Chapter 34
F
OR THE ENTIRE TWENTY-MINUTE DRIVE
to Ben’s house, my stomach flipped. This was it; I was going to be a grown-up, one who made big-girl decisions and talked things through like an adult. One who took calculated risks to improve her happiness and welcomed open communication.
Exhilarated, I cranked up the local classic rock station when Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” blared out of the radio, and I sang along. I didn’t care that the song had been overplayed since its resurrection on
Glee
or that it was one of the greatest slices of cheese in the classic rock canon. The unapologetic optimism in the lyrics fit my mood perfectly.
As I neared the turnoff for Ben’s neighborhood, I entertained myself by imagining his expression when he opened the door and found me standing there. It felt good to be turning the tables on him for once, to be the one showing up at his house with food in hand and a challenge to take another step forward.
I peered at the street signs and looked for landmarks. At last, I recognized a small bungalow on the corner marking his street. Its remarkable shade of pink made it memorable. I suspected the owners had intended to create some kind of mellow Mediterranean terra cotta effect. Instead, they got a shade of salmon, its freshness questionable.
I hung a left and peered at the left side of Ben’s street closely, looking for his house. I spotted his car in the driveway. My nerves would have exploded if I’d had to sit and wait for him, wondering if every pair of headlights turning onto the street belonged to him. I parked in an empty spot two houses down, got out, and retrieved the dinner sitting on the floor mat. I had learned the hard way never to transport food on a seat after a childhood incident involving a sudden stop on the way to a Church dinner and a massive pot of chicken and dumplings sloshing to the floor of our minivan.
Hefting the awkward bundle of baking dishes, I managed to navigate onto the sidewalk and up to Ben’s walkway. I stood at the foot of it for a moment, taking in the sight of the house and enjoying the warmth that came with knowing I had made the right decision about my love life, for once. I stepped to the door and awkwardly shifted my cargo to one arm so I could knock.
When the door opened half a minute later, I smiled, eager to see which expression would win out on his face.
I got shock.
Ben’s lips parted but instead of puckering up to kiss me hello, they formed a wordless “oh,” and consternation creased his forehead. My confidence faltered as he stared at me. “Jessie. Hi. What are you doing here?”
He didn’t sound delighted like I thought he would in my daydream, but I pressed ahead. I had resolved to be a grown-up, and I would see this through. “Hi. I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow night to talk stuff out. What are you doing right now?” I tried to make the question sound flirtatious.
When he flinched, I knew I had failed miserably. “Uh, now?” he asked, casting an uncomfortable glance over his shoulder.
“Sure, now,” I answered, feeling stupid with my arms full of a chicken.
“I totally want to talk, but tomorrow would be a lot better. I’m kind of in the middle of—”
“Ben?” a soft female voice interrupted. A hand appeared on his bicep, resting there comfortably, tipped in manicured pink fingernails. Whoever the voice belonged to stood out of sight, hidden by the door frame. “Who is it?” she asked.
A flush suffused my face, and I backed up, ready to retreat. Ben took a step toward me, a hand outstretched. His shift created enough room for a pretty blonde to take his place in the door, her hand fixed firmly to his arm. When she saw me, she tightened her grip possessively. “Who’s this?” she asked coolly.
I could see Ben’s reluctance to make introductions written all over his face, so before he could walk us through that particular exercise in humiliation, I jumped in. “I’m Jessie,” I said. “Ben’s friend from church. I was assigned to fellowship him so I stopped by with some food. You should have some. It’s from one of my mom’s recipes,” I babbled, amazed I could lie so easily. And I only lied to save Ben from a tough spot so he wouldn’t be on the hook with this girl. Who I didn’t even know. Which meant I had lost my mind, so I switched into escape mode, desperate to get away.
“Anyway,” I continued with my word vomit, “I’ve got a busy night, so I’d best be going.” Not knowing what else to do, I turned and set the food at the edge of the porch and whipped around, heading for my car.
“Jessie!” Ben called, shaking off the hand on his arm and taking a few steps after me.
I turned and said, “No, Ben. I don’t want to intrude. Enjoy the meal, and maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Ben, what’s going on?” his guest asked.
Good question. I knew I didn’t have the presence of mind to stick around for the answer, so I picked up my pace and focused on getting to the car before I did something even more embarrassing. Like cry.
I cranked the ignition, cursing the loss of my favorite casserole dish to Ben, and fought the instinct to burn rubber in my mad rush to get away. When I safely navigated out of the neighborhood, I found a business park already closed for weekday business and pulled in. I put the car in park and idled the motor, radio turned off, my hands gripping the wheel like it was the blonde’s neck.
