I turned on my heel and headed back inside through the patio doors, not waiting to see if Ben followed or used the main entrance.
9
Murphy
“Look, I’m sorry,” Ben said as I got out of my car at home later that night.
Standing near where I usually park, he was no longer in scrubs. He was freshly showered, his hair wet, wearing another pair of khaki cargo shorts, a white T-shirt, and running shoes. His woodsy scent begged for me to get close, but I resisted the urge.
“Stalk much?” I said while yanking the seat forward to get my bag.
“A little WD-40 may help that.”
“Whatever. I know it’s probably better off in the junk yard, but it’s mine. Let it go,” I said, somewhat snippy. “I know how this looks, poor little rich girl who grew up being chauffeured around in Escalades now hits rock bottom.”
As I locked the car and slammed the door shut, I caught a good whiff of myself—coffee and grime—and wondered if Zara had ever thought about putting in a shower so we could clean up before we left work. I laughed at the ridiculous thought as I made my way to my door, ignoring Ben trailing behind me.
“Murph, slow down. I’m sorry. Shit, I seem to be saying that a lot. This is new for me. Seeing you, remembering how I really liked you—all of you, even the part who was used to being chauffeured around. It’s just, you’re different now. I want to believe you’re better suited for me, and better for yourself too. God, I know how bad that sounds.”
Turning in my doorway, I glared at him. “Better suited? Better for me? What does that mean? I’m still me, a person . . . and I’ve always been one. I need to try to stop punishing myself for having to live under my parents’ rule. And you have to stop holding it against me.”
Hadn’t I treated him differently at Pressman? He wasn’t wrong that I was better now.
Ben caught me off guard, running his palm down my cheek, and I looked up at him. “I see you get it now.”
“Am I that obvious? Jeez, I thought I’d been taught better. My poker face is supposed to be perfect.” Putting a pin in my thoughts, I spied one of my neighbors parking, and said, “Let’s go in.”
Ben walked over the threshold, this time with no surprise in his expression.
“Give me a sec, okay?” I said. “I have to put this down and run to the bathroom.”
“No problem.”
I decided to take a little longer, wiping off my body with a Burt’s Bees makeup-remover wipe—a small luxury I still splurged on. It would have to do. Quickly, I changed into a pair of old J. Crew shorts and a loose off-the-shoulder gray T-shirt. Finger-combing my hair and spritzing on some Chanel perfume, a leftover Christmas gift from my mom, I did my best to look and smell somewhat appealing.
“Okay,” I said, walking back into the tiny living space of my place.
Ben looked up from a photo of my friend Jordana and me hugging, glassy-eyed and bushy-tailed for lack of a better description. “I remember this. You and,” he said, snapping his fingers, “Jordana, that’s it. You guys went to a hayride for the other school nearby . . . Wallace Prep . . . and got so drunk. Jordana spent the night hanging over the garbage can in the custodian’s closet.”
Although I’d kept the picture, Jordana was a friend from my past life. We occasionally texted or called, sent birthday cards, but she was living the good life in New York and I was here in Vermont. She was one of the ones who didn’t turn on me completely, but she still distanced herself a little now that I wasn’t one of them.
“We did. Bobby Williams asked me, and of course I was dying to go to the Wallace hayride. It was supposedly an epic event. Sadly, one I don’t remember much of to this day. I didn’t know Bobby was going to slip grain alcohol in my water bottle. Jordana was a mess. Her date talked her into smoking some bad weed.”
Ben nodded. “You called me when you got back and needed help.”
“I know. You were the only one I trusted not to blow our cover. I’m sorry. It was probably wrong of me to call. I trusted you, though. That had to mean something.”
“But not with you,” he said. “You didn’t trust me with all of you. You only gave me parts of you, little bits—your fiascos, bad grades, and anxieties. Which is why I’m here to say I’m sorry. Again. I didn’t mean to end things so abruptly last night. I’m not excusing your behavior from back then, but I don’t want to act that way too. Seeing the way people acted at Pressman, holier-than-thou and shit, I vowed to never be that way.”
Not wanting Ben to belittle himself on my behalf, I said, “It’s okay. I get that we’re from different worlds, and always have been. Look, I know I was a bitch then, but I’m trying not to be one now. It’s just I’ve been thrust into some strange limbo between your world and mine. It’s hard to shake some of the old thinking, but I’m trying to be better. That’s the truth.”
I fell on my sword because this was Ben, and although it had been well over a decade since we’d seen each other, it was like we were lost in time. With his hair as messy as it was back then, his perfectly scruffy jaw, his feelings out in the open, all I wanted to do was reach out and run my hand over his cheek and put my lips on his.
It was a force I didn’t recognize. A
