I put my hand on the door handle. “This is going to be the worstthing anyone has ever said, but I think I just feel like, with Holden, I don’t have high expectations for how my life is going to be. So if it turns out to be basically boring but easy, I’ll never be disappointed.”
Cameron put her head on the steering wheel. “Listen to yourself. You don’t marry ‘basically boring,’ Annabelle. You marry ‘can’t live without.’ You marry ‘heart racing through your chest and feet lifting off the ground and want to rip each other’s clothes off.’ I mean, yeah. You have to be able to get along and have similar values and blah, blah, blah. But how could you possibly get through life without that passion?”
I looked at her for a long minute. And, not for the first time, I envied Cameron. She was so self-assured. She always knew exactly what she wanted. And, lately, now that college was over and I was supposedly an adult, I felt sort of lost. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. But I knew that life with Holden was something I was supposed to want. I sighed. I didn’t want to talk about it, so, instead, I said, “I need a shot.”
We both jumped out of the car and Cameron said, “Coming right up!”
I had never heard of Ben Hampton, never Googled him or had his YouTube video pop up on my sidebar. But when I walked into the sparsely attended bar, with a few ripped black leather chairs scattered around, and heard him crooning, he seemed familiar to me. He was so tall standing up there onstage, his hair as black as the guitar strap around his shoulder with these dark, piercing eyes. I’d never been the kind to get worked up over tall, dark and handsome. But, suddenly, I got the appeal. I sat down within his view, spellbound by his voice, suddenly self-conscious and wishing I looked more like rocker Barbie than bubblegum Barbie. He was so effortlessly cool, so sexy... But I wiped the thought away like a dry-erasedoodle. I looked down at my left hand. I was engaged, after all, to hedge fund Ken.
At first I thought I was imagining it, but then Cameron whispered to me, “Your attire has so deeply offended my boyfriend that he keeps looking at you in disgust.”
I didn’t get disgust from his gaze. “Well, then maybe I should move out of his line of sight.”
But when I got up, the strangest thing happened. Ben stopped singing, stopped playing and said, “Where are you going?”
I looked around, confused, and, as I was the only person standing, pointed to myself and said, “Um, me?”
He nodded. “Sit back down.”
I sat back down obligingly, my heart racing in my chest. “I didn’t know this was the freaking opera,” I whispered to Cameron, mortified that I had been scolded.
“Excuse me, everyone,” Ben said into the microphone, looking straight at me like a sniper on his target, like no one else existed, “I’m going to have to take five because I believe I just met my wife.”
It was like jumping in the ocean. The noise all around me was suddenly muffled, and my lungs felt like they were filling with water.
Cameron whispered, “What the hell, Annabelle? How could you have stolen my boyfriend like this? We were meant to be together.”
All I could muster was, “Apparently not.”
He jumped down off the stage a few minutes later, took my hands in his and kissed my cheek.
“She’s engaged,” Cameron said indignantly, her hand on her hip.
He rubbed his fingers over the diamond on my left hand, never taking his gaze off of my face, and said, “Not anymore.”
Maybe it was because I was twenty-two and unsure, or maybe it was because I was twenty-two and totally sure, but I followed Benout of the bar a few hours later. I had to know more about him, I had to understand why I felt so immediately drawn to him. Under the flood of the streetlight that, instead of a dingy, moth-ridden fluorescent stream, seemed like an enchanted glow under the spell of Ben, I started to come to my senses, even through the tequila haze I was in.
“Wait,” I said, suddenly feeling the two shots and two liquor drinks I’d had, “you could totally be a serial killer. I mean, this is nuts.”
Ben walked toward me, a smile playing on his lips. I felt my back touch against the vintage CJ7 Jeep that my dad would have flipped for, my heart beating so loudly I couldn’t hear anything else. He stepped closer, took my hand, and put it on his heart. “Would one sweet, beautiful girl make a serial killer this nervous?”
I leaned my head back against the window. “No... no. I guess not.”
I’d never felt so totally out of control. I’d never done something so unplanned. And it felt so good I didn’t want it to ever stop. I felt Ben’s hand on my face, sweeping my hair behind my ear. I looked up at him and smiled, his sparkling eyes boring right through me. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, totally overcome with wanting to be closer to him, to know him more. He leaned in and kissed me, my legs giving way. If it hadn’t been for the car behind me, I probably would have fallen onto the asphalt. As I reached my hand up to run it through his hair, I heard, “Quit kissing my boyfriend, you slut,” quickly followed by Cameron’s loudest, drunkest cackle.
I laughed too as she made her way toward the Jeep, sort of sideways and peering. The combination of the drinks and the kisses had made me a little sideways too. “You,” she said, falling into me, her mouth right on my ear, “have totally impressed me tonight.”
She leaned away, looked at Ben, swallowed with intention and said, “I mean, this girl, she always does the right thing. I mean, seriously, you have no idea. She’s like per-fect.” She made a hand gesture to punctuate the last syllable.
Ben laughed, and Cameron squinted at him. “And you,” she said, slurring, pointing her finger right in the middle of his chest. “I was in love with you until you pulled that sappy shit up onstage.”
Ben put his arm around my shoulders. “Sorry to disappoint.” He kissed my hair and opened the car door for me.
Cameron slid in right beside me, so I was in the middle of the front seat. I looked at her. “Whatcha doing there, sweetie?”
“Do I look like I can drive myself?” Cameron asked.
We both burst out laughing. “Oh my God,” she said. “I love you so much. I’m so proud of you. I mean, seriously, I love you.”
