Oh, sweet baby Jesus. He had seen it. He had seen the whole thing. And Ben had known. I was at once appalled at Ben's behavior and impressed by it. Playing things dirty like this: I wouldn't have thought he had it in him, to be completely honest.
Ben slipped past Seth and into the house, Seth never even sparing him a glance. I felt a pang as I saw, once again, their friendship cracking apart, all because of me.
Seth lifted his chin and walked slowly down the steps. The bread Ben and I had bought lay on the pavement in its bags, and Seth approached, bent, scooped up the bread, and carried it back inside without saying a word or meeting my eye once.
I stood there on the sidewalk feeling frozen, not just from cold but from the utter inability to decide what to do. Part of me wanted to run away rather than face them together in the same room. Another part wanted to continue this conversation with Ben. Still another part of me felt as though maybe some attention to Seth was in order.
After all, wasn't everyone telling me I needed to get to know him, spend time with him in order to make a choice?
You know, this all sounds like so much damn fun in theory. Two astoundingly gorgeous men, fighting over you? I won't pretend it wasn't flattering, or that my self-esteem wasn't rising by the second.
But more than that, it hurt. While I was making one happy, the other was hurting. I felt knotted up inside all the time, and my brain and heart couldn't seem to stop fighting long enough to form a coherent plan.
I was doing this all wrong, I knew. Making a mess of everything like I always seemed to. If I had any sense, any compassion, I would have bolted, just left and never came back.
But.
There it was, that one tiny word that changes everything.
But: Different parts of me wanted each of them. It wasn't just that they were battling each other for me, but that I was battling myself for them.
Having them together was not helping in the slightest, mostly because they refused, without so much as a word, to be in the same room, let alone the same conversation. How would I ever be able to compare and contrast the two of them if I never saw them side by side, being themselves?
It occurred to me then that a crowd was perhaps not the best place to ask them to let go and be who they were. Seth was surrounded by people who knew him as Spot Conlon, and he was, flawlessly, acting accordingly. The smirk and swagger I hadn't seen at full wattage since he'd returned had both been back in full force today.
Ben, well, he was Ben. The old Ben, the one whom I loved and cherished but didn't feel any passion for. This new man, the one who didn't hide his feelings and desires behind a mask of propriety, this man made me feel…alive.
The door slammed, and Seth came trotting down the steps, holding a covered dish in his hands. He walked briskly to me, and made a "come along" gesture with a tilt of his head. I followed without thinking, without questioning a thing, and it wasn't until I saw that we were approaching the trolley station that I grabbed his shoulder.
"Where are we going?" I asked, and didn't pretend that there was any question of my not coming. Of course I would come.
"I need to check on my mother," he said, still refusing to look at me. "Make sure she eats and everything. You're coming; we'll be back in time for dinner." And with that, he walked on.
Well, well, well. Race had been right. Spot Conlon had come back from the dead. Order first, ask permission and advice later. It seemed that the Spot Conlon I had known was still somewhere deep inside Seth.
"My god, you're bossy," I murmured as we walked to the platform.
He didn't answer, merely stepped onto the trolley. He didn't speak to me while we rode to Brooklyn, and I contented myself with staring at him unabashedly, something he pointedly ignored, though a flush of red worked its way up his neck and into his cheeks.
He was dressed for church, in black pants, a blood red shirt, and black vest with an overcoat. He had stripped down to his thin, worn, light brown undershirt while he had worked, but was now back in order. The red in the shirt made his face light up, made his eyes even more vibrant in his face.
We were in the tenement building, hovering at the closed door the apartment, when he spoke to me again, setting the dish on the floor. "I'm not gonna play games with you if you don't play them me, okay?" his voice was hard, and I merely nodded, crossing my arms over my chest, already feeling defensive.
"I saw you and Ben. And he saw me. And I'm fucking pissed." He held up a hand as I opened my mouth. "I know I can't be. I know I don't have a right to be. I was the moron who said it was a contest in the first place. But…" he ran a hand over his hair, then laid his palm flat against the door to his mother's apartment, leaning his weight into it and looking at the floor. "Seeing him kiss you, it made me…" he trailed off and looked up, and there was anger in his eyes, yes, but there was also pain, and that was so much worse.
