I lifted his chin upward to take his lips in a swift kiss. “Yeah, I can do that. Can I have, like, five seconds alone with you before you leave?”
He nodded his head and turned toward his parents. “Jesse and I are going to step into the bedroom for a second, okay? We’ll be right back.”
When the door closed behind us, I pressed Ben up against it, my lips immediately seeking his as my hand sought lower, rubbing over the seam of his shorts. He sighed against my lips, an “ohhh” escaping as he bucked into my palm.
“What are you doing?” he whispered breathlessly.
“I wanted to touch you. I haven’t touched you all day.” I pulled my hand from his shorts and lifted it to his face. “Also, I wanted to talk to you about what you said.”
“Don’t,” he replied, looking to the side to avoid eye contact. “Just don’t.”
“I don’t want to avoid that. Look at me.”
Ben took his time, but finally met my eyes, the gloss in his showing his embarrassment over the subject. “What?” he groaned.
“You were going to tell me that you loved me? At the restaurant?” I asked.
“No,” he said with a pout. He looked to the side again and I turned his face with my thumb.
“You weren’t?”
He shook his head. “I was being emotional and having a very Ben moment. It happens.”
“Okay, here goes,” I told him.
“No,” he responded, shaking his head. “Nope, nope, nope.”
“Ben—”
“Jesus Christ. I have to bury Oma and—”
“I just wanted to tell you that I love you.”
Ben tapped his foot and stared at the window. “Nope,” he said again softly. “No you don’t.”
I kissed him softly. Wetly. With tongue. Lots and lots of dirty, dirty tongue. “Yep, I do. I’ll text you the address to my house. Now, that’s pretty funny. We’re two people in love and one of us doesn’t even know where the other one lives. But within minutes, we will. I’m gonna take your dad there so he can relax and have a pool day. Hell, maybe I’ll even make us some Mai Tais. Think he likes Mai Tais? Anyway, I bet he wouldn’t mind a beer or something. Wait, does he even drink? I’ve noticed that he doesn’t even swear… they aren’t religious, are they? Geez, I hope not. You should probably get going and I’ll see you later at the house. Oh, and bring your suit when you come. The really short white one.” I smacked his ass once, likely leaving a red mark, but he didn’t flinch, still staring at me. “I love that white one.”
Ben stared at me as I tried to turn the knob, even having to push him out of the way a bit to get the door open. His fingers traced over his bottom lip as if in shock, but when I smacked him on the ass again, he seemed to snap out of it, closing the door and turning his face into it, quietly starting to count out loud. “One… two… three… four… five…”
“Ben? What are you doing?” I asked, rubbing my hand over my beard.
Ben continued his count, nearly getting to twenty before he peeked over his shoulder. “I… I’m sorry. I don’t know what… you… you said that—”
“I loved you?” I asked. “And you decided to start a countdown? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “You should probably go home now. I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a meltdown today. It’s likely starting now. Actually, I’m pretty sure it started to happen back there at the restaurant, but you should probably steer clear of this.”
I pressed my chest against his slender back, essentially caging him against the door. “Nah. This is too much fun.” I rubbed my bearded cheek against the back of his neck as he continued to bury his face against the wood. “You gonna turn around and kiss me?”
“No,” he mumbled. “No one’s ever told me that they loved me. I mean, Zach did, but only because he knew I was going to let him go. He didn’t mean it, not really. But no one’s ever told me that, like, for real. Did you mean it?”
“Are you gonna start counting again?” I asked with a laugh.
Ben slowly turned to face me, quietly shaking his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
I took his face in both of my hands. “Yes, I meant it. Of course I meant it.” I pressed a kiss to his lips, this time chaste but soft. “I love you, Ben.”
“Oh my God.” There were tears again, but this time accompanied by a wide smile. “Holy shit.” Ben kissed my neck, my ears, my cheeks, my lips—all while smiling, accompanied by the occasional laugh. “I don’t want to say it back because I feel like I’m gonna jinx it.”
