10. Marley
TEN
MARLEY
I freeze where I am and look over just in time to see a petite blonde woman appear at the door.
“Oh!” She lays a hand on her chest and laughs. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know Bennett had company.” The way she says it makes me think she’s not mad to find me here, so that’s good. I’m not exactly in fighting shape at the moment. Not that I’m a fighter.
She walks further into the room, and I get a better look at her. She sounds younger than she looks, and I’d peg her age somewhere in her fifties. She’s wearing leggings with a matching jacket, and she’s got a pair of those thick thermal socks on. She’s not Bennett’s mom, clearly, but maybe an aunt?
“Um,” I say, frozen where I stand, balancing as gracefully as I can on one foot. “Bennett’s out with the dogs.”
“Really,” she says, sitting in the chair I’d recently vacated. “He’s usually back by this hour.”
“He got a late start,” I say, sitting down at the end of the couch, wishing curiosity hadn’t gotten the better of me.
She gives me a knowing look, but I’m not sure what it is that I’m supposed to be knowing, so I just smile back. Then it dawns on me that she thinks I’m the reason for his late start. This is technically true, but she is implying that the start was something a hell of a lot less innocent than coffee and breakfast.
Before I can set the record straight, I hear the door open again quickly followed by Yogurt racing into the room and right up to the woman.
“Yogurt!” she exclaims, scooping him up. “How’s my special guy?”
“Hey, Nancy,” Bennett greets her. “I wasn’t expecting you today.” She stands to hug him.
“Well, Karl wanted to check out the damage, and I wanted to get some fresh air so I decided to join him” She tilts her head subtly towards me, her eyes wide. She’s as good as I am when it comes to fishing for information, it seems.
“Um,” Bennett stutters as he seems to catch on, “Nancy, this is Marley. Marley, Nancy.”
Nancy crosses the room with her hand outstretched. “It’s lovely to meet you, Marley.”
I shake her hand. “Same.” And then her name registers. “You’re Nancy!” I say, maybe a bit too enthusiastically, and also in a way that makes it sound like I’ve got the memory of a goldfish. “I mean, obviously, Bennett just said that, but you’re the Nancy, the sauce Nancy.”
“Wow, I’ve never felt famous before!” she says, looking extremely flattered.
“Marley and I had your sauce last night,” Bennett explains. And now she knows I spent the night. Although the road is out so it’s not as if I popped in this morning.
“Oh, last night, eh?” It feels like my face has been set on fire.
I open my mouth to clarify, but Bennett beats me to it. Or at least that’s what I think he’s doing until he says, “Yeah, we had it over some of that fancy penne you gave me. Maybe my favorite batch yet. Marley looked like she wanted to dive face-first into it.” Okay, so that intention, as fleeting as it was, did come across. Good to know.
“He’s not wrong.” I laugh nervously.
“Well, I did have ulterior motives for joining Karl, but I guess it’s silly now,” Nancy says, sitting back down and waiting for Bennett to sit before continuing. When he does, it’s right next to me. He looks at me quickly, lips thin and eyes wide. If I were a betting girl, I’d say he was communicating Help me .
“Sophie is home from school for the week, and I thought maybe you’d want to join us for dinner. But I can see you’re otherwise engaged.” She peers over at me and smiles. And while she could mean it in a passive-aggressive way, she seems genuinely happy that he’s “otherwise engaged.”
I’m thinking I should let Bennett know he’s absolutely welcome to join them for dinner, but once again he responds before I can even form words. “Thanks for considering me but”—he looks at me with a lovely smile—“I’ve got my hands full at the minute.”
I’m staring at Bennett, who is smiling at me in a way that has me hearing love ballads and wedding bells. I’m losing the battle over the butterflies in my stomach until Nancy pulls me out of my lusty haze. When I look over at her, regrettably breaking eye contact with Bennett, she’s pointing at my ankle. “When did you do that?”
“Yesterday morning. Head was in the clouds, and oops.”
“Mm-hmm, I bet it was,” Nancy replies, side-eyeing Bennett.