Do you see? Do you see now how horrible this all was? This was the person I was. This was what I had done. And I know, I know: I didn't ask Ben to love me. I didn't ask Seth to come back. But I was participating in this, wasn't I? I was kissing them both, spending time with them both.
Neither one of them should love me, I decided. They should both hate me. God knows I certainly hated myself.
"Seth, please," I started, but he shook his head.
"Don't," he said to the floor. "Don't tell me you're sorry. I already know you are. I know you're thinking what a terrible, piece of shit person you are." I stiffened, not because I was insulted, but that it was eerie, really, how well he knew me. "It's not your fault. We forced you into this."
"That doesn't mean it's not awful," I said softly, and he nodded.
"I guess part of me thought this would be a game," he said, his voice creaking slightly. "But it's not. This is not fun."
I felt fear creep up from my stomach and settle in my sternum. "So are you saying you're done?" I asked.
"Do you want me to be?" he countered, looking up, his eyes searing into me, pinning me to the spot.
I didn't think before I spoke. "No."
He exhaled, as though in relief, and swooped forward so quickly I had no time to brace myself before he grabbed me about the waist and picked me up. My legs went around him automatically, and I thought he would kiss me.
But he didn't. He squeezed me tightly, his face turned sideways and tucked under my chin. My arms went 'round his neck, and I gripped him, both arms and legs straining.
When he set me down, I laughed shakily, feeling close to tears and weak with relief. "Again with all the hugging," I said, in a lame attempt to lighten the atmosphere.
"Well, before it was mostly yelling and sex," he said, not cracking a smile. "I don't want it to be like that this time."
This time. Could we really have a do-over? Could we really, truly, have a second chance to make this right? Or was it too late?
Seth unlocked the door and held it open for me, picking up the dish. I stepped inside and was immediately assailed with the scent of human waste. Seth flinched, but didn't back down as he passed the dish to me and moved toward the curtain hiding his mother. He knocked on the wall, and when a grunt answered, slipped behind it. He emerged moments later holding a chamber pot, his face deliberately pointed away.
I looked absolutely anywhere but at the thing his hands as he walked past me and into the hall. I heard a splash, and a flush, both of which made me shudder in revulsion, followed by running water, and then Seth and the newly-cleaned pot returned. Seth brought the chamber pot back to his mother while I went to the kitchen to deposit the dish and wrench open a window, wishing mightily for a candle scented with oils, which I had seen and lusted after in a shop the previous week before finally caving in and buying one, which was currently making the lodging house smell like cinnamon, even when no one was baking.
Seth joined me in the kitchen and washed his hands with a bar of Lava soap, scrubbing at them for longer than could have possibly been necessary.
"So how is she?" I asked when he was drying his hands on a rag.
"I don't know," he said, his eyes on the now still curtain blocking her from view. "She hasn't eaten, I don't think, and she says she's not hungry."
A large—okay, overwhelming—part of me wanted to let her starve, but instead, I turned and uncovered the dish. Mashed potatoes with gravy, a small sampling of turkey, and, in a separate container inside, a soft, still-warm berry cobbler.
I pulled a clean plate from the cabinet and put a small amount of everything on it, then, ignoring Seth's outstretched hand, took it to his mother myself.
She looked mildly surprised when she saw me there, but said nothing as I set the plate and silverware on the tray already over her lap.
"Do you need anything to drink?" I asked in my most polite voice.
She shook her head, her eyes drilling me, suspicious. I refused to be rattled.
"Well, Merry Christmas then," I said, hopefully pleasantly, although I fear some sarcasm may have slipped into my tone, and walked out.
"What was that?" Seth asked when I stepped back into the kitchen. He was leaning against the counter, arms folded lightly over his chest, watching me with the same suspicious look his mother had given me.
"Every time you interact with her, you come out of it looking like someone ran you over with a horse," I said matter-of-factly, hoisting myself up on the table, a mere foot away from him.
He looked gravely insulted. "I do not," he insisted, tightening his stance, tensing.
I pressed my hands into the table on either side of my legs and crossed one knee over the other. "Yes, actually, you do," I replied mildly, acting like I didn't care, like it was merely a casual observation, when in truth, the look on his face every time she actually deigned to speak to him made me want to scream.
