Romance: Love Left Behind - A Mystery Romance: (Romance, Mystery, Mystery Romance, Romantic Suspense)

by Paige Powers

  Starla didn’t answer, just squeezed her fingers a little tighter against his. The silence set back in and for a few minutes neither of them spoke. They just stared at the sky, at the hundreds of thousands of stars glittering up above them. The universe seemed so vast and they were so small, so Ben couldn’t figure out how, in this grandiose world, the girl next to him meant everything to him.

  “Come with me,” he said, already anticipating her answer. It was a conversation that they had been through before, months ago when Ben received his acceptance letter to NYU. He had brandished the letter in his hand as he had knocked excitedly on Starla’s front door, only to be met with a face of defeat.

  “You know that’s not possible.”

  “It is. I want you to come with me, Star. We can get a little apartment. You can find some work and I’ll go to school. We can be together. You know how badly I want that, don’t you? For us to be together?” Ben let go of her hand so he could prop himself up on one arm. He stared deep into those green eyes that he had fallen in love with and felt his heart jerk when he saw that they were full of pain. “Please, Starla. I want to give you everything you deserve.”

  There was a slight stretching of skin as she withdrew her fingers from his. She sat up, wrapping her arms around her slightly shivering frame. “But Lisa,” she said simply, letting the rest of her sentence fall away into the dark.

  Lisa…now Ben knew that Starla would never leave that small town of Bellen, New Jersey as long as Lisa was still around. She was Starla’s younger sister, only sixteen years old, and suffered from a condition known as Hutchinson-Guilford Progeria Syndrome. Basically, Lisa’s body looked and acted like the body of an elderly woman. She was stiff, couldn’t move easily. Her skin was paper-thin and tore easily. Worst of all, Lisa had heart disease. She wasn’t going to live for a long time.

  The two sisters had grown up as close friends despite the difference in appearance and lifestyle. Starla had the privilege of participating in many activities that Lisa couldn’t do, which always weighed heavily on the older sister’s heart. When her parents had lost their jobs and were forced to rely on government assistance, it was Starla who went out and found a full-time job. Every day she balanced school, work, and care for her sister. Sometimes, Ben was surprised to see Starla walking towards him with a smile on her face, confused about how this girl who had everything in the world going against her but was still happy.

  That’s why he wanted to whisk her away to the big city – away from the long hours at the diner with ungrateful customers, away from Lisa and heart disease and the inevitable stench of death that always hung around their house, away from all of the pain and heartbreak that Starla had dealt with in that small town existence. Ben wanted to show her bright lights and movie stars, wanted to hold her hand while they sat on the Ferris wheel in the Toys ‘R Us in Times Square. He wanted to wake up every morning to that cute button nose and the soft sound of her snoring.

  “Lisa will be fine with your parents,” he said half-heartedly, not really believing his own words.

  A soft, wheedling sigh escaped from Starla’s lips. “We can’t afford her medicine unless I’m working.”

  “Do you just not want to go with me? Is that what it is?” His voice rose. He was aware that he was becoming irrational and didn’t really care. “Every time I ask you to come with me, you have an excuse. I love you, Starla. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  “Don’t make this about you.”

  “It is about me!”

  “No, it isn’t! It isn’t about you!” Starla’s vocal volume rose to match Ben’s, as she shouted, “There’s more to life than going to college and being rich, Ben! My sister is dying and I want to spend as much time as I can with her. I work so hard.” Her voice caught in her throat for a minute. She rarely got this angry, rarely felt the need to scream. Tears welled up in her eyes and she wiped them away with the back of her hand, leaving a dark-brown streak of dirt across her cheek. “I work so hard and it still isn’t enough. Not for you, not for my parents. So I’m going to stay here and support the only person who knows how hard I work, and that’s my sister.”

  Their anger rolled over them like clouds, dampening what had been such a wonderful night. Above them, the glow of the stars seemed to dim, washing them in a deep blackness. Starla closed her eyes, trying to eradicate them of any stray tears that might have slipped out. She felt crying was a waste of time, a sign of weakness. People could call her many things but weak was not one of them.