I could correct her and say that spraining my ankle had nothing to do with looking up at Bennett or daydreaming about Bennett or anything to do with Bennett at all, but I play along because it’s almost too easy to imagine. “Yeah, well, you know how it is.” Without even thinking, I drop my hand to rest possessively on his thigh. I feel him tense for a split second before relaxing under my touch. When I look over at him, he looks pleased as punch, and while I don’t actually know what pleased punch looks like, I’d say it’s whatever the look he has on his face right now.
For the third time in about ten minutes, I hear a door open and someone calling out. This time it’s a deep booming voice looking for Nancy. A middle-aged man wearing overalls, a flannel shirt, and a well-worn baseball cap joins us. This must be Karl. When he registers my presence, he looks around quickly as though he may have walked into the wrong house.
“Bennett,” he says dramatically, “that road is a fucking mess. And you just know the town is going to take their sweet time doing something about it. This happened eight years ago, and it was two weeks until we could get back to the road. Not sure what our taxes go to these days, but it sure as hell isn’t road maintenance. Let’s hope we never need any real help, am I right?” Karl shakes his head as he approaches me with a wide smile. “Sorry for my little outburst,” he says, sticking his hand out to me. “Karl Hore.” I see his mouth start to open again, and I think I know what’s coming next so I jump in.
“Oh, I’ve heard if I need a hoe, you’re the man to go to.”
He bursts out laughing and looks back at Bennett, who for a split second looks like he wants to throw up. But the look is gone as quickly as it appeared.
“I like this one,” he says before looking over at Nancy. “So I guess it’s just going to be the three of us for dinner?” Bennett’s hand is sliding under mine, palm up, and I automatically curl my fingers around his.
“So it would appear.” Nancy’s smile grows when she glances down at where our hands are joined. “Oh,” she gasps suddenly, “do we still have those crutches from when Sophie tore her ACL? Marley sprained her ankle while she and Bennett were out for a hike yesterday.”
Karl thinks for a minute. “I’m not sure, I can look when we get home. Speaking of which, shall we, my dear?”
Nancy stands and starts following Karl out of the room, before turning back to me. “It was so nice to meet you, Marley. I hope we see each other again.”
“Absolutely!” I give them a little wave before they leave. Bennett gradually releases my hand so he can walk them out, and I immediately miss the feel of his palm on mine.
“So, what was that about?” I ask when he comes back.
Bennett looks at me like I spoke another language. “What was that about?”
“The whole act? Why didn’t you tell Nancy why I’m here?”
He sits and pulls Yogurt into his lap, getting him settled before he responds. “The Hores are the best, don’t get me wrong. I’m so lucky to have them as neighbors, and luckier that they’re three kilometers away. Nancy seems to have taken it upon herself to find me someone.”
“Find you someone? As in she believes you’re”—I put on my best English accent—“in want of a wife?”
“How very Austen of you.”
“Says the guy with the first name Bennett.”
“Well, my mother was obsessed with Jane Austen so that checks out. Although she insisted on adding an extra t”
“Aw. You’re lucky she didn’t go too obscure with it, or worse, too on the nose.”
“Yeah, she definitely could have gone the more traditional route with John or Darcy.”
“Oh my god.” I throw my head back and laugh. “There are so many Johns. ”
“As a John, I would have fit in splendidly with the Hores, though.”
I point at him, trying to get my giggles under control. “That’s still no excuse for letting her think there was anything going on besides an excessive number of piggybacks between adults.”
“Had I known they were going to pop by, I would have prepared you, maybe even asked your permission to play along. She thinks I’m too dedicated to the dogs to have a social life, so whenever her daughter, who is very nice, comes home from school, she invites me to dinner or sends her over with ten jars of sauce or more milk than any one man can consume.”
“And when you say school…” I trail off.
“She’s doing her master’s.”
“Oh, okay, so she’s an adult at least.”
“Technically, but I’m not going to be guilted into dating a twenty-three-year-old.” I sit back and study him. When he’s had enough, he lets out an exasperated sounding “What?”
I roll my lips and squint at him. “Nothing.” I’m not exactly annoyed with him even though I feel like I should be, which confuses me if anything. I’m not sure I could ever see myself being annoyed with this man, which is fucking irritating; I can only imagine the things I’d let this man get away with if given the opportunity. So it’s probably a good thing I don’t plan on giving him any.