I hesitate for so long that he looks embarrassed, and he steps back. “I’m sorry. I got it wrong. I thought it was mutual. It’s okay.”
“Wait!” I grab his arm as he’s about to turn away. “You just . . . I didn’t . . . uh . . . I’m surprised, that’s all. I forgot how to like someone that way.”
A slow smile lifts one side of his mouth. “Like how?”
“Like like,” I say, and realize I do, that I have been liking him for quite some time. All those days when he made tea in my kitchen, when he fixed the windows in my studio. When I noticed his mouth and then insisted to myself that I did not out of embarrassment over my wish to have something like that in my life again.
I take a breath. “Ben, I would love to get dressed up and go to Poseidon and get a margarita with you. When?”
“How about Friday night?”
“Yes. I’ll ask Suze if she can babysit.”
Is it my imagination or does he look at my mouth? I look at his, neatly framed with his thick black-and-silver beard. I’ve never kissed anyone with a beard before. His lower lip is full, red. I realize I’m staring and, predictably, blush.
“Okay.” He grins. “Okay!”
And then he’s off and I’m standing in my studio, flush with pleasure and anticipation and things I had completely forgotten.
A date. With Ben.
Chapter Twelve
Suze
It’s awkward in my house after Joel comes in. I have no idea what to do with my hands or where to look or if I should talk or not talk. My body is noisy with reaction, blood racing through my veins, thoughts and memories chasing each other through my brain, my mouth dry as a bone, my limbs shaky.
Joel simply goes about the business of the electrical problem. I watch him open the fuse box, and he moves differently, like a man, like the grown-up man he is. Silver threads through his long hair, but it’s still beautiful hair. His jaw is softer. His hands look like they’ve been used hard, with scars and marks and calluses, but they’re still beautiful, long fingers and wide palms. His frame is still lean, almost ropy. Beryl used to say we either get too lean or too fat as we age, and it proves true.
He mutters about the electrical problem, something to do with frayed wires in the main breaker box, and takes the plates off several light switches and outlets, muttering some more. I follow him, standing in doorways as he tracks the trouble.
Finally, he heads back to the fuse box and closes it. He turns, not quite meeting my eyes. “I have to get some parts, but this is a pretty serious issue. The kitchen looks good, but don’t use anything in the bedroom and living room area until I get back.”
“I had the kitchen updated three or four years ago,” I say, crossing my arms. “I thought the rest had been done when I first bought the house in 2012.”
“Doesn’t look like it.” He shrugs back into his performance raincoat. Expensive. His boots, too, are high-end waterproof hiking gear. It’s hard to look directly at him, so I can only gather these details. He’s wearing old-school Levi’s with copper rivets. “Won’t take me long.”
“Okay.” I feel like there is something else I should say, something to fix the moment I pulled away, but I can’t think what that would be, and he simply goes out the same door he came in. Winded, oddly on the edge of tears, I sink down on the banquette and pick up my phone to text Phoebe:
Did you know Joel was back in town??????????
Yes. I thought I told you. He’s been back a few years now. Longer than me.
What???? Was he here during the pandemic?
No, I think he was in Salem taking care of his mother. I don’t really talk to him. We’re not friends or anything.
Why not?
No reason, really. Our paths don’t cross.
I hold the phone in my hand, a thousand memories tumbling through my mind. Joel and I met the first day of seventh grade, both outcasts and outsiders. I think of that boy, with his brutal acne and hunched shoulders, hiding his face behind a fall of thick black hair. I think of the Joel he grew into by the time we started high school, tall and lean and way too good-looking, still my main person after Phoebe, or maybe equal to her.
I text: Did you know he would be the electrician who showed up?
No! OMG!
I told Phoebe everything back then, but she doesn’t know the truth about Joel, that he and I were deeply in love for over two years. We kept it to ourselves, all through ninth and tenth grades, even though it irked Joel a lot.
But she struggled with friends and boyfriends. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. She had a gigantic crush on him for literally years. He was safe, the boy who lived in Blue Cove. She’d kissed him a few times, even though he was my friend first.