Totally and Completely Fine(44)

“I’m gonna, uh, go get…um…” Allyson mumbled something and then she was gone.

Coward.

Not that I blamed her. I wanted to run too.

“Hello,” Ben said.

“You’re in Montana,” I said, cutting right to the chase.

“I told you I always wanted to visit,” he said.

He looked so good. I tried not to focus on that.

“You could have said something.”

Ben tilted his head, like he was a confused puppy.

I was probably being dramatic but the whole thing felt like it was out of a movie. Not in a good way.

“I did text,” he said.

“It’s been a while,” I said.

His brow furrowed.

“Maybe I thought I’d surprise you.”

“I hate surprises,” I said.

Which was true. I was the kind of person who liked knowing the endings of movies before I watched them—just in case the dog died or something. I hated April Fools’ Day, which to me was just an endless parade of mean surprises. And everyone in my life knew better than to throw me a surprise party.

Of course, Ben didn’t know that.

Because he didn’t really know anything about me. Except that he liked my tits and ass.

“Huh,” he said. Like it was no big deal.

He had an earring. A little gold hoop in his right lobe. I hadn’t noticed that in Philadelphia. It was sexy. His hair was longer too. That was also sexy.

Not that it mattered.

It didn’t.

“I gotta go,” I said, turning toward the exit.

He caught me by the arm. And oh, it felt good. Stupid good.

It’s a damn hand, I told myself. Get it together.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Let me make it up to you?”

The look in his eyes indicated exactly how he wanted to make it up to me.

I was momentarily tempted, and that was exactly the problem.

“Are you insane?” I hissed. “We’re in a restaurant. In my hometown. My brother is in the next room.”

He laughed. “I was thinking we’d go somewhere and talk, but I kind of like this exhibitionist side of you.”

Terrifyingly, so did I.

I needed to get out of there.

I shrugged his arm off and headed away from the dining room toward the exit. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have my purse. Allyson would bring it to me tomorrow—and that was one good thing about small towns, I could walk home, and my back door wasn’t locked.

The cold air reminded me that I’d also had a jacket inside, but it didn’t matter. It had been a mild winter. I could walk fast. I could run.

“Lauren, wait. Let me explain.”

Ben had followed me out into the alley. I turned on him, anger rising.

“Let you explain?” I fumed. “I haven’t heard from you in forever, and you just show up making jokes about having sex in a restaurant?”

“Technically, you made the suggestion,” he said.

I narrowed my eyes at him, and he held up his hands in surrender.

“I realize now that I should have texted about coming,” he said. “But I thought…”

“What?”

He shook his head. “You never responded to me,” he said. “Days ago.”

I sputtered. “Yes, I did!”

There was that head tilt again. This time it wasn’t confused, though. It was condescending.

“Okay,” he said. “My mistake.”

I glared at him, but somewhere in the back of my mind, doubt was starting to root. He’d left my last text unanswered.

Hadn’t he?

The last few weeks felt like a blur.

“What are you really doing here?” I asked.

“The play,” he said. “Gabe asked a while ago. I thought you knew.”

I shook my head.

“I did keep asking about Cooper.”

That’s why he’d been asking those questions?

It had been a game. Hadn’t it?

From the look on Ben’s face—disappointed and surprised—clearly not.

“It’s not for long,” he said. “Just a short run to get the theatre started. You’ll barely know I’m here.”

That seemed completely unlikely.

“How long are you here?”

“Not sure,” Ben said. “At least a month. Probably two.”

My jaw dropped.

“Two months?”

“Maybe,” he said, taking one step back as if he could tell I was starting to get manic. “I really thought you knew.”

I couldn’t understand how he was so casual about all of this. Then I remembered. He was a thirty-year-old actor who lived out of a suitcase. He was casual about everything.

And that was the problem.

“This is not going to work,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingers.

“What—”

I held up a hand, silencing him. “I’m not talking to you,” I said.

My mind was spinning. Everything was spinning. I leaned up against the cold brick wall in the alley, my eyes shut as I tried to make sense of the farce that was currently occurring around me.

Ben was here. In Cooper.