I woke up the next morning to someone standing over my bed. I had a brief vision of being stabbed in the heart by a masked intruder, but that vision was dispelled as Seth, fully clothed in his slightly rumpled outfit from the day before, sat down on my bed and handed me a huge mug of coffee, doctored just the way I liked it.
"Merry Christmas," he whispered softly, his hand lingering on mine as I took the mug from him.
I smiled, touched by this sweetness I had not yet learned to expect. "Merry Christmas, Seth," I whispered back, and took a huge sip, feeling the strong brew begin to ease away the caffeine-deprivation headache I always had in the morning. "You scared me, by the way," I said conversationally, before taking another hot gulp.
He chuckled. "Sorry," he said, and picked up a lock of my hair, twirling it around his fingers. I watched him examine it, watched his eyes travel over his own hand and my hair as though mesmerized. I took a slurp of my coffee to jolt him back to reality, and he jumped and looked up, releasing my hair. "I have to get going," he said finally. "I should really get back to my mother."
"Well you can't go yet," I said firmly. "We have to do presents."
"No one even knew I was coming. I didn't even know I was coming. What's the point?" he asked, taking the mug from my hand and taking a sip of my coffee. He winced. "Ugh. I forgot how strong your coffee is."
"You made it!" I squawked indignantly, laughing a little.
He smiled softly, cocking his head at me. "Yeah, but I made it like I used to see you make it. I'd totally forgotten how disgusting it is." He smacked his mouth open and shut. "How the hell do you sleep? Ever?"
I laughed and took a deep, satisfying gulp. "Mmm," I sighed. "So delicious."
He shook his head and lifted a lock of hair off my face, tucking it behind my ear. "You're ridiculous," he said, with no hint of malice in his voice.
We were most likely seconds away from kissing at this point, but feet started to pound on the floor above us, and, both of us figuring we had about fifteen seconds before people came downstairs—people like Ben—and found us in my bedroom together, we both stood, and Seth slipped out the door.
By the time I followed, dressed in a tight-bodiced charcoal gray dress with black lace embellishment and a slim skirt, the tight sleeves rolled halfway up my forearms, Panic, Mush, Ben, Seth, and Sprint were in the kitchen. David and a sleepy Les had dashed out even before I had woken up—Seth mentioned David's shouted, "See ya later!" as he darted out the door—to get to his mother's to join her and his siblings for the day.
"Girls coming down?" I asked, not missing Seth and Ben on opposite sides of the table.
"They should be flying down like bats out of hell any second now," Panic replied, taking a sip of her freshly poured coffee. I watched Seth perk up, clearly anticipating her revulsion, but she sighed with pleasure and looked down at her cup. "This is amazing. Who made this?" she asked, and he slumped, looking adorably disappointed.
"You can thank Seth for that. I think he was trying to poison us with too-strong coffee," I laughed.
Sprint pulled an overly-innocent face. "Too-strong coffee? I have no idea what that means. Is that a thing?"
"Oh, forget it," Seth muttered, but a grin was playing on his face, and even Ben gave a tiny half-smile.
"Oh, by the way, Merry Christmas!" Mush yelled suddenly around a huge bite of toast with jam, splattering crumbs all over himself.
"Merry Christmas!" everyone except Seth yelled back, as obnoxiously as possible. I don't know, really. Mush tends to pull us into stupid, annoying, lovable traditions. Seth was looking at us all with the expression of a distant relative surrounded by crazy, psychotic family members.
"I assume everyone else is still passed out?" I said, biting into a slice of apple.
"We're the only non-drunks," Ben said, speaking for the first time.
"You were terribly nicknamed," Seth said suddenly, speaking directly to Ben for the first time since that first night. "I don't even know how a twelve year-old gets that name,"
Ben stared at Seth for a moment as though deciding whether or not to respond to him, but then shrugged. "It was Alex," he replied, glancing at Seth before letting his gaze float around the kitchen. "He was only fourteen, but he thought he was a badass or something. He called himself—"
"Whiskey," Sprint, Panic, and I all sighed. We had all gone a bit glazed in the eyes, and didn't notice Ben, Seth, and Mush all staring at us for a few awkward moments.
