Truly (New York Trilogy #1) (30 page)

When she rolled to her back, Ben was there, looking down at her. His brown eyes, dark in the dim room. His face so familiar, she might have known it for years.

I could draw you
, she thought.
I could draw you a thousand times
.

But she knew she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to risk turning Ben into another fantasy, more memory than man.

This was what she had left. This morning. These moments in the dark. Because as soon as they got out of the bed, she would begin leaving.

Unless you stay
.

She closed her eyes.

Shut up, shut up, fantasy brain
.

When she opened them, he was still there. “I can sleep on the plane,” she said.

He rubbed his thumb over her cheek. “Don’t move.”

With one hand planted on the bed beside her torso, he reached across her body and retrieved the glass of water he’d used to bring her ice cubes last night. He took a long drink.

“Here,” he said. “Sit up.”

She did as he asked. He handed her the glass. She drank the last few inches of tepid water. “Thanks.”

“Put it down.” She set the glass back on the table.

He caught her by the waist while she was still turned away and eased her down to the bed. “Now I can kiss you.”

When his head lowered, she cupped his face, her fingertips resting lightly against his jaw to feel his mouth opening over hers. She concentrated on these tactile impressions—every movement, every contraction and sensation a physical expression of his desire. The flexing muscles. Each stroke of his tongue, cool and wet. His solid body pressing her down into the mattress.

The warm reality of Ben.

She wouldn’t think about her guilt, or about what she felt for him—whether he felt it, too. Whether each of them was here in the bed separately, unknown and unknowable, or whether they
had something together that neither would admit.

She couldn’t think about it. Not without ruining everything.

May stroked her hands down Ben’s naked back and lived in the warm slide of his skin and the beat of her own heart. Touch by touch. Moment by moment. Breath after breath, as they roused to life and to the pleasure they could give each other.

There was only now.

He overdid it on breakfast. It was one of those things—he saw himself putting too much food in his basket at the market, watched himself calculating cooking times and thinking about garnishes, and he knew it was way over the top. He simply didn’t care.

May was leaving, and he was quietly flipping out.

Time had gone funny on him, moving in lurches and gasps. The seconds had ticked by slow as anything in bed this morning. In the dim light that snuck through the half-open bedroom door, he’d watched her face when he clasped her hands and lifted them above her head. He’d sunk inside her, captivated by her short, harsh breaths and the way her pleasure so closely resembled pain. Drawing it out, he’d kept his thrusts slow and controlled through her orgasm, then rolled onto his back and guided her hips in a rocking rhythm that kept him just shy of where he needed to be.

He’d stayed there with her for an eternity. A lifetime of May rising and falling over him, her soft skin beneath his hands, his mouth on her nipples, his fingers tracing the shapes of their joined bodies.

But afterward, time sped up. She got out of the bed, and he was somehow dressed, choosing produce at the market while she showered. He was behind the counter in the tiny kitchen, mixing dough while she talked on the phone. Chopping shallots while she bent over his laptop a few feet away.

And then time buckled again, and they were eating, side by side, his hair wet from the shower while the pans he’d used to make way too much food soaked in soapy water in the sink.

He couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t stupid.

Thanks for staying with me
.

The sex was incredible
.

I’ll miss you
.

He’d miss her. Did she know that? He hoped she did, but he had no intention of telling her. He shoveled potatoes into his mouth.

“I need to talk to Dan,” she said.

Ben swallowed wrong and started to cough. It bent him over the counter, streaks of pain
in his chest making his eyes water. For the span of a few seconds, he felt wretched everywhere, deep inside his bones where the marrow hid, blood-dark and unfixable.

“Ben? Are you choking? Stand up and let me see your face. You’re scaring me.”

He straightened, wiping his eyes, and she looked at him. Looked into his eyes and saw too much.

“I’m fine,” he wheezed. He grabbed his water glass and forced air into his lungs, holding his breath as his diaphragm convulsed. When he drank, his chest calmed, and he was able to say, “Just swallowed funny. Why do you need to talk to him?”

