Under the Orange Moon (28 page)

What the hell did that even mean?
She’s moving on
. Why was Charlie rubbing his face in it? Why wouldn’t the world allow him to forget her?

Ben pressed the delete key. He slammed the last of the scotch, emptying the nearly full bottle, and threw his coat on. He stomped out of his apartment and went to the first bar he could find. He could have stayed home and gotten stinking drunk on his own. Not even he could explain why he left. It was one of those moments where the intelligent part of the mind is screaming to stop, but your legs keep going and lead you to a bad place.

He walked into the campus pub and sat down along the rail. The bartender could already see that Ben was on some kind of rage. He groaned in irritation and made his way to Ben. He had seen him in there before, and he was well aware of Ben’s quick temper and callous personality. He had just opened for the day and was not ready to begin it like this.

“Son?” he began carefully, “what would you like?”

“I’m not your son, asshole,” Ben snapped. “Get me a whisky. I don’t care how it comes.”

The bartender’s eyes narrowed on Ben. “Sure,” he answered as he poured Ben a shot. “We should probably just keep it at this one, though.”

Ben threw the shot back and eyed the older gentleman in front of him. He slammed the glass down, and demanded, “Fill it.”

The bartender shook his head slowly. “I told you just the one, son.”

In a move that would have surprised no one that truly knew him, Ben reached over the bar and grabbed the bartender by his white, collared shirt, the same way he had just grabbed his father’s only moments before. He yanked the man close to his face, and growled, “I said I’m not your son.”

The bartender stared with alarm in his eyes as Ben slowly released him. The man’s hands shook now and he was completely paralyzed with fear. Ben was unhinged; there was no room for argument there.

“Fill it,” Ben demanded again, and tossed the glass onto the bar where it shattered into pieces.

“All right, buddy. Here you go.” He filled a new glass and slid it over to Ben. He watched as Ben disappeared into it. He then placed the entire bottle beside the glass in the hopes that it would distract Ben while he slipped away. He hurried to the back office and locked the door, where he quietly called the police.

“McKenna?” the guard called as he opened the door to Ben’s cell. “You made bail. Get out of here.”

Ben lifted his head and groaned. He stood to his feet and could only speculate who his father sent to plead his case. As he shuffled his feet down the long, fluorescent hallway, he wondered what time of day it was or, more importantly, which day it was. He had nearly two fifths of liquor in his stomach, and he thought seriously about throwing up just to get the nauseating feeling out from inside him.

He rounded the corner and felt the worst kind of fear when he realized his bailers were none other than two of his professors, Bethany Gray and Paul Arthur.
Great.
Ben retrieved his belongings and walked slowly to his teachers, contemplating what words to use in order to get out of the load of trouble he was in.

“Jesus,” Ben grumbled while rubbing his head.

“Don’t say another word,” Professor Gray warned with a pointed finger. She looked over a piece of paper that was attached to a clipboard and signed the bottom in an angry manner. “Come on,” she ordered the clerk holding more papers in the window, “I know there’s more. Give them to me!”

Ben yawned. He headed out the double doors of the station and strained his unadjusted eyes at the bright sun. He stretched out as he put on his jacket and leaned against the brick wall, waiting for the wrath of his two favorite professors to come down on him like an anvil.

The two came out through the double doors only minutes later. Before they could even clear the final cement step, Professor Gray was yelling at Ben. “Do you have any idea how stupid that was?”

Ben figured she wasn’t asking for an answer. He knew how stupid he was.

“I just had to beg—
plead
—for that judge to let you out of there! I had to convince him that you weren’t some psycho hoodlum terrorizing innocent old men for no reason. We had to scramble to clean this up, making sure Tanner didn’t get wind of it. He’d pull you from the program so quickly you’d be waiting a year before you got another chance at it.” She straightened out her coat, and sighed with aggravation. It seemed as though she was counting to ten, which Ben may have found hilarious if his life wasn’t dangling on a thin string in front of him. She drew in another long breath, adding, “Your father will make sure Tanner doesn’t find out as long as we gave our word that we would watch you from now on.”

“Benjamin, what were you thinking?” Professor Arthur asked more calmly. Clearly this was a good cop/bad cop sort of thing. “I’m trying to understand here, son.”

Damn that word
, Ben thought.

“It doesn’t matter,” Professor Arthur said with a wave. “The bar isn’t pressing charges, because
—well—because that idiot of an old man served you when he shouldn’t have. With a little legal mumbo-jumbo and a small payoff, he isn’t going to talk.”

Ben smirked. He knew well enough that if that man had refused him the first time, they’d still be standing exactly where they were. He would have lost it still, and he still would have gone to jail. There was nothing that man could have done to change a bit of it.

“Go home. Sleep,” Professor Gray demanded. “You have a therapy session with Dr. Roberta Fields tomorrow.”

Ben’s eyes lit up like a raging fire.

“Don’t speak,” she snapped. “You need it, damn it. And don’t even think that you’ll fill the doctor’s hour with silence and BS. You’re going to actually talk to this woman. If you want to keep your internship, you’ll do exactly what we tell you. We aren’t going to allow someone as intelligent as you to become a raging moron.”

“We let ourselves into your apartment and took the liberty of dumping the liquor cabinet you called a kitchen,” Professor Arthur added. “You won’t be drinking while you’re at Weis and Carter.”

Ben surrendered, nodding his head.

“We know it’s been tough on you, Benjamin. We’re here to help with whatever it is you need us to do.” Professor Arthur placed his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Get your head together, son.”