I was unapologetic. "It was the skin. Whiskey; bourbon: dark liquor. The same color as your skin." My eyes went to Ben's bare arms and shoulders, exposed in his sleeveless undershirt. "God, remember what crushes we had on Whiskey when he was leader?" I said suddenly, to distract not only myself, but Seth and Ben, who had both looked down at Ben's arms when I did, Ben looking confused and a little pleased, Seth stormy.
Sprint sighed dreamily. "I wanted to marry him when I was twelve," she said, her chin in her hand.
"God, me too," Panic and I said in unison, and Ben stood, clearly trying not to smile.
"Okay, this is getting weird. Can we open presents now, or what?"
Everyone stood, Seth leading the way, and I brought up the rear. Ben stuck his arm in front of me, halting me in my tracks. We both glanced over to see if Seth was hovering, but he was out of sight in the front room.
"A crush on my big brother, huh?" he asked, smirking, adjusting the same lock of hair behind my ear that Seth had.
"Mmm, yes," I said dreamily, fluttering my eyelashes dramatically. "My first love."
Ben shook his head, grinning, his teeth white and even, and leaned in to kiss me softly on the cheek. "Merry Christmas," he whispered against my cheek, in the same tone as Seth had used not much earlier.
"Merry Christmas, Ben," I whispered back, echoing myself.
We all opened presents, and I, at the last moment, dug out my spare cinnamon candle from my bedroom, tied a sloppy bow on it, and handed it to Seth. He sat, holding it in his hand, as everyone else exclaimed over their gifts and the girls ran upstairs to try on their new clothes. I and the other women had pooled some money over the last few months to get each girl a new skirt and blouse, and they were all ecstatic.
I sat next to Seth on the couch, keeping a proprietary distance between us. He ran his thumb over the smooth side of the candle, then held it to his nose to breathe it in. "This'll always remind me of you," he said softly. "The house smelled like this when I walked in. So did you."
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him off for suggesting that there would be a time when a candle would be the best reminder of me he would have, but I managed to hold it in. No promises, I reminded myself. At least not until I was confident that I could keep them.
When everything was cleared away, Seth said his goodbyes, and even exchanged a strained handshake with Ben, both of them, I think, thinking of Seth's previous comment, which, though it seemed innocuous enough, was really a reminder that once, their relationship had not had ups and downs that depended upon me, that they knew things and anecdotes about one another that no one else did.
"You're sure you can't stay?" I asked, looking him up and down, at the candle he still held in his hand, the bag of bread (we hadn't eaten it all, despite the "bread emergency" the day before) dangling from his fingers. He hadn't shaved, and his clothes were getting more wrinkled with every second, but to me, he looked astounding. I remembered the slouching, sexy boy of my teenage years, seeing him shining through the adult face of the man before me.
"I've been gone a lot longer than I should've been already," he said, sounding a little on edge, and I knew he was dreading finding something amiss when he returned—like his mother's dead body, for one. But I wasn't worried. One, because, let's be honest here, her death wouldn't exactly be a national tragedy. Two, because I doubted that woman would let go of her clutch on life before she could manage to say at least one more horrible thing to Seth. She would probably make him watch her die.
"Okay," I said finally, not knowing exactly how to say goodbye to him. He took the burden off my shoulders by putting his arms around my neck and pulling me to him gently. I breathed him in and was only a touch self-conscious when I realized that he was doing the exact same thing.
"So when will we see you again, Seth?" Panic asked, and I shot her a sly, grateful look, because I knew she had seen me faltering, wanting to ask but not knowing how in front of everyone.
"Oh, uh," Seth looked around. "I don't really know. I guess I'll stop by tomorrow if that's okay?"
"Tomorrow is perfect," Panic put in smoothly, and she and Sprint stepped forward to kiss him lightly on his cheek. He exchanged a handshake with Mush, told us to tell everyone else "Merry Christmas" when they finally woke up, and left.
The rest of the morning was spent munching on leftovers and razzing the hungover masses as they woke up and took their red-eyed leave.
