On Sale for Christmas (8 page)

"Shhh!" I said as the wreath jangled on the door, and colorful blinking lights sent a rainbow of festive colors over the snowy porch. "If you keep fumbling with the lock, we're going to get caught."

"We're not breaking in," Ben said, chuckling. "I live here, remember?"

Even though I was giddy enough to giggle, I still warned, "But you're going to wake up your mom! And if your mom catches us, she's going to think I corrupted you."

"Which is totally untrue," he whispered, getting the door open so we could slip inside out of the cold.

"Wait, it's a little true…"

"Nope.
I
corrupted
you
, Slick. But if my mom did catch us, she'd probably ask you to stay for breakfast—I'm making pancakes. Tradition."

Tradition
. It didn't seem so bad, at the moment. Inhaling the scent of fudge, I saw presents under Ben's family Christmas tree while an angel gleamed from on high.

But I felt anything but angelic.

While Ben's dog, Rusty, wagged his tail and circled us, Ben helped me get my mittens off. Then, testing the lower step of the staircase for squeaks, Ben said, "After you."

Up the stairs we crept to his boyhood room, which was cluttered up with army caps and a footlocker, and lined with a ridiculous number of shiny basketball trophies.

I shook my head. "Such an overachiever!"

"In bed and everywhere else," Ben boasted, shutting the door behind him and locking it. "You're sure this isn't creepy?"

"It's sweet," I said, meaning it in the best possible way. He'd softened me up in a way that cookies, and tinsel, and holiday songs never could. I was feeling the joy of the season of giving, and boy, did I want to give him a present.

Ben took a deep breath, flicked on a dim snowflake lamp by his bedpost next to a random santa hat, then eased back onto the single bed with its camouflage bedspread. "Then allow me to introduce you to the mattress upon which a thousand boyhood Becca Vincent fantasies were dreamed up."

I snickered. "Did you bang Maureen here?"

Ben raised a brow. "What if I did?"

"Then we should do it in exactly the same spot and send her a picture."

He blinked. "That's…a really evil idea."

"Evil ideas are my bad girl super power."

His wide eyes narrowed in appreciation. "I really
do
like bad girls…"

"I finally believe you," I said, with a chuckle. "So show me where I should plant my ass to erase Maureen from your mattress."

He grinned. "You've long since erased her. Besides, I never did it with Maureen here. Sadly, this mattress has seen distressingly little action."

Straddling his leg and donning the santa hat from his bed post, I said, "Well, Soldier, that's about to change."

To my surprise, his smile fell away. "Ok, but before it does…I've got to tell you something."

Uh oh
. So there really was another shoe and it was about to drop right down the chimney. "Okay," I said, shakily, because even fully dressed, I felt softer and more vulnerable than I could ever remember feeling. "Is it bad?"

"You're probably going to think so."

I felt my brow furrow. "Then just say it."

"I'm so into you, Becca, that I feel like I'm lost right now," he said, with an honest-to-god scowl. "I mean, I've always been into you. I never lied about that. But what we just did together cracked open something inside me and got mixed all together with you."

My heart actually squeezed inside my chest. "Oh, Ben—"

"Look, I know it's not cool to talk about this shit in a pre-coital haze. It's all sugary and traditional and small-town and everything you hate—"

"Ben—"

"I get it, Becca. You drew your boundaries and I ought to respect them. I'm fucking up a perfect night right now. Trust me, I know. I don't want to kill the mood, but I feel like it's going to kill
me
if I don't tell you how I feel. You're the girl. You've always been the girl. I tried to let this be a
fling
. I really did. And maybe right up until this moment I could let it be. I've held my shit together until now. But for me, going forward, it's not a fling, it's a
thing
. So—"

"
Ben!
" I took his face in my hands to shut him up. "It's absolutely a
thing
. For me too, okay?"

He let out a breath, then touched his forehead to mine. "Yeah?"

"Definitely. But let's talk about it
after
I screw your brains out."

I lay sprawled on Ben's body, which had burned like a fireplace all night. I was sore all over. My hair a wild tangle on his broad chest. And as I blinked from sleep in the cramped confines of Ben's boyhood bed, I was blinded by dazzling morning light filtering in through the frosted window…

Morning?