I forced myself to relax my death grip after a few minutes and dropped my head back against the headrest. Then I did it again, and three more times for good measure, but the cushion prevented a satisfactory thump. What was I thinking, going over there unannounced? I dropped my head to the steering wheel and replayed the awkward scene in my mind: Me, standing all fresh-scrubbed and eager with a homemade dinner for Ben on a Friday night. Ben, standing there, looking slightly disturbed to see me. Blonde Girl, her pink-tipped claw wrapped around Ben’s shirt sleeve and the disdain in her question, “Who’s this?” And me again, practically throwing the food at Ben and hightailing it out of there.
How humiliating. I started the deep breathing exercises I reserved for getting myself through dental visits, trying to exert control over my emotions. On my third deep breath, the phone rang. A sidelong glance showed Ben’s number on the caller ID screen. I grabbed the phone and sent the call straight to voicemail. It’s not like I could form words at the moment. A beep twenty seconds later told me he’d left a message. I turned the phone off completely. I didn’t want to hear anything he had to say at the moment.
What
was
going on? I had to give it to the blonde. She asked good questions. I’d love to know the answer to that too. Who was she? She clearly felt comfortable enough with her place in his life to be at his house at dinner time on a Friday evening and to demand explanations about his visitors.
Maybe it was his sister,
I rationalized. But I knew she was away at BYU–Idaho.
Carie.
It had to be her. No one else would have felt justified in acting so possessive. Not even me, not even after he’d confessed his feelings and the things he’d said had haunted me all week, forcing me to realize how much I liked him. I had no claim on him because I’d been too chicken to stake one.
I drew several more deep breaths before I calmed down enough to drive again. I spent the return trip home in a weird, numb shock. I blessed it because without the numbness, I think a suffocating sense of idiocy would have overwhelmed me. When I pulled into my parking space, autopilot took over, and I found myself pushing through my front door, unaware of even leaving my car.
Sandy glanced up from a bizarre yoga pose in surprise but took one look at me and unwound herself. I walked straight to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down, staring at my hands on the placemat in front of me. She sat down directly across from me and said nothing for a while. Then she asked quietly, “What happened?”
“He—”
My throat closed up. I cleared it and tried again. “He had company,” I said.
“Company?”
“Yeah. Some girl.”
Her face tightened. “He had a girl over?”
“Yeah. His ex, I think.”
Her face darkened further, but she said nothing before jumping up and heading for her bedroom. A minute later, she returned, a sweatshirt over her yoga tank and a purse in hand.
“Where are you going?” I asked as she charged past me to the door.
“For ice cream. I’ll be back in ten minutes with a big carton of something bad for you.”
“Oh.” I hesitated. “Sandy?”
She turned, pushing the front door back open and poking her head in. “Yeah?”
“Could you find me a really big spoon while you’re at it?”
Chapter 35
A
N HOUR LATER, WITH MY
stomach full of Jerry’s (Sandy had inked out the “Ben and . . .” part of the carton label before handing it to me), I stewed. It felt better than being a useless lump, which is what I’d been until the ice cream had kicked in. Then I began processing my humiliation.
I had a litany of things I was mad at: me, for going over there; Sandy, for giving me the idea to do it; the blonde, for being at the house; and Ben. He had a whole list of things that made me mad at him. Like, that he was breathing. And those were the rational things I could think of.
The adult and responsible thing, which I had set out to do tonight (before Blondie’s intrusion had blown it all sky-high), would be to stay calm and find out exactly what was going on. But as a smart girl with math skills, I could add up the facts and find no good outcomes. An irritatingly pretty girl, probably his ex-fiancée, had clearly marked Ben as her territory and acted very at home in his house. Plus, Ben hadn’t felt the need to inform me of said girl coming around. Plus, Ben looked uncomfortable to see me. Not delighted, not excited.
Uncomfortable.
And worst of all, I had left work early to make him a stupid roast chicken for no reason, and I had dropped it on his porch and run away. All that equaled me being an idiot.
Again
. Well, time to fix that. I hopped up, startling Sandy, and raced over to the fireplace mantle to snatch up the rock sitting there. The words “This is just a rock” were still scrawled across its face, written in my burst of empowerment a month ago. With one Sharpied motto, I had turned it from a souvenir of my failure at love into a statement about my readiness to move on. It was supposed to symbolize that if I let go of that failed relationship, maybe it would lose its grip on me.
I felt the sudden urge to do with the rock what I should have done when I plucked it out of Jason’s hands years ago: toss it in the ocean and not look back. Maybe if I had done that then, I wouldn’t be living in that old shadow, practically repeating the same mistake. I was into a guy who was juggling feelings for me with feelings for someone else. Again.
“I want to go to home,” I announced.
“Um, hi. You’re here already?” Sandy said.
“No, I mean,
home
home, to California. I want to eat at my mom’s table and have my dad refer me to fifty different scriptures related to this mess, and I want to throw this stupid rock in the ocean and figure out what to do next.”
