthia out of her trance.
“The house, you mean?”
“Yes.”
For some reason, her pulse skyrockets. “…Ben, don’t be silly,” Cynthia scoffs.
“You really want me to sell this house?”
“Of course.”
“To the highest bidder?”
“That’s… usually how it works.”
“I think I want to keep it. In fact, I think I want you have it.”
“What? No, Ben. It goes on the market.”
“Your very heart and soul is in every detail of this house.”
“Yes. And my heart and soul is what sells.”
“Well, enough selling. I doubt I’ll make very much money on it anyway. You pulled out all the stops, and I’m glad to see what my unlimited budget could do. I’m honored. And I want you to have it. It’s time you enjoyed your own hard work.”
“Says the man who inherited everything he has.”
Ben takes the bottle and refills his wine glass with a sigh.
“Cynth, enough. You’re constantly taking swipes at me.”
“Because you talk like someone who owns the world, and frankly it’s annoying.”
“You’re also well-to-do now, Cynthia. You sacrificed everything to get there, I should think you would enjoy it more.”
“Being your side piece for six months is hardly ‘everything.’”
Her words are meant to wound him and they succeed.
“I’m trying to do something nice for you.”
“And I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t want it done.”
“You’re just going to keep giving away the best parts of you? Just because someone’s willing to give you some cash?”
“Frankly, yes. Because some people didn’t grow up affording everything.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, this again.”
“Those people have to give over very large sums of money. They have to go into debt for decades, and in exchange they get something very very beautiful, a personal piece of art they get to live in.”
“I’m familiar with the process.”
“You should be. You literally export it.”
“Don’t you want to feel what they feel? For longer than a few months?”
“I can’t feel what they feel, Benji. It’s not the same. I have to give it away.”
“It sounds like you’re refusing to be happy.”
“No.”
“No?”
“It makes me happy to be valued, to have a vision and then see it carried out. Not to live in a shrine I created to myself.”
“A shrine to yourself? Or to us?”
Cynthia’s silent, stewing, as if to deny that he’s sitting right there next to her. Whether she’s snapped into a trance or out of one, he can’t quite discern. Either way, he senses the subject is wildly tender.
“Is that it? Is this our house, Cynth?”
The notion is adorable, almost childlike. Not almost, it is. And he is completely taken aback. That little liar, he thinks.
“Is that why you put in the elevator? Is it for me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snipes forcefully. She picks up the wine bottle from the table and tops off her glass. “You didn’t know whether you would buy or sell. I figured you would change your mind again at the last minute, and I was right. Rich types like you are always doing that. You had an unlimited budget.”
But her words at face value suddenly sound ridiculous to him. He can’t believe he’d ever allowed his insecurities to overpower the obvious truth. Suddenly he understands. This moment only makes sense with all the others if she really loved him. Loves him.
“Is that why you don’t want to live in it?” he deduces.
“Of course I don’t want to live in it!” Cynthia cries.
It’s all she says before she looks away with a scoff, and for a moment Ben wonders if she might just get up and go home. She sits there with her wine, sipping it absent-mindedly instead. After a long silence she begins again, matter-of-factly and with a far off look.
“The house. The one that we lost all those years ago. It had a carport. And this… kickass basement. It wasn’t really a basement, just a lower level. It had its own entrance. It was gonna be my apartment when I graduated. I was gonna pay rent.”
“Cynthia…”
“I just wanted to picture it. I just wanted to picture it, and then give it away. And then you called… out of the blue. You stole it from under me, and you just… fucked it all up. And you obviously had money to burn. I kept trying to think bigger and bigger and bigger…”
She takes a sip of her wine. A big one. They’re both silent until finally Cynthia has to speak. His stare is unnerving.
“It doesn’t mean anything, alright? My mind, it just grabs hold of something… we were just two dumb kids, I know that—”
Ben silences her with a hand on her lips. Cynthia recoils.
“Don’t… fucking play me, Ben.”
“I’m not. I would never.”
“Ben, you already did,” she spits, her eyes turning steely.
As Cynthia brings up the past without his prompting, Ben senses a breakthrough. He puts down his wine glass and leans in close to her, as if coaxing someone off a ledge.
“I never, lied to you, Cynthia. I wouldn’t. You have to believe me,” he responds, pleading vulnerability in his eyes.
Cynthia breathes hard as she looks at him, as he’s letting her probe him. He barely blinks, daring her to doubt him. Her eyes dart back and forth as she takes her fill, until she sees the boy that used to hold up the chow line and it makes her shake.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” she insists, breathless. “I hardly even knew what I was doing.”
“It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful,” he says. He grabs her hand.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m choosing, Cynth. I choose you. It’s you. It’s always been you.”