I grabbed him and pulled him close, whispering into his mouth. “Say it back, Ben. Please. I want to hear it.”
He paused, a tremble on his lips, but the words came out. And I was thankful as fuck to hear them. “I love you too, Jess.”
David was the executive for a logistics outfit. I didn’t really understand much about what that was, but he’d been trying to explain it to me for the past ten minutes as I’d tinkered around with his laptop. Pretty much as soon as we’d hit the inside of my living room, he’d shoved it into my hands and scratched his head, claiming that he “wasn’t sure what had happened,” but that he “hadn’t done anything.” I knew very little about computers, essentially pressing my finger against the reset button every few minutes and pretending to listen when he described in great detail just what it was that he did for a living.
It was one of those jobs where he was responsible for the web fulfillment for a company outside of his own or to make sure that orders made it to yet another facility on time and then were distributed by a third-party. Or… something.
It was definitely outside of my skillset, but he seemed to know a lot about the business, so I just smiled and nodded my head in all of the right places—that was, until the sliding door opened and my brother popped his head out into the screened-in pool area.
“Heyyyy, little brother,” Will said slowly, a look of confusion spreading across his face once he’d seen David. “I saw your truck. I didn’t realize you had company. Is this… is this Ben?”
David laughed aloud and set his beer down on the side of the pool. He outstretched his hand for my brother to take. “I’m David Watts. I’m Ben’s dad.”
The baffled look didn’t disappear as Will nodded, looking over to me for some clarification, even as he leaned down into the pool to take David’s hand in a polite grip. “Will Solomon.”
“Um,” I responded, not sure where I should start, “Ben and his mom are at the nursing home. They had a—”
Will interrupted me, making the conversation a bit easier. “A death in the family, yeah. Dad said something. That’s why I’m here. I just wanted to see what was going on. Why didn’t you just say that when you asked me to cover you?”
I scratched my beard and looked down at the blank laptop screen. “Because I didn’t want you to ask about it,” I answered. “Kind of like you’re doing now.”
Will turned toward my father. “Sorry to hear about your, um…”
“Mother-in-law,” he answered, tipping his beer to Will. “Thank you.”
Will turned back to me. “Ben alright?”
“He will be,” I answered. “He’s having a rough go of it right now. They were pretty close.”
“Dad said that you and he had, like, kind of a disagreement.” Will scratched his head. “What’d he say to you?”
I shrugged. “Nothing he hasn’t already said before. This time it was just a little louder. A little clearer, I guess. I told him I was taking time off to spend with Ben and his family”—I glanced over at David uncomfortably—“and Dad told me that I should probably spend my vacation at the beach.”
Will stared at me blankly. “We live on the beach,” he deadpanned.
“That’s what I said.”
“Well,” Will replied, looking over at David a final time, “I should get out of your hair. I came to talk to you about, well, something else too.” He smiled and sniffed out a short laugh. “But we can
talk later, alright?”
“You want to go in the house?” I asked. “David, can you excuse me for a few minutes?”
David smiled and sunk down into the pool. “Take your time.”
I closed the computer and followed Will inside, closing the door behind us. The air conditioning was set low, immediately sending cold chills up my spine. Quickly wrapping a towel around my waist, I gestured for him to sit. “Want a beer or something?”
“Nah,” he answered, waving his hand dismissively. He plopped down onto the sofa and kicked off his flip flops. “So…”
“Jesus, man, enough with the suspense. What’s going on?”
Will grinned widely and kneaded his hands in his lap. “So,” he started again, “you’re, uh, you’re kinda gonna be an uncle, man.” He looked up and let out a short laugh. “Fuck, we found out yesterday for sure. It’s like, really early, so you can’t tell anyone, but—”
“Will!” I shouted. “That’s awesome!”
I started toward my brother, arms out for a hug. He stood and wrapped me up in a tight squeeze, nearly crushing the breath out of me. We both laughed for a few seconds, just taking in the moment, when I heard a polite clearing of someone’s throat behind me.
