CHAPTER NINETEEN

HOLLY

 

“Higher!” Anna shouted gleefully from her perch two feet above my head.

I sighed through my responsible nerves. “Anna, if I push you any higher, you’re going to flip over the swing set and Mommy won’t like getting a call from the hospital.”

“Higher!”

Grumbling, I gave her a forceful shove, sending the toddler swing only a few inches higher, but it seemed good enough judging by her delighted screams.

It was unseasonably warm for November on Long Island, with the temperature hovering somewhere around the mid-60s. The forecast was calling for a frost come the end of the week and I figured I’d treat Anna with a trip to the park before the weather became too unbearable. It wasn’t common for me to bring her to the little park in the quaint town of Brightwaters, because she had a perfectly good swing set in the backyard that she rarely had the desire to use. But on that particular day, I thought it would do us both some good to get some fresh air.

Another woman seemed to have the same idea, sitting on a nearby bench while her two small children played on a seesaw. Whenever the kids made a noise that would suggest they were having less than a good time, she’d glance up from her phone and scold them with disgust before looking down at the screen.

“Higher!” Anna shrieked, giggling as she outstretched her arms, spreading her fingers into the air.

“Seriously, Anna Banana, if I push you any higher, I’m going to launch you into space. I’d really rather not explain to your mother why we have to send your dinner to the moon.”

As Anna giggled, my phone vibrated in my back pocket. Resuming my pushing one-handed, I pulled the phone out to check who had disturbed my relaxing day of shoving a toddler on a swing until my arms fell off, and I wasn’t surprised to find that it was Ben.

 

“Hey babe, are you gonna be around during my lunch break?” 

 

It was now par for the course that he stopped by the house around noon on days that I didn’t take Anna to Story Time. I made sure to have her tucked snugly into bed for her nap, and Ben snuck in like a teenage boyfriend to grace me with a quickie and a sandwich before heading back to work. Our relationship—whatever it was—had been going on for about two weeks and for the most part, it had been more or less enjoyable. More in that I had a regular sex life that I was relatively satisfied with; less in that we didn’t seem to click otherwise—at all.

Ben, I learned, didn’t read, so he didn’t find any enjoyment in spending hours at a bookstore. He didn’t particularly care for cats, despite caring for them every day of his work life, and didn’t seem to find any interest in my job as a child’s caregiver. Yet, while I found myself growing exceedingly irritated by this, I couldn’t say I had been any better. I knew all of the things he didn’t like, but I couldn’t think of a single thing he enjoyed.

Well, besides sex, his crockpot, his daughter, and dogs.

Still, though, I kept reminding myself that neither of us had signed up for anything serious, and we were certainly having fun.

 

“I’m at the park right now, but I’ll be home at noon.”

 

The young woman with the two kids raised her voice, and I turned to find her standing over them. They sat on the wooden edge of a sandbox, their heads in hands, elbows on knees with pouts plastered on their little round faces.

“You need to stop! Do you understand me? If you don’t, I am going to tell your mother that you were both little brats for me, and then she’ll punish you. Do you want that?” she shouted at the kids—two little boys, who couldn’t have been more than Anna’s age.

I squinted in her direction, neglecting my pushing duties as the disgust rose in my throat. I couldn’t recall the kids doing anything that would have warranted an outburst like that, and I couldn’t imagine whatever was on her phone to be that important.

One of the boys began to cry and the apparent babysitter groaned, stuffing her phone into her pocket. “Oh, here we go with this now. I can’t do this! I can’t. We’re leaving. Happy?” This announcement caused the other to start crying, and she grabbed them by the hands. “Come on, get up now. We’re leaving.”

“Excuse me, is everything okay?” I called before biting my tongue to keep myself from tearing her apart from the start.

She turned in surprise that someone else was there, and flashed me an obligatory smile. “Oh, yeah, everything is fine. You know how kids are—because like, you have one.”

I flashed her my own wry smile. “Oh, I do. My kid actually broke my face about four weeks ago, and you know what? I would still never talk to her the way you just talked to those boys.”

Her smile faded, replaced by guilt as she pushed her long dark hair from her face. “It’s my first week with them and it’s been a long one. My patience is nonexistent at this point.” Her eyes fell to the two little boys attached to both of her arms and sighed, her lower lip puffing out.

“You want a tip?” I asked dryly, feeling only a sliver of sympathy for her. I understood long weeks. Hell, I understood long months, but that was no excuse to scold them for doing nothing.

She gave me a small nod, and I said, “Stay off your phone and pay attention to them. They’ll respond a lot better to you and treat you with respect if you show them some.” 