He shook his head as though too irritated to respond, and stayed silent. He looked around the sparse apartment for a moment, then said, so quietly I almost missed it, "She woke up after you left last night."
I jerked my head up to look his full in the face. "She what?" I demanded, wondering if she had heard what had happened, and if so, what her reaction, if any, had been.
"She woke up," he repeated, his voice still almost incoherently soft. "She had me come into her room, and she told me that since she was dying, she wanted to tell me about my father."
My eyebrows shot up, all worry and/or excitement about her having heard me calling her a "fucking bitch" vanishing to be replaced by morbid curiosity. "What about him?" I asked. "Did you know him?"
I myself had only known my father briefly, before he had taken off into nowhere, never to be heard from again. I can only assume my mother didn't know where he was. I know for certain that she never went after him. And she had definitely never looked at me with hatred because he had betrayed her.
"No," Spot replied, looking somewhere in the vicinity of the table legs. "I never even met him. Once, when she was drunk, and I was nine, she told me he had raped her in an alley. She said that's why she hated me." He was still speaking calmly, quietly, and my gasp of horror was even more noticeable in the silent room.
"She said that to you?" I asked, aghast, my head swiveling automatically toward the curtain, as if it held some sort of answer as to the insanity of a woman who would say that to a little boy. Nine years old?
"It wasn't true," he said flatly. "About the rape, I mean. The hating me part was definitely true," he added, and his voice wavered before he cleared his throat to continue. "He was rich. He was engaged. She met him at some restaurant where she was working, and they had sex. She wound up pregnant and tracked him down, but he wouldn't speak to her. And she got me."
As I digested this, it occurred to me that Seth could, somewhere out there, have siblings, a family, who didn't even know he existed. I wondered, in a burst of lateral thinking, what it would feel like if I didn't know he existed, either.
"I can't imagine not knowing you," I said, mostly by accident. He looked up, his brow creased in confusion, "Heh?" practically written on his forehead. "I just mean," I added, trying to make sense of my thoughts, "That your father doesn't even know you exist. I just…thinking of not even knowing you were in the world makes me feel…" I struggled to find a word less dramatic than bereft or devastated, which were the first to come to mind, and settled on, "Lonely."
He studied me, as though searching for truth in my face. "After everything that's happened, you really don't think you'd be better off without ever knowing me?" He straightened and closed the gap between us. I uncrossed my legs and he pressed himself against my knees. "You wouldn't even miss me. You just…wouldn't know."
"I would know," I whispered, and just the thought, the mention of him not having been a part of my life, a part of me, made me feel panicked, made my eyes burn. I cleared my throat and looked down before I did something irrevocably stupid, like cry. "So what else did she say?" I asked, my voice tight.
"That she should have 'done something' about me when she first found out," he said, and though his voice was steady, a look at his face told me his mother had, once again, for the umpteenth time, managed to break his heart.
"Oh, Seth," I breathed, and put my hands on his wrists, pulling him closer. I could feel his pulse in my hands, quick and frantic. "I'm so sorry."
He shrugged, but I could see, in the way his entire body was on edge, his face stony, that he was about five seconds away from melting down again. I didn't think the old, fragile furniture in this place could take another beating.
"Why on earth would she decide she needed to tell you that?" I asked, kneading his arms with my hands, my voice accusing. I was ready to go in there and spit on her.
"I don't know," he said, his voice wavering on the last word. "She hates me, and I don't know why." He shook his head, clenching his teeth together, and I immediately stood, still holding his wrists, and turned around, switching places with him. He sat on the edge of the table, his arms held up by my hands, but otherwise slumped, head hanging. I slid my hands up his arms, across his shoulders, to grasp the sides of his neck.
Anger, outrage, and thoughts of murder rose in my chest, and I dropped my hands and stalked across the floor and into his mother's room before he could even look up. By the time he had jumped up to follow me, I was standing before her in the bed, positively trembling with fury.
"Mrs." Conlon, from her bed, looked up at me impassively, as though I were a mildly irritating gnat that wouldn't leave.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" I spat, and she jerked back as though I had struck her, though I was a good three feet away and couldn't if I had wanted to, not without leaping on her, which actually, come to think of it, didn't sound half bad.
"Lydia, don't," Seth said from behind me, and tried to grab my wrist. I shook him off.