When we were down to just the newsgirls, Panic, Mush, Sprint, Ben, and a returned Dave, I went into my room to put away my few presents—a new winter-weight nightgown in a crisp, pristine white, perfectly selected by Lady and Angel, who both had exquisite taste; a romance novel from Panic that I suspected was more tongue-in-cheek than anything; oils for the bath from Sprint; a magnificent-smelling perfume from Mugger. Typically, their men had simply penned their names onto the cards, the epitome of lazy. Race had given all us women gorgeous, boldly-colored scarves, Jack silver-plated, chunky bracelets. Brandy and Miranda had brought homemade jam.
Everyone else had brought something small, something well-received but largely impersonal. It was, after all, hard to buy gifts for people you didn't see but a few times a year.
Skittery, however, had given me a small, shrunken, jade green man's undershirt, showing me once again that he knew me better than I thought he did by silently conveying that he was aware of my predilection for donning men's clothes on my lazy days.
It was strange. I loved Skittery; I really did. He was hilariously cynical, and I didn't think our group would be half as much fun without him. But I had always assumed that we were friends by association, and our relationship existed because he had been with Angel, and was best friends with Blink and Mush, who were cemented into our group by their women.
What was it that Seth had said? "Every single guy who came to Brooklyn the other night loves you so much they were willing to fight for your honor." And hadn't Ben said that Skittery had been the most furious that night? And later, he'd said, "Do you not see the affect you have? You make people want to be around you."
I hadn't noticed, really, that my friendships with these men had, over the years, grown independently from our group, growing their own identities, or that if everyone else in our gang were to disappear off the face of the earth, we would still be friends. We were no longer friends by association, drawn together because of mutual links. We were just…friends. Family. I knew, all at once, that I would do anything for each of those men—Blink, Skittery, Mush, Water, Dave.
Oh, God, a flippin' Christmas miracle. Realizing who your true friends are, and what's most important in life, all that good stuff. I rolled my eyes at myself for being so disgustingly sappy, but the truth was, I was feeling pretty damn lucky.
I had gotten nothing from Seth or Ben. Not that it mattered, I told myself, trying to ignore that stung feeling in my chest. There was a soft knock on my half-open door, and when I turned, I saw Ben peering around the doorframe.
"Hey," I said, trying my best not to sound bitter. No such luck. He smirked a little as he entered, shut the door, walked over to my bed and plopped down on it.
"Someone a little put-out about no present?" he teased, and I crossed my arms belligerently before he pulled out a tiny box painstakingly tied with a bow.
"Not anymore," I said brightly, reaching for the box. He whipped it out of my reach and yanked my hand, causing me to go flying at him. He caught me deftly and lowered me to sit on the bed beside him.
"I didn't wanna give this to you in front of…" he trailed off, and I knew that he didn't want any mention of Seth right now. "Well, I just thought, it'd be nice to see you open it when it was just us."
He handed me the box, a rounded red velvet square, and I gently pulled the forest green ribbon off. I hesitated before opening it, wondering if (or hoping? Dreading?) it was a ring.
It wasn't. It was a long, silver necklace with scuffed and worn silver coins dangling from it by tiny holes that had been drilled into their tops. The coins all depicted stern-faced men on one side, and a seal on the other. I couldn't tell what they said, but assumed, since these came from Ben, that the writing was Greek. The year on the coins said 1878.
As I held the coins in my hand and rubbed my fingers over them, marveling at them, Ben lifted the chain from the box and held the necklace up to the light.
"I had one of the guys at the factory make this," he explained, his voice nervous. "They're coins my parents brought with them from Greece when they came here. They always held onto them, and Alex and I both took some when they—when we went to Brooklyn." He had just leaned forward to put the necklace around my neck when I leaned back, and he froze.
"I can't take this," I said, unspeakably touched and honored by his gift, but nonetheless horrified at the thought of taking these priceless mementos away from him.
He lowered the necklace and looked at me like I'd hauled off and smacked him. "Why the hell not?" he demanded, his voice slightly higher than normal, and I knew he was thinking of Seth, wondering if the game was over.
