Once in a Lifetime

Page 29

He stared at her as the first inkling of doubt began to creep in. Hannah had been busy every day after school, but she’d told him she was working at the optometrist’s office where her mom worked. More than that, the college scholarship thing was setting off alarm bells in his head. Hannah had been all set to go to the University of Washington at Seattle—with him. But after she’d dumped him, she’d gone to a community college instead. He’d always assumed it’d been so that they wouldn’t be at the same school. But what if that hadn’t been it at all? What if what Aubrey was saying was true—that Hannah hadn’t brought her grade up enough and she’d lost her scholarship? “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why did you tell her we slept together?”
“I’d like to tell you the whole thing,” she said, “but the short answer is that I was jealous.”
“Jealous.”
“Yes.” She clasped her hands together and kept her eyes on them. “I’m not proud of that. I’m sorry, Ben.”
Was she serious? A “sorry” was supposed to make it all okay? He jerked upright and yanked on his pants.
“Wait,” she said, jumping up, too. “Let me tell you the rest—”
“I don’t give a shit about the rest.” He shoved his feet into his shoes and turned back to her. “Just tell me one thing—why now? Why are you telling me this now?” Then it hit him, and he let out a harsh laugh. “The damn list. You need to clear your conscience. Well, congratulations, Aubrey, you did it. Job well done.” He snatched up his shirt and, without putting it on, stormed to the door. Needing to know one more thing, he whipped back. “Wait. Why did she believe you?”
Aubrey stood there before him, pale, eyes filled with regret and other things that he didn’t want to see, wearing his damn shirt, looking devastated. “I can be very convincing,” she said softly.
“Yes,” he agreed, staring down at her bowed head. “You can.”
She winced as the barb hit, and he told himself he didn’t care. “So what was this between us? Amendment? You f**ked me to make up for lying about f**king me?”
“No. No,” she said. “You saw my list. FUCKING BEN was not on it.”
“Well, BEN was on it. Don’t tell me you’re also f**king the pumpkin man.”
“Don’t you get it?” she cried. “I didn’t plan to sleep with you at all!” She tossed up her hands. “And trust me, this”—she gestured to the bed—“was not how I planned to make amends.”
“Okay, so out of morbid curiosity, how were you going to do that? How were you going to give me back the two years I missed out on with my wife?”
“I didn’t know!” she said. “I still don’t!”
Suddenly drained, he moved to the door. “You let me know when you figure it out.”
When he was gone, Aubrey’s legs gave way, and she slid down the wall. Hugging her knees, she dropped her head to her chest and fought the tears.
She remembered that long-ago night as if it were yesterday. She’d been at a party where she hadn’t belonged. It’d been for seniors, so she’d been lying low when she saw Hannah and a girlfriend get in Hannah’s car to leave. Talking and laughing, Hannah had pulled out into the street without looking and caused a wreck. With the cars still smoking, and horns and alarms going off, Aubrey had watched in disbelief as the two girls had switched spots, crawling past each other in the front seat so that Hannah was no longer behind the wheel.
When the police arrived, Hannah’s friend—the sober one—had saved Hannah from getting a DUI.
Aubrey couldn’t believe it. As the girl who had always gotten in trouble for every little infraction—and some that weren’t even hers—she had been infuriated.
The next day at tutoring, Aubrey had told Hannah that she knew what she’d done. At first, Hannah had pretended not to know what Aubrey was talking about—until Aubrey told her she’d seen it herself. Hannah had paled but rallied quickly, telling Aubrey that no one would ever believe it.
Their tutor had broken up the heated whispered exchange, yelling at them to be quiet and work. Hannah had told him that Aubrey was trying to cheat.
Aubrey had gotten detention.
“You see?” Hannah had whispered. “No one will ever believe you over me. The girl who dresses like a prom queen when she’s not. The girl who needs tutoring in all her classes. The girl no one wants. Even your own dad picked your sister over you.”
Horrifically wounded by this, her secret and humiliating hot button, Aubrey’s mouth had disconnected from her brain, and she’d said, “Ben has no complaints about me every time we meet in the woods.” Not about to stop herself—her biggest regret—she’d gone on. “And I’m not the only one he’s doing it with, so obviously he’s not getting off on you.”
Hannah had stormed out, earning herself detention right alongside Aubrey. But she’d dumped Ben.
And then eventually fate had stepped in and gotten them back together, though Hannah must not have told Ben about Aubrey’s tale.
But he knew now…
Ben didn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Aubrey’s face as he’d left. The regret and fear and misery in her expression haunted him, making him want to toss aside his hurt and anger and soothe hers.
So he stopped closing his eyes because he needed to hold on to the hurt and anger. He needed that badly, and as to the reason why—well, he didn’t want to study that too closely.
When dawn came, he went for a run. He beat Sam to the pier, but not by much. When Sam came up level with him, he stopped and frowned. “You okay?”
Ben grunted in response and took off. Sam caught up with him but didn’t ask another question. Ben ran hard and fast, and Sam kept pace, never slowing until Ben did.
Just before they got back to the pier, Sam spoke. “You know where to find me if you need anything.”
Ben met Sam’s gaze and saw nothing but sincerity. He nodded. “Thanks, man, but I’m good.” Actually, he was the opposite of good, and they both knew it, but Sam let the lie go.
Ben skipped the bookstore. The work he had left to do there was minimal. He knew he needed to finish, but hell if he could face her yet. So he went to work and put in twelve straight hours on a subterranean water leak out at the dam, which was threatening the properties below the harbor. That night he stumbled into bed, exhausted, and proceeded to stare at his ceiling for hours.
The next morning he heard a polite knock at his door.
He ignored it.
He ignored the doorbell, too.
