by Kim Karr
I’d really like to talk to you and explain things. I’m not sure I’ve made the best impression. Things at the release party weren’t what they looked like.
“He was at the party?” he hisses.
I bite the inside of my cheek, feeling nervous. “Yes.”
His eyes narrow on me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m not sure. I guess I never thought of it.”
“What’s his message mean?”
I look at him.
He has daggers in his eyes.
“I’m not sure.”
His brow furrows. “S’belle, I have a hard time believing you have no idea what he means.”
My eyes meet his before dropping. “Well, maybe he wants to clear something up.”
He doesn’t say anything. His stare does all the talking. He waits for me to explain.
“I thought he and Tate were having a threesome with some girl that night.”
His hands grip the table. “And how would he know what you thought?”
My voice grows small. “I told him when he called me and asked me to meet him and Tate.”
Fury blazes in his eyes now. “Fucker,” he says a little too loudly.
“Why don’t you two like each other? There has to be more to it.”
His jaw is stiff, his body rigid. “Because he wanted Dahlia in high school and he didn’t care that she was mine. And now he obviously wants you and once again doesn’t care.” His words come out laced with resentment.
“Am I yours?” I ask him.
His eyes dart to the table and something shifts in his gaze. “What’s going on with you? Are you playing some kind of game with me? You’ve been so hot and cold.”
“No!” I sound offended because I am. But the disappointment I feel that he won’t answer the question rises again. “When Kale called me your girlfriend today, you flinched like you didn’t like him using that word.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“It wasn’t why you think.”
“Then why was it?”
He seems at a loss to come up with an answer.
“Do you consider me your girlfriend?”
“Yeah, I do. You know I do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What’s all this about?”
“Never mind, forget it.” I’m afraid I’m losing him.
Shifting in his chair, he asks, “When do you leave?”
I swallow. “Tomorrow. I already planned to take the time off work anyway until the wedding.”
“You leave tomorrow?” His voice rises.
“Christmas is in two days,” I say incredulously.
“I know when Christmas is,” he blasts.
“Oh, I wasn’t sure. You hadn’t mentioned it.”
“How long have you known you were going?”
“My mom asked us all last night at dinner. Jagger’s dad has taken a turn for the worse and Mom wants us all to go to be with Aunt Celeste and him.”
“Shit, S’belle, I’m sorry. Do you know how long you’re going for?”
“A week, hopefully less.” Not that I don’t want to be there for Jagger, but I need to get back and finish getting everything ready for Xander and Ivy’s wedding.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“Do you want to?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t. I’m getting a little tired of asking you to be honest.”
“Then I’m sorry to inconvenience you.”
“What’s with the attitude, S’belle?” He grabs my hand. “Talk to me.”
I search his face. “What’s going on with us?”
He pauses a moment as if trying to figure out where this outburst is coming from. “Do we have to define it now, here in the restaurant?”
“No. But the mixed signals and blank stares are getting to me.”
“My mixed signals? Are you fucking kidding me? This week you’ve been all over the place.”
I motion between us. “What is this for you? Just sex?”
He hesitates before saying, “No.”
“Is this about Dahlia, then? Are you not over her?” I can’t believe I’m asking him that, but the Romeo comment must have brought it to the surface.
He glares at me. “No, I mean yes, I am. You know I am. This has nothing to do with her.”
The hurt and shock are evident on his face and I want to take it all back, but it’s too late. Maybe I’m not just ready for this. I can’t handle these kinds of feelings. That has become very clear. I stand up and toss my napkin on my plate because something that feels an awful lot like finality courses through my body.
“Sit down and let’s talk about this,” he says, trying to keep his voice controlled.
“I have to go. I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
He stares at me in disbelief and even though I know I’m being irrational I lay it all on the table. “Look, Ben, I’m not looking for forever, but before I bring you home to my family I need to feel like there’s more than just tomorrow. And I’m not sure you can give me that.”
And then I leave him sitting in the dining room at Pebbles two days before Christmas. He doesn’t come after me and I remind myself that I knew something like this would happen eventually.
What did I do? Why am I ruining this for no reason? I’m unable to answer any of my own questions. The valet pulls my car up and I get in. As I drive home I try to figure out why I didn’t just tell him the truth—that I want him to come with me, to be with me, that all I need to know is that he wants the same. I think about my actions the whole way home—maybe I’m just self-destructive. When I drive down Sunset I stop at a light and look around. A purple sign flashes MISTY’S WORLD. She’s a fortune-teller; I’ve passed the place many times but never gone in.
I find a place to park and walk down the street. When I get to Misty’s I take a deep breath and walk in. A bell rings and I look around the tiny room with green walls, fluorescent lights, and stars hanging from the ceiling. A smiling woman opens a beaded curtain and I nod to her.
“Fortune,” she says in broken English.
“Yes.”
She goes back behind the curtain and returns with a tiny cup of coffee in her hand. “Drink.”
“Cream?” I ask her.
