Make Me Bad(61)

He guides me to his car and then I direct him to her house. Thankfully, the apartment has its own entrance and exit in the back alley, so I can come and go as I please.

We park and Ben sits quietly for a second. It’s an ominous silence, the kind that leads into bad conversations I don’t want to have.

I prepare myself for the following possibilities:

“Madison, that was fun, but I want to keep this casual.”

“Madison, now that I’ve sampled the milk, I don’t really care to purchase the cow.”

“Madison, bye.”

Instead, he turns to me, eyes narrowed in frustration. “That’s the entrance to the apartment?”

I turn to see where he’s pointing. The staircase off the alley leads straight to the front door. The light overhead flickers like we’re in a horror film. It’s charming, right?

“Yup. Just up the stairs.”

“And the apartment doesn’t connect to Mrs. Allen’s house?”

“No, thank God.”

His frown intensifies. “Has your dad been here?”

I’m confused. What’s he getting at?

“Not yet.”

My dad took the news of me moving out surprisingly well—so well, in fact, that I suspect he’s been waiting for me to be ready to leave the nest for a while now. I truly thought he needed me there. I thought I was doing him a favor by staying and looking after him, cooking him meals and keeping tabs on his health, but as it turns out, it might have been the other way around.

I’m wondering about the hilarity of that when Ben leans forward.

“Madison, this alley has no security cameras. Nothing. That door doesn’t even have a deadbolt.”

I frown, not quite seeing his point. Clifton Cove is safe. There’s nothing to worry about.

“You were held up at gunpoint a few blocks over from here—what makes you think that couldn’t happen again? Or worse?”

“So…you don’t want to come up and see it?”

He emits a low grumble—more like a growl, really—and then follows me up the stairs. Looking at it from his perspective, I can see his point.

“I was so eager to get out of my dad’s house, I didn’t really have many options,” I say, turning my key and pushing the door open. “The rent here is cheap, and it’s just supposed to be temporary.”

I step inside and the room seems even smaller than when I left this morning. I didn’t want to move any of my furniture over here since it’s not technically mine. My dad bought that stuff. I need new, adult stuff that I purchase with my own money, so I’m currently sleeping on a futon. The other furniture is all stuff that was already up here collecting dust. There’s a funky gold floor lamp beside the futon. A card table is currently covered with my two duffel bags full of clothes. Behind a door on the right, there’s a toilet and a shower. The toilet only flushes when it feels like it and I haven’t figured out how to get hot water in the shower, but I’m sure if I keep at it, I’ll figure it out. Easy peasy.

“Madison,” Ben says, his tone just as hard as it was down in his car. He doesn’t see the same charm that I do.

“What? It’s homey!” I say, pointing to the Bob Ross-style landscape painting covering most of one wall.

“Come stay with me,” he says, as if it’s the simplest idea in the world.

“For a night?”

“Yeah, sure, or for…longer.”

For a second there, I thought he was going to say forever. My eyes bug out of my head. “No. Way too soon. I can’t believe you’d even suggest it.”

“Is it too soon? I’m thirty-one. I’ve dated a lot of women.”

“Well I haven’t dated a lot of women, or men, for that matter. I’ve been living with my dad and I don’t want to jump from his house to yours. I’d like to stand on my own two feet, at least for a while.”

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long is a while?”

“I don’t know.” I turn and walk away from him, pretending I have some important task I need to take care of. I refold a shirt on the card table before I shrug. “A month…two months. I’ve never thought about it.” I’m annoyed that he’s forcing me to put a specific timeline on my figurative goal. “I just don’t want to look back at my life and feel like I was never confident enough to pave my own way.”

“I admire that, but I’d also like to point out that your dad wasn’t supporting you. You work full-time. You take care of yourself. I understand what you’re saying and I’ll let you do what you need to do, but I’d just like to point out that you’ve been standing on your own two feet for a while now—you just don’t realize it.”

With that, he walks out the door.

My heart drops.

“Hey, wait! Where are you going!? Did we just break up?”

He laughs and shakes his head, continuing down the stairs. “I’m going to the hardware store. It should still be open for a few more minutes. Also, no, we didn’t break up, but I would like to take this opportunity to ask you to be my girlfriend.”

He’s back on the ground now, looking up at me. Bugs the size of my fist swirl near the light at my head, but they cannot ruin this moment.