  Next to her there was a shuffle on the grass, some movement, as Ben stood up and wiped debris off from his pants. His dark purple tie was skewed off to one side.

  “If you want to come with me,” he muttered, “you need to tell me now. Otherwise, I’m walking away, Star. If you say no, I’m going inside and that’s it. You and I are done. I’m leaving this town no matter what.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Starla, I’m dead serious. You need to tell me right now that you’re coming with me or this relationship is over.”

  Pain intensified in his gut when the girl in front of him stayed quiet, her head held in her hands. She wouldn’t even look up at him. Ben took a few deep breaths, trying to steady himself, trying to give her time to agree with him. God, he was so in love that he thought she might actually do it. He heard her hiccup softly as she tried to hold back her sadness, and then nothing.

  Defeat. It hurt like nothing he had felt before. “Fine,” he said. “Fine.” He turned on his heel and opened the back door to the house. With one final look back at the only girl he had ever loved, he shut the door on his first relationship and solidified his move into a greater life.

  As the night turned cold and bitter, so did Starla. For another hour she remained planted in the center of Ben’s backyard, unable to stop the tears.

  Chapter Two:

  2014 – Ben

  The morning air quivered with the sounds of honking taxi cabs and screaming children unsuccessfully being soothed by their frazzled nannies. The city never slept and neither did the inhabitants. The area around Central Park was notorious for the morning noise as the tourists with their clicking cameras wandered around the sidewalks hoping to get a feel of what New York City was made up of.

  It had been eight years since Ben had first moved to the city for college and he was finally acclimated to the city sounds. At first, upon his arrival at NYU, they were jarring. He didn’t understand how people could spend their nights accompanied by a near-constant stream of curse words and car horns. Oftentimes he couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning in his bed, wondering why he had traded the near-silent streets of Bellen for the hustle and bustle of a city.

  “It’s not for everybody,” his roommate, a striking African-American guy named Kyle, had told him one morning. “Now me, I love this city. But I grew up here. I can’t even hear no noises outside anymore, tune ‘em out. But you?” With that, Kyle had chuckled. “With you, you’re a small town type of guy. Can’t stand the noise, the movement, the aggressiveness. Everything in New York City is aggressive. The people, the streets, the women. Bet you can’t handle that. You’re not used to it. Probably have some sweet little chick back home, don’t ya?”

  Ben, remembering Starla, had shrugged and said no. He wanted to leave all the nonsense of his past behind and move forward. He had finally escaped. It was at that moment, talking to Kyle, that he promised himself he wasn’t going to be some sweet small-town guy that other New Yorkers and other students could take advantage of. He wasn’t going to be like Starla Bluff, forever stuck in stagnation. So he committed himself to finding parts of the city to love, to getting used to the noise, to being the Benjamin Brindell that he knew he could be.

  Eight years later, he couldn’t believe that he had ever disliked the sounds of the city. They were like the sweetest music to his ears now. It was difficult to sleep without the white noise of footfall and screeching cars. Every morning he made himself toast with butter
and strawberry jam, sat at his kitchen table, and listened. He was finally a big city man.

  That morning, he had opened the fridge to take out the strawberry jam and realized there was none. He made a mental note to run to the market later and grab some, lest his breakfast routine be ruined for more than one day. Begrudgingly he decided to use grape jelly, a much less appealing option. Ben didn’t even like grape jelly much; he found it cloyingly sweet. It stuck to his palate all day, making him errantly smack his lips and run his tongue around the inside of his mouth. He normally wouldn’t keep such a disgustingly processed food item in his refrigerator, but Mina liked it. The old saying was “Happy wife, happy life,” but it should honestly have been changed to “Happy female companion, happy life.”