The lines around her mouth deepened. “I was going to buy a ticket, but at the last minute like this, it’s more than I should spend. I have to ask Dan if he can change the original one. That’s only a hundred and fifty dollars. But I think he’s flying today, so I’ll probably have to leave a message and wait … I don’t know. Maybe I should just buy it.”

Ben turned back to his food. Put something in his mouth. Chewed it. He couldn’t say what it was—fruit or meat or bread. Nothing tasted right. His ears buzzed with the sound of swarming bees.

“I’ll buy you the ticket.”

“You can’t. It’s too much. I think this is, like, a business travel fare, or something—it’s more than a thousand bucks, and the website says there’s only a few seats left at that price.”

“So you’d better lock it in quick.”

“It’s better if I call Dan. I’d be able to pay you back, but I don’t want to spend that much.”

“I don’t mean I’ll loan you the money, I mean I’ll buy it. You shouldn’t have to talk to him after … not so soon. Not if you don’t want to. And it’s too complicated anyway. Easier to go ahead and buy the goddamn ticket.”

“I couldn’t take that much from you. Not when you’re …” She made a looping gesture with her hand that meant nothing.

“I have the money. Let me.”

She stared into her coffee cup. She wasn’t eating much. He wondered if she felt as sick as he did.

“I have to see him anyway. He’s good friends with Matt. He’ll be at the wedding.” She tried to smile. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll call him, and that’s better, right? It’s more grown up. So
nobody feels uncomfortable or anything.”

Ben imagined May making nice with a good-looking Viking in a tux who’d as much as told the whole world there was something wrong with her. A man who’d proposed to her with words so offensive that she’d stabbed him for it.

He tried to set his fork down, but it hit the plate with a clatter, skittered along the countertop, and landed on the floor.

Don’t be like that
, he wanted to say.
Be the way you are with me
.

He had no right to tell her how to be. Nothing but the feeblest kind of hold over her. He just couldn’t stand the idea of releasing it. Not if she would go back to a life so circumscribed and not-May.

And yet he knew there was no way he could hold her. They’d agreed that this was a break for her, a vacation from reality, and even if they wanted to make it real—if May wanted to leave her life with Dan and make a life with him, somehow—he couldn’t imagine what that would look like.

He had to focus on his goals. Find an apartment. Calm himself down, put himself back together so he could be ready for that restaurant and maybe, someday, for May. Or for someone like her.

Even though there wasn’t anybody like May.

“Ben?”

Her eyes were soft with concern, unhurt by the sudden stiffness in his posture. Unafraid of falling forks or his flailing feelings.

He wanted her with him for a few days longer.
This
May. This one without fear, who told him what she wanted. This May who’d put her soft pink mouth around his cock when he was still knocked flat from their first round of sex last night. Who’d driven him crazy with her fingers and her tongue and her gentle, teasing questions.

Like this, Ben? Here?

He wanted her. He wanted
that
her.

The words emerged from his mouth at almost the same instant the idea came to him. “I’ll drive you home.”

“You …” May blinked. “What?”

“If I drive you, you don’t even have to worry about the plane ticket.”

“You have to move out, right? Isn’t Alec coming back?”

He looked around the apartment. He’d forgotten. “Most of this is Alec’s. If you give me a few hours, I can pack, and we can put my stuff in the van, or in the storage at Figs if there’s too much. Cecily won’t care.”

“It’s—it’s far,” she said. She hadn’t stopped frowning. “It’s a long drive.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. Let me check.”

She crossed to the couch and grabbed the open laptop. Her fingers clattered over the keyboard, and then she leaned in to read. “Sixteen hours?”

“Two days.”