"No!" I cried, turning halfway around to look at him. "No, Seth." He didn't say anything, just stared at me, and I turned back to his mother. "How dare you?" I said loudly, my voice harsh, biting. "He never did anything to you. He was supposed to be your baby. Why do you hate him so much?"
She looked completely bored by my outburst. "He was a terrible baby, always crying. And when he got older, he was always runnin', always breakin' things, never listening."
"Always interrupting your boozing?" I retorted, and I heard Seth groan from behind me.
"Lydia, enough," he said, and put his hands on my shoulders.
"No," I repeated, softer now, my voice low, cutting, as I addressed his mother again. "I know you're in pain, and I know you're dying. But that doesn't excuse what you did to him," I told her, and Seth's hands clenched on my shoulders, whether to support himself against collapse or in warning, I wasn't sure. I barreled on. "He deserved better than you."
Now she looked angry. "I never wanted a baby!" she screeched. "I didn't know how to take care of him. And I was sick all the time!" she added defensively.
"Oh, is that what they call being a drunk these days? An illness?" I shot back, my voice dripping with disdain. Okay, okay. I know. I was fighting with a woman dying of cancer. But you know what? Dying doesn't make you a saint. So, honestly: fuck her.
She drew herself up as far as she could from her sitting position. "I won't have this!" she yelled, looking to Seth. "This is what you bring to me when I'm dying? This little bitch who thinks she knows everything?" she looked at me. "That no-good man got me saddled with that boy, and then left me high and dry."
I snorted. "Oh, yeah, poor you," I said mockingly. "You know what you do? You deal with it! You pick yourself up! You don't drink yourself stupid every night. You don't take it out on a little boy!"
I was crying now, losing it, feeling completely hysterical. "We could have had everything!" I screamed, my body jerking, hair flying, knowing that even though she would not grasp the full meaning of my words, Seth would. "We could have had everything, but you broke him!"
Unable to stand anymore, I turned, tearing myself from Seth's grip and fleeing, running out the front door. I stumbled on the steps and wound up sitting on the bottom stair, my face in my hands, sobbing as though my life were over.
A soft thud and warmth in the air to my left told me Seth had followed me. I struggled to calm down while he sat silently at my side, one stair up, not touching me. I managed to stop bawling and wiped my eyes with my hands, tossing my head back and taking a deep breath.
I pivoted to face him. His expression was impossible to read. It was serious, but blank, and with his eyes on his knees, I couldn't see what was in them.
"I'm sorry," I said shakily. "I made a complete fool of myself in there." As my hysteria was fading, embarrassment at how ridiculous I had acted began to creep up on me. What had I thought? That calling her on her shit would make her love him? Oh, God, I had been screaming, screeching like a banshee, like a fucking crazy person.
He nodded once, and looked over at me. His eyes were soft, his expression gentle. "Don't be sorry," he murmured finally. "Nothing anyone says will change how she feels about me, but…" he grasped my forearms and pulled me close, opening his legs so I was cocooned in them. "Don't be sorry," he repeated, and I pressed the side of my face into his firm stomach, wrapping my arms around his waist. His hand rested on the open side of my face, securing me to him. His other arm was about my shoulders. He was so warm, so solid, and so, so real. It had been years since I had felt his body under my hands, and now I couldn't seem to stop seeking it out.
He didn't have to say anything, and I had about screamed myself out. So we just sat that way, wrapped in each other, until he glanced at his pocket watch, an old beat-up silver thing, and said we needed to get going.
We stood together, and he came down the final stair to stand in front of me. "Come here," he said, and pushed my arm so I had no choice but to stand a few inches above him on the first step. This way, our faces were perfectly level, and he put his hands on my hips, the second man to do so that day (she thought guiltily).
"I love you," he said, staring into my eyes, and I struggled to find a way to respond. "I love you too," would have been true but potentially misleading, possibly devastating.
When I merely gazed at him, taking in the colors in his eyes, he pulled me closer. I brought my hands to his face and held it while we kissed, soft and sweet. His arms went about my back, and I kept one hand on his face and put the other arm around his neck, pressing our warm bodies together.
Kissing Ben, it felt new and exciting, and made me feel things in all the right places.
