“Perfect.” Amelia smiled and she held her breath to hear the story that she had been waiting for all night.
“I attended college on an athletic scholarship. When I was in my junior year, I had some really impressive numbers and a few pro clubs were eager to take me on. Since the semester was close to an end I decided to finish up and have an agent get me the best deal possible.”
Amelia waited as he took a drink from the melted dregs of ice in his glass. When he sat it back down, she leaned over and refilled the contents with fresh rum.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. Continue.” She sat stock still and waited for his story.
“You are the bossiest woman alive, you know that?”
“I used to be told that was one of my more endearing traits.”
“I bet.”
Amelia refused to entertain his hesitation. “If you recall Benjamin, you said this was necessary. I didn’t.”
“I know. It’s just that even while I want to tell you, I don’t know how. I’ve never told a living soul the whole story. But I want you to know.”
“How about this… I’ll talk and you listen. By the time I’m finished, you will think you had a cake walk for the most part.”
She could see by the look on his face that he didn’t believe her. “Okay, I’m all ears.”
Chapter Eight: You Can’t Handle the Truth
Ben was fairly sure that he had shot himself in the foot. Just because the situation he had been in before was almost more than he could bear, didn’t mean that she had seen less trauma and for totally different reasons. He didn’t know her story, the tale of what made her such a special person, a woman that thought so much of others that she disregarded self.
She was silent for a long moment, not the lengthy spell he’d taken, frozen like a coward. But more a calm before the storm, when all was thoughtful and even the very animals heeded the pensive warning Mother Nature gave her children.
“It was ten years ago. Do you know the book you read? From your sister’s box while you convalesced?”
“Which one?”
Amelia inhaled and released the air in a lengthy hiss. “The Straight Jacket Diaries.”
“Yeah.”
“I wrote that.”
The writer of the novels was named A.E Barnett and he had never put two and two together. Ben couldn’t believe that the woman before him was the author of one of the books that helped him so much before. He had never personally met an author, unless one counted reporters and before he’d licked his wounds in private, Ben had spoken with his share of the rabble-rousing paparazzi. “That’s amazing.”
“Yeah. Well, ten years ago…”
She told him about how she had gone to her very first book signing with so much joy in her heart. Then he learned of the cruel hand she was dealt when she was burned by an incensed man. How the man had blamed Amelia for the fact that his wife left him after he cruelly abused her for decades. The man had fixated on Amelia after his wife, Lily, walked away from him when she read Amelia’s book. Finally, the man after a drunken bender concocted the plot to hurt her, the same way he was hurt.
“I’ll never forget what he said to me as I writhed in the floor begging for the pain to stop. Nothing in life could be as painful as corrosives when applied to the skin. It feels as if you’re being eaten alive by a fire, but there are no flames to put out. I rolled over and over as I went into shock. I flopped like a fish out of water. He said to me, “Now you know what it feels like to be burned by a stranger.”
Amelia shuddered and Ben immediately reached over to her. He tugged off her light weight tennis shoes, along with her cutesy owl printed ankle socks.
“Take off the jacket and hat, Amelia.”
She looked nervously at him, but he refused to let her fear force him into backing down. When she saw he wasn’t going to give in, she shrugged off the jacket followed by the cap. He pried his own shoes off, popped the socks into the empty cavern inside. The fact that he had taken his shoes off in her house made his cock lift slightly. As if the sight of their footwear side-by-side was more intimate than anything he’d ever had before.
Even with the rock-star sex groupies tended to give, all to say they’d fucked an athlete. But for him, that game grew old far quicker than it did with most men of his ilk. Within six months of boning his first ball bunny, he was sick of fly-by-night sex with women he less than barely knew.
“Doesn’t that feel better?” He asked her as her toes curled up, then flexed outwards.
“Certainly does.” She smiled, but that changed to a look of fright when he grabbed her feet and placed them in his lap. She was effectively forced to turn and recline against the arm of the couch.
“Please, continue.” How quickly thing change, Ben thought, at first she was the one impatient, now he was the one to provide the reminders.
“O-okay.” She twisted her hands together, then when she looked down at her hands in the midst of a soapless wash stopped the movement altogether. “After years of therapy and numerous skin grafts, taken from places that hurt to even think about later, I was physically healed. But emotionally? I know I was a mess then. I might be bad off now, but before? Ugghh, I went through every stage of grief every single day. Even looking in the mirror is hard to do. Can you imagine looking at your reflection, and the person that you see is not you? It was like I had to learn a new body, I had to learn how not to cringe at the sight of myself. I remember the pain of the burn, but the pain of seeing this face in the mirror every day was a million times worse than anything else done to me.”
“I’m sorry Amelia. You’re right. I can’t completely understand what happened to you. But I can sympathize.”
