I didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. Instead, I closed the rest of the distance between us, wrapping my arms around him.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”
I could imagine that, too. How he was feeling. Being the one to blame.
“I wanted to tell you so many times.” I could feel the warmth of his breath on my neck, the stale smokiness, and I realized that this was the closest we had dared to get since that night at the oyster roast. The first time since then that we had ever really touched. “All those times we were talking, and I was avoiding going home, avoiding having to deal with it, I wanted to just tell you all of it. Get it off my chest. We weren’t happy, Isabelle. We weren’t good together anymore.”
“It’s okay,” I said again, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“I tried,” he said, pulling back from me. The way he was looking at me, so desperate, I could tell that he wanted me to believe him. He needed me to believe him. “I tried so hard to make it work. I mean, you know, all those times that we were together, I wanted to … but, obviously, I didn’t—”
“I know you tried, Ben. You don’t have to convince me.”
I pulled my hands from his back and placed them on his cheeks, holding him tight. I looked into his eyes; our faces, inches apart, and before I knew what was happening, the space between us closed. Ben’s lips were on mine, moving frantically, his hands pulling at my hair. I felt his cigarette drop to the ground, skimming my arm on the way down, and our kiss was long and hard and desperate, the culmination of six months of wanting, wondering, remembering what it had been like that first time on the water.
I had forgotten where I was in that moment, what I was doing. Allison’s mother on the ground inside, too distraught to care about the glass cutting into her flesh. All of my coworkers—my future, my career—one small step away from finding us out, from ruining it all. But I didn’t care about any of it. All that mattered was that I was with him, finally.
He was mine, finally.
“Ben?”
I heard the back door open, the creak of the hinges. A pair of footsteps stepping out onto the porch, feet from where we were standing.
“Ben, are you out there?”
In an instant, Ben separated himself from my arms, peeling his hands from my hair and wiping his lips, removing any traces of me from his skin. One second, we were intertwined, knotted together, whole—and the next, he was gone.
“Yeah, out here,” he said, jumping up onto the porch without looking back. “Just getting some air.”
I heard the slap of a hand against his back. That same voice, swathed in worry.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Yeah, all good.”
I heard Ben walk back inside, his shoes on the hardwood, but knew, somehow, that the person who disrupted us was still there. I could feel him, lingering, just on the other side the wall. I pushed myself farther back into the bushes, feeling the branches scratch at my skin, getting tangled in my hair, and held my breath, waiting to be found. He took a few steps forward, and I watched the back of his head emerge as he walked toward the steps, hands punched into his pockets, before looking down at the ground—at my champagne glass, sweating in the heat, little bubbles exploding to the surface. Then he leaned down, picked it up, and inspected the smudge of lipstick on the rim.
I turned around and ran.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
NOW
Waylon and I spent the rest of the weekend recording. It’s starting to come more naturally now: those conversations that once felt scripted and forced flowing effortlessly, like we’re two old friends, hunched over coffee, making up for lost time.
It’s Monday morning now, and I watch as he shuffles around the kitchen with a mug in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. It reminds me of Ben and me, just barely over a year ago. The easy chaos of a weekday morning. The natural rhythm of two lives intertwined, growing together like vines: me, planting a kiss on his cheek as he brushed his teeth; Ben’s fingers grazing my back as I perched on the edge of the bed, lotioning my legs. Helping him shave those hard-to-reach nooks on his neck, my razor pushing into his soft spots.
“I’m going to swing by the station first,” Waylon says, wiping a smear of peanut butter from his lip. “See if I can catch Dozier first thing.”
“Sure,” I say, blinking away the daydream. “Sounds good.”
I told him about my neighbor this weekend, too. About the confrontation on his porch and my sighting of him at the vigil; the old man in the rocking chair with a direct view into my yard. I still don’t have any evidence, any proof, but I desperately need some other angle to focus on after seeing myself on that laptop screen.