A knock on the door cut off Sandy’s answer. Since I was closest, I peered through the eye hole, and my stomach dropped.
“It’s Ben!” I hissed at Sandy. “What do I do?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, do you want to talk to him?”
“Should I?”
“I have no idea what you need right now. If it were me, I’d open the door—but that’s me.”
“Jessie, I can hear you through the door. I know you’re home. Can I talk to you, please?” he called.
I hesitated for a moment and then yanked it open and turned around, walking to the sofa. Sandy got up and, after casting Ben an ambiguous smile, headed back to her bedroom. He stood in the middle of the living room, wavering for a moment before moving to take a seat on the opposite end of the sofa from me.
“You’d better sit there,” I said, indicating the oversized matching chair instead.
He nodded and sat where I pointed. He shifted a few times, eyeballing the rock in my hand.
“Are you going to throw that at me?” he joked.
The joke fell flat when I set the rock on the floor but otherwise declined to answer.
“You’re mad,” he surmised.
“No.”
“Okay.” He didn’t believe me; I could tell. Smart man. “So that was Carie at my house.”
“I figured.” I kept my expression blank.
“She surprised me by showing up about a half hour before you did. She wasn’t supposed to be here today,” he said.
His phrasing caught my attention. “You mean, she wasn’t supposed to be here today, but she was supposed to be here at some point, like on a different day?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Oh, that’s fantastic,” I bit out.
“It sounds bad, but it’s not, I promise. I wasn’t expecting her until next week.”
I snorted. “This gets better and better. Next week, meaning after you and I talked so you could let me down gently and be free and clear to pick things back up with her?”
“No! Of course not. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you for days and hammering out this thing between us.”
“Oh, I can save you the trouble. The thing between us now is Carie,” I retorted.
“Jessie, please. I need you to understand—”
“What? That Carie was conveniently on tap for next week if I didn’t show up tomorrow? You had your plan B all worked out until she and I both came up with the embarrassingly unoriginal plan to surprise you tonight?” I realized I was contradicting myself and making no sense, but I hurt too much to care. “You’re so good that you ended up surprising the two of us instead. I hope she bought the whole fellowshipping thing. I don’t want to be the reason things don’t work out for you again.” I lifted my chin and stared him down.
He jammed his fingers through his hair, frustrated. “Jessie, listen. I agreed to see her because—”
“Stop!” Suddenly I didn’t want to know. “I don’t have time for this. I came over tonight instead of tomorrow because I’m going out of town, and I didn’t want you to think I was standing you up.” Well, the going out of town part was true as of that moment. “And I need to be getting on the road soon, so you should go.”
I got up and walked to the door, a clear invitation for him to leave. He sat for another moment, looking like he wanted to argue. Then he sighed and stood up. “Will you call me when you get back?”
I didn’t answer.
Looking defeated, he shoved his hands into his pockets and walked out.
When the door shut, Sandy walked back into the living room.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“So what did he want?”
“To explain.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. It was his ex-fiancée. He was expecting her but not today.”
“Wow.”
“I don’t even know what to think about that,” I blurted. “He admitted that she came so they could talk. How many girls does he have to define his relationship with anyway?”
“Uh, I can name at least two.”
“Very funny. Not.”
“Okay,” she said. “How do you know it wasn’t all her idea?”
“I don’t, but it doesn’t matter,” I responded. “If he’s willing to let her get on a plane and fly all the way up here to see him, that already tells me a lot.”
“So . . . what next?” she asked.
“I’m taking a road trip, I guess.”
“To your parents’ house?” she clarified.
“Yep.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to ask you this, but what about work?”
I shrugged. “Dennis Court as good as told me to take a vacation. I’ll shoot him an e-mail and let him know I’m taking advantage of that for a few days. He’ll probably do a hooray cheer.”
“Dennis Court? I don’t think he cheers.”
“Okay, he’ll say, ‘Excellent plan, Ms. Taylor,’ and start in on another spreadsheet. But believe me, he won’t care if I’m out of the office for a few days.”
“All right! California, here we come!”
“We? Not we. You have to work.”
“Jess, you don’t think I’m going to let you have all the fun, do you? I’m not shivering in my long johns here while you’re soaking up the sun at the beach.”
“Not to burst your bubble, but it’s not exactly beach weather in January, even in California.”
“Fine, but at least it’s not Seattle. Besides,” she grinned, “it turns out I have a couple of sick days to burn. Susannah can’t fire me because there wouldn’t be anyone likeable left in HR.”
“Can you be ready to leave in an hour?” I asked.
“An hour? Who taught you to pack for a spontaneous road trip? I’ll see you out here in thirty minutes.” And she flew back to her room.
I shook my head and went to dig my cell phone out of my purse. When it powered back up, I saw eight missed calls from Ben. Ignoring them, I hit speed dial number two.
“Mom?” I said when she answered. “I’m coming home.”