I put my hands over his, running my fingers over the silver chain. "I can't take these things away from you, Ben," I explained, and his face softened as he looked down at the coins. "They're a part of your parents."
He looked into my face and gave me an endearing half-smile as he reached one hand into the collar of his shirt and pulled out another chain, this one short, with only one coin hanging from it. "I didn't give 'em all to you," he said softly, and let the chain fall.
I looked into his dear, beautiful face, taking him in, all the history etched into his features. For all I knew about my ancestry my ancestors could have arrived on the damn Mayflower or sailed into Ellis Island fifty years ago. But Ben, he knew everything—cities and towns in Greece where his family had come from, relatives who still lived there, names of people he would never meet and their entire life stories.
These coins, they weren't just coins to him. They were a part of his history, a part of his family, and mostly, a part of the parents he had worshipped. And he was giving most of them to me.
Well. Isn't that a kick in the face? Just another reminder of how deeply and honestly this wonderful man loved me, and of how terrible, awful, and selfish I was.
Ben slipped the necklace over my head and around my neck, and I fingered the coins, which hung to my sternum, leaving them exposed outside of my dress.
"Thank you," I whispered, and opened the collar of his shirt to touch his necklace, the companion to mine, not a twin, but without which the collection was incomplete.
There had to be a metaphor in there somewhere.
One hand on my own necklace, the other on his, I looked into his dark eyes and said, a little louder, "I love it."
"Just it?" he murmured, his voice deep and rumbling, and there was no time to move or prepare before he kissed me.
This time, there would be no interruptions, and if there were, well…happy eyeful, sucker.
He was on top of me, his hands seemed to be everywhere, and his mouth was hot and tasted like the peppermint candies we had set in bowls all over the house. Somehow, we shifted to lie in the middle of the bed, my head on the soft downy pillows.
He pushed his hips into me, and I gasped, feeling pleasure shoot from my pelvis up through my spine, making my skin taut and my head spin. As I tilted my head back, Ben tucked his to graze his teeth along my neck, his soft curls caressing my jaw. In a frenzy, I yanked open his shirt, popping buttons, which clattered around the room, and reached down to pull off his undershirt, leaving his dark skin exposed.
He worked the buttons on my dress, taking considerably more care than I had to avoid damage, and soon, all that separated us from the waist up was my corset and chemise.
"Goddamned thing," Ben muttered, working the front ties impatiently before opening the corset and sliding it out from under me. He yanked down the straps of my chemise, losing patience, and his mouth suctioned onto one breast. Immediately, I cried out, and he shot back up to my mouth to muffle my voice.
He pushed his hips into me once again, insistently now, and I felt him—all of him—against me, and my hands moved of their own accord to the buttons on his trousers, but as soon as my fingers found purchase on them, Ben shot backward as though electrified, and was up and off the bed before I could blink.
He went to the far wall and leaned against it, his hands above his head, bracing himself as he breathed, heavily, gasping, in and out.
Confused, alarmed, and not a little disappointed, I pulled the straps of my chemise up to at least partially cover myself as I sat up.
"Ben?"
"I can't do this," he gasped, and at his tone, I was up and off the bed like a shot, hurrying over to him.
"Ben," I repeated, putting a hand on his hot, slightly sticky shoulder.
He dropped his hands and his head hit the wall with a dull thunk. "I can't do this," he said to the wall. "I want to so bad it's killing me. But I—fuck." He straightened and turned, flopping back to lean against the wall. "It's not like I'm some virgin. But it's different with you," he said, avoiding my eye, his cheeks starting to darken with humiliation. "I can't just have sex with you knowing he's gonna be near you after, trying to do the same thing."
"Are you saying you think I'd have sex with both of you in the same day?" I demanded, feeling mortally insulted, yes, but mostly, ashamed, because chances were, I would probably do exactly that, if it came down to it.
"Wouldn't you?" he asked, finally looking at me, piercing me with a stare, one that clearly said, I know you. I know all the things about you that you hate.
I didn't answer, but I'm sure the way I dropped my head to stare at the floor, where my eyes lit on a discarded button, was confirmation.
