"Yeah?" He pulled me up, and he didn't let go of my hand right away, and his thumb moved gently across my knuckles, in a way that had nothing to do with helping me off the ground. The noise of the field went a little far away. "What kind of crimes are we talking?"
"Identity theft, mostly. I'm going to become a woman named Brenda who charges her phone every night and has a label maker. Brenda has never once cried in a supply closet. Brenda's bras all match." I considered it. "God, I hate Brenda. Forget it. I'll just commit regular crimes."
He laughed with his head back, and it did something stupid to me. Because that was the trouble with Ben. Cole made me feel safe and Luke made me feel grounded, but Ben made me feel like the funniest, most interesting woman who had ever lived, and he did it without seeming to try, and a person could get addicted to that. A person could build an entire stupid future on a man who laughed at her jokes in a goat field.
He was still holding my hand. He was looking at me like he was thinking about doing something he shouldn't in front of twenty-two children, and I was thinking about letting him, when I caught the look over his shoulder.
Cole was watching us. He'd gotten the goat off his back at some point and he was sitting up on his mat, and he wasn't smiling, and his eyes were on Ben's hand around mine in a way that was very intense. And then his gaze flicked up to Luke, who I realized had also stopped what he was doing, who was also watching us, and something passed between the three of them. I’d like to think it was hunger for me, but could it have been jealousy?
I pulled my hand out of Ben's, casual, like I was just brushing grass off my leggings, and I felt the thought arrive like an unwelcome relative on my doorstep.
What if I messed up. What if this was going to ruin their friendship.
"Cupcake?" Ben's grin had faded a little. "Where'd you go?"
"Nowhere. Here. I'm here." I plastered the smile back on, the one that got parents to relax and kids to stop crying and principals to leave me alone, the one I was very, very good at. "I have to go count children. Sunshine's about to make us feed the goats and I refuse to miss that."
I walked away before he could answer, before any of them could, my heart doing complicated maneuvers in my chest.
"Mom." Oliver fell into step beside me, notebook open. "Three goats broke rules. One ate your lanyard. One urinated during the breathing part, which I think is rude. And one is currently standing on Mr. Cole again." He looked up at me. "Your face is doing the thing it does when you pretend you're fine."
I looked down at my son, who saw everything, who'd never once in his life let me get away with a single lie.
"I'm fine, bud."
"That's the thing I just said you do." He went back to his notebook, unbothered. "But okay. The goat on Mr. Cole is named Gerald. It says so on his collar. I think Gerald is the best one."
Behind me, somewhere in the chaos, I heard Ben call my name once, and I pretended the wind ate it, and I kept walking towardthe children, who at least only wanted snacks and never wanted anything from me I couldn't give.
40
Ben
I'd been quietly losing my mind over Callie Morgan ever since the goat yoga incident. So, when she texted that Oliver had a sleepover at his grandparents' and Wednesday was the one night she had to herself, I did something I hadn't done in the four years I'd owned Ben's Bait and Basket.
I closed early. Flipped the sign, killed the big neon BAIT light in the window so nobody'd come banging on the glass looking for night crawlers, and sent Fiona home two hours early, which earned me a look that said she knew exactly what I was up to and planned to bring it up for the rest of my natural life. The dining room sat empty and dim, all the little net-and-buoy junk I'd nailed to the walls over the years throwing long shadows, the booths quiet, the whole place smelling like fryer oil and salt and the lemon stuff we mopped with. Not fancy. My place was never going to be fancy. I liked it that way, I was proud of an old-school place that I paid for with my own two hands, and tonight I was going to share it with her.
I had the grill going in the back and a couple beers sweating on the counter when she knocked on the locked front door.
I let her in. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that had a small hole near the hem and she'd clearly tried to do something with her hair that her hair had voted against, and she was holding up a gas station bag like a peace offering.
"I brought dessert," she announced, "because I panicked and didn't know if showing up empty-handed was rude, so I stopped and got-" she peered into the bag, "-four packs of Reese's, a thing of donuts, and a scratch-off. I got carried away. The scratch-off is for both of us. We're partners now. If it hits we split it."
"What's the split?"
"Sixty-forty. I drove."
"You drove five minutes."
"It was a hard five minutes, Ben. Emotionally. And you know I'm always playing Russian roulette with my gas tank."
God, I was gone for her. I took the bag and set it on the counter and didn't tell her I'd already made dessert, because watching her produce a fistful of gas station garbage as a gift was better than anything I could've plated.
"Sit," I told her, nodding at the one booth I'd actually wiped down. "I'm cooking."
"You're… wait, you closed the whole restaurant? For this? For me?" She looked around at the empty room like she was only now noticing, and frowned. "Ben, that's a whole night of business. You can't just-"
"I can do whatever I want. I own the place." I popped the cap off a beer and handed it to her, mostly to give her hands something to do besides wring each other. "Sit down, Cupcake. You've spent every day this month taking care of twenty-two kids and one of your own and three idiots who don't deserve you. One night. Let somebody feed you for once."