She shakes her head no and I drink it quickly, not liking the taste at all and even more disgusted by the grinds at the bottom of the cup. She shakes her head at me, disappears, and comes back with another. “Drink it slower.”
I sit down on the tattered chair and take sip after sip. Once I set it down she points at me and then turns and goes back into the room behind the beads. I follow with my cup in my hand. I question what I’m doing here, but the second thoughts are fleeting.
“Your cup, please,” she says.
I hand it to her.
She stares into the cup, and without asking me a single question, she begins to talk. “You will find love, but it won’t make you happy. Be patient and let it come to you and you will find true happiness.”
I roll my eyes because that’s a little generic.
“Your job has changed in a big way. You have two bosses. Listen to them both.”
How could she know that? She doesn’t know me from Adam.
“You will find yourself in a situation you have been in before, and you will handle it much better this time.”
Another generic statement, but the one about the job still makes me want to believe. She stands and leaves through a door, making it clear she is done with me. When I push the beads aside, a younger girl is waiting for me.
“Forty dollars please,” she says.
I open my purse, a little dumbfounded, and hand her two twenties. “Can I ask her some questions?”
The young girl shakes her head.
I leave there laughing that I just wasted not only my time but forty dollars. I pull out my phone and send Ben a text.
I’m sorry but I knew this wouldn’t work. Please give me
time. I’ll contact you when I get back.
I press SEND and resolve to push him out of my head until I have to go back to work.
CHAPTER 35
Say Something
Ben
One week later
Don’t be stupid—my own words echo in my head. I’d heard the statement from many different people and in many different contexts in my life. Mostly from teachers when I was growing up. I was far from an A student, but they knew I wasn’t dumb. I just didn’t know how to channel my energy. Fuck, I could never keep my mind on one task. How could I when I couldn’t even sit still? And right now I feel like that same fifteen-year-old kid again. I haven’t been able to concentrate, my leg is perpetually tapping the floor at high speed, and I feel I want to throw something, anything.
The office is closed but I came in anyway since I didn’t have anything better to do. I’ve been sitting here for hours alternating between staring out the window and glaring at my computer. I turn back around in my chair and this time I fixate on the keyboard. It’s been just over a week since she left me sitting at Pebbles and then sent me a text to give her time. And I have. She has family responsibilities. I understand those. What I don’t understand is what went wrong. Nothing that we talked about makes any sense. I drop my head to my hands. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I haven’t spoken to her. Not because she asked me not to but because I can’t figure out what happened. I’ve typed a few texts but never hit SEND. I’ve dialed her number more than a few times but never let it connect.
Christmas came and went. Serena and Jason went to Hawaii to spend it with Trent. He had a surfing competition over the holidays that he didn’t want to miss out on. I could have gone but wasn’t really in the mood to be jovial. So instead I spent the day with Beck, Ruby, and Beck’s dad. I ate with them and called it an early night.
Today is New Year’s Eve and I find myself even more agitated than I’ve been all week. I switch to staring at my phone, trying to figure out what to say to her, but I just can’t find the words. Can I tell her that being without her is fucking hell? That I’m miserable? That I miss her, and not just the sex? I’m not sure any of those will work. Still tapping my toe, I grab a pencil, break it in half, and throw it across the room. “Fuckkk . . .”
I push up in my chair and decide to hit the gym. Running always helps. I change quickly and yet as soon as I hit a steady stride she’s back in my thoughts. Having her at Plan B has been a real asset and I hope she comes back to work here. In the past month she’s created a comprehensive social media strategy to increase magazine visibility, membership, and traffic across both publications. She’s experimented with new and alternative ways to leverage social media activities. And she’s been monitoring trends in social media tools as well as trends in applications. Together she and Beck have successfully launched Plan B into the social media network.
I kept my promise and after that first day of a little boss/secretary fun, we haven’t stripped down in the office again. However, one late night she did pretend to be my secretary again, push me back in my chair, and suck me off. And one morning when we had to be at work really early and she was extremely grumpy, I did punish her by lifting her skirt and slowly licking her to climax. But other than that I have really behaved while at the office. Our relationship was—is, I’m not sure—incredible. Hot as fuck, fun, and engaging. I thought it was almost perfect.
There may have been a few flaws and I was working on them. She’d spend most nights at my house except for Thursdays and Sundays when she went to her mother’s for family dinners. Even then I’d usually met up with her at her place later. She hadn’t invited me to go with her and I hadn’t asked to join her until the night at the restaurant when I knew she just wasn’t going to let her two worlds collide. That’s why I let her go. I don’t know how to break that barrier between us.
“Running from the devil again, mate?” Kale says, pulling my earbud from my ear.
“Something like that.”
“Must have to do with our girl.”
I ignore the our. “What makes you say that?”
“You were on top of the fucking world and now that she hasn’t been around, you don’t seem happy about it. Did you break up?”
“I have no fucking clue. I don’t know if we were ever really together.”
“I’m not sure about what you Americans call together, but to me it looked like you were definitely together.”