Her face came up from the screen, and she met his eyes. “Four days, for you. There and back. I can’t ask you to—”

“You didn’t ask. I offered.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got the bees and the garden. Plus, don’t you kind of hate Wisconsin? You said—”

“The garden will be fine, and the bees can survive on their own for a lot longer than four days.” He stepped closer. “I can handle a few hours inside the borders of Wisconsin. And anyway, you don’t need to think about whether I really want to drive you or why I’m offering. All you need to decide is whether you want to spend two more days with me.”

As soon as he’d said the words, he regretted them. Because what if she didn’t? She could hardly say no now without being rude.

He skirted the couch and sat down beside her, pulling the laptop from her grip and sitting it on top of the coffee table. He wanted to see her eyes when she answered him.

He grabbed her hands and asked again. “Do you want to?”

She looked at his fingers intertwined with hers. Her thumb brushed over the back of his hand in a gentle sweep. Back and forth.

He saw the smile before she lifted her face. The apples of her cheeks rose. The bridge of her nose wrinkled. And then her eyes came up, full of dark amusement and delight.

“Two more days? Of course I want to.”

Of course she wanted to.

Of course she was smiling at him, squeezing his fingers.

She was May.

Of course.

May learned a hundred things about Ben in the next two days.

That he had so few personal possessions, there was room to spare in the backseat of the van after they loaded it up, but he had an obscene amount of bee-keeping equipment stored in the rooftop shed at his friends’ restaurant.

That he kept his chef’s knives in a metal toolbox that he packed into the space behind the driver’s seat, and when he locked the van, he did it with his eyes on that toolbox, as if he were assuring himself it would stay put.

She learned that he navigated easily through city traffic but preferred empty stretches of highway, where he liked to drive with one arm out the window, his fingers tapping along to the music, his shoulders relaxed and his mouth quick to smile.

She learned that he liked beef jerky, root beer, and—when they stopped for lunch—chicken stew with dumplings. That he liked it when she sang along with the radio, but he refused to join in.

She learned how the sunset light could make his profile glow, as if he’d been drawn with a sparkler against a saturated backdrop of pink and orange and red.

She learned the feel of his chest hair against her cheek and lips and nipples, the jumping contractions of his stomach muscles as she tongued a path down his body. How hard his fingers could dig in when she made him frantic. The rough jerk of his hips after a long day of innuendo and building heat.

By some silent, mutual agreement, they didn’t talk about anything important. She didn’t ask him what he thought he’d do with the money his ex had given him or why he didn’t seem to be doing anything with it at all. He didn’t ask her when she planned to call Dan or what she would say to him.

They talked instead about childhood Saturday morning cartoon rituals. They discussed organic farming and argued over Disney movies. She told him about some of her favorite assignments in the job with the Packers that she’d left behind, and he gave her a detailed description of the best way to make pasta. That was when she learned that the sound of Ben talking about food in a foreign language was just about the most arousing thing she’d ever heard.

They got in an argument about politics, and when she lit into him for never voting—actually
lit into him
, without thinking about it, as if she were the kind of person who upbraided other people for anything, ever—he snapped at her and then immediately apologized. They passed through ten miles of silence, during which she amazed herself by not worrying about it.
He’ll get over that
, she thought. And he did. He pulled into a rest area, unbuckled her seat belt, and tugged her into his lap to rest his forehead against hers.
I’m sorry
, he said.
I suck
.

You do suck
, she agreed.
But you have potential
.

Making out in a van became her new favorite way of resolving an argument.

Sometimes they drove in silence that she felt no pressure to fill. Through the softly undulating landscape of Pennsylvania, the industrial sprawl of Gary, Chicago, and Milwaukee, she rode high above the highway in Ben’s Astro minivan—an impeccably clean twenty-five-year-old vehicle that smelled of beeswax. She shelled pistachios and passed them to him to eat as he drove, kissed him under the awning of a gas station and accepted his gifts of glazed doughnuts and Funyuns.

She joked with him and punched him playfully in the shoulder when he said something too disgusting to be permitted.

She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him deeper into her body, deeper into her heart, deeper into her life.

But over and over again, mile after mile, she kept reminding herself,
This is temporary. You are driving toward the end
.