"God, Lydia, what do you want?" he half-shouted suddenly, his voice breaking, and he brought back a fist to punch the wall.
I backed away, not so much scared of him as overwhelmed and surprised. Was this Ben? Steady, constant Ben?
He followed my footsteps, closing the gap, and took my face in his hands, more firmly than roughly, and shook me slightly. "What do you want?" he repeated, his voice lower but no less forceful.
I shut my eyes against the look on his face: fear, anger, desire. "I don't know," I whispered, knowing it wasn't good enough, knowing I had said it before, would probably say it again, knowing that I was killing him, that I was…Oh, God.
I was doing the exact same thing to him that Spot Conlon had done to me. Jerking him around, making him love me, and then pulling it all away. Playing with his emotions. Hurting him in a way that, if it didn't end well for us, he would never truly recover from.
The realization that I was inflicting the same pain I had endured and suffered onto another person—no, not just another person, onto Ben: stunning, wonderful Ben—made me feel breathless.
The only upside was that I knew what to do to at least hold him over, to comfort him at least a bit. When my relationship with Seth had crumbled those years ago, I had wanted, more than anything, for him to at least show me, in some way, that he was hurting like I was.
So I cried.
No, actually, I basically sobbed my eyes out, sinking to the floor, and Ben came down with me as I choked out, "I never wanted to hurt you. I hate this. I hate myself. I wish I could tell you yes or no, but I can't." I managed to pull myself to my knees and look him in the face. My breath was coming jerky and erratic, and I wiped at my still-leaking eyes.
"You don't deserve this. I don't deserve you," I said, slightly less frantically than before. "You should hate me. You should just walk out on me. It's what I deserve."
Ben shook his head and wiped my eyes with his thumbs, his hands gentle on my face. "But I can't just walk away now, Lydia. Not when there's a chance," he said, his voice soft but insistent, unbending.
"It's what I deserve," I repeated. "To lose you." But even as I spoke, my fingers traveled up his ribcage to clutch at the muscles at his sides, as though my body were determined to hold him there at all costs.
"You deserve more than you think you do," he said, showing me more kindness than I could ever hope to earn, unfailing in his belief that I was a good person. "Come here." He pulled me forward, and, on our knees, my arms around his ribs, my cheek on the warm, soft skin of his chest, his face pressed into the top of my as head he held me to him, I felt rather than saw the few hot tears he allowed himself before he sniffed, cleared his throat, and pulled away.
"I should go," he said, and stood to get dressed. His shirt was gaping open, his undershirt exposed, and I knew that once he had gone, there would be questions from the others.
I stayed where I was, kneeling on the floor, and he crouched down on his way out to lift my chin with his fingertips and plant a kiss on my temple.
Once he was gone, I stood up, in a haze, and pulled my own clothes back on. It wasn't until I was finishing buttoning my dress and was smoothing my skirt that I felt it in my left pocket.
I reached into it and pulled out a key on a tan suede string. I recognized it instantly. Spot Conlon's mysterious key, the one he had always worn around his neck and answered no questions about. And suddenly, I realized I knew this key, although I had not recognized it without the string, when it materialized on its own from a pocket.
Seth had, in his days as Spot, kept the key to his mother's apartment around his neck. And here it was, back on the string, just as I had known it. He had obviously planted it on me as he'd left, given it to me as a message to—what? Go to him?
Could I? After what had just happened? It would, after all, be just what Ben had been afraid of—that I would run to Seth moments after being with him.
It would prove that I really was this terrible person I feared I was.
But as I stared at the key, warm from my pocket, I knew I would go, for how could I not?
I had probing questions from concerned friends to avoid. I had warring and conflicting emotions, thoughts, and wants roiling around in my brain. I had tears threatening to overflow that I desperately wanted to avoid, if only for a little while.
I had Seth.
So instead of proving Ben and myself wrong and staying home, I did it: I grabbed a spare coat and Race's scarf, and exited the lodging house through my bedroom window like a wayward daughter, hitching rides like I had done so many times before, running to Brooklyn, to Seth.
