Coming Undone (39 page)

“
Oh, wow. Well, what a coincidence, I’ve been at my father’s house all day, trying to figure out what to do with all the stuff and feeling completely pathetic.”

She laughed again, telling herself not to get sucked in but finding it irresistible just the same. Carefully, she took a drink of hot chocolate.

“
So, what do you say we meet somewhere and try not to be pathetic together?” he asked, and she almost dropped the cup.

“
What?” She looked down at herself as she fought to carefully set the cup on the counter despite her shaking hands. Gray sweats, hair up in a twist, cleaning hands still visible. “Now?”

“
Sure. Why not? You can just come the way you are. Whatever. I don’t really care. I just… I want to see you.”

And then she understood. He needed someone to talk to. This was going to kill her outright. She knew it, and yet she couldn’t get herself to say no. “Okay.”

By the time he got to the little coffee shop, Ben was a nervous wreck. What was he thinking? He should have asked her out on a real date, to a nice restaurant. He should be in a coat and tie, not in sweats looking like he’d been on a six-day drunk, which actually wasn’t terribly far from the truth. In the little booth near the big window scrawled with Ned’s Diner in red and yellow, he sat, watching the traffic and people pass by beyond that window. It felt like so very long ago when he was part of them—if he ever had been.

“
Can I get you something?” the cute waitress asked, stepping up.

“
Hm, well…” He turned to her putting his arm over the booth back, but his smooth move ran smack into horror of what he was doing. What was he doing? Hitting on a waitress he didn’t even know while he was waiting for Kathryn? He pulled his arm back down. “Just coffee. Thanks.”

She nodded and headed for the counter meeting Kathryn coming the other direction. At least he thought it was Kathryn. She looked really different in a way that wasn’t wholly unpleasant.

“
I’m sorry. I kind of got lost.” Sliding into the booth across from him, she rubbed her hands together. “It’s freezing out there. What happened to May?”

Ben couldn’t stop the smile or the admiration from coming to his face and his heart. She was truly worth considering buying. He shook out of that thought. “Thanks… thanks for coming. I know it wasn’t right of me to ask. It’s so miserable outside.”

“
No, it’s okay.” She shrugged and refocused on her purse, digging in it.

The waitress returned and set his coffee in front of him. “Could I help you?”

Kathryn looked up, seeming not to realize she was being questioned. “What? Oh. Yeah. Coffee. Just coffee. Please. Thank you.” She dug for a moment more but came up empty-handed. Finally she put the purse down with a determined thwack and turned her attention to him as she laid her forearms on the table. “So what’s up?”

He was caught in the awe of her for one more second. “Oh, you know…” Putting his arm back on the booth, he tried to look cool as if they’d just run into each other in the middle of the afternoon between meetings. “Just trying to keep on keeping on. You?”

“
Yeah.” She rubbed her hands together again and raked her fingers through the strands of hair that had fallen out of the ponytail. “Trying to stay warm. This rain is ridiculous.”

The waitress set her coffee in front of her, and Kathryn smiled up at her with that smile that brushed his heart.

“
Thank you.”

When the waitress was gone, Ben refocused on his coffee because he truly did not know what to do next. “So, you’ve been working?”

“
Oh, yeah. Not today though. Off today. And tomorrow. I’ll be back on Monday though.” She seemed stuck in talk mode. “How about you? Are you back to work yet?”

“
Pushing pills,” he said, remembering Jason’s assessment of his job. “Pretty exciting stuff.”

“
And your dad’s estate?” She took a sip. “That’s going okay?”

He widened his eyes and let them fall back almost closed in overwhelm and surrender. “‘Okay’ might be stretching it.” Shifting, he looked only at his coffee. “It’s kind of crazy dismantling all of it. I mean, I’ve got boxes of just stuff. Stuff he loved, stuff I remember from growing up, but I don’t know what to do with it all. It’s crazy.” He took a drink.

The frantic fidgety thing dropped from her demeanor. Suddenly, she was keenly focused only on him. “You know, a lot of families go through that. Have you considered having an estate sale, or maybe going through an auction house? I have some contacts. I could give them to you if you want.”

“
Yeah.” His gaze fell. “Yeah, that would be great.” The center of his heart hurt. This was not how he’d pictured this. He didn’t want to talk about estates and funerals. He wanted to find some way to tell her that he was in love with her. The thought pushed him back into the booth. Blinking it back, he fought to figure out why he had thought something so bizarre. Love? Could it really have gone that far? They hadn’t even been on a real date.

As she watched him, still struggling so hard, Kathryn forced her nerves and feelings to stand down. He needed her—not freaking out and wondering if maybe he liked her, but Kathryn. His friend. “I guess this has all been pretty rough on you, huh? I know it can be really hard to get back into the swing of things after the death of someone close.” Counselor slogans slipped into her mind. “Don’t push yourself though. You’ve got to give it some time. You’ll be surprised how soon normal feels normal again.”

His gaze came up to hers, far more lost and sad than she had apprehended upon her arrival. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“
No, Ben. Really. I’ve seen this a thousand times. The first couple of weeks are the hardest, but it gets better. It really does.”

“
No. Kathryn. That’s not what I mean.”

That stopped her.

“
Oh.” She sat back in the booth, more worried than stable. “What… what do you mean?”

Ben let out the breath slowly. He closed his eyes, begging God to let him out of the feelings—for her sake. But they weren’t going anywhere. Finally, he opened his eyes and picked his gaze up to hers. How could he tell her this and not sound like a complete idiot? He’d led her on and then dropped her like a rotten sack of potatoes when it was time for him to invest something of himself. Now here he was, wanting to lay his heart out but sure he was ruining her life by doing that.

