Page 21 of The Legend Next Door
I am patheticness personified. A gurgling, whimpering mess that smiles like an idiot. I close my eyes and tilt my head back as the first tiny droplets rain down on my face. They land on my skin with a cool splash. I receive them with gratitude. Reverence. I receive them like they’re a blessing. A sanctification. A benediction.
I receive them like that, only a little more stupid.
The cold water shakes something loose in me. Something bad. It springs a leak in the part of my brain that manages impulsivity, rapidly draining my body of any and all ability to control myself. I raise a single shoulder, smiling coyly, and look up at Ben through a deliberate veil of eyelashes.
“Thank you, Captain,” I say in a voice so intensely coquettish my entire spine contracts in horror when I hear it.
Ben’s smile freezes microscopically, and he blinks twice. “You’re welcome,” he says after a pause that’s long enough to give me time to spot the shovel lying on the lawn a few yards from us and make a firm plan to use it to dig a big hole and bury myself as soon as Ben and Luca go home.
Fortunately, Ben recovers quickly. I think most likely due to one of those evolutionary traits humans have developed that causes us to have a mini mental black-out when something is so absurd that we cannot possibly make sense of it, so our brain simply deletes it from our minds.
Thank God for small mercies.
“Wow,” says Ben, pointing to the fence between his house and mine, “look at that, Luca. Those are the scratches Coco and Gabe made. The ones Jeremiah was telling us about the other day.”
Yes, yes, that’s right. I’ve told Ben so much about myself over the past few weeks that he’s on a first-name basis with my aunt’s Great Danes, despite the fact that he’s never met them. Or her.
I’ve told him all about my childhood and how my mom and dad moved out east when I was a freshman in high school, and Aunt Lissa took me in when I didn’t want to change schools, cities, and states. Basically wanting to be part of her family instead of the one I was born into.
He knows Lissa built the guesthouse for me when I dropped out of college for the second time and suggested in passing that I was getting too old to live with my aunt for much longer. He knows that though there’s no real bad blood with my immediate family, I feel closer to Lissa, Ness, and Marcus than anyone else. He knows I love them, and that Marcus is kind of a grump but also a softy, that Ness is a dark horse who hates meeting new people, and he knows that Lissa loves spicy food and antiquing and has nomadic tendencies that see her traveling from spring to fall most years.
“Do you miss them?” he asks.
“The dogs? Oh yeah, they’re the sweetest. Gentle giants, the pair of them, but there’s something to be said for being able to walk on the lawn without fear of stepping on a landmine.”
Ben bobs his head and says, “Yeah, that’s the trouble with big dogs. What about Lissa? Do you miss her?”
“I do. It’s always really quiet for the first few weeks after she leaves.”
“Do you get lonely?”
“I’m not lonely anymore.” Jesus. That was coquettish too. Fortunately, it was much milder than that awful Captain business earlier. This was more of a hint than a full assault. I’m pretty sure it went over Ben’s head, but just in case, I tack on, “You know, because I have Marcus and Vanessa—”
“And you have us.” It’s not a question per se, but the way Luca says it makes it sound like one.
“Yep, he has us,” answers Ben because despite my recent mindboggling lapses in judgment, he is a kind, kind man who doesn’t want people to feel like more of an ass than they already do.
Since Luca watered himself along with the seeds, and it’s a warm day, I connect the sprinkler to the hose so he can play. Ben and I sit on the lawn and watch Luca run from the far end of the yard to the house and back again, stopping midway each time to do his version of a cartwheel over the sprinkler.
Ben talks about drawing curtains and rambles about endless reams of fabric. I do my best to pay attention, but I’m lagging. Usually, I hang on every word he says, storing every utterance that leaves his mouth in a vault for safekeeping, lest I should ever have an urgent need to retrieve information about what kind of ice cream he likes best or what music he listens to.
Pistachio and jazz and rock and the kind of thing you can sing along to in the car, in case you were wondering.
I’m out of it today, catching every second or third word at best, because today, Ben is sitting in the sun, and the way the light hits him is different from the way it hits other people. I’m struggling because today Ben’s hair is wet and he’s pushed it back off his face, and he has a smudge of dirt across his left cheekbone that disappears into his stubble. A smudge that’s currently taking every ounce of my concentration to stop myself from wiping it off for him.
With my tongue.
But mostly, I’m struggling because Ben has kind eyes, a kind voice, and kind hands, and it’s just occurred to me that no matter how much of a problem I have with Adam’s apples, thick thighs, deep voices, and masculinity that’s been pressed through a sieve, those aren’t my main problems.
Kindness is my kryptonite, and this man has it in spades.
Sunlight dances across his face and plays with the shadows cast by his nose and brows. There’s a buoyancy to him today I haven’t seen before. At least, not in real life. I see it all the time on the man who lights up my TV screen every night. His sadness seems a little further away today, and I’m so fucking delusional that I let myself believe it’s because of me. Because he’s here, in my yard with me, and I’m making him happy.
When the implication of that thought takes hold, it sinks in deeply and jolts me out of my stupor.
This isn’t funny. What’s happening here isn’t amusing. It’s serious. This isn’t a lark or a laugh. I’m not being ridiculous in a fun, chaoticthat’s what Jelly’s likekind of way. I’m being reckless. Reckless in a real way. A very fucking real way. This isn’t lighthearted. This is how hearts get broken. What I’m doing to myself with Ben Stirling is the first chapter of the oldest story in the book. A long, sad story written by those who’ve loved and lost.
It’s the prequel, the origin story of the brokenhearted.
