“I’m sorry.” Barely a voice. His chin was down. His body had folded inward until he took up as little space as possible. “I got the floor dirty. I’m really sorry. I?—”
His words stopped. His face crumpled. He looked down at himself, and I watched the realization hit him at the same moment I saw it.
His jeans were darker at the front. Wet in a way that had nothing to do with mud.
William stood in the middle of Ben’s dining room, next to Ben’s new table, on Ben’s muddy floor, and he was shaking sohard his teeth clicked together. His eyes were huge and glassy, and the mortification on his face was so complete it went beyond embarrassment into something that looked like surrender.
Every instinct I had was firing at once—pick him up, hold him, tell him it was fine. But I was frozen because I could see that any attention I drew to what had just happened would make it worse. Would confirm that this was the catastrophe he believed it to be.
Ben moved.
He set his coffee down. Came around the table. Walked to William without hurrying, without any shift in his energy that might register as alarm or disgust or any of the things William was bracing for.
He lowered himself to eye level. Not in front of William. Beside him.
“Hey.” Low and easy. “You know what happened to me once?”
William didn’t look up. But he didn’t pull away.
“I was in the Army. My first real mission. We were moving through a building, and somebody started shooting. Loud. Close. Scariest moment of my life up to that point.”
Ben said it the way he said everything—plainly, like the facts were enough. “And right there in the middle of it, while I was supposed to be this tough Army guy, I pissed myself. Just happened. My body got scared before my brain caught up.”
William’s chin lifted a fraction.
“You know what my sergeant said afterward?”
A tiny shake of the head.
“He saidwelcome to the club. Said it happened to him his first time too. Said it happens to every soldier at some point, because that’s what bodies do when things get intense. It’s not something you control. It just happens.”
William’s breathing had slowed. His hands were still gripping his jacket, but the white-knuckled tension had eased.
“I was so embarrassed, I wanted to disappear,” Ben said. “But my sergeant treated it like it was nothing. Because itwasnothing. So I’m telling you the same thing. It happens to men. No big deal. Never will be.”
William’s eyes finally came up to Ben’s face. Searching. The careful scan of a child looking for the lie, for the turn, for the moment the calm voice would become a loud one.
He didn’t find it.
“But I got the floor dirty,” William said. His voice broke on the last word.
“That’s what floors are for.” Ben said it like it was the most obvious fact in the world. “Floors get dirty. That’s why God invented mops. This floor has been too clean anyway.”
Something shifted in William’s face. Not a smile. Not yet. But the rigid terror was loosening, giving way to something cautious underneath.
Ben glanced over his shoulder at Jolly, who had taken the opportunity to lie down in the middle of the muddy kitchen and was now rolling onto his back, paws in the air, grinding mud into his own fur with the commitment of an artist.
“Now, the bigger problem,” Ben said, turning back to William, “is that guy. Look at him. He’s a disaster. I need to give him a shower, and he hates showers. He fights me the whole time.” He paused. “I could really use backup. Somebody who doesn’t mind getting wet. You’ve got to get in the shower with him, though. Fully clothed. Only way to keep him from escaping.”
William’s eyes went wide. “In the shower? With our clothes on?”
“Everything except shoes. Only way it works.”
“That’s silly.”
“Jolly doesn’t think so. He thinks it’s terrifying. That’swhy I need a brave guy to help me.” Ben glanced over at me for approval, and I gave a tiny nod.
William looked at the proffered hand Ben had extended. Looked at Jolly, who was still on his back in the kitchen, tail thumping the floor. Looked at his own muddy, wet clothes.
