Truly (New York Trilogy #1) (10 page)

He jotted down his email address and phone number and handed them over. “Call me when you get home.”

“I don’t want to bother you.”

“Call me. I’ll worry otherwise. And if you don’t get home, and something goes wrong, call me and tell me, and I’ll come pick you up.”

More sensitive-man crap. Apparently if you acted like a nice guy, you turned into one. At least temporarily.

“All right, I will. Thank you.” She hopped off the chair. “I can help with the dishes.”

“No, I’ve got it. You should get going. It might be a hassle at the airport.”

“You sure? I hate to leave you with this mess. I know it’s mostly on my account.”

When she lifted a plate, he said, “Leave it.”

Too harsh. She held up her hands, palms flat.
I’m backing off
, the gesture said.
So you won’t bite me
.

She went into the living room and folded the blanket he’d thrown over her last night. After slipping on her shoes, she spent a minute pushing Alec’s couch pillows around into a more attractive arrangement and then pulled her jersey over her head.

Her hair had started to dry at the ends and in wispy little curls around her face. The sun was up now, and it lit those stray pieces of hair so they glowed, golden and bright.

“Thanks for everything,” she said. “Sorry I … you know. Kind of crash-landed in your life last night.”

“Did I not make myself clear about the apologies?”

That won him a fleeting smile.

“You really won’t let me drive you.”

“I really don’t
need
you to drive me.”

He sighed. “At least tell me how you’re getting back to the subway.”

“Right out the door, left at the first corner, two blocks down.”

He nodded. He couldn’t think what else to say, so he stepped close, leaned in, and
brushed his lips over her cheek. She smelled like his soap.

“Travel safe, May-Belle.”

“I’ll do my best.”

When she left, he sat down on the couch and stared at the blank back of the door, trying to figure out why he felt like he’d just been whacked with the blunt end of a karmic stick.

And what it meant that he felt remarkably calm about that.

Empty, but calm.

It started raining hard soon after May left, and it didn’t let up all morning.

The downpour cut way down on the number of people who came to the Saturday Greenmarket at Union Square. He and Amanda—the Figs waitress who ran the restaurant’s booth four days a week—crouched under the tent in their coats, drinking coffee from another booth and exchanging idle predictions of when the weather might clear up.

The people who did venture out to buy produce weren’t interested in standing around and chatting about honey, but they did buy a lot of honey white-bean soup. Ben had made it thick, with chunks of ham, and Amanda kept telling people it made an excellent breakfast food.

She was a hell of a saleswoman.

At ten, his cell phone buzzed in his pocket, and he looked at the screen. New voice mail.

It hadn’t rung. He checked his missed calls and saw two from an unknown number, the first ten minutes ago, the second just now.
May
.

He put his hand on Amanda’s arm, interrupting her conversation. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

“Okay.”

He ducked behind the tent.

The wind whipped up, and he had to hunch and pull his raincoat hood over his head in order to hear what she was saying in the message.

—sorry to bother you again, but I wasn’t sure—

—police report, and I don’t have it, so I don’t know—

—at a Starbucks, but it’s fine. Sorry to bother you—

—All right. Bye. Thanks again
.

He listened to the message a second time, but he didn’t get much more from it than that she’d missed her flight, and he’d missed her.

Goddamn it
.

Ben walked away from the booth, his loose fist curling and uncurling. Now how was he going to find her? There were a hundred Starbucks in New York, if she was even in New York. She could still be in Jersey.

Wherever she was, she was alone, and she didn’t even have a coat. She had forty-some
dollars and a credit card number written on a menu.

He should’ve given her his own card. Made her wait for him to get cash from the machine, regardless of how little she liked the idea. Something.

He returned to his seat. A customer asked him why the honey from Jamaica Plain had a green tinge, and he said, “How the fuck should I know?”

Amanda gave him a look after the man scurried off.

“Sorry,” he said. “Woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“You can go grab lunch, if you want,” she said. “I’ll handle the honey for an hour. Or you could pack it in. It’s miserable out here today.”

