I stopped the video, set my phone down, walked over to Fred and Sam, and snuggled down between them, drawing them close with my arms.
“I love you both,” I told them. “So much.”
Sam licked my face, and for once, I didn’t pull away.
Last week I cried after accidentally stepping on Fred’s paw hard enough to make him cry out. Part of it was because I had felt so bad for hurting him, while the other part was because I realized I could neverbe sure that he knew it was an accident and that I was so, so sorry for it.
The dogs were like my children, but I knew there was a difference between them and actualchildren. I could only imagine how Ben’s parents felt. How Ben felt, every day, not knowing what the future held for him.
My face burned with embarrassment again. There I was last night, ogling his good looks and trying to get him to lighten up because of my own stupid need to feel liked.
I immediately abandoned my plan to put him at ease around me and instead adopted the much better plan to leave him the hell alone. I also needed to talk to Jack. He all but forced my number on the poor guy before we left last night, in case Ben wanted help with design choices. From everything he’d said last night, Ben knew what he was doing. He probably wouldn’t call, but if he did, I was going to let him decide everything. I wasn’t going to invite myself over or him here. I was going to drop the full-blown charm offensive I went on last night and try my hardest to treat him like I would anyone else.
He said he came out here to get away. It was easy enough to guess from what. The media, the trolls. Maybe he needed space and time to deal with the death of his brother, sister-in-law, and nephew. Or to come to terms with his own risk of CTE and what it might or might not mean for him.
I hoped he was able to. I tried to think about it from my own perspective, like if I had to deal with all of that. I had no idea how I would react, or how long it would take me to process through everything.
My phone rang from the couch. I let the dogs go and stood to get it. My sister Megan’s name flashed across the caller ID.
I swiped right to answer. “Hey, Megan.”
“Hi,Ella,” Stacey’s voice greeted me. I would have worried that something had happened to Megan if not for the fact that she and her wife were forever calling me on each other’s phones.
“Hey, Stace. What’s up?”
“We’re supposed to get a Nor’easter on the twenty-third and want to get the hell out of Boston before it hits. Is it okay if we get there a day early?”
They were staying with me through Christmas, because with Anabel still in high school, Charlie home from college, and Jacob and his crew all crashing at my parents’, the house would be packed. Megan was enough of an introvert that crowding in with everyone else was a non-starter. Staying at Jane’s was out, too, because they’d never progressed past the antagonistic stage of their sisterhood. My place was the perfect option. Megan and I had always been close, and because I was so good at reading people, I recognized when she needed to be left alone for a few hours.
I put Stacey on speaker and pulled up my phone’s calendar. “So, you’ll be here Friday?”
“Yup.”
I looked down at my unswept floor just in time to watch a tumbleweed of dog hair roll by my feet, then glanced around at the rest of my house. I wouldn’t have called it a disaster zone, but…
“Friday’s great!” I said with forced cheer. “What time are you going to get here?”
“Meg, when do you want to leave Friday?” Stacey asked my sister.
“I don’t know. Noon?” was her muffled response.
“We should be there by six or seven,” Stacey said. “Depending on traffic. We’ll call you along the way and give you updates.”
“Sounds good.”
“Okay, talk to you later.”
“Love you guys.”
“Love you too,” she said before hanging up.
Friday. That would still give me time to finish up printing all my open orders, get to the post office, deep clean my house, set up the spare bedroom, wrap my Christmas presents, and drive over to Walmart to stock up on all the tofu and vegetables I could find. Megan and Stacey were vegan, and I wanted them to have plenty of food options while staying with me.
Right, first I needed to make a list.
My stomach rumbled, as if to say, “No, first you need food, woman.”
Chapter 4: Ben