“I don’t understand—”
“I broke it off with Esmee.”
“You… what?! When?”
“Right after we talked. Right after you told me you were beautiful like stain and I could be happy with you. You were right about everything except one thing. I can’t be with just anyone. It has to be you. I want you to have this house, and I want you to live in it. With me.”
“Benji!”
“I’d love to tell you that this was my plan all along, to give you everything you ever wanted and deserved, but it wasn’t my plan. At all. It’s better than my plan. Marry me, Cynth. Choose me back. Please.”
Cynthia freezes, stunned.
“Unbelievable,” she shakes her head, leaning forward and slowly setting her goblet down on the glass coffee table in front of them.
“You’re crazy. Crazy and spoiled, Ben, you
know that?”
He does know that. He says nothing, only follows her brazen movements as she turns back to face him on the couch, eyeing his lips and he knows exactly what is happening.
Gently he grabs her face in his hands as she grabs his. Their lips crash together.
Now that he’s kissing her for the first time in ten years, it seems obvious.
“Cynthia,” he chants, remorse, of all things, washing over him. “I’m so sorry.”
“Just shut up,” she whispered, emotion in her voice. She kisses him as though it were a compulsion, with no end in sight. Some fast, some slow and deep. She doesn’t let a nanosecond go by without another.
She was right to do what she did, he realizes, as he lets her take her fill. He lets Cynthia straddle him as he holds her waist, with his arm so tight around her that she gasps. Tears pour out of her eyes as though he’s physically squeezed emotions out of her. His mouth engulfs hers again and he can feel her body tense frantically, rocking him forward. Her lips break from his as she throws her arms around his neck and clings to him, sobbing. He pulls her towards him, holding her as if they were on the edge of a cliff. This is what had been missing. This is what he wanted to say to her.
And she’d wanted to say it back. This whole time.
He tries to hide the fact that he’s rock hard within seconds of this heartfelt moment. But he can’t. And the moment Cynthia can feel him, her body is grinding against his and clinging to his rod like a magnet. She pulls forcefully away from him to undo the buttons on her dress so she can peel down the top of it. He wants to undo his pants and free his cock but he doesn’t want to be presumptuous, even though he can read Cynthia’s sparkling eyes and thoughts now the way he used to. Sure enough, her hands go to his belt buckle and he takes over the job, leaving her to undo her nude colored bra.
“Fuck,” he exclaims at the sight of a topless Cynthia, the sensation of her hand around his cock again for the first time in ten years. His voice echoes in the private darkness of the narrow back patio, lined by the tall cedar fence and greenery. He breathes in frustration. He wants her too much. But she needs this, and he can’t let her down.
Once she lowers herself onto him, their calm, quiet chemistry once again takes over as though their first time were yesterday. Ben closes his eyes tight, trying to shield himself from the image of Cynthia’s ecstasy so he can last as long as possible. He digs his fingertips into her thighs. Her breath hits his ear again and again as she tightly clings to him, her gasps turning to sobs that Ben can’t decipher. Whether they’re happy sobs or not, his heart breaks for his Cynthia, whom he inadvertently left out in the cold and took him back without warning.
“Don’t stop,” she weeps.
“Oh, Cynth,” he quietly moans, taking her face into his hands, distracting himself with her kiss until he can regain his composure enough to resume his steady strokes, deeper this time.
“Oh my God,” Cynthia grits her teeth. Sex with Ben is as good as it ever got for her. She never felt so loved and adored. Practically worshipped. And it only seemed to feel like anything when those brown eyes were looking back at her, his smooth, firm hands touching her. She regrets taking it for granted.
“Fuck! Benji!”
He slinks one arm around her waist and holds her even tighter against him with the other, his composure unraveling.
“I’m gonna fuckin’ come inside you, baby,” he whispers, as if a lament.
“Yes!” she whispers.
Fuck. Cynthia Gordon is once again calling his name, begging him to breed her like a beautiful dream. He let her do it a lot more than he should have in the past, because in the moment he simply could not give a fuck. It became his way of forcing fate’s hand, making it easier to break off the engagement if Cynthia turned up pregnant. He questioned her motives after that, but now she is once again letting him fill her, which means she’s still that same wild girl, making her way around the world on just her instincts. And she finds him worthy. Still.
“I need to hear you say it again.”
“Come inside me, Benji.”
“That’s what you want?”
“That’s what I want.”
“Say it fucking loud.”
She says it again and again, until she is emptying her muffled cries over and over into his shoulder as she milks his cock with her hips, chasing her release that comes with a vengeance on the heels of his own. It is a noise record for the couple, and Cynthia is a sobbing mess by the end. He continues to hold her as they breathe hard. He can tell by the rasp in her voice that she’s emotional.
