Page 24 of The Fear of Falling
Siena smiles wide, leaning into her new husband. “Thank you. And Ricky’s not lying about Benson. It’s been a few years since he and Ricky worked together, but I’ve never seen him like this.”
Oh, it would be so easy to innocently ask what kind of work Benson does. Benson hinted that Riccardo knows about the nature of our relationship, but Riccardo seems like the kind of guy who might enjoy spilling a few secrets. Knowing Benson’s job might make it easier to find him. Knowing his last name would be even better.
But guilt builds in my stomach before I open my mouth. I can’t ask Benson’s friends about him. If I want to know details like that, I need to askhim.
So I ask something less specific. “He’s a good guy, right? He’s not putting up a front for me?”
Riccardo and Siena both laugh. “I have no idea what he’s been like with you,” Riccardo says. “But he’s one of the best guys out there. He saved my bacon a few years back, and he’s been one of my best friends ever since. He’s loyal, no matter how much he pretends otherwise.”
It isn’t that Benson has come across as disloyal, but he certainly made it clear when he said he wasn’t the type to commit. That’s easy to believe; a guy like him would have been locked down long before now if he had any plans to settle down. It’s the one part of him I haven’t liked.
People make long distance work all the time. Why couldn’t we?
Because you’re barely two months off your engagement, I remind myself and fix my smile before it droops. “Well, he gave you a glowing recommendation,” I tell Riccardo, “so I’ll trust yours about him. Uh, where…?”
Siena points near the fountain. “I last saw him over there somewhere. He was texting someone.”
“Probably working,” Riccardo says with a roll of his eyes. “Avery, go save him from himself.”
Is Benson a workaholic? I try to imagine that as I pick my way through the throngs in the direction Siena pointed. I haven’t seen him on his phone much at all, and most of the time when he is, he’s texting Dani. Which is weird. But they’ve both told me they’ve barely talked about me and have been talking “business,” whatever that means. I trust my sister, and she says she trusts Benson, so I’m choosing to be cool about their strange friendship.
So tonight Benson is either working or texting Dani, but either way, he’s not as desperate to find me as the newlyweds think.
“You look breathtakingly beautiful,” a smooth voice says behind me, stopping me in my tracks. “Please tell me you’re looking for me and not some Italian man to sweep you off your feet.”
Grinning, I spin to face Benson, exhaling shakily when I see the look on his face. He examines me with a slow, searching look, from my head to my toes and back up again before meeting my gaze.
“Breathtaking,” he repeats in a whisper and tucks some of my hair behind my ear.
He’s one to talk. I saw this man in a tailored suit the first time I met him, and that was wildly attractive. He’s been more casual throughout the week, wearing button-down shirts and chinos or fitted t-shirts and shorts. But Benson in a tuxedo? This man knows how to wear a tux.
Does anyone look bad in a tux? Probably not. But Benson has the height and the bulk and the jaw and the eyes and…where was I going with this?
A chuckle rumbles through him, and he reaches out and laces his fingers with mine, pulling me closer until we’re swaying to the music. “How was your day?”
“I rescheduled that tour of the Galleria dell’Accademia so I could see the David statue.”
“And?”
“I was so bored.” I bury my face in his chest in my embarrassment. “I mean, the statue was cool, but I feel like I already saw it because of that replica in the Palazzo Vecchio we saw two days ago.”
Benson tucks his arm around my back, holding me tight against his body. “What else did you do?”
I love so much that he’s asking. Even more that he seems to genuinely want the answer. “I bought a bracelet at that jewelry shop we’ve passed by a few times.”
He lifts our clasped hands to study the gold chain on my wrist. “It’s nice. But it’s not the one you were looking at.”
The one I was looking at every time we passed the jeweler on the Ponte Vecchio was four times more expensive than this one and way out of my budget. I tried—and apparently failed—to be discreet every time I looked at it, worried Benson would try to buy it for me because this dude really has a thing for buying me things.
He let me buy a cannoli, but his shiny credit card has bought everything else. At one point he strong-armed me out of the way before I could buy a silk scarf for Dani. I would have died if he spent hundreds of dollars on a bracelet just because I like the star pattern built into the chain.
“I like this one,” I tell him, twisting my wrist to look at the single gold star charm hanging from the chain. “The simplicity of it can be symbolic.”
“Of what?”
“Me, I guess. Remembering that life doesn’t have to have every moment planned. I don’t know.”
Humming, he spins us in a slow circle. “It’s like a shooting star,” he says. “You can’t plan for them, and if you try, you’ll be disappointed. But you also have to slow down if you want to see one. Let yourself be in the moment, without any distractions.”