Kissing Seth sent those same shivers through my body, and left me wanting more, wanting it all, but kissing him was different in that rather than feeling as though I were discovering new territory, I felt like I was coming home.
We pulled away, and I stepped down and stood on my tip-toes, hugging him, burying my face in the hot skin of his neck, inhaling the scent of him: fresh pine, sweat, and a hint of my cinnamon candle.
As we rode home, toward our friends, toward my house, toward Ben, I wondered: Between these two men, which one could I not survive without? Which would I miss far too much to ever be happy? I loved them both, that was evident. I was undeniably attracted to them both.
But there had to be something, I knew. Something that would tell me, on an instinctive, visceral level, which of these men, who both loved me in spite of my many, numerous flaws, would be the best for me.
All that was left was to find it.
But instead of working myself into a frenzy, I merely slipped my arm into Seth's as we sat on the trolley toward home, and pressed the top of my head into the warm, inviting curve of his neck.
We were at the door when he stopped and dropped my hand. I looked down at my now empty hand, feeling the frigid air rapidly cooling it. "Ben kissed you when he knew I saw," Seth said, adjusting his coat, "But I'm not gonna walk in there holding your hand. That's just dirty."
Twice in one day—impressed. First by Ben's viciousness, now by Seth's unwillingness to follow suit. I would have expected it to be the opposite, if anyone had asked my opinion.
I nodded, and we walked inside, just two people separated by a foot of space.
"Finally!" Sprint cried when she saw us. She was carrying a platter of mashed potatoes out to the makeshift table in the living room, where all our friends were seated. The newsgirls were in the kitchen, clearly visible through the propped door.
"What finally?" I asked, glancing at the clock. "It's five forty-nine!"
"Oh, just sit, darlin'," Race said amiably from the middle of the table.
I walked toward the empty chair and halted. They did it on purpose. They had to have done it on purpose. Sprint put out place cards every year, and mine was in between Race and Jack, directly across from the places marked for Ben and Seth.
I was supposed to eat with the both of them staring at me? I looked over to shoot eye daggers at Sprint's head, but she was resolutely looking away from me. I could have sworn, though, that I saw her smirking to herself.
What. A. Bitch.
I sat down, trying not to look as fuming as I was, and Seth sat down next to Ben, gingerly, as though a bit afraid the chair itself was about to explode and blow him to tiny bits.
Ben didn't look all that relaxed himself. His mouth was scrunched forward in the universal expression of awkwardness, and he was looking around himself as though unsure how he got there.
Somehow, feeling so ill at ease, it surprised me when everyone else began talking all at once, conversations flying every which way. Jack, ever tactful, asked Skittery when he and Angel were going to get back together, and I was given a brief respite from my own internal demons as I watched them both sputter and look anywhere but at each other.
Seth smirked, his eyes twinkling, and leaned forward to address Water, who was two chairs down from him at the table. "And when're you and Ginny gonna stop foolin' around and get serious?"
This couple did not sputter or hem and haw, but merely laughed uproariously, and then, in front of everyone, Water planted a kiss on Ginny's mouth, still laughing. "We like it how we have it, thanks," Ginny said, grinning wickedly.
"And you?" Jack said to Mush, for apparently he and Spot were now a razing tag-team, "When're you gonna pop the question to this lovely woman here?" he asked, motioning to Panic, who went bright red and let out a tiny, moaning laugh.
But Mush, far from looking embarrassed, beamed with pride. "Actually," he said, drawing out the word and calling everyone's attention to him. "We have an announcement to make."
Everyone at the table froze, forks in midair, napkins halfway off the table, still mouths full of half-chewed food. I had been about to take a sip of water and halted, water sloshing in and out of my mouth as I stared at Panic, who was halfway obscured by my glass.
Panic, still red, looked up, and I realized her flush was not from embarrassment, but pleasure. "We're engaged!" she cried, and then all hell broke loose.
I practically punted my glass onto the table, where it spilled onto the tablecloth, and ran to the other side of the table, pushing through people whose faces I didn't even look at to get to my truest, most loyal friend.
I threw my arms around her and squeezed her as tightly as I could. "When did this happen?" I practically yelled in her face.
She beamed. "Last night." She lowered her voice. "I wanted to tell you, but you seemed upset when you got back, so I just…I'm sorry, I should have told you."
