Make Me Bad(25)

I’m not sure he means for me to see his disappointment, but it’s there in his subtle frown, in the way he nods but doesn’t offer a reply.

He scoots his chair back from the table after signing the bill, and we walk in silence toward the door. Once we’re outside, standing shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the valet to bring around our cars, he speaks about the subject we usually do our best to tiptoe around.

“I’ve been hoping you’d come to terms with your mom’s passing on your own, but it occurs to me that I might have failed you in that department.”

We’re both staring out at the manicured golf course, unwilling to turn and meet the other’s eyes. We don’t talk about this, at least not often. If he’s bringing it up, it’s with a hell of a lot of courage.

“I was with her for 47 years, Ben. The suffering there at the end was only for a short while. Ask me if I regret the 47 years because of how it ended. Go ahead.”

It’s too hard to swallow past the lump in my throat, much less speak.

“The answer’s no. I don’t regret a single damn day. If you want to keep your focus on that firm and that house, that’s all right. It’s your life, your only life, and you get to choose how you spend it. I just don’t want you to get to my age one day and regret…” He pauses and scratches his chin, buying himself time. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m rambling, aren’t I? Look, there’s my car. You’ll be free of me soon enough. Forget I brought it up, all right?”

He claps my shoulder twice and then steps forward to greet the valet. I catch his boisterous laugh and the few words they exchange, but my attention is still on the horizon.

It’s your life, your only life, and you get to choose how you spend it.

I reach into the pocket of my pants and pull out my phone.





10





Madison





I honestly didn’t expect to hear from Ben again. After the strange way we ended things on Friday, I sort of expected him to cancel his volunteer assignment at the library and avoid me at all costs. My email to him was my way of casually putting the ball in his court. Are we going to steer clear of each other from now on? Pretend we don’t know each other? Or is the “make me bad” plan still on?

So, you can imagine my utter shock when I saw his text message pop up on my phone first thing this morning. Hey, this is Ben. I just got your email. Saturday morning is fine. It felt strange and thrilling and wonderful and I replied quickly because I was so excited, but now in hindsight, I realize I should have waited and played it cool.

His text was kind of curt, impersonal. One reply from me would have sufficed, but no, I had to let my fingers fly and send off half a dozen rambling messages before common sense finally kicked in and I nearly flung my phone at the wall. Reading our conversation back to myself only made matters worse. None of my texts make any sense. I asked him about my tone?! If he wanted my work number?!

He probably exchanges texts with actual supermodels, and I couldn’t manage to think of a single witty one-liner or teasing innuendo? I am deeply ashamed.

My solution to all of this is to just stop texting him altogether and shove my phone out of sight in my desk drawer. Well, kind of.

The pattern goes like this: I put a few books away, check my phone. Help a mom and her son find age-appropriate chapter books, check my phone. Set up for mommy-and-me story time, check my phone. I think I’ve checked it so many times, I’ve worn down the home button. It’s getting a little ridiculous, so when Eli comes down to retrieve me for our lunch break, I leave my phone behind and go without it. It’s nice, liberating. I sit in the restaurant and focus on my meal. Sure, my knees are bouncing under the table, and I seriously consider stealing Eli’s phone, logging into my iCloud, and checking my text messages—but I don’t! And that counts for something.

Fortunately for me, Eli doesn’t notice how weird I’m acting or the fact that my knee has bumped into his approximately 37 times. He has a lot on his plate. He and Kevin are trying to work with an adoption agency, and they’re hitting every single roadblock imaginable. The whole process is way more expensive than they realized. I feel terrible. He has actual problems. Even still, on our way back to the library, he finally remembers to ask me about Jake’s party.

“Was it fun?”

Keep it short, I tell myself.

Then, I proceed to tell him every single detail down to the brand of champagne I spilled on myself.

“Did your brother flip out when you disappeared?”

I let my head fall back against the seat and groan. “God, that was a fiasco.”

The minute Colten found me at the party, he yanked me right on out of there and insisted we go straight home. It didn’t matter that I had a pretty good lie for where I’d been for the past half-hour. First, I told him I’d accidentally spilled my drink on my dress and being too embarrassed to go back into the party, I’d gone down to the beach to have some time to myself. I thought that’d put the matter to rest, but it had the exact opposite effect. Colten told me in excruciating detail all the reasons that was a bad idea. Some guy from the party could have followed me out there. I could have bumped into a stranger on the beach and been _____. Fill in the blank with some kind of horrible thing: raped, stabbed, shot, kidnapped. I tried to point out that even though I recently had something bad happen to me, the crime rate in Clifton Cove is ridiculously low and the odds of me stumbling upon someone who wanted to do me any harm again are slim to none. He didn’t want to hear it, though. He told me I needed to take my safety more seriously. They haven’t found the guy yet. It wasn’t a joke.