The Magnolia Chronicles: Adventures in Modern Dating(40)

But he wasn't doing it on purpose. I watched him as I measured and re-measured the dining room, one eye on the wall, the other on Ben. He was trying to get it right. He studied each board until I had to wonder if it was talking to him, positioned the miter box then checked the angle I'd written on the back of the board, and then positioned the box again. By all accounts, he should've had it right.

He just didn't. He didn't have it at all.

When I saw him switch the saw on, I dropped my hold on the tape. It recoiled into the device as I crossed the room. "Wait, wait, wait," I shouted, waving my hands to capture his attention.

He glanced up at me through his safety goggles—one of my victories on this project—with a confused scowl. "I haven't even done anything," he said. "How is it already wrong?"

In the week since deciding I was going to do this wild thing and date both Rob and Ben at the same time—separately—Ben never failed to compete the hardest. He was the first one to text in the morning and the last at night. He was working for it. The gold star, the prize. The validation—the distraction—of winning.

Ben did all those things but Rob…Rob was subtle. He asked after my work, my dog, my family. He made small but significant gestures that proved he was paying attention. It was a strange form of courtship but I liked those things. I appreciated those things.

I knew it buttered Rob's buns that Ben got "extra" time with me because I was physically incapable of letting this house fall into shambles. For reasons I didn't understand but nonetheless appreciated, Ben didn't compete while we were working on the house. He wasn't angling for a gold star here, that much was certain. He was his regular brash, ballsy self when he pulled on the gloves and goggles. No jockeying, no sweet words for the sake of earning another point on the leaderboard.

It helped that I didn't see this as Ben-and-Magnolia time because I was squarely in Gigi territory while I worked. I wasn't a girl here, I was the job boss. I wasn't anyone's to woo.

"It's still wrong, buddy." I reached across him to turn off the saw's spinning wheel. "Trust me, it's possible."

Ben pushed the goggles to the crown of his head with a grunt. His hands found his hips and his body shifted into Very Annoyed, a pose in three parts.

One: hands on the hips. This often included his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, but there were no sleeves today. Nope. No sleeves. Ben was wearing a tank that fit like a sunburn and it was bare, bronzed skin for days. I repeat: no sleeves.

Two: scowl face. It didn't stop at the tilt of his lips. This expression involved narrowed eyes, a pinched forehead, and a ticking jaw underneath a day or two of stubble. The scar running the length of his cheek seemed to deepen, darken with the scowl.

Three: wide stance. He stood there, his feet planted shoulder-width apart and his entire body tense as if he was daring a tornado to rock him from this spot. Today, this stance accentuated the narrow line of his waist and the way his jeans seemed to hang there like a parabola. The button sitting at the vertex forced my attention low, low.

It was funny that, in the Cartesian coordinate system, the focus sat above the vertex in a positively opened parabola. In the Ben Brock system of screwing up basic tasks while wearing fuckhot jeans, the vertex and the focus were almost the same thing. And that had me thinking about focal length. If the vertex and focus were the same thing in this weird world where I was dating two men—and remodeling a house with one of them—what was the focal length? Fair question, right? I already knew Rob's, ahem, length. I could at least calculate Ben's.

If this parabola's vertex was at the origin, and if it opened in the positive y direction, then it was only a matter of solving y = x2 / 4f.

Trigonometry. Always useful.

"You're staring at my crotch again," he said.

I waved him away but kept my gaze on his waist. Again. As if I did it often. "I'm solving for f."

"Yeah, me too."

He pulled his gloves off and tossed the goggles to the workbench. He advanced on me but I was only peripherally aware of it as that shiny vertex, the one stamped with the jeans' brand, moved closer. I lost sight of that point when he stepped into my space, his midnight eyes still Very Annoyed.

Ben's hands found my hips and he forced me backward until my ass hit the wall. "I have had," he started, his fingertips driving into my soft tissue like he was trying to snatch something from beneath the surface, "I've had enough, Magnolia."

I dragged my gaze up, over his neck, his chin, that scowl, that scar. And I met his eyes. He was still Very Annoyed but there was more. Something I needed time to catalog without him holding me, without his chest rising and falling as breath moved through him.

"As have I. Wasting good building materials is ridiculous," I said. "I'm firmly against filling up landfills because someone isn't following directions."

His eyes fluttered shut and he bowed his head a bit, as if the weight of my words was dragging him down. But then he edged up, his scruffy cheek passing over my jaw. "Do you know how much it costs me to fuck up in front of you? How much I fucking hate that I'm getting this wrong? That I'm surrounded by proof that I can't do anything right?" he whispered. His hold on my hips tightened. It didn't hurt. That was the benefit of having plenty of padding there. "I keep telling myself that I'll get it right and then—then I'll earn it."