Under the Orange Moon (21 page)

He had to hear Ben out. He needed to know where his head was, how he felt. He hated to ask such invasive questions. After all this time of silence on the matter, though, he deserved to get answers.

“Where are you going?” Brandon asked as Jonah headed for the door. “We’re in the middle of a discussion.”

Jonah said nothing. He only walked out the back door and made his way through the yards.

Jonah’s face looked somewhat different, Ben noticed. At first, he questioned whether he was dreaming; it was difficult to tell the difference these days. Life was more of a blur than anything lately.

“You up?” Jonah asked. He sat straddling a chair, holding a glass of water in one hand and aspirin in the other.

Ben sat up and pressed his throbbing head to his hand. “Hell,” he mumbled.

“It gets worse,” Jonah snapped.

“I don’t want a lecture.”

Jonah stood furiously, knocking the chair to the ground and startling Ben beyond belief. “Maybe that’s exactly what you need, you piece of shit!”

Stunned, Ben stared up at him in bewilderment. He knew it was only a matter of time before this moment came and, as the previous night played over again in his head, he knew this conversation was only fair.

“Do yourself a favor and just shut up, Ben.”

A foreign look of rage rushed through Jonah as Ben tried to grasp the fact that he was on the opposing end of his fury. He must have wanted to unleash this all on him the night before, but Ben’s incoherent brain had been drowning in beer and whiskey. Now, here Jonah was, stewing on it all night and ready to explode. It was strange looking up at him with his angry face looking back.

Ben sighed long and heavy. “All right, get it over with. Tell me what an ass I am.” If there was ever someone who could get away with speaking to Ben this way, it would be Jonah. Ben knew that he owed Jonah a lot after everything he caused the night before. He had a right to be heard.

“You honestly think this is about what you did last night?”

“Isn’t it?” Ben half-laughed awkwardly, possibly a bit fearfully as this new version of Jonah stood over him with his fists clenched.
Would he really punch me?
“I got wasted and punched Olerson. Sorry, man.”

“I don’t care about what you did at Oilies. That was just another bar brawl to add to the list.” Jonah stood his ground, refusing to sit again. He seemed as though he was trying to keep his cool, but it didn’t look as if that battle would be won in Ben’s favor.
             

Yes. Yes, he would definitely hit me
. Ben shook his head, hoping it wasn’t what he thought. He turned his head and looked at nothing, suddenly remembering the reason he punched Michael.
Oh shit
.

“I don’t ask a lot of you. I never have. I didn’t know how serious it was
—if there was anything at all, that is.” Jonah looked down and shook his head. “I’ve kept my opinions to myself because I had hoped this was actually something different for you, but I can’t just let you do this to her. I should have stopped it.”

             
“Oh. That.” Ben’s throat burned.
Of course that
. “You knew the whole time then?”
              “All the times you went up to her room in the middle of the night? How could I not?” Jonah stared and waited. He waited for Ben to gasp, jump, implode—something!

“I don’t know what to say,” Ben said in a cowardly whisper. “I didn’t realize you knew.”

“Say that you’re sorry for hurting my sister. Say that you’ll go over there and fix it. Say something that will make me not want to punch you, anything besides nothing.”

“I can’t fix this, Jonah.” Ben looked down. “I wish I could.”

“Why her?” Jonah growled in frustration as he turned and headed for the door. “You shouldn’t have come back. You should have left her alone.”

“I know,” Ben replied quietly. “That’s why I’m leaving today.”

Jonah laughed sarcastically. “And, let me guess, you have no plans of coming over and telling her to her face.”

Ben shook his head. His chest stung as he allowed his next words to come out. “I am who I am, though, right?”

“You really are a selfish bastard, Ben.” He brought his fist to his mouth, attempting to calm his rampant nerves. “Don’t come back. Leave her alone and, you know what, you can leave me alone, too.”

Jonah left, slamming the door behind him.

Ben watched his brother leave in an angry rage. It was less than what he knew he deserved. He was doing them all a favor that they would never thank him for. As lonely as life would be without the Mathews, he didn’t deserve any of them. 

She could hear the chatter from the lower level of her home, and she knew without listening what the conversation was about. It was just another invasion of her life that they all helped themselves to on a regular basis. Why did they always feel it so necessary to invade her privacy?

She reluctantly made her way down the stairs. If it weren’t for the list of supplies she needed to get for her class, she would have stayed in bed all day just to avoid them all. She hadn’t been sure if she would even finish out the semester. That’s how certain she had been that she would be leaving with Ben. She had put the task off for long enough now and her class was getting ready to resume after its long holiday break. The job couldn’t be ignored any longer.

She rounded the corner and flinched, prepared for the worst. Her brothers and Linda stopped speaking and stared at her sympathetically. It was obvious what they thought.
Brandon’s face was enraged. The rest of them looked torn and confused. Dylan wanted to scream. They were turning it into their problem.

“Morning,” she said, biting her lip and avoiding an outburst that was sure to make her day worse. She had neither the strength nor the patience to defend herself today.

“Hi, honey,” Linda said in a fake, uppity voice. “Would you like coffee?”

Dylan shook her head. She stared, confused and suspicious by their behavior. They looked at her through careful eyes, gawking as if she were a time-bomb. They looked frightened but thoughtful.

“Hey, Wee—I mean—
Dylan
,” Jonah began, “we thought you should know—”

Dylan put her hand up to quiet him. “You don’t get to say,” she said sternly, thinking there would be an opinion following his words. She wanted to be clear that nothing they believed would matter to her.