 

***

 

“You should have seen me,” I smiled, reminiscing as I clasped my bra and pulled my t-shirt over my head. “It was like I actually knew what I was talking about. I felt … I felt proud, for probably the first time in a long time, you know? I think that maybe I, uh—Ben?”

When I didn’t receive a response, I glanced over at him, sitting upright with my blanket across his naked lap, his back against the headboard. His phone was in his hands, thumbs tapping the screen as his brows worked together, deepening the line between them.

“What’s wrong?” I asked flatly, pulling my underwear up as my mouth twisted with irritation.

He put the phone down on the blanket and looked up, his forehead lining with surprise as though he had just remembered where he was and who he was with. “Huh?” I repeated myself, and he shrugged, “Oh, it’s nothing. Just discussing Thanksgiving with my mom. She wants to know what we’re doing.”

“We?” I swallowed hard, taken aback by the sudden interest in possibly moving the relationship forward from having sex and eating lunch. After only a couple weeks of sleeping together, meeting his family for Thanksgiving seemed like an enormous jump when maybe we should have been considering a smaller step, like discussing what we were to each other.

“Yeah, we—Kaylee and me.” He gave me a hard look as though that should have been obvious, and I realized my shoulders had tensed as they relaxed. Ben noticed then that I had gotten dressed and he pouted. “I have a half hour before I have to get back.”

“Don’t you want to eat something?” I balanced on the edge of the bed, too small to comfortably accommodate us both.

He placed a hand on my thigh, fingers sliding upward to the juncture between my thighs. “I’d be fine with this,” he insisted, but I looked at him knowingly and he groaned. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll be starving if I don’t eat, but shit, I wish I got a longer break.”

But Anna still wouldn’t have a longer nap.

He threw the sheet off himself, revealing very plainly that he could’ve gone for another round. I could have maybe entertained the idea, providing that Anna had remained asleep, but since that panic stricken moment of thinking he wanted us to be a more serious item, I had lost any desire for rolls in the hay.

“Hey, uh, did you actually want to come to Thanksgiving?” Ben asked as though reading my mind. I hadn’t been aware we had that type of connection, or any connection for that matter, and I gawked at him as he slid his scrub bottoms over his boxers. “I just didn’t really think to ask, because we haven’t really talked about, you know ...”

“Oh, well,” I said, my voice carrying on a loud exhale. He turned to me, shaking out the long-sleeved shirt he wore under the top of his uniform. I had the sudden need to divert my eyes, looking distractedly at Camille on a pile of dirty laundry. “I don’t really know.”

“It’s fine. I just didn’t know if you expected it,” he replied indifferently, pulling the shirt over his head and covering the chest I had only minutes before had my hands against. The top of his scrubs came next, and then the name tag he kept clipped to the front pocket. “Where are my sneakers?”

“Um, I think in the living room,” I said, welcoming a reason to get out of the room that seemed to be closing in on me. I opened the door to abandon him in my room, my socks sliding easily along the floor of the hallway and living room, and I spotted his black sneakers next to the couch. “Got ‘em.”

Ben had followed me and leaned against the wall. “Are you alright?”

I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes at that. For two weeks I had struggled, trying to find some semblance of a connection to this man I was giving myself to willingly on a regular basis, and not once had he picked up on that. And yet, there he was, noticing that I panicked at the sheer thought of meeting his parents.

 “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve just had a weird day.”

“Tell me about it,” Ben said, walking towards me and wrapping his arms around my waist, pulling me to him.

I sighed irritably. “I already did, Ben.”  

“You did?” He rested a cheek against the top of my head as a hand came up to tangle in my ponytail. “Oh, wait, are you talking about that girl at the park?”

He had actually listened. I smiled against his chest. “Yeah. It just felt good, but I don’t know what that means. I mean, I spent months feeling unhappy about this whole thing, but now I think I actually like it.”

“Yeah, that’s good.” His hand continued to curl into the strands of my hair, and I took note of the tone in his voice. Distant and disinterested.

My arms unlatched from behind Ben’s back, signaling for him to let go, and I walked into the kitchen to fetch the bag of deli sandwiches he had brought over. I pulled out the two wrapped rolls, and placed them on paper plates, while Ben grabbed a couple bottles of water from the fridge. We ate in silence at the table, checking our respective phones for news, until Ben spoke.

“This is really nice,” he said with a smile, his dimples looking adorable. “I love that I can just sit here and be totally comfortable with not talking.”

“Yeah,” I said with a smile, and thought about the only person I truly felt comfortable doing nothing with.

I missed him.