“Hi.” The voice belonged to Ben—that much I knew—so I carefully lowered my arms from my brother’s and turned around to greet him and his mother, standing with several grocery bags between them.
“Hey,” I said with a wave. “Ben. Bridgette.”
“Hi,” he repeated, sort of gesturing with his eyes toward my brother.
“Oh, shit,” I fumbled. “This is Will. My, uh, my brother. Will, this is my Ben.”
My Ben. And fuck, if Ben’s cheeks didn’t pink at that.
“Oh my God,” Ben said, lifting his fingers to his lips and nearly dropping the bag. “I’m so embarrassed.” He turned toward me for a moment with a bright smile. “I thought he was like another Doug or something.”
I laughed once and watched the two men grip hands. My brother smiled politely, but Ben… Ben put his whole self into that greeting. He leaned in and took Will’s hand tightly, smiling as if my brother was the most important person he’d ever met in his life.
Ben clumsily held the bag, stared at Will, and said, “Will, it’s so good to meet you. I heard you sort of helped this whole thing along.”
“Oh, yeah? How’s that?” my brother asked.
“The Mai Tais.” Ben winked at him once and gestured to his side. “This is my mom, Bridgette. Mom, this is Jesse’s brother, Will. He’s sort of, like, responsible for us.” Ben placed the groceries onto the coffee table and turned toward her. “Jess was sort of, like, having a hard time starting things, you know? He wasn’t being very forthcoming with his feelings and Will here suggested that he just crash my house with a little after-work booze party.” He smiled widely and winked again, this time at his mom. “It totally worked.”
“I bet it did,” she answered back, outstretching her hand and taking Will’s. “Will, it’s nice to meet you.”
“What was the big lovefest about?” Ben gestured between us. “All the hugging?”
I looked over to Will as he nodded in approval. “Will and Janine are pregnant,” I said with a wide smile.
Ben’s hand flew to his lips again as he sucked in a breath. “Didn’t you tell me that they’d been trying for a while?” His eyes glossed over immediately as he turned to my brother. “I’m sorry. It’s been an emotional few days, but these are happy tears. I’m so happy for you and your wife. Congratulations, honestly.”
I watched as Ben beamed at a man he’d never met, simply because he was such an important part of my life. I knew I’d made the right decision choosing Ben for myself. He made me feel good—alive—and the way that my brother looked back at him in that moment, with nothing but approval, it was the first time I’d felt proud to have someone in my life that I could bring home. I wanted to introduce Ben to everyone, even my parents, though I dreaded the reaction he’d receive from them.
Something told me Ben could take it. Ben was the man who’d taken punches to the gut and gotten back up bigger and better. He’d rather die than become anyone else than who he was, his father had said.
That was the man I’d fallen in love with. He was the man it had taken only two weeks to fall in love with. I’d never felt an inkling of that type of emotion with anyone else—no one.
“Do you want to stay for dinner?” he asked my brother excitedly. “I’m making chicken. I mean, it’s not that exciting, but I’m a pretty good cook and”—he looked over at me for approval before continuing—“I haven’t ever made dinner for Jess before. I’d really like it if you stayed. Maybe you could call Janine or, I don’t know… I’m babbling.”
“Yeah,” Will said, turning to smile at me. “I know Janine would love to meet you. Let me go collect her and, uh, we’ll be back in, say, an hour?”
Ben gave a short squeal and clapped his hands together. “Perfect.”
Seventeen.
Ben
Janine was gorgeous. A tiny little thing, maybe five-feet-two, with a body for days—stretched tight inside of a red tank top and painted-on jean shorts. Her legs weren’t long, but the open-toed stilettos she wore made up for her lack of height, giving her at least four inches, those calves sculpted and tan—satiny-smooth and coated with some type of shimmer oil. She was, in a word, fabulous.
The long black hair pinned up into a retro flip, the red lips to match the plunging top, the heaving neckline, the navy eyeliner fanned into the perfect point to highlight jade green eyes… just everything.