I slow my pace. “I can’t figure out what we were.”
“So you’d be cool with me asking her out?”
I slam the STOP button and the treadmill slows and I get ready to pounce on him.
He raises his hands surrender-style. “Whoa, mate, I’m just messing with you. See, there’s something more there you’re not seeing. I’d try to figure that out if I were you.”
Even though it pains me to admit it, he’s right. I know that. “Have a great night,” I say to him, and head toward the door.
“I’m headed out if you want to join me.”
“No, thanks, man.” I hit the shower.
On my way home from the office, I stop by Blondie’s to say hi to Noel.
“Just a fucking brilliant way to expand the merchandise,” I say. I say it every time I walk in because I’m so impressed.
He beams from behind the counter. “Hey, Benny boy. What brings you by?” And he says it just as he always does.
“Wanted to check on you.” But that’s not the truth. I want someone to talk to. Someone to help me figure out what the hell is going on in my head.
“Getting ready to close up and take Faith out for a night on the town. I might even swing for a hotel suite if she’s up for it. Walk with me.”
I follow him outside. “Where are you taking her?”
The breeze pushes his salt-and-pepper hair in front of his eyes. He swipes it away. “I don’t know,” he says.
I bend down to pick up one of the boards lying in the sand.
“I was thinking about one of those fancy hotels in downtown LA where they have what they call the heavenly beds.”
I glance over my shoulder toward him. “Yeah?”
“What do you think?” he asks, pulling the shutters closed over the windows.
I shove the board under the shack. “I think you should let me spring for it. Call it a late Christmas present.”
He sits on one of the broken steps and looks up at me. “Anything you want to talk about?”
I put my hands in my pockets. “What makes you ask that? Because I offered to do something nice for you?”
“No, Benny, because you look like shit and your leg is moving a hundred miles an hour. Now come sit next to me and tell me what’s going on.”
I give him a tentative smile, but it quickly cracks. The breeze picks up again and as the metal chimes surrounding the run-down shack sing in the wind, I tell him everything—everything from my first conversation with S’belle in the library to our last one in the restaurant.
He looks out toward the water once I’ve finished to where the sun gleams off the waves. “I’m going to be honest with you. I think you’re scared.”
“Scared?” I feign indifference.
“Yeah, I do. And I’m going to give it to you straight. You had one girl growing up. She was your life. When you lost her, something in you changed and that’s to be expected.” He pauses to look at me, but it’s without the smile he usually wears, then casts his eyes back out toward the horizon. “Did I ever tell you about my first love, the girl I married in Hawaii?”
My eyes dart to his. “No.”
“Her name was Keilani. I met her when I moved to Hawaii to train. I was eighteen. I had never been in love, but I thought I was with her. I asked her to marry me right away. Needless to say, it didn’t work out. We divorced two years later. But then I met Faith. And what I felt for her was so different from what I felt for Keilani it took her telling me how I felt to realize I loved her.”
I grin at him. “I
could see her doing that.”
He rests his hand on my shoulder. “Do you love this girl?”
I look at him stunned for a minute. “Love her?”
“Yeah, love her. You don’t have to answer me. But you need to figure it out for yourself. I think you’re afraid to admit your feelings for this girl because they’re different from your feelings for Dahlia. But it’s okay if they are.”
He stands up. “Think about it, Ben. And if I’m wrong, then you need to let her go because it sounds to me like she really loves you.”
It hits me then that I’ve never really thought about it from her point of view.
He locks the door to the shop. “Call me and come over for dinner next week. I want to finish this conversation after you’ve had time to think.”
I rise to my feet, my legs a little wobbly. I try to ignore what that means. I start walking toward my bike and turn around. “Noel, head over to the Beverly Wilshire. It’s on me.”
He shakes his head.
“I mean it. I’m calling now. Tell Faith I said Merry Christmas.”
Even from a distance I can see the old man’s throat working. “Thank you,” he calls out hoarsely.
I jump on my bike, and as I drive, every single minute I’ve spent with her pops in my head. Things she’s said, things I’ve said. And fuck me if I don’t see it clear as the sun descending on the horizon—all she wanted from me was to acknowledge that I have feelings for her—was it really that easy? Because if it was—why didn’t she just ask me? Am I really that thick that I didn’t see it? Yeah, you are, the devil that’s been sitting on my shoulder waiting for me to fuck up announces in my ear. Fuck that— I’ll show him. I slow down and quickly turn around to head home to change. I know exactly where I plan to spend New Year’s Eve.
• • •
Although the scenic stretch of moonlit highway between Laguna Beach and Los Angeles is forever etched in my mind, it still captures my attention every time I drive past it. The exhilaration I feel when I see the crashing surf or the transcendent vision of the jagged shoreline is something I’ll never get tired of. It’s easy to lose yourself in its beauty—in fact, the sight helps to calm my racing nerves. And the panoramic ocean view off to my right lit by streetlights overhead always seems to put things in perspective for me.