“Thanks, Ben. But I think the hardest part was that when the bandages had to come off, my fiancée ran like he owed me money.”
“Now that I can understand.” He certainly could, just as she was about to find out.
“I moved here when I realized there was nothing left for me back home. One day, I went outside, uncharacteristically. As I passed by a place I used to eat, my ex was there with his wife and their child. It was as if everything I had was stolen from me and it wasn’t my fault. Like I helped others but had to sacrifice myself in the process. I drank the pain away for months… lost an entire season. Spring as a matter of fact. That was the year I moved here.” Amelia’s eyes were dry, but he was guessing that was only because she’d cried so much about what happened that there were no tears left for her to give.
Ben rubbed the arch of her foot with his thumb and watched as the pain in her eyes melted into pleasure.
“Since you were willing to tell me everything, I’m going to tell you a story that no other person knows.” She sat up, as if he’d drawn her attention away from her own hurt. And all it took was the knowledge that his pain would also burn on the altar crafted out of the harsh baggage carried between them.
“It all started about ten years ago for me too…” He told her about how he had gone to State with an athletic scholarship. His major was in economics and business management. “I’m a farmer’s son, Amelia, we’re simple folk. But the hardest part about farming is the supply and demand. Sometimes you have a great harvest, with no diseases, bugs, or poor rain to plague you. Other years can be much harder. I thought that if I wanted to get a degree, at least I could get one that would help the family business…”
But partway into his junior year, there were a few major league scouts sniffing around, and he decided to talk with an agent. Ben was smart enough to know that if her were crazy enough to make his own deal, that he would get taken somehow. Even if every other decision he made thereafter was dumber than hell, he did try to start out well. His father was proud, but disappointed as the elder wanted to have his son follow in the footsteps of many a proud Winston man. And Benjamin wanted the same, but he knew that if he played his cards right, he could ensure that his parents were always well taken care of. No matter how well the farm did in th
e harvest seasons.
But when he was picked, the contract was a good one. He made more money per year than he would make in ten in the family business. After he started making money like water, Ben did practically anything he wanted.
First, he purchased a condo downtown. Then there was the Maserati. He acquired a steady stream of women, all who loved to shop. He didn’t care, the revolving streams of ladies were all easily disposed of and none of them cared about him anyway. But after a few months of sex, sex and more sex, he was bored with the vapid women he wasted his time with. He was practically a monk at that juncture. Gratuitous sex wasn’t going to cut it for the country boy, even though he dealt with a lot of ribbing from his teammates.
A couple of years and a beyond stale sex life later, he met Kylie. Somehow, she was a breath of fresh air, pure womanly curves that put Marilyn Monroe to shame and a brain that gave Stephen Hawking a run for his money. Within a month, he knew that he loved Kylie. She was almost anything a man could want.
But she kept finding ways to delay marriage and one year turned into two, then a third. The next thing he knew, his patience was gone. At first, she used her education as the reason she didn’t want to wed. Then she was a hair’s breadth from earning her PhD, but she was still skittish about setting a date.
After that, he started really paying attention to what she wasn’t saying. One night everything came to a head. Ben had a few drinks under his belt and he was ready to talk about the elephant in the room, hidden behind their healthy sex life and singles fun.
During the confrontation about what was really on his mind, Kylie blurted out, “I’m pregnant.”
Ben fell to his knees, and all he felt was extreme joy. But Kylie acted far from elated. In fact, she seemed as if someone died. Her face was drawn tight and lips thin, bloodless. “What’s wrong Kylie?”
He could never forget what she said next. “I can’t do this.”
“What? I don’t understand.” He truly didn’t. The fact that Kylie carried his baby was only confirmation of what he knew. It was past time for them to become man and wife. He had no problem swapping his Maserati for something more kid friendly.
“I don’t want the baby.”
What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
Instead of trying to figure it out he asked. “What do you mean, you don’t want the baby?” She looked at him as she shed a single tear that dripped down her right cheek.
“Just that, Ben. I. Don’t. Want. The. Baby.” Each word was punctuated with a finality that made him sick at the end of the syllables.
He couldn’t let her destroy their child. “I do! If you don’t want it, then give the baby to me. I can raise it! I’ll give you anything I have Kylie.” All Ben knew was at that moment he was willing to do anything to change her mind. He was willing to pay any price to save their baby.
“I don’t even want to have the baby.”
“You’re going to kill our baby, Kylie? Why? Because a child doesn’t fit into your five year plan?”
“I just can’t, Ben.” Her face was resolute and he felt true rage for the first moment in his life.
“What kind of monster are you?” In that moment, he knew one thing. That he never loved Kylie, he could never love a woman who would murder his child.
“The kind that does what she has to do.”
“If you do this, I’ll never speak to you again.”
