Page 5 of All My Love
5
Elizabeth
I slidethe A key into the doorknob on Ben’s apartment door and let myself in, wondering how the hell I’m going to get through this week without tripping into a danger zone I won’t be able to get outof.
When I get inside, I don’t go for my phone right away even though I promised him I’d call as soon as I walked in. That was hyperbole. First, I take in how lovely his apartment is. The building is four stories and he lives on the top, in an apartment that takes up the entire floor. It’s a walk-up, which I don’t mind, and in fact would probably help me out in the fitness department and to which I might be able to attribute how fit Ben is. Though he must work out. There’s no way living in a walk-up could dothatto someone’sbody.
The left side of the apartment is covered with windows that flood the living room with warm light. There’s an ornate fireplace against the wall and three brown leather couches around it, two smaller than the one facing the fireplace, and they look like something from nineteen seventies New York. The whole apartment has that feel. Brown, beige, desaturated colors and simple lines. There’s no television. The windowsill is lined with plants: ferns, umbrella tree, Chinese evergreen, spiderwort. There’s a low wooden coffee table in the middle of the couches with a few short stacks of books, and to the right of where I’m standing, there’s a narrow kitchen. Past the kitchen on the left is a small round dining table and fourchairs.
Straight ahead there’s a narrow hallway with three doors, probably the two bedrooms and abathroom.
This apartment is so sweet and beautiful that it’s giving me goosebumps. A little yellow and orange tabby cat slinks around the corner of one of the open rooms straight ahead, and I fall slowly to my knees to coax the little beauty toward me. He stretches out one paw and gingerly walks over to me, nuzzling up against myankle.
“Show me the rest of your pad, little guy,” I coo at him. He prances over to jump onto an arm of one of the couches and posts up in a small sliver of shade. I shrug at his inhospitality. “I guess I’ll show myself around,then.”
I pull out my phone to text Ben that I’ve arrived safely, and he immediately texts me back:Good. The room on the right is yours. See yousoon.
The sun is setting and any feelings of embarrassment or stupidity that were germinating in me have been swept away by the feeling of seeing Ben again. I feel consumed, alive, excited, a little nervous. I make my way into my intended bedroom and feel so happy I could burst. I drop my backpack by the door and go over to the window box where the open window is letting the sweet smell of roses perfume the air. There’s a little chest of drawers and a bed made up with white linens and a mirror over a writing desk that’s framed with ornate gold. There’s a little ladder in the corner which I assume leads to the attic Ben hadmentioned.
I sit on the corner of the bed and pull out my laptop, checking the text from Ben for the wifi password. My readers, all very few of them, are going to likethis.
And I have a feeling I’m going to loveit.
* * *
I’m startledawake when I hear the door of the apartment open. I don’t even remember putting my head down, let alone falling asleep, but I don’t have that sensation of being lost like I usually do when waking up from an unplanned nap. I remember where I am. I knowexactlywhere Iam.
“Liz?” I hear Ben call from the living room. I straighten out my hair quickly in the mirror and then pad out of myroom.
“I wasn’t expecting you to have a key,” I tell him. The notion of Ben having spare keys around makes me nervous. Should I be expecting a woman to make an appearance thisweek?
“Borrowed my brother’s spare set,” he replies. Right. His brother Thomas. Very nice man, a little bit less my type thanBen.
I watch Bengo to the refrigerator and grab two beers, casually uncapping them with a bottle opener on the keyring. He drops the keys on the counter, a little clank of just-home comfort hanging in theair.
“This place isbeautiful.”
“It belongs to the university." Putting the beer into my hand, he smiles again before turning away to go back to the kitchen, grabbing a can of cat food from his pantry and peeling back the tab. The cat comes around the corner and Ben empties the contents of the can into a small dish and adds water to another, putting them on the floor. Cat meows hisappreciation.
“The cat’s beautiful, too,” I say over my shoulder. “Does he come with the apartment or do you get to take him with you when youleave?”
“You come all the way to Paris to poach me from the university?” he asks with a little smirk, leaning back against the counter. “Who are you with? If it’s MIT, I’ll consider giving up thisapartment.”
“So I assume you like it here,” I say with a smile. I take a sip of my beer, cold and crisp with a hint of citrus. I give him my own little meow of appreciation. “This is good! The last guy who put a drink in my hand was trying to get me drunk at three in theafternoon.”
An etch of concern brings Ben’s eyebrowstogether.
“I don’t likethat.”
“Tell me about it,” I reply, perching on the couch closest to the window. “We went out for coffee and he said he had a book on the Galapagos turtles that I’d be interested in when I’d mentioned I’d done an online tour of the islands for my blog. When I got inside his one-room apartment he asked if I wanted a drink and I said yes, which he took as an invitation to promptly put a cup of just straight-up vodka in my hand. When I protested, he said I was stuckup!”
Ben takes a seat on the couch across from me and purses his lips. A see a tick of nerves flash across hiseyes.
“Where the hell did you find thiswinner?”
“An app. Online dating sucks. No one goes through any kind of vetting process. These people aren’t even friends of friends. It’s like all these guys you meet online are kept in a warehouse in Canada and they’re only taken out of their cages when unassuming young women are just looking for someone to have a coffee and maybe a glass of winewith.”
But the man who’s apartment I’m in, now this man is vetted. As life-long friends of my parents I know right off the bat that he is trustworthy. I know he isn’t perfect - no one is - but I know he is at least, at the bare minimum, a goodman.