“
Ben.” She finally sat forward and laid her hand across to his wrist softly. “Whatever it is, just tell me. I want to help.”

If only it was that easy…

He let his gaze fall to the table for another moment, and then seeing God wasn’t going to do as he had begged, he looked back at her. However, instead of saying what he wanted to, he carefully turned his wrist over until he caught her hand in his. Surprise jumped into her eyes followed by concern. But he was already moving, and he wasn’t going to stop now. Gently, slowly, he lifted her hand to his lips. Kissing it drilled right through him all the way to the center of his being. He’d never felt anything like it. His eyes fell closed with the feeling. When he opened his eyes again, her gaze was on him, panicked and concerned.

“
Ben?”

His other hand came across to feel her hand in his. It was completely unbelievable what that did to him. “I’m sorry, Kathryn.” He looked right at her. “I haven’t been honest with you. I’ve taken advantage of you without giving anything in return, and that wasn’t fair to you.”

Panicked. She looked completely and utterly panicked. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”

“
When you first showed up, I was so grateful for you, for what you did, for how you helped me. I’d never… No one had ever done anything like that for me before.” His fingers continued to rub over hers, learning, memorizing every inch. “You were right there the whole way, and I thought that was, you know, because of your job and everything, but these last two weeks, being away from you…” He pulled his gaze to hers, vowing to be strong if she told him to get lost. “I know I have no right to say this or to ask you, and to tell you the truth, I’m probably going to tank the whole thing because I really don’t even know how to do this…”

“
Ben?”

He couldn’t tell if she was scared for herself or for his sanity. He was scared enough about all of it for both of them. Finally, he looked right at her. “I just need to know. Was this all about doing your job, or is there something… more there?”

A stab of joy pierced right through her, but she yanked it back. He couldn’t be serious. Her? Why would he choose her? “Ben, I don’t… Are you serious?”

“
I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life. I just didn’t know how to say it, and then when you walked away that day. I thought I’d have time to maybe come up with something or to you know, talk myself out of it. But I can’t do that. And the truth is, I don’t want to.”

Shell-shocked. It was a good word for how she felt. “You’re serious? You want… to like… go out or something?”

He almost laughed. “You seem surprised.”

“
Shocked.”

Amused, he leaned closer. “Why?”

Tears bunched up in her eyes, stinging. “Because look at you, and look at me. You’re like wow, and I’m like blech.”

His eyebrows arched. “Blech? I’d hardly call you blech.”

She was still spinning. “But wait. I thought you didn’t want anything to do with marriage. I thought, you know the whole single thing, ‘I like being single.’ That’s what you said.” It sounded like an accusation even to her, but she was almost sure of it because that was one of the few logical parts of her that had kept her from getting her hopes up.

The flippancy fell from his face, and suddenly she knew he was serious.

“
I was talking to Kelly earlier, and I was trying to tell him I wasn’t interested…”

“
In Kelly?”

The laugh was back. “In you.”

She sank back. “Oh.” It was so hard following because her mind was mush.

“
I was trying to tell him I wasn’t cut out for the whole marriage thing and it wasn’t fair to you to pretend I might be.” He grew silent and thoughts flitted across his face. After a moment, his gaze came up to hers. “That’s what I always thought, that I was so much happier single. I wasn’t tied down. I could come and go as I pleased. Whatever. I didn’t have to answer to anybody. But I see now what a lie that was. All those years, I went out and partied and everything, and then I’d come home, and I was so miserable.”

She knew that feeling all too well, except for the going out part.

His gaze fell into a serene softness. “But I wasn’t lonely and miserable when you were around. Even when you weren’t right there. I would think about you, about what you were doing and stuff. I couldn’t wait to see you again… even if it was all kind of weird.”

Kathryn was holding her heart back. She’d read about this, how patients fell for their nurses because it was the first time they had been given attention. “Ben…”

“
No, please, Kathryn. Let me finish.”

How could she argue?

“
I know this isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. I know what people will probably think. But I don’t care about any of that. All I know is that somewhere along the way I fell in love with you, and all I need to know from you is if there’s a chance for us. If you hate me and want me to get lost, I will.” He rubbed his fingers over hers once more. “It will kill me, but I will.”

Holding onto her heart, holding onto professional had seemed like such a good and noble idea. But the truth was, they were holding her back from the life with him she really, really wanted. “Okay, but I think we should probably take this slow,” she said, measuring every word and hating the wisdom in each one. What she really wanted to do was say, ‘Who cares’ and go for it. But if this was the nurse syndrome thing, she would surely get hurt worse by doing that. “After all, who knows—you may decide next week that it was all some fantasy that wasn’t even real.”

He smiled. “Not going to happen. But that’s okay about the going slow thing. If that’s what you want.”

“
I just want to make sure this isn’t all built on rose-colored glasses because I helped you or something.”

Ben had no trouble agreeing because he’d already worked out that argument in his heart. “So you’re not saying no?”

How her reluctant smile could play with his insides like that, he had no idea.

“
I’m not saying no.”

Ben raced around his apartment frantically trying to get ready. He had made the mistake of agreeing to go to church with her, and then she was going to come to his dad’s with him. It wasn’t a terrific first date, but evenings were out for sorting and boxing—it was just too far to drive every night, and he needed to get the house done. Sunday would be his best bet.

“
Good grief. When in the world did this happen?” Ben stood at the mirror, adjusting his tie which looked all wrong. “What was I thinking? I don’t know how to do this. God, I really hope You’ve got a plan here because I’ve got no clue.”

Kathryn had tried to talk him into meeting her at church, but he wouldn’t hear of it. At nine-thirty, her doorbell rang, and she sprinted for it. Only at the door did she stop and breathe. Wrenching the doorknob, she swung the door in. “Good morning.”