If he went home, he’d just be rattling around the apartment, pissed off at himself. “No,” he said. “You go on to lunch, get warmed up. I’ll take care of the booth.”

“You sure?”

“I promise not to bite anybody.”

“There’s a comfort.” She stood and picked up her coffee. “All right. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Ben huddled in the booth, hands jammed in his pockets, glowering. He didn’t sell any soup. Or anything else.

His phone rang again. Unknown Caller.

“May?”

“Hi!” she said. “How did you know it was me?”

“Nobody calls me. Where are you?”

“I’m actually close to your place. At the Starbucks near the Fiftieth Street subway?”

“I’m not there.”

“Oh.”

“You know where Union Square is?”

“I don’t know where anything is.”

“You still have some cash?”

“Sure. I only spent a few dollars on coffee.”

“Take a cab to Union Square. I’m working at the farmer’s market.”

A pause. “I can’t bother you if you’re working.”

“You won’t be bothering me. You’ll be keeping me company.”

“I don’t know, Ben. I feel bad calling you at all. I was thinking I can go to the Public Library, maybe. If I get online—”

“May-Belle, get your ass in a cab, or I’m coming to get you.”

A longer pause. Shit. He sucked at this. “I’ll feed you honey white-bean soup with ham when you get here,” he offered.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“See you in a few minutes, I guess.”

“Yeah. See you.”

When he hung up, the wind was whipping the flap of the tent around, and the sky had turned darker. Downright ominous.

But Ben felt a lot better.

* * *

She turned up at noon, looking like a drowned rat.

He was talking to a customer when he spotted her, and he shoved the jar of honey into the woman’s hand. “Just take it,” he said. “On the house. If you like it, you can buy some more next weekend.”

“Thank you,” the woman said, delighted. “How wonderful of you …”

But Ben didn’t hear the rest, because he’d already walked out of the tent and wrapped a protective arm around May.

“Your shoes are soaked.”

“I know. I wasn’t sure where to stop the cab, and it dropped me off over there.” She pointed to the far side of the market, over the top of hundreds of tents arrayed in long rows that wrapped around the outside of Union Square. Three blocks long and two blocks wide. He’d stranded her at the far end of a football field in the rain.

“Fuck. I should’ve said which street.”

“It’s okay. A little water won’t hurt me.”

But after he got her settled under the booth’s protective tent with a bowl of soup, she started shivering. Soaked to the skin. As if May had needed one more shitty thing to happen to
her.

Balancing an empty box against the edge of the table, he started packing jars of honey into it. “They wouldn’t let you on the plane?” he asked.

“No.” Her mouth puckered into a fist. “The TSA website says that if you lose your ID, they can ask you some questions and if you answer them right, they’ll let you through security. But what it doesn’t say is that the airlines have their own separate policies. The woman at the airline counter said I couldn’t check in without ID unless I had a police report.”

“That sucks.”

“It’s the rules, you know? But I think it’s okay. If I can just log in to the airline website, I can use the credit card number to change the ticket to later today, and then I’ll check in online and it’ll all be fine.”

“How’s it fine?” He paused, a jar of honey in hand. “Don’t you have the same problem?”

“No, that’s what I’m saying. If I went straight to TSA without checking in—which I can do, because I don’t have any luggage—then they’ll ask me some questions about my identity to confirm whatever is in their databases, and I’m home free. It’s because I went to the airline counter to get boarding passes that I ran into trouble, and by the time I was done figuring all that out with the lady at the counter—they have a special line for people with problems, and of course it was nine miles long and
so
slow—I’d missed my flight.”

He put the jar in the box and heard glass crack, realizing too late he’d forgotten to be gentle with the packing. And that his heart was hammering in his chest, his body full of restless anger on May’s behalf.

Deep breath.
Calm
.

He visualized Lake Superior, but it didn’t do much for him.

“Stupid fuckers,” he muttered.

“And I tried to change my ticket at the airport, but—”

“But she wouldn’t let you do it without a credit card. And if you’d let me give you five hundred bucks in cash, you wouldn’t be here right now, but you wouldn’t take it, so here you are.”