“Ben’s leaving,” he continued. “He’s leaving right now.”

Without a moment’s thought, Dylan ran out the back door. She sprinted through the yards and over the gravel in a garden. She nearly stumbled over a small cactus, forgetting it had been there as long as she could remember. She was clumsy, unfocussed but, most of all, she was determined to get to him. How could he leave her like this?

She cleared the final yard and came to the edge of the curb right across from Ben’s house, stopping with a near screeching halt against the pavement. The scrapes on the bottom of her feet only reminded her too late that she was barefoot. She was in her pajamas and still hadn’t brushed her teeth. She felt ridiculous.

She couldn’t make her feet move another step. She stared at Ben’s house. Unbelievably, it managed to appear even more depressing than before. When Dylan would pass the home on her way out of the subdivision, she would smile, and think,
There’s Ruth’s house
. On occasion, she would look up towards Ben’s window and smile, hoping for his return.  Only now, Ruth was gone and, very soon, Ben’s room would be empty again.

She thought of Ben packing his bag, ignoring Ruth’s closed bedroom door. She imagined the house demolished. She knew that he probably destroyed anything within reach. That was always Ben, polite destruction.

She had no idea what she was even going to say to him this time. She hadn’t thought of a greeting as she ran. She was always so careful with her words with Ben; she handled him fragilely out of fear that he would point out her stupidity. The last few weeks with him made her feel the roles were reversed, but now they had come full circle and she was almost dizzy from the abrupt change their relationship had taken again this time.

A yellow cab sat in the drive as Ben slowly walked from the front door. He looked sad, alone, angry, tired
—just about every negative emotion one person could have. She stared as he set the alarm and walked down the stone path that ran to the waiting taxi. She watched, debating whether to call out to him.

Screw it,
she thought. He owed her a goodbye. “Ben!”

He stopped walking and froze. His shoulders lifted and then fell as he sighed. He was in the middle of a fast getaway and she was ruining it now. “What?” he asked without looking.

“You could at least look at me.”

He turned slowly, raised his hands at his sides, and asked, “Happy? I’m looking at you.”

“No,” Dylan answered. She stepped down and walked closer to him. She walked like she was moving into battle, and she was in a way. “What are you doing? You don’t want this.”

“You have no idea what I want,” he said. He straightened his black leather bag on his shoulder and turned toward the taxi. His wall of arrogance seemed taller and much thicker than usual.

Dylan stepped after him. “I’m just going to follow you. I’ll get into that cab if I have to.”

“Why are you making this so hard, Dylan?” Ben snapped uncaringly.
             

“You really don’t know?” Dylan let a tear fall down her cheek. “Because I love you, Ben,” she whispered.

Ben’s jaw tightened. “Well, I’m sorry for that. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“You’re sorry?”

“Don’t do that,” he ordered and ran his hand through his hair. “Don’t be such a girl.”

“What?” she asked painfully. “I
am
a girl.”

“I know you’re a girl,” he grumbled. “Just go back to your house. This conversation isn’t going anywhere. It’s stupid.”

“Ben, let me help you. We can work this out together.” She stepped closer, pleading almost. “What happened to your mom—”

Ben snapped. “What
happened
to my mom?” he asked incredulously. “What
happened
to her was this: while I was off fucking my best friend’s sister, she shoved pills down her throat and died.”

That was her undoing. Dylan’s chest stung, her throat burned. She launched herself at him without thought, and shoved him hard in the chest. She slammed her fists against him, one after the other, until all the energy drained from inside of her. She was breathless, animalistic, and completely devastated.

Ben remained unfazed by it all. “Feel better?” he asked when she was done. “That’s what you wanted, right? The truth?”

There was nothing she could say to make it stop, to change his mind. He was going to do this. He was going to leave. She was sure he would never come back this time.

She backed away slowly while she attempted to catch her breath. She gasped at the painful emptiness he was able to leave behind on her. She was shaken to the core but, as her father had told her years before, she knew it was time to let love go. There was nothing more she could do.

Ben didn’t look at her a second time. He carelessly walked away and got into his cab. As it drove away, passing Dylan as it went, he refused to look at what he was leaving behind. He wouldn’t even give her one last glance.

“You got a clinger not taking the hint?” the driver asked Ben as they sped away. “Sometimes you have to just hit em’ hard.”

“Something like that,” Ben replied quietly.

“Well, it looks like she got it now, though, right? I mean, you demolished her back there.”

“I did her a favor.”

“I don’t think she thanks you,” the driver said with a chuckle.

Ben turned his face and looked out the window. He watched in agony as his neighborhood grew smaller and smaller behind him. “She will,” he whispered,
while barely holding on to a falling tear.

Dylan spotted Meredith’s impatient face in the doorway of her classroom. Her cheeks were rosy, a sure sign she was feeling the pre-wedding stress a bit more as the big event closed in. It seemed as if every day there was something new, another emergency that only Dylan could help solve.

Dylan saw through Meredith’s motives, though. One didn’t have to be a Mathews to understand the way they all worked. The wedding was a convenient way to distract her from frequent thoughts of Ben and, Dylan was positive, Charlie asked Meredith to be an even bigger pain than before. They treated her as an explosive, a grenade perhaps, ready to go off at any moment if she continued to bottle up the feelings she refused to release.

Meredith lifted her arm and pointed to the tiny watch that wrapped around her wrist. She mouthed the words
wrap it up
, and made an expression of urgency as she did.