Something New (41 page)

The door to apartment eight opens a microsecond after I ring the bell. Ben stands before me, a vision in unbuttoned jeans, no shirt, a towel slung around his neck, his hair just-showered wet, and an eighth of an inch of beard growth peppering his chin. He smiles warmly at me and a single thought steamrolls over all other thoughts in my brain.

I want this man.

He steps aside wordlessly to let me pass, but I stand frozen for moment. Never in my life has a man actually taken my breath away, at least not one who wasn’t being projected onto a movie screen. I want to hurl myself at him and wrap myself around him and rocket to the stars at the speed of light.

“Come in,” he urges.

I walk into the apartment. The interior is what you would expect from a dwelling that is home to no one. The walls are bare, the furniture is clearly an amalgamation of thrift store purchases, and there are no personal effects or items of interest decorating the room. The plus side is that two walls in the living room are made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, through which the sunshine blazes, cheering the otherwise drab surroundings. At least it’s better than a dingy bathroom in a bar.

“Can I get you something?” Ben asks, coming up beside me and gingerly placing his hand on the small of my back. “Coffee?”

I shake my head. My heart is still pounding, and I fear that adding caffeine to my body chemistry would give me a coronary.

He nods, then leans in and kisses me softly on the cheek.
I turn toward him and his lips slide to mine, never breaking contact with my skin. My first instinct is to pull away. He and I should talk first, and I fear that once we get started with the touching and kissing and, uh, the rest, there will be no stopping us until we are a sweaty, sated, horizontal mass. But Ben breaks off the kiss first and takes a step back.

“Are you…okay?” He is looking at me intently, as if reading my mind.

“I’m fine,” I assure him.

“Sit, sit,” he says, gesturing to the worn gray-green couch. “I’m sorry about my ensemble.” He chuckles as he crosses the room and grabs a white oxford shirt hanging over the back of a chair. He quickly puts it on, tossing aside the towel, and all I can think is,
Oh, please, no! Don’t cover those spectacular pecs.

“So, how did your surveillance thing go?” I ask him.

“Good,” he answers, taking a seat next to me and relaxing back against the cushions. “I can’t really talk about it.” He grins, embarrassed. “Ongoing case. But we got what we needed. Thanks for asking.” He reaches over and brushes his fingertips against my cheek. “I heard there was some excitement at my house yesterday,” he says, pulling his hand back and raking it through his wet hair.

“Yeah. You could say that.”

“Thanks for your help. Linda is a wunderkind at litigation, but she’s not great with exploding pipes. Anyway, the plumber came out and fixed it, and everything’s drying out nicely, including the boys.”

We sit in awkward silence for a moment. Then he cocks his head at me. “This is kind of weird, huh?”

I exhale, possibly for the first time since I entered the apartment. “Yeah. It is. Kind of.”

“Yeah, well, I thought, maybe. I don’t know what I thought.…I’m not really, uh, well versed at extramarital seduction.”

I feel myself go rigid, and Ben notices.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

I’m silent.

“It’s just, this is a first for me,” Ben says. “And obviously for you, too. Which makes me feel great, that you’d choose me, that you’d want to.…Oh, God, I should just get my jaw wired shut!”

I want to laugh, he is so earnest, but I can’t laugh, because he has just lied to me again,
twice
, in the last thirty seconds. I could overlook
one
fib, said over drinks in a bar. But
two
?
Three
, all together? What kind of woman am I, anyway? Have I no standards?
Just don’t think about him naked from the waist up and you’ll be fine.
I stand and immediately move to the door. I turn back to him but keep my eyes on the floor.

“I’m sorry, Ben.”

He bolts off the sofa and takes a few steps toward me. “Wait. Don’t go. Ellen, what? What is it?”

Balls, Ellen. Grow some. Right now!

I raise my eyes and stare directly into his. “Linda told me about your affair, Ben.”

He looks at me, puzzled, and then slowly, understanding dawns on his face. He leans back against the arm of the couch and blows out a sigh. “Oh. Jesus.”

“She was upset. I don’t think she even knew what she was saying,” I explain, suddenly protective of her.

“No, I…I didn’t mean…”

“So, clearly, this is
not
your first time…”

“Wow. You must think I’m…” His voice trails off.

A liar? A cheater? A bastard? Check, check, and check. A handsome, sexy, desirable one, but still…

“It’s true,” he admits quietly. “But it was different.”

But it was different
is right up there in my book with
It didn’t mean anything
. I stand there and look directly at him.

“I understand if you want to go, but at least let me explain what happened.”

No
, I think.
I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want you to regale me with your conquest of a twenty-two-year-old hooker with a heart of gold or how you tripped and fell and your dick accidentally landed in your best friend’s wife.
What I want, what I wish for with all my heart, is to have the ability to time-travel back to yesterday noon. To have Jill show up on time, so that I wouldn’t have had to bear witness to Linda’s distress and subsequent revelation. So that I would not be caught in a quagmire of conflict, and would instead be in bed with this man, luxuriating in the feel of him holding me. His dick would probably be inside me by now and there would be nothing accidental about it.

Ben pushes himself to his feet and crosses to me, taking my hands in his. “Please,” he says entreatingly. “Come back. Sit down for a few minutes. Then you can go.”

Begrudgingly, I allow him to lead me back to the couch. We sit side by side, and after a brief hesitation, he releases my hands and stares down at his own, which he folds in his lap like a contrite schoolboy. My gaze lands on the scarred coffee table in front of us.