“Kind of.”

She sounded chastened, which made him feel guilty because he’d been hassling her and it wasn’t her fault. He knew what it was like not to want to be indebted to people.

“The airline policy is horseshit. I hope you reported that woman to management.”

“She was only doing her job.”

How like May to be understanding about the airport employee who’d kept her from going home to her family. He bet she’d never mouthed off in public to anyone in her life.

“What are you up to?” she asked.

“Putting away the honey.”

“Is the market over soon?”

“Not until six, but as soon as Amanda gets back from lunch, we’re leaving.”

Her forehead furrowed.

“Amanda runs the booth. I just kind of squat here and sell soup and honey.”

“We don’t have to leave because I’m wet. I’ll dry.” She shoveled another spoonful of soup into her mouth. “This is warming me up already. It’s wonderful.”

“Thanks. It’s no big deal to leave early. There aren’t many customers anyway.”

“But that means every sale matters even more.” She reached for a jar of his honey and turned it over. “Especially when the honey costs thirty-five dollars.”

She surveyed the rows of honey still left on the table. “Did you ever think you might sell more if you charged less for it?”

“It’s special honey.”

“I guess so.”

“I get a lot of repeat customers.”

“I’m sure you know what you’re doing, then.”

But the set of her mouth told him she didn’t believe it. He made a mental note to try to change her mind later on. After he got her dry.

When he finally found the cracked jar and lifted it out of the box, she was staring into her soup bowl, stirring around a chunk of potato with her plastic spoon.

“You have a game plan?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Like I said. I can change the ticket online and do it all over again. Or I could take a bus home.”

“You’re not taking the fucking bus. Are you kidding? Have you ever been on a bus going cross-country?”

“They can’t be that bad.”

“Yeah. They can.”

He squatted down next to her, trying to read her reluctance and make all the impulses inside him align with whatever it was she wanted him to do.

Trying to ignore his gut, which was telling him to keep her here, whatever it took.

He couldn’t go by what his gut told him. His gut was a Neanderthal. All it wanted was to eat and fuck and win at things. If he wanted May to stay, he had to figure out what someone
else
would do in this situation. Someone with better instincts.

Don’t put your arm around her
.

He braced his palm against the back of her chair. “You thinking about going back to Thor?”

“No way.”

There was anger in her voice. Buried hurt.

Ben needed to see her expression, so he reached over and tipped her chin up with one finger.

There it was. Those eyes, just like they’d been at Pulvermacher’s. Full of sharp intelligence and fury.

She bottled everything up. You had to pay close attention to see the signs—how quiet she got when she was well and truly upset. How cheerful she acted in the face of a disaster that was gutting her.

What would it take to get her to let go? To uncork that bottle and say what she really felt?

He wondered why he needed to find out.

“You know what I think?” he asked. Because he had no fucking idea what someone else would say in this situation.

“What?”

“I think maybe you’re not in a big hurry to get up to that cabin and have to explain yourself to a bunch of busybody family members.”

“You do, huh?”

“I think you’re not the kind of person who ordinarily forks quarterbacks, so they’re all going to want to know what happened, and you don’t feel like talking about it yet.”

She gave him a little smile. “You might be right.”

“I think you need a vacation.”

“I’m trying to take one. At the cabin.”

“Yeah, well, apparently New York has other ideas. New York thinks you need a vacation
here
, and it’s not letting you go until you give it a few more days to change your mind about it.”

May looked at her shoes, the smile still lingering. “If New York wants to woo me, it shouldn’t be such a dick.”

Ben laughed. He took the soup bowl from her and set it down, then folded her hands between his. Her fingers were freezing. “New York has a proposal.”

“What’s that?”

“Stay with me. Let me show you around for a few days. I have to find an apartment anyway, so I’m just going to be rattling around the city, visiting different neighborhoods to check on my bees and looking for somewhere to live. You can take a break and make a vacation out of the rest of the long weekend. Then you can buy that plane ticket for Tuesday, and I’ll take you to the airport and see you off properly.”