Need Me (Broke and Beautiful #2)(11)

Honey’s cell phone buzzed on the tar roof beside her. She lifted her sunglasses and peered down at the screen. Elmer Boggs, calling again. Her ex-boyfriend, God bless his soul, had called her every single day since she’d left for New York. Now, Elmer might be a little on the lazy side, but he was a good guy who cared about her, so she didn’t fancy stringing him along. She hadn’t answered once for that very reason. But she could admit that today she felt a little vulnerable and a lot homesick. It wouldn’t hurt to see how old Elmer was getting along, would it?

She answered on the third ring. “Hey hey, Elmer.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. Honey Perribow is alive.” Elmer chuckled good-naturedly, and she couldn’t help but smile back. “I thought you might be too good for me now. Landed in New York and forgot all about Elmer.”

“Aw, I won’t be forgetting you anytime soon. You’re too damn big.”

His laughter boomed down the line. “You never complained when we won first prize every year at the apple picking competition.”

As always, when she spoke to someone from back home, her accent thickened. “You never complained when I baked them into pies, neither.”

He made a pained sound. “Now that is just plain cruel reminding me of all the pies I’m not eating. When are you coming back, Honey?”

“I’m not, Elmer.” She rolled onto her stomach with a sigh. “Tell me some gossip.”

Elmer was silent a moment, and she pictured him as he always was. Backward hat, faded jeans, goofy smile. His class ring glinting in the sunshine. She’d wager he’d be buried with that ring someday. Strong, dependable Elmer. His image was comfortable and familiar, so she let it linger, but it didn’t remain long. It was bulldozed by an intense, dark-haired professor with magical lips and sinful hands.

Finally, Elmer spoke, breaking into her wayward thoughts. “Katie and Jay got engaged last night at the homecoming game. Right there in the stands. Said he wanted to score a wife in the same place he used to score all his touchdowns.”

Honey felt tears pool behind her eyelids. It didn’t seem real. That the people she’d known since she’d been in diapers still had lives going on, so far from this place. She wasn’t self-centered enough to think life in Bloomfield suspended itself when she left, but it hurt to know she’d missed moments like the one Elmer just described. Maybe that was real life and this New York City dream of hers was an illusion. “Wow. How long do you give them before they’re having babies?”

“Now, I reckon there’s already one on the way.”

Honey giggled into her elbow, and it felt so good. Felt like she’d never left. “How’s your mama?”

“She’s keeping busy. Misses you.” He huffed out a breath. “So do I. Come home, Honey. I’ve got a gig working with a road crew, fixing potholes and whatnot. It’s steady. I can support us while you do the doctor thing here.”

Her smile vanished. “Elmer, don’t make me sorry I picked up the phone. I love talking to you, but I’m not coming back. I need to make my own way.”

“You always were stubborn.” He cleared his throat. She knew he was doing that nervous move with his hat, twisting it around his head. “I’ll let you go. Answer next time I call, will ya?”

“Okay, Elmer. Bye.”

Honey hung up the phone and stared at it a while, thinking of everything happening on the other end. Lives being lived. Babies being made. She thought of Elmer and his mama. Her own family. Ben. Always Ben. And she wondered if her course, the course she thought she’d always wanted, was the right one when it hurt this bad sometimes to follow it.

BEN KNEW HE should stop drinking. It wasn’t that he was a lightweight. He couldn’t afford to be a lightweight with friends like Louis and Russell, who drank beer like they might discontinue the shit. But he had a train ride back to Bushwick in front of him. Falling asleep on the J train and ending up in Queens would only ice this shit cake of a day, so really, he should stop.

Fuck it, I’ll get a cab.

Louis and Russell gave identical whistles as he reached for the pitcher of beer and missed. “Exactly how much beer do you need to consume before you tell us how you, Mr. Rule Follower, ended up with your hands up a student’s skirt?”

He abandoned his quest to get a decent grip on the pitcher and slapped both hands over his face instead. “Please, for the love of God, don’t say things like ‘hands’ and ‘skirt’ and ‘student.’ Not out loud.”

Louis looked amused. “You want us to come up with some kind of code?”

“Yes.” Ben pushed up his glasses, but they slipped down again almost immediately. “That should have been obvious.”

Russell threw an arm over the back of his seat, shit-eating grin firmly in place. “All right, Professor. How did you end up with your jackhammer so close to an off-limits coconut?”

Now Ben knew he needed to stop drinking, because in his drunken state, that nonsense actually sounded vastly better. At least it created some comical imagery to replace the decidedly not funny memory of what his hands had felt like up Honey’s skirt. No, not Honey. Ms. Perribow. Lolita. Jesus, how had he let things get so far? There was a process to getting your hands up a lady’s skirt, and it involved dates, drinks, conversation that lasted longer than ten minutes. It certainly didn’t involve your heart lodging in your throat, your hands clenching with the burning need to touch her touch her touch her. He couldn’t even begin to reason with that Ben, storage closet Ben, to deduce what the f*ck he’d been thinking.