“I anticipated that. Be grateful I even told you. I didn’t plan this, but you browbeat me into it.” Benjamin clenched his fists and for the first time in life, feared he would hit a woman.
“Get out!” He yelled and Kylie scurried backwards, away from him. When she ran out of the door, he punched a hole into the nearest wall. There were dry bits of paint and shards of drywall embedded in his knuckles.
He spent the night pouring enough liquor down his throat to fall into a gluttonous stupor. The only thing he remembered of that night even now was the fact that he had the bright idea of going to the store for another bottle of liquid ruin.
When he came to, he was in a hospital bed with no memory of what happened. “I had fallen down the stairs and had the bad luck to land on my knee and wrist.” Ben shrugged out of his jacket and held the wrist out to her. “It’s held together with pins and the knee is the same. So I understand how you feel. I thought the world was about to be given to me on a platter, only to find that I was to lose it all. It’s kind of like Midas. He wanted gold so badly that when he was given the gift to make all as he wished, Midas lost his own child to his greed.”
Amelia sat still for a moment, and then she leaned forward and shifted her feet from his lap. She scooted closer and then her thigh pressed to his. Her arms wrapped around him and he took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry, Ben.”
“Me too.” Even now, he mourned the child he had never gotten the chance to know. He loved children, and the fact that he had lost the opportunity to raise a little boy or girl still ate at him.
Benjamin stood and stretched. When Amelia did the same, he took her hand.
“Let’s go to bed.” Amelia stiffened then smiled.
“Alright.”
“Now, don’t think to show me to a guest room. I want you to take me to your room. I plan on holding you tonight and waking up with you in the morning too.”
“But… Ben, I don’t know if I’m ready for that much intimacy.”
“I’m going to keep my hands to myself. Well, as much as I can help anyway.” He smiled and she slowly ascended the steps with him in tow.
Her room was just like her, serene and self-contained. Everything had a home here and he saw the amount of time she had taken to determine exactly what would go into the area. There was just enough that the room wasn’t bare, but the space was still sparse, Spartan within in the spotless cleanliness. Nut brown walls and crisp white trim with a large four poster bed and a few dressers the only furniture. There were no photos, nothing to deem the room as hers. Any person that walked into the room could be comfortable in the generic decor.
He almost felt like he was in Hotel Amelia.
“Would you like a shower? I can toss your clothes into the washer if you want.”
Ben didn’t have to think twice about her offer. “I sure would love a shower. I probably smell worse than a three day dead fish in the sun.” She laughed at his analogy. After being on the field half the evening, he probably smelled far from fresh and he didn’t want to leave Amelia with that kind of impression.
“Why is it every analogy you give has something to do with the sun? I think you smell just fine, but I certainly want you to feel comfortable. Follow me.” There was a small en suite master bath in her room.
She pointed out a few of her most recent additions to the space. The bedroom connected to a closet that spanned the hallway. It appeared that she used the small nursery to make the hallway, which was spanned on both sides with cabinets and long bar shaped racks. There was even a place for shoes at the bottom, each labeled with a picture of the contents held within the carefully stacked boxes.
“First stop on our tour is the master bathroom.” She handed him a towel from the large cabinet. “Here you are. Oh, wait a sec, here is a toothbrush.” She pulled out a large package of the tooth cleaners and he could see that she was well prepared for anything. Maybe even Armageddon, he thought with a laugh that he buried in his chest.
“Thank you.”
“It’s no problem. There are several types of soap in the shower basket beside the tub. I’m just going to wash your clothes, so leave them outside of the door and I’ll just hop into the hall bath.”
After she walked away, he left the small pile of clothing in front of the door and took the offered shower. The water was better quality than the city’s harsh mineral output and he vaguely wondered if she had added softeners to her tank.
Chapter Nine: Hold Me
Amelia picked up the discarded clothes and took them to the washer. The garments smelled like Ben with a kick of so
mething sensual and she couldn’t help but to bring the fabric to her nose before she tossed the load into the basin.
She quickly grabbed something to wear to bed. Normally, she would wear something beautiful when she dressed for the night. Over the years it had become a habit. Even if no one else saw, she tried to build her flagging esteem with the garments.
But tonight? She was going to wear more discrete night garb. So she tugged out a long sleeve tee and tights. Her bath was the quickest on record. Shoot, she lathered her entire frame so fast that she should have been issued a ticket. She brushed her teeth, but really she was far short of the two minutes that dentists recommended.
But the only thing she couldn’t avoid in her usual routine was her hair. If left to its own devices, the locks would be a mass of tangles that she couldn’t even comb in the morning. She brushed the straight length away from her face and twisted it into her signature bedtime braid. Ben asked for the good, bad, and ugly, and he was about to get it.
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