Page 66 of I Do With You

“Oh, don’t you worry. I’ll bereal sureto tell Hope you stopped by.” Mom makes it sound like Roy will wish she’d kept her mouth shut by the time she’s done telling me, but there’s no need. I’ve heard it all.

I heard the way Roy talks about Ben. About me. About himself, like he’s somehow important even though he’s an average guy, with a boring job and a shitty personality, who’s treated me poorly for far too long.

The front door opens and closes. Trusting that Roy’s gone, I step into the living room.

“How much of that did you hear?” Mom asks from by the front door, where she likely escorted Roy out. She doesn’t seem surprised in the slightest to see me.

I shrug. “Enough. Heard the threats against Ben and me.”

Mom looks at the front window like she can see Roy pulling away through the closed blinds. “Has he always been like that? How did we not see?”

She sounds sad, and mad at herself.

I go to her, hug her tightly, and confess, “I never gave him a reason to show you that side. I only saw it recently, when I started questioning things.”

I feel her nodding as she apologizes anyway. “I’m sorry. I should’ve known.”

Pulling back from the hug, I correct her, “I didn’t want you to. I did my best to make it seem perfect, even if it meant Roy walked all over me.”

“You can lie down for people to walk on you, and some of them will still complain you’re not flat enough. Be bumpy as a speed bump, Hope.” She boops me on the nose to emphasize her point.

A bark of laughter escapes my chest because I did not expect that from her. “Where’d you hear that? A fortune cookie?”

She laughs too. “Saw it on Facebook. One of those me-mes.” There’s a glint in her eye, and I laugh harder, realizing she’s intentionally mispronouncingmemeto lighten the situation because she follows it up with a hard question. “What about the things Roy said about Ben? Howmuch of that’s true?” She peers at me, her laughter gone as she frowns so hard the lines by her mouth turn into parentheses.

I grimace. “More than you’ll like, but Roy made it sound worse than it was. Sit down and I’ll explain what I know.”

To Mom’s credit, she does, and so I do, telling her the rough details of what Ben shared.

Mom doesn’t like it, but she seems to understand that things were different for Ben than they were for me—or her—growing up. “Nobody got hurt?” I shake my head. “People got their stuff back?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know if Ben knows. He was a kid. But he helped the police take down the ringleader, which was the best he could do at the time.”

She stares off into space, still thinking about it. She probably will be for a long time, and then she’ll discuss it with Dad, and then they’ll both think about it some more. Especially with Ben’s record adding a layer to his arrest today. I hope they come to the same conclusion I have—people, like circumstances, can change. And I’m not going to hold what Ben did to survive a life I can’t imagine against him.

“How’d things go after we left?”

“Mom!I’m not talking about that with you!”

She rolls her eyes, giggling like a schoolgirl. “Not the sex, Hope. I don’t need to know that. I don’twantto know that.” She shakes her head vehemently. “I meant, did you two talk?”

“Not really. Sean showed up and Ben said they had a lot to talk about, so he asked me to give him a bit.” I nibble on my lip, still worried I overstepped and extra worried that there seems to be something Sean knows that I don’t, though he keeps assuming Ben has told me.

“Oh! You met Ben’s friend. Was he nice?”

Such a mom question to ask, but the truth is ... no, he was not. He was gruff, rude, and basically kinda terrifying. “I think I liked him better on the phone.”

Mom’s brows jump up her forehead, remembering what I said after hanging up with Sean.

“Well, it sounds like I need to set an extra plate for dinner, then,” she says, tapping me on the leg. “Come on, you can help me cook, and when Dad gets home, we’ll eat while Ben and Sean get themselves sorted.”

Mom’s the best. She can tell I’m worried and is going to do her damnedest to keep me busy in an attempt to keep my mind off it. It won’t work, but I appreciate her trying more than she’ll ever know.

Chapter 24

HOPE

I don’t hear from Ben before dinner, or after dinner. Mom and Dad try to distract me with a movie I’ve seen a dozen times, but after missing my favorite part because I’m staring at my silent and dark phone, I finally give up and say I’m going to bed. But when I lie down in my childhood room, under the damn pink-and-purple comforter where I swore I’d never be again, I can’t stop tossing and turning as I worry about Ben.

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