  Mina Gurkiri was, by all means, an aggressive woman, as his roommate had described it to him back in the day. She was a socialite, a daddy’s girl, and a brilliant investigative journalist with a smile like strawberry lemonade. She knew exactly what buttons to push to get people to do what she wanted them to do and wasn’t afraid to push them. Mina was fearless, or at least it seemed that way. She never backed down from a challenge or a story, sometimes even going to dangerous depths to acquire information for her scoops.

  The fact that she was mind-numbingly gorgeous didn’t hurt either. She rarely wore her brown, silky hair up, unless it was for a special occasion, but always wore black kohl around her eyes. She claimed it made them pop. She even wore a special shade of red lipstick that she had special-ordered.

  “It’s not exactly whore red,” she explained to Ben once. He had been resting his head on her lap. She was running her fingers absentmindedly through his hair, sending tingles across his scalp. Her fingertips were like electricity and Ben wanted to get electrocuted every day. “But it’s not virginal red either. It’s more of a provocative red. A red that makes people want to tell me their deepest secrets.”

  She was still asleep that morning, though, fresh-faced in bed. Her hair was strewn across the pillows, her body wrapped nearly completely in the white comforter. The sight made Ben chuckle, as well as remember that he should probably buy another blanket soon. While he relished the chance to sleep with that beautiful woman every night, Mina was a notorious cover hog. She usually tucked a corner of the blanket under her body and then, as she slept, would roll over, completely enveloping herself. She spent the night being warm and toasty while Ben froze off to the side. Mina sometimes complained that he kept the temperature in the apartment too high, and Ben repeatedly explained that he wouldn’t need to keep the temperature so high if someone understood how to share.

  Ben slathered his toast with butter and added a tiny smear of grape jelly, enough so that he’d get the flavor but hopefully not explode his mouth with sweetness. Holding his plate with one hand, he popped the jelly back into the fridge, being careful to close the door quietly as to not wake up the slumbering princess.

  He broke from his routine again at the breakfast table. Rather than listening to the outside sounds, he cracked open his laptop. With one hand, he lifted the toast to his mouth, taking tiny bites. It was too sweet but he figured he couldn’t change it now. His other hand typed away, pulling up his favorite websites so he could scroll through the daily posts. He checked Reddit and Twitter, absentmindedly scrolled through a few news posts on MSN. Then he brought up Facebook.

  As he finished his first slice of toast, he read through all of the status updates. Most of them were from his colleagues in the city. They stayed up late, woke up early, and made the most out of their days. A few statuses were posted by journalists, some of Mina’s friends, trying to draw people to stories they were tracking.

  He clicked on one story about a seven-car pile-up in the Bronx, sucking in some air as he took in the pictures of cars crumpled up like pieces of paper. In one picture, there was a rusty red streak across the pavement – blood from some of the people who didn’t make it. Out of everyone involved, two escaped unharmed, five – including two children – were in the hospital, and three were killed.

  What a shitty start to the morning, Ben thought. He picked up his other piece of toast and finished it quickly, trying to override the images with the crunching noise reverberating through his skull. Swallowing the last piece of crust, he clicked out of the website and went back onto Facebook.

  He found himself looking up people that he hadn’t spoken to for years, looking through pictures of old high school friends who still lived in Bellen. For a little while he scrolled down the page of Katie Winer. Katie worked at the diner in town. Growing up, she had been the second closest friend he had in Bellen, following only slightly behind Starla. She was a rambunctious redhead with a gravelly voice and a heart of steel. Katie was a frequent tagalong on many of Ben and Starla’s high school escapades. It made Ben’s insides warm to scan her page and find out that Katie was doing well back home.

  In his heart he knew what page and what name he was looking for, but he wanted to pretend that he was over his first love. He always ended up back on her page though. Every single time.

  Starla looked even more beautiful at twenty-five than she did at seventeen. She had grown into herself. There were curves in all of the right places. She had grown her hair out so it rolled over her shoulders in long, luscious blonde waves. Her profile picture hadn’t changed for a few months. It was her on her front porch, hands planted on her hips, grinning into the camera. She wore lip gloss so shiny that Ben could see it sparkling through the computer, but had almost no makeup on the rest of her face. It was refreshing to see someone look so natural, especially when every woman in New York City seemed to paint their faces on daily basis.