"Whatever!" I yelled. "I'll be pissed off about that later! I'm so happy!" I actually jumped up and down as I hugged her again, feeling, for the first time since this whole mess had started, really and truly joyous.
I released Panic to the crowd of friends and newsgirls clamoring to get a hold of her, and found Mush in a huddle of men, all slapping him on the back. They parted for me, and I swiftly made my way to him and hugged him with all my might, loving him so much, loving Panic so much, and knowing that this couple, at least, would last.
Let's face it: Me, Seth and Ben. Mugger and Water. Skittery and Lady. We were all fucked up. Well, there's safety in numbers, I guess. Or at least someone to deliver the suicide note.
"I'm so, so happy for you," I whispered in his ear, and he squeezed me tighter to him.
"We both love you so much Lyd," he said, the only person—and I mean only—who could get away with calling me that. He loosened his grip, and I started to pull away, but he held fast to me, looking into my face, speaking almost too quietly for me to hear him. "I want you to know that whatever you do here," and his eyes flickered over Ben and Seth, who were both starting back to their seats, "We'll both back you. We all will."
I smiled, feeling a little teary, and quickly kissed him on the cheek. "Thanks, Jake," I said, and he gave me that top-toothed grin of his and released me to grab hold of his bride.
After that, nothing could bring me down, not even Seth and Ben's refusal to even look at each other, or the way they ate hunched and cramped, trying not to bump elbows, a feat made harder by the fact that the right-handed Seth was directly to the left of left-handed Ben.
In fact, I was of the mood to find watching them mildly hilarious.
It seemed like no time at all before we were all bundling up against the cold to walk the eight blocks to Midnight Mass, which in reality started at ten. We were all Catholic, I guess, in theory, but none of us ever made it to church when it wasn't December 24. But this was tradition, after all, the one thing that Missus Wells, our old director and a raging Catholic, had made us do growing up.
I found myself walking between Seth and Ben, and both of them swung their hands too close to mine for it to be an accident. What did they want from me? Was I supposed to choose one of them right here, right now, by grabbing a hand like we were picking teams in the schoolyard? Was I maybe supposed to hold both of their hands?
I did neither, and we made it in and out of church without incident, though sitting between them, feeling both of their warm, firm bodies on either side of me forced me—really, I had no choice in the matter—to think decidedly sinful, inappropriate-for-the-Catholic-Church thoughts.
By the time we left I was flushed and sweaty, though it had been chilly and drafty in the church.
At the house, it took all of us women to get the girls settled down for lights' out, and it was midnight—real midnight this time—when we got downstairs.
In our absence, the men had turned the dining table into the setting for a poker game, and they all sat around it, clutching cards and sipping booze from rocks glasses, though, Seth, true to his past, had a full glass he was not drinking out of, instead drinking water.
Sprint seemed to notice nothing—she had not been there, after all, but the rest of us—me, Panic, Mugger, Lady, and Angel, stopped abruptly in the doorway, and I, for one, was overcome with the most powerful déjà vu I had ever felt.
A late-night poker game at a lodging house. These people. Seth, not drinking, although the reasoning behind that—fear of turning into his mother: cruel, abusive, terrifying—was much clearer to me now than it had been before.
It could have been three and a half years in the past.
"Whoa," Mugger said, summing it up for all of us with one word.
"Eerie, right?" I replied, and they all nodded.
"What are you women doing?" Race called, looking up from his cards.
"Wondering if we've stepped into the past," Lady replied, moving forward to stand near Blink.
"What's that now?" David asked, looking to Sprint to fill him in, but she shrugged, still clueless.
"It's just this scene is very familiar," Angel said, avoiding Skittery's piercing gaze. "It's very much like that party Brooklyn had. During the strike, I mean.
Seth's eyes flew from Angel to me so fast it was like we were magnetized. That goddamned party.
I returned his gaze, and knew we were both thinking the same things, remembering the same events: The party. The other girl I had usurped from his lap. The laughing, talking, me drinking, touching. And then, in the bathroom, hearing two Brooklyn boys laughing about Spot's women for every day of the week—and my "name," Thursday. The abrupt change in my demeanor, the sex, which I, hating myself but unable to resist, had participated in willingly. The fight in the morning.