But he couldn’t ignore whoever the hell was letting himself into his house. He slid out of his bed, prepared to take on the intruder bare-handed and in his boxers, thinking maybe a good old fight would loosen the two-day-old knot in the center of his chest. He was ready when he padded into the living room, but stopped short at the sight of his aunt Dee.
She was in his kitchen, unloading a bag of groceries. She had a carton of eggs in one hand and a gallon of orange juice in her other as she looked up and caught sight of him. “Hey, baby.”
There were flowers in a bouquet on his table. “You brought me flowers?” he asked inanely.
“No. They were on your doorstep. I just brought them in. There’s a note,” Dee added. “It’s sealed, or I’d have totally sneaked a peek. Although I can guess.”
Ben could, too, but he didn’t want to go there. “You going to the senior center today?” he asked Dee.
“Yes. It’s bingo lunch.”
“Take the flowers with you.”
She gave him an assessing look. “Okay. Did you want to go get dressed and eat, or would you rather kick my butt for intruding?”
“I’m still trying to decide.”
She smiled. “Go on. Find some clothes. I’ll be done here by the time you’re back.”
“Done with what?” he asked.
“Breakfast, silly.”
“Breakfast,” he repeated, stunned into stupidity by heartache and lack of sleep.
“Yes.” She beamed at him. “Remember all those mornings you got up at the crack of dawn to come make me breakfast after my chemo? Well, I’m returning the favor.”
He didn’t want breakfast. He wanted…Aubrey. He wanted her sated and boneless in his bed, with one of those smiles on her face that was just for him, as though he were the best thing she’d ever seen.
At the thought, emotion swamped him. He told himself it was all anger, because she’d ruined it. She’d ruined everything. But the truth was, it felt more like sadness and regret than anger.
Dee’s smile faded, and she set down the orange juice and eggs and came to him, wrapping her arms around him. “Rough morning?” she asked quietly.
He shrugged.
Just as he’d done for her all those mornings when she’d been sick and exhausted and scared and hurting, she didn’t ask a bunch of questions. She accepted that some days were just shit. “You look like hell,” she murmured.
He let out a low laugh. “Thanks.” He went to his room to yank on a pair of jeans and then came back to the kitchen.
“Sit.” Dee gestured to a chair with her wooden spoon. “You’ll eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Did I ask you if you were hungry? No, I did not.” Again she pointed to the chair and when he didn’t budge, she shoved him.
“Bully,” he said without heat, and let the five-foot-two woman push him down to the chair.
She smiled and patted his shoulder. “I learned from the best, you know.”
“I wasn’t this mean,” he said.
“Oh, please,” she said on a laugh and affected his low baritone as she imitated what he’d said to her whenever she’d resisted him. “You will sit there and shut up and eat, Aunt Dee, and if you don’t, I’ll force it down your throat.”
“I didn’t say it like that,” he said, but surprised them both by laughing.
She smiled. “Aw, that’s better. You probably want to know why I’m here.”
“You’re here because you’re nosy.”
“Yes, well, there’s that.” She came over with a loaded plate and the juice. She set them both down in front of him and hugged him.
“Again?” he asked.
“Hug me back or I’ll keep at it.”
Because she looked so worried, he let her boss him around. He hugged her back, letting her hold on for as long as she wanted, which was about a year. “I’m getting gray hair here,” he finally said.
She pulled back and smacked him upside the head. Then she cupped his face and stared into his eyes. “I’m here because I got the mom feeling that something is wrong. Is it hard being back here?” she asked quietly. “In Lucky Harbor? With us? Is that it? You’re going to leave again?”
“No. And it’s not hard being back. I like being back,” he said, no longer surprised to find that it was absolutely true. He might have started out a true city boy, but he’d also been a lost one, without people who cared. And then he’d landed here in Lucky Harbor, where everyone cared. He liked that—a lot. The place fit him; it always had. “I’m not leaving,” he promised.
“Is it Hannah?” she whispered. “The memories of her?”
“No,” he said, and when she just kept looking at him, he said, “I miss her. I’ll always miss her. But it’s not her.”
“Then it’s Aubrey,” Dee said. “Damn. I told you that one was going to be trouble.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Dee paused, still hovering. “Can I just say one thing?”
“Could a freight train stop you?”
She smiled and cupped his face once more. “It was lovely to see you putting yourself out there again. I hope that whatever happened between you two doesn’t change that.”
He gave her a look. “You’re fishing.”
“Yes.” She paused, and when he didn’t fill in the silence, she sighed good-naturedly. “I love you, baby. You know that, right?”
“I know it. I’ve never doubted it.”
Her eyes looked a little damp as she looked him over again, but she nodded firmly. “You’ll get through this.”
She was right about that; he would get through this. He didn’t see much of a choice. Life was funny that way. When it threw him a curveball, sometimes it hit him between the eyes and sometimes it hit him in the gut, but he always kept coming back to bat.
That afternoon, Ben stood bleary-eyed in front of the Craft Corner gang. He was teaching the kids how to make the kite he’d learned to build from some kids in Haiti, when what he really wanted to do was something far more physical.
Like night surf. He was feeling more than a little out of control, but he knew he needed to keep it together, because he still had to go back to work after this. He could have sworn he was keeping his bad mood from the kids, but just as though he’d projected it out there, a fight broke out over a roll of twine between Pink and a scrappy, tough little girl named Dani. “Hey,” he said, striding over and breaking it up. “Cool it. There’s enough twine to go around.”
“That’s not what this is about,” Pink said, still glaring at Dani. “She’s being mean.”
“Am not,” Dani said.
“Both of you knock it off,” Ben said.
But the girls continued to stare each other down, neither one of them speaking.