Ben nodded again, resisting the urge to throw a punch. There was nothing he could have said to change their minds and he only wanted to be home at that point. He figured silence was most definitely golden in these particular moments.

“Go home,” they both demanded in unison.

Ben walked the short walk home, thanking the gods above for his free idiot pass. He wondered if it would always be this simple for him. His last name took him far and seemed to be the golden ticket to being a flat out dick most of the time.

He’d go to therapy and do all the little tricks they ask him to do. They had him by the balls, so he’d do whatever they wanted. When his internship was over, however, he’d go right back into that bar, finish off a full bottle of whiskey, and then bash the empty glass over the old man’s head.

On Friday, Dylan hurried along the walk that lead to the Coney Island she was to meet her new landlord at. She was running late, naturally. She hoped he hadn’t left in anger over her rude sense of time. All of her belongings were packed and ready to move and it would be extremely disappointing to start over in a search for a new place all because she couldn’t find an outfit that resembled something a responsible tenant would wear.

She really didn’t understand this lunch date of a meeting anyway. Even Linda and Charlie thought it was completely odd for a landlord to want to meet his future tenant for lunch. Linda thought it was a ploy and checked all the papers for sadistic mad men in the area that had set up fake rental possibilities, and then lured sweet, innocent young girls with bright futures to him by requesting a lunch meeting. She was sure Dylan would never be seen again.

“Dylan!” Michael Olerson called to her from just outside the Coney Island.

“Great,” she mumbled under her breath.

“Hey, Dylan! Wait!”

“Michael, I am so late,” she said, while power walking to the doors. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk right now.”

Michael began to walk with her, taking each quick stride at the same time she did. He opened the door for her, and smiled. He waited for her to run through, and then he followed right behind her fast pace.

             
Still ignoring Michael, Dylan looked out over the room of diners and realized she had no idea what this man looked like. She stood on her tiptoes and arched her neck as she scanned each table and booth, looking for a lone diner. 
              “Excuse me,” Dylan asked a passing waitress, “do you have anyone waiting for someone to join them?”             

The waitress shot her a peculiar look. “Um, just that guy behind you,” she answered, and rushed away.

Dylan turned and looked at Michael’s smiling face. She frowned and looked back out over the sea of people. “Damn,” she whispered. “He left.”

“Who left?” Michael asked.

“What? Nothing.” She sighed heavily. “I mean no one.”

Michael stepped next to her. “Who are you looking for, Dylan?”

The waitress came back around. “Do you guys need a table?”

“Yes. A table for two, please,” Michael answered. He didn’t even look at Dylan to ask if she wanted to join him. He just assumed she would.

“Oh. No, Michael, I can’t stay.”

Michael laughed. “I’ve carried this on long enough.”

“Huh?” Dylan asked, slightly annoyed and still looking around the room in the hopes that she may have missed someone.

“You’re meeting
me
here, Dylan,” Michael said, grabbing her hand to lead her behind the waitress that would show them to their table. “I’m your new landlord.”

Dylan stopped and stared at Michael with a look of pure puzzlement. “What?”

Michael laughed again as he slid into the booth and picked up a menu. He looked up at Dylan and laughed when she didn’t sit down. “I’m sorry. That was really evil of me to stress you out like that. To be fair, though, I have been waiting for a while. Sit down.”

Dylan slowly obliged. “
You
own that loft?”

Michael nodded. “I do.”

“Why wouldn’t Charlie say anything? He knew I was moving there.”

“I don’t tell people everything. I bought it a long time ago and kept it for storage. Half the time I would even forget about it.”

Dylan fell against the back of the booth. She shook her head as she sat baffled. “I thought I knew all there was to know about you,” she finally added when she was able to control her mouth once again.

Michael shrugged. “It was just an investment idea that I put aside when the bar began to pick up.”

“So, why are you renting it out now?”

“The economy is poor. The bar’s sales have gone down a bit, so I thought now’s the time to fix the place up and make some money off of it.” He laughed and looked back down to examine his menu. “When the real estate agent said she was meeting a Dylan Mathews, I just about died. I never thought you’d leave your mother.”

Dylan nodded. “That’s why you went down on the price so quickly.” She had wondered why it was so simple to get the price lower and why the real estate agent’s phone call only lasted minutes. She figured she would have to bargain. She should have known it was too easy.

“I can’t rip you off, Dylan. You know that.”

Dylan laughed and picked up a menu. She peered over the top of it and raised an eyebrow at Michael. “So, then what is this that we’re doing today?”

Michael peeked over the top of his menu, eyeing her back. “This is lunch between two friends.”

Dylan shook her head and made her selection. The waitress came back with their waters, took their order, and left them alone to talk.

“So, how are things?” Dylan asked awkwardly. “How’s Oilies?
”

“Missing its favorite bartender actually.” He sighed and picked up the paper covering to his straw. He began to rip it into tiny pieces, rolling them into balls, and piling them up on the table. “It’s not the same is all I’m trying to say.”

Dylan nodded her head. She hadn’t even considered taking her job back at Oilies and she really hoped he didn’t ask her to come back now. She might feel obligated to if she was living under his roof, so to speak.

“How are you?” he asked, pointing to her.

Dylan heard that question so much since Ben left, it was beginning to exhaust her. She came up with the same sharp answer, “fine,” for each time someone asked it. As common as a question like that is, she knew what it was that they meant. She almost wished they would just come out with it and say what they mean, less the tact:
Hey Dylan. How are you since you stupidly fell victim to Ben McKenna?