“I love you so much,” Ben whispers. Cynthia responds with a kiss on his neck. She raises her lips to his ear.
“My mama’s gone,” she confides.
“I know,” he whispers gently.
“She didn’t even get to see…”
“I’m so sorry, Cynth.”
“That fucking money,” she pants, forlorn. She rocks on him a bit as if in tangible pain, beating a clenched hand against him. Ben’s chest tightens.
“That’s not what did it,” he sternly insists, “That’s not your fault.”
“She was fine when we lived in the van, Benji. God wouldn’t take her if we were still on the street, because I needed her.”
“Cynthia, stop it. You’re driving yourself insane.”
“I buried her here because I didn’t want to be alone. She should be buried next to daddy, but I couldn’t…”
Ben just cradles her head nestled in the crook of his neck as she continues to sob relentlessly. Finally, limp with exhaustion, her head still resting on his shoulder, she whispers, “please don’t hate me,” her head rocking back and forth pitifully.
“I could never, ever hate you, Cynth. Do you hear me?”
“Promise me you won’t,” she raises her head and looks at him intently.
“Cynthia… I promise,” he says, wiping her tears with his thumbs. He grabs her raw face and kisses her again, this time slow and needy, until she’s reaching between his legs again. His mind races at the thought of Cynthia’s insatiable need for him and his body responds in kind, another record..
“Cynthia, wait—”
“Don’t tell me no, Ben,” she moans.
“I won’t, but… not here. Not like this.”
“Yes, here. Yes like this.”
“Why?”
“Because we can. Because it’s your house. Our house.”
“I’ve waited ten years—”
“I know.”
“I want to make love, Cynthia.”
Cynthia whined, laying her head on his shoulder. She was never very good with waiting. He chuckled, his new reality still feeling new and dreamy.
“Let’s take a shower. Like we used to?”
“Did you notice the bench?” she sniffs.
“In the upstairs master? I did,” he smiled, “let’s try it out.”
Wordlessly they retreat upstairs, entering the cavernous bathroom with the long shower bench. Cynthia leans against the double vanity with a flirty smile.
“Age before beauty,” she says. Ben starts to strip unceremoniously, loosening, unhooking and unbuttoning from head to toe until peeling it all off was the only job left.
“Do you think our neighbors heard all that?” Ben asks as he watches Cynthia reach for her own buttons on her black dress.
“Probably.”
“That might be a new public record.”
“Lotta records broken tonight,” she smirked as she began to pull her dress over her head. Ben stops her, undressing her himself. Cynthia undresses him back until they’re both naked.
They try not to ogle each other until they are both wet, until the temperature was just right and they were shrouded underneath a canopy of white noise, the sound of pressured water all around them. The sight of Cynthia’s naked form is instantly arousing and Ben doesn’t hide his enthusiasm. Heat and emotion mingle together in his big brown adoring gaze and Cynthia is melting all over again,
feeling his broad, sinewy bare shoulders for the first time in a decade. When their lips finally meet again, soft and wet with tears and tongues and the heat of the shower, they find their words once again, kissing and caressing apologies. Panting and moaning regret. Groping promises to never let go again.
They reunite in the California king of the master bedroom, where Ben takes his time driving Cynthia back and forth to the brink, slowly making love to her until they are again spent.
“I guess I can cancel the reveal tomorrow,” Cynthia lazily replies with her eyes closed.
“Don’t. It’s important to you.”
“Not if we already used the shower. And the bed.”
“And the patio,” he smirks, stroking her hair, her head on his chest.
“Did you really break it off with Esmee?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t say it like that, like I’m crazy. You have a history of leaving fiancées in the wind.”
“I have done some growing in ten years, Cynth.”
“I’ll say,” she said with a naughty grin that had his cock stirring. “How’d she take it?”
“Better than I expected. She seemed to know it was coming.”
“Where’s she now?”
“Probably landed in Prague this morning.”
“I hope she’s okay. I liked her, Benji.”
“Me too. She reminded me of you. A lot. I didn’t know that, at the time.”
“…I don’t know if we should’ve done this.”
“This is the best thing we’ve ever done.”
“I’m no good, Ben.”
“Cynthia, enough.”
“I only thought I loved you. And then he wrote me that check. The only thing that rivaled us was the memory of holding that check in my hand. All those zeroes. It was so plain. I get checks like that all the time now, and I still remember it.”
“I understand.”
“How can you?”
“You don’t think I’ve seen what money does to people? To grown men, twice your age? The spell that comes over them? You were young. And you had nothing.”
“I didn’t give you a second look. I walked right out of that building and I didn’t even give you a first look, let alone a second.”
“You took the money and invested it. You became independent. Made something of yourself, and then fucking paid it back. You, Miss Gordon, are not ‘no good.’”