She was everything.
Will was Jesse’s polar opposite. Maybe three or four inches shorter than Jesse’s six-foot-one frame, even an inch or so shorter than I was. Where Jesse’s hair ran thick and lush, Will was bald, shorn close with maybe a day or two of growth on his polished dome. And again, unlike Jesse, Will had tattoos… lots and lots of tattoos, running over nearly every square inch of his arms, even a few creeping onto his hands (one with Janine’s name) and some sort of wrench entwined with a lightbulb just below his ear.
One thing was for sure though. These two—Janine and Will—were insanely in love. Not a minute went by where they weren’t touching each other or she wasn’t smacking his backside with her long raven-polished nails. He would grab her from behind or whisper something into her ear until she’d hit him again playfully.
And another thing about Janine? She loved Jesse. I’d met her for thirty seconds in the door where she’d proceeded to fling her arms around me like we were long lost siblings—oh my God, could she have been any cuter?—and then done the same thing to Jesse a few seconds later. Only when she pulled back from his embrace, there were tears in her eyes… right before she smacked him in the chest.
“I knew it,” she’d said. “I knew you’d meet someone great.”
Then she had turned to me again and smiled, those full red lips framing perfect white teeth. I’d smiled back instinctively. “Ta-da! Spoiler. It’s me.”
“Oh my God,” she’d deadpanned. “He’s so cute. Don’t ever leave him.”
Jesse had wrapped his arms around my waist. “I don’t plan on it.”
After that, she’d fallen in love with everyone else. My mom, my dad… chatting their ears off while I worked at the stove, a somewhat nervous Jesse at my side.
“You okay?” he said. “How’d the thing go? The funeral home.”
I shrugged. “It was a funeral home. The viewing is the day after tomorrow.” I stirred my pan sauce and avoided his gaze. “I can’t believe these things can happen so fast, you know?”
Resting his chin on my shoulder, he turned to press a kiss to my neck. “How long do you want to wait, you know? People need closure, I think. I mean, I think they do. I guess most of the time they do.”
“You’re babbling, Solomon.” I stirred again, studying the pot. “This sauce is almost done. Anyway, the funeral is the following morning and then it’s ov
er. I guess we just all go back to our regularly scheduled programs.”
Jesse pressed another kiss to my neck. “Welcome to my house,” he said softly. “Sorry this is the first time you’ve been here.”
I looked around quickly at the rustic surroundings. It was very lodge-like for Florida, with a lot of dark wood and deep colors as opposed to the pastels I’d grown so accustomed to in the area. Even the kitchen was very cabin-like, with a custom plank wall designed for the suspension of a few heavy cast iron pots and skillets.
“It’s really nice here. But, I’ve gotta say, I’m kind of pissed that my parents get to fuck in your bed before we do.”
I felt Jesse immediately stiffen behind me. “You really think they—”
“Oh my God,” I returned. “I’m kidding. You really think those two are going to get it on at your house? I don’t even think they touch each other at their own house and it’s in the middle of nowhere.”
He breathed out a sigh of relief against my skin. “Oh, thank God.”
“You have cable, right? HBO at least, you said.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, his chin hitting my shoulder. “Why?”
“Well, they don’t. My dad is such a fucking cheapskate that he refuses to pay for cable at home, so whenever they are somewhere that has cable, my dad is up until like four in the morning because he’s afraid he’s gonna miss something great if he goes to bed.” I laughed lightly as Jesse’s arms wrapped tighter around my waist. “He used to come to my apartment like three nights a week to watch dumb shit on TV. He likes those shows about the, like, people who rent storage units and then can’t pay for them and then they call auctioneers or whatever and then people come and bid on all of your shit?”
“Storage Wars?” he asked.
“Yes!” I screamed, nearly flinging my spoon. “Storage Wars. And he also likes the one where they body paint people. He says it’s a really cool form of art, but basically he just likes an excuse to watch these naked women with airbrushed palm trees painted over their tits.”
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