Sunlight?

Shit!

In a panic, I tried to untangle myself from his arms, but they were like dead weights. "Ben," I whispered, but he didn't stir. And while I might've taken some satisfaction in the fact that I'd worn him out, I really needed him to wake up. "Ben!"

He groaned happily as if in pleasure to feel me there next to him, rolling over so that I was even more tightly trapped against his body.

"Ben, wake up!"

"Am I dreaming?" he croaked, without opening his eyes. "Because if so, it's an awesome dream."

"It's
morning!
" I hissed.

Ben wiped sleep from his eyes and stretched. "It's also a holiday. Everybody's sleeping in."

But I could hear the strains of
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
floating up the stairs and the scent of bold, rich, coffee filled the air. "Crap! Ben, you have to sneak me out of the house."

Ben laughed. "What are you going to do, climb out my window?"

"That's a great idea!"

"Or, we could just go downstairs and have breakfast."

That'd be nice. Normal. But nothing about last night had been normal. "Your mom—"

"We can all be adults about this."

"No we can't," I said, crawling out of his arms to grope the floor for my panties. And bra. And dress. And, what had happened to the thigh high stockings?

From the rumpled bed, Ben sighed. "I was wondering when the panic was going to set back in…"

I shot him a look over my shoulder. "I'm not panicking."

"So, you're totally okay with us being a thing," he said, pointing between the two of us, oblivious to the santa hat that was currently covering his naughtiest parts.

I hopped on one foot, getting into my panties. "I said I was, didn't I?"

"Then why don't you want my mom to know?"

"Because…" I trailed off, trying to find an explanation. "Because it's embarrassing."

He rolled up out of bed, reaching for his boxers. "Embarrassing that you spent the night or that you spent the night with
me
."

I started to tell him to get over himself. That we were past that. But I heard my mother's voice from downstairs and realized that maybe we weren't. "O.M.G. My mother's downstairs having coffee with your mom. And you want to, what? March down there and let them think that we…that we…"

"Had sex?" Ben asked, pulling on his tee-shirt. "What, are you worried you're going to get a reputation?"

He meant it to tease me, since I'd always had a reputation in this town, but it suddenly mattered in a way that it hadn't ever mattered before. "I don't want your mom to think—"

"She's pretty sure that I have sex, Becca."

"But not in her house. And not with me!"

"Becca, my mom likes you. And our moms have both been trying to get this to happen for so long they'll probably cheer."

"Oh,
great
. So even if they don't go postal, they're going to tease us mercilessly."

Ben was utterly calm. "Well, I'd rather they didn't, but I tend not to make decisions based around preventing my mom from saying:
I told you so
. Seriously, Becca. We might get stares and uncomfortable silence before I start making pancakes, but after how brave you were last night, you're afraid of
this
?"

Okay, so he had a point. He did. So we'd have to do the walk of shame in front of our moms. It could be worse, right? Probably not. But I didn't see a lot of alternatives, and now wasn't the time to be chickenshit. "Fine."

Ben found a pair of flannel pajama pants from the bottom of his drawer and offered them to me. "Wanna wear these?"

"That's just like rubbing their noses in it!"

"Suit yourself," Ben said, pulling them on himself, then helping me to zip up the green chiffon dress which I was ever-so-thankful looked relatively sweet and innocent.

"Wait, c'mere," he said, using his fingers to smooth out my hair and put me in some kind of presentable order. But then he used his thumb to wipe beneath my eyes.

"What are you doing?"

Ben kept wiping. "You've got some—uh—I dunno. Some black smudges."

"My make-up. From last night. I must look hideous."

"You look movie-star gorgeous," Ben said. "As always."

Not believing him, I spun to the mirror to fix myself, then stopped dead at what I saw. Not in the mirror. But next to it. A picture on the wall. A portrait of Ben and his unit…

…and the blood drained from my face. "What the actual
fuck
?"

Ben glanced up, noticing the guy from last night, and then the blood drained from his face too.

"You know this guy?" I asked, a shrill note piercing my voice as I grabbed the photo and yanked it right off the wall. And when Ben said nothing, I thrust it toward him to force him to answer.