That fight. The fight where I good as admitted to him that I was hopelessly, pathetically in love with him. The fight where we both tried to say the most damaging things we could think of in order to spite the other.
The fight that ruined us.
Here we were, all the same guests, the players the same. Our lives were different now, though. We were different now. He, especially, was different now. Hadn't he just told me, only hours before, that he loved me? Said it without stammering, without a flash of embarrassment? Could we perhaps use this moment to change our ending?
An hour later, during which I was largely silent, observing both Ben and Seth, who seemed determined to be as dynamic and winning as possible, and fully aware that I was watching, Seth stood and said he had to be getting home.
"How you plannin' on doin' that, Conlon?" Race, who was spending the night and was, by now, happily drunk, slurred.
"You can't walk," I protested, standing. "It'll take you until three-thirty in the morning to get there on foot."
He shrugged, and I knew that it wasn't determination to check on his mother that was spurning him to leave, but the fact that he had not been invited to stay.
I hesitated. Ben was already planning to stay. In fact, the girls had doubled up into the larger bunkroom so the one across the hall was empty, the bunks waiting for bodies. Everyone was staying
"Stay, Seth," I said finally, and felt the heat of Ben's eyes on my face. My heart jumped a little, but I took a deep breath to calm it. After all, it wasn't as though I had asked him to sleep in my bed with me, right? I hadn't said, "Hey baby, sleep in my bed with me tonight." There were bunks upstairs for everyone. I would be sleeping alone.
Unfortunately. I mean—what? Who said that?
Seth looked around, but most of the group was no longer paying attention, having assumed he'd stay and moving on. Panic was watching me intently, her eyes flicking between Seth and Ben before coming to rest on me. I looked at her and she raised her brows slightly, saying nothing, but I could hear the warning nonetheless.
He returned his gaze to me, his expression difficult to read. When he nodded, Ben stood from the poker table and, saying nothing, walked into the kitchen.
As Seth sat, I followed, trying not to trip under his watchful eye.
Ben was in the kitchen, his back to me as he braced himself on the sink. In the clear reflection in the window, our eyes met. He shook his head at me and looked down.
"It's gonna be him, Lydia," he said softly. "It was always gonna be him."
Without thinking, I practically sprinted across the kitchen and yanked at his arm. He straightened and faced me, but wouldn't meet my eye.
It's not like I knew what to say anyway. I couldn't say anything to either of them, really. Anything I said to reassure him would be taken as a promise, a hope that we would be together. And I didn't know if we would be.
Let people say I led them both on; let them say I acted like a whore, kissing them both, wanting them both. Let them say I was stupid and cruel. But never let it be said that I made them promises I didn't keep.
So instead of saying something that would come back to haunt me, I pulled at him until he leaned, half-sitting, half-standing, against the kitchen table. I stepped close to him and he opened his legs to let me stand between his knees.
His face. He was slap-in-the-mouth gorgeous, but he looked…he looked miserable. Lost.
Without conscious thought, I traced his brow with a fingertip, and when he didn't jerk away, I trailed my finger down his jaw, across to his lips. I stood there for a moment, staring at my own finger on his lips, feeling its softness beneath the pad of my finger.
Ben parted his lips, and I tilted my finger just slightly, just enough to brush against his teeth. His teeth parted, and his tongue reached out to graze my finger. A shock, a thrill, zapped down my spine, and a strangled moan escaped my mouth.
I was this close to shoving him backward onto the table and having my way with him when he withdrew his tongue, shut his mouth, closed his eyes, and turned his head, dislodging my finger and leaving my hand in thin air. Eyes shut, brow furrowed, his face tensed as he took a deep breath. His mouth moved from one overwrought position to another.
After a few of those breaths, he opened his eyes. "I'm not doing this now. Kissing you earlier, in front of Seth, it wasn't right." There was the man I knew. "I don't wanna kiss you in here and then have him drag you off to kiss you, too. It's not fair to…" he shook his head, more a tick than a conscious movement. "Anyone. Him, me, you." He looked up at me. "Next time I kiss you, he's not gonna be in the next room."
And he walked out.
AN: I now have a plan taking shape for the rest of this. Until now I've just been kind of going along with idea where this was going…but now I know….And I am…hahaha. /evil.