  He looked through her page, focusing on menial status updates about the way her life was going, before moving on to check her relationship status. It hadn’t changed in years so he wasn’t surprised to see that she was still in a relationship with Blair Bexler, who had been in their high school graduating class. Unwittingly a groan escaped from Ben’s lips. It wasn’t that he hated Blair, it was just … no – it was that he hated Blair. The guy had always been stuck-up and entitled, thinking that he deserved everything in life simply because he existed. During his junior year of college, when Ben found out that Starla and Blair had started dating, he had been bewildered. He couldn’t figure out what Starla saw in the guy.

  His cursor moved up to the “Send a message” button and pressed it. Their past conversations sprung up on the screen. The last time they spoke had been two weeks before, a short conversation in which Ben wished Starla a happy birthday and asked about her plans for the night.

  Despite Ben’s insistence that his leaving New Jersey would be the end of their relationship, they had taken up communication somewhere around his sophomore year of college, after Lisa had passed away. Starla had been inconsolable and had reached out to Ben as one of the only people who had been involved in that aspect of her life. He had comforted her to the best of his abilities, leaving inspirational quotes or messages of good will for her on days when he knew she was suffering – the day of Lisa’s funeral, Lisa’s upcoming birthday, Thanksgiving.

  They began speaking a bit more after that, ignoring the awkwardness of Ben’s departure. They kept up to date on the menial details of their day to day life. Ben usually talked about his classes, how much there was to do in New York City, and the people that he met. He wanted to, in a way, prove to Starla that she had missed out on a wonderful opportunity. All she spoke about was how people in Bellen were doing and some of the people she met at her waitressing job. They briefly spoke about whether either of them was dating, then dropped the subject, not wanting to delve into it too deeply.

  Then Ben met Mina. The two of them were in a journalism class together. While Ben was taking the class to fulfill his English minor, Mina was on a mission to become a word-class journalist. On the first day of class, they sat next to each other. Ben got lost trying to take notes because the professor was speaking too quickly. When he asked the quiet-looking
ethnic girl next to him if he could copy some of her notes after class, he got a whispered lecture about learning to write in short-hand. After all, what was a journalist who couldn’t take notes?

  It was the start of something new. Mina eventually let Ben copy her notes on the condition that he take her out for some drinks. Their conversation had flowed freely and no topic was left behind. Family, friends, dreams, fears…everything was discussed. Mina was one of the least judgmental people Ben had ever met. She lived her life in that New York frame of mind.

  They had consummated their relationship on a cold and blustery Friday night in December of Ben’s sophomore year at school. He found it funny that he could remember the specifics of the night but figured it was because such a momentous occasion was meant to stand out. Mina and he had been out for dinner at Bowery Diner and had then wandered back to her dorm, where she had invited him up to her room to watch movies. Her roommate was away that weekend. Her bed had red sheets and a blue comforter, both soft and plush, so when she pressed his chest down, pushed him onto the bed, he felt like he was floating on air.

  She had moved her hands down his body, feeling his muscles contract beneath her fingers. Ben’s pants fit a bit tighter. He watched as Mina unbuttoned his jeans and slowly drew them off from his body. As funny as it was, when she dropped them on the floor, he worried about wrinkles and creases. There was almost nothing that Ben disliked more than creases in his jeans. But then Mina started using her hands, her fingers, and her hot, hot mouth, and all the worries disappeared from Ben’s head.

  She was his first, his last, and every single one in between. But the sex was good and the care and compassion he felt every day was better, so Ben didn’t really mind that he didn’t have much experience in the way of women. Mina kept him busy enough. She took him out on the town, introduced him to all of her contacts. It was Mina that had helped introduce him to publishers that might be interested in working with him on his story ideas. Mina was a constant part of his life, the moon to his Earth. So after college, it just made sense that they would move in together. Ben would be lying though, if he said that he never thought about what it would be like, to be with another girl. Just one specific other girl. Just once.