“Yeah, I need to head out early,” I say as if that was the plan all along.
He doesn’t ask where. He just nods. I pull him into a hug and he lets me. His arms come up around my back how they did the first time I hugged him, stiff at first and then tighter. God, how I’ll miss sweet Stormy. I hold on for three seconds and then I let go.
Sheila is behind the bar counting the register. I walk up. She glances at me, and her eyes go to my jacket and the expression on my face that I’ve been holding together for hours and can’t hold for much longer.
“Sheila. The food was perfect. You’re perfect. They’re all lucky to have you.”
“Baby.” She’s reading me and the reading is telling her a story she doesn’t like. “What’s going on?”
“I need to head out earlier than I’d planned.”
She holds my gaze for three seconds. Three seconds where she’s deciding whether to push or let it go. She lets it go. She comes around the bar and she hugs me and says into my shoulder: “You call me if you need anything. You hear me? I’m always right here.”
“I hear you. Thank you.”
I walk back into the bar. Mickey is still by the front, talking to Tex. The party banner is hanging above them.
I let myself look at him one last time. His profile in the bar light. The shoulders. The hands on the armrests.
Then I turn and walk out the front door.
The parking lot is dark. The neon sign casts colored light across the asphalt. I get in the rental car, put the key in the ignition and sit there.
My hands are gripping the steering wheel and the smile that I put on four hours ago is the last thing to go. It finally goes in the parking lot of Big Tex’s Roadhouse, alone.
I shouldneverhave come here.
I drive and make it two miles. The putt-putt golf place has a parking lot that’s dark and empty.
Dante answers on the second ring. “Hey. How was the party?”
The sob comes from the bottom of my chest and it bends me over the steering wheel. The phone falls against my knee and I’m crying in a putt-putt parking lot in Panama City Beach under a huge ostrich that has a giant hole in his butt. This isn’t grief about a bullet or fear about a wheelchair. This is finding out I’m not enough. Not enough to be named. Not enough to be claimed. Not enough to be anything other than the fucking help at a party.
“Benji.” Dante’s voice goes serious. “Benji, what happened? Talk to me.”
“He introduced me as the party planner,” I choke out. “His sergeant was there. His cop friends were there. And he said this is Benji, he’s helping out with the party. That’s what he said. That’s who I am, Dante. I’m the help.”
“Where are you?”
“A putt-putt parking lot.”
“Are you driving?”
“No. I’m parked. I’m under an ostrich with a hole in its butt that people are using as a trash can.”
“Stay there. Don’t drive. I’m texting you an address and a lockbox code. It’s my Airbnb ten minutes away. Go there. Get off the road and go straight there. I’ll stay on the phone with you the whole way.”
“I packed my bag. I left George. I took Frankie.”
“Okay. Frankie is yours. George was always his.”
“I can’t go back, Dante.”
“You don’t have to go back tonight. You go to my Airbnb. You sleep. I was planning to come in tomorrow afternoon for open houses. I’ll try to get an earlier flight. We’ll figure it out when I get there.”
I put the car in drive. The putt-putt parking lot disappears in the rearview. I drive while Dante stays on the phone. His calm voice fills the car. He doesn’t lie and tell me it’s going to be okay. He doesn’t say Mickey didn’t mean it.
He just stays on the line and lets me cry. The staying is what I need because the man I love just proved that the one thing I can’t survive is being erased by the person who’s supposed to see me the clearest.