“It was a couple of years ago,” he begins. “I was working out of L.A. South, which is about a billion miles from here. I was breaking in a new partner. She was straight out of uniform, spent a lot of time with youth services while she was on patrol. Sharp woman, but…young.” His voice takes on a faraway quality, as though he is caught up in the memory. He doesn’t look at me, just continues to inspect his hands. “We’d been working together a couple of weeks when we
caught a domestic violence call. It exploded before we got there. Two kids, the mother. I’d been a cop for almost twenty years at that point, and I’d never—It was bad. It was really bad.” The way he says
bad
, in a low whisper, causes a chill to course through me. I look at him and see that his eyes are closed and his expression pained, as though he is reliving the scene. I want to reach out to him, but I don’t. He opens his eyes and gazes at the coffee table.

“When you see something like that…” He clears his throat, swallows, takes a breath. “Your first instinct is to reach out to someone else who’s seen the same thing, so you can both try to pretend you didn’t see it in the first place. It’s like you’re trying to prove to each other—to yourself—that the human race actually does have redeeming qualities, despite what we’re capable of.” He shakes his head regretfully. “It doesn’t work. It only gives you a momentary escape. But it happens sometimes.”

I think of Mia’s dalliance with Peter Stormcloud.
Yes, it does happen.

Ben scrubs at his face as though trying to wipe the memory away. “Linda blew it out of proportion. Not that she didn’t have every right to,” he adds quickly. “But it was one night. The night of possibly the worst day of my life.”

And now, I do reach out to him, closing my fingers around his. I feel his wedding band digging into my palm, but I don’t care.

“Still, it
was
cheating,” he says. “But this is different.” His eyes find mine. “I feel something for you, Ellen.”

“You don’t even know me,” I say, so softly that I’m not even sure I said the words aloud. But I must have, because Ben counters them.

“At this moment, I probably know you better than anyone else in your life.”

I choose my words carefully because he is wrong. There is someone who knows me better than Ben does. That person is
me
.

“I would be lying if I told you that I don’t want to be with you,” I say. At this, he raises my hand to his lips and kisses it. His beard stubble against my skin sends shivers down my spine. “But,” I say, gently withdrawing my hand, “this whole thing, between you and me. It’s the same as your…one night with your partner. It’s an escape. We’re drawn together because we’re…we’re new to each other. I feel like I’m the best version of myself when I’m with you.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” he asks.

“No,” I answer. “It’s not. But you don’t know anything
about
me. You don’t know any of the ugly stuff. The secret stuff. The things that make me who I am. For better or for worse.”

“I want to know.”

“No, you don’t. That’s not what affairs are for.”

“Ellen.”

He suddenly reaches out and pulls me to him and kisses me fiercely. I start to recoil, but when his tongue presses against my lips, demanding access to my mouth, I am unable to resist. We sink against the cushions, fused, as my insides burn. But Ben takes the kiss no further. He retreats, only by inches, and holds my face in his palms.

“I want to know the ugly stuff, too. I want to know all about you. Tell me. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone before.”

I smile at him. “Just one thing?”

“Everything.”

“This could take a while.”

He chuckles and his breath is sweet. “I’m doing surveillance, remember? I’ve got all day.”

Five hours later, completely drained and in need of a long soak in a hot bath, I pull the Lexus into my driveway. The sun is low in the sky and a faint breeze flutters through the trees, but I am warm, have a surplus of heat flowing through me from my time with Ben.

When I open the front door, I know instantly that something is amiss. There is no sign or telltale sound of Sally. Also, the air feels different, as though it has shifted in the wake of something larger than a dog. My first instinct is
burglar
, and I consider walking out to the front lawn and calling 911. Except for the fact that I can’t call 911 from the lawn because my cell phone is currently lying in the bottom left drawer of the kitchen among a veritable buffet of dead batteries that await recycling.

I tentatively tread across the floor of the foyer, my senses on alert, expecting someone to jump out at me, cheap horror-flick style, from any number of hiding places. I stop at the archway and turn toward the living room and let out a frightened screech of deafening proportions.

“Jesus!”

Jonah sits on the couch, staring at me expectantly. He stands up, but doesn’t move an inch in my direction.

“Jonah! What are you—shit! You scared me!”

“Sorry,” is all he says. He is looking at me like I am a total stranger and my stomach roils with sickening dread.

“Where are the kids?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.

“I dropped them at Jill’s.”

Oh, God. What did my cousin tell him? Did she call him and relay my whole sordid week to him, hickey included? Tell him to get his ass home before things went from worse to
downright irreversible? No. Jill wouldn’t do that. Would she? No. She wouldn’t.

“I guess you parked in the garage,” I say dumbly.

“Yup. You did a great job in there.” While his words are complimentary, his tone is anything but. I am sweating with guilt and shame and wonder if Jonah can smell the scent of my sins from across the room. He narrows his eyes at me and shoves his hands in his pockets while I stand there, taut with tension, awaiting a verbal firestorm. “What happened to your cell phone?”

It takes me a minute to process his question, since I was expecting a far different one, then quickly think of a few alternatives to the truth.
Stolen by a marauding purse snatcher, crushed beneath an alien spaceship’s crash landing, borrowed by MacGyver to avert nuclear holocaust.
Anything to deflect the blame away from my irresponsibility. As if my mishap with my cell phone is the worst thing I’ve done.

“I dropped it in the toilet,” I say finally. At least I can be honest about that.

“I didn’t realize you were so attached to your cell that you brought it with you to the bathroom.”

“It was in the back pocket of my jeans. I keep it there sometimes.”

“Since when?” His voice is laced with sarcasm.

I realize that this conversation is probably not about my cell phone, and if it is, it shouldn’t be. Wearily, I drop my purse on the stairs and head into the living room. As I move toward him, Jonah recoils from me as if he were a sea urchin being poked by a stick.