Ben gulped in a bit of air, holding up one hand as if to defend himself. "Listen, I can explain—"

"Oh, I'm fucking listening," I said, hand shaking. "Who is he?"

"He's a friend. A really good friend, actually."

"Goddamn it!" I shouted, wanting to smash something. Wanting to smash him. Feeling betrayed—violated somehow. "I told you it had to be anonymous. It had to be a
stranger
."

"And he
is
," Ben said. "To you. He's my buddy, but he's a stranger to you and that's what you asked for."

"No, idiot. I needed it to be a stranger so that this could never come back at me," I said, feeling so fearful that tears pricked at my eyes. "So that nobody but the two of us would ever know. I trusted you, Ben. I trusted you!"

"And I trust Lance," Ben argued. "He's the only person I
could
trust to do this with you. To be clean, safe, and discrete. What did you think I was going to do? Put out an advertisement and risk you getting arrested or hurt by some crazy asshole? It was tense enough thinking something could go wrong. That I could have put you at some kind of risk—"

"It was
about
risk, Ben! That was the fantasy." My nostrils flared, seeing the sense of what he was saying, but blinded by fear and upset anyway. "But you put me at risk in a way that I didn't consent to. We said that this is a thing between us, right? Well how can we have any kind of relationship going forward if one of your friends has—"

"He lives two states away, and even if we cross paths, he'll never bring it up, Becca. Not to you, not to me, not to anyone. Not unless we say so. Lance swore it on the name of a friend we lost in battle. I told him it was that serious."

Tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes and Ben reached to wipe them away but I shoved him back. "Did you tell him who I was?"

"Of course not!"

"Did you tell him what to say to me when we were—"

"Yeah, kinda," Ben said, lowering his voice so that we couldn't be overheard. "It's not like either of us had ever done anything like that before. He owed me a favor and I knew he'd be game, and I'm hugely grateful he didn't fuck it up!"

"
You
fucked it up. You're
friends
with him, Ben. That makes it both not real, and
too
real. If we're together, he's going to figure out who I am. That makes me feel unsafe."

As if I'd kicked him in the stomach, Ben lowered his head, breathing in deep labored breaths, and squeezing his eyes closed. "
Fuck
."

We were both silent for a long time.

Ben finally murmured, "You're right. I fucked it up. I wanted to do this right for you so that you'd see that we were meant to be together, but now we can't be."

"What do you mean?"

Ben's eyes met mine, dark and soulful. "Just keep your distance from me. Go back to school. Just like you planned to do in the first place. No one will ever figure anything out and I'll never say a word. I'll have the memory of last night. You'll get your fantasy the way you wanted it. And you don't ever have to feel unsafe. Not because of me anyway." He took the photo from me and hung it on the wall, taking a great deal of trouble to make it level. "Problem solved."

My chest rose and fell in shock. "Wait. Are you breaking up with me?"

He couldn't even look at me. "Were we together?"

"Yes, we were fucking together," I snapped. "For like, twelve hours, but yeah, we were!"

"Well, now we're not."

"Who
are
you?" I asked, shoving his arm. "One minute you're a nice guy, then you're getting down and dirty, and now you're being an asshole."

Ben's head snapped in my direction. "I'm all those guys, okay? The guy who got down and dirty with you? Yeah. That's me. Part of me anyway. An authentic part. But there's another part, too. The part you don't like. A guy who hates risk. So let's not take the risk of being together because it obviously
is
a risk."

"Wow," I said, letting everything sink in. Understanding—really understanding—that whatever he did was only to protect me. That if I'd really cared who it was, maybe I shouldn't have told him to surprise me. He'd done the best he knew how to live up to the trust I gave him, and that I ought to be grateful. And maybe I
would
be grateful if he wasn't breaking up with me. "Everything is a risk, Ben. It took you how many years to get up the nerve to take your shot with me? And now that you've scored, you're just walking away without even asking me what I want?"

"I'm clearly not what you want, Becca. I
am
a nice guy. I'm the kind of guy who can pimp you out, but not without a twenty page checklist of contingencies."