30. Marley
THIRTY
MARLEY
Bennett makes pasta with Nancy’s sauce again for dinner, and I savor every single bite. I have to wonder if it will taste as good when I use it at home without this man sitting beside me. Does the company make the food better? I kind of hate that I’ll be able to answer that question soon enough.
By the time we’re doing the dishes, we have mastered small talk.
“So can your place accommodate the crutches?” he asks, looking at the plate he’s scrubbing instead of at me.
“We’ll move some stuff around, but that won’t take long. I’ll be zipping around there in no time.” I don’t tell him the truth, which is that I’m actually only stopping at my apartment to grab some necessities and then going to stay with Nellie for a few days. Tom also has me booked in at the hospital where he’s an anesthesiologist, for an X-ray to make sure it is just a sprain, but again, I don’t tell Bennett that. I’m closing him off more by the minute, and even though I know it’s not fair, I feel like I need to do it in order to protect myself.
“Are you going to go to the hospital? ”
“Probably. Bennett?” I put the towel down and move towards him. In my head, I’m doing this very gracefully and somewhat seductively, but it’s impossible for me to do with the crutches.
“What?” He’s watching the water swirl down the drain and doesn’t turn my way until I’m right next to him.
“If I was the type of person to stay in one place…” I swallow and collect my courage before continuing, “this is the only place I’d want to stay. This is the only place I’ve ever felt like I could stay.” And fucking hell, his eyes actually fill with tears. I want to drop dead for making him sad. But I don’t have much time to think about it because his soapy hands are pulling my face to his before a single tear falls.
He’s got me in his arms seconds later, and then my ass hits the island and he’s laying me back and kissing down my body. It’s kind of fitting that this was where everything started, me on the counter, Bennett taking charge and not asking permission.
Before I really register what’s happening, he’s got my leggings and underwear pulled off my left leg and dangling around my right ankle, then he’s on his knees between my legs. I’m not really an oral kind of girl and I’m about to say as much when I feel his lips drag up my inner thigh, his beard causing interesting sensations to spread across my skin, and the words die on my lips. There are a lot of labels I’d never apply to myself, and yet with Bennett, I’m ready to invest in a label maker and cover myself with them.
When I’m close, I reach down and grip his hair, tugging gently so he stops.
“Did I hurt you?” he asks, looking up at me.
“God no.” I shake my head. “I just, I want you… but…” I’m turning into some bashful virgin apparently because I have no idea how to form the words I’m trying to say. But because it’s Bennett, he nods in understanding. He kisses his way back up my b ody and runs his tongue from my collarbone to my chin, sending shivers to the very tips of everything on my body.
I sit up and wrap my arms around his neck, keeping his mouth fused with mine as I scoot my ass to the edge of the counter. And that’s when I stop and pull away.
“Oh my god,” I say.
“What?” Bennett asks, his breath coming out heavy.
“This is not sanitary.” I’m bare-assed on his counter, and to put it plainly, I’m horrified.
Bennett looks down and grins wickedly, then captures my mouth again as he slides one finger inside me, causing my eyes to roll back. The last thing I think before he takes me back to the edge of oblivion is this is why they invented Lysol.
Later, when Bennett catches me looking at the counter and biting my lip, he assures me that it’s going to be gone soon anyway. He’s got new butcher block counters ordered, and besides, we were the only two who ever sat there.
“Literally, you mean?” I grin at him as I hand him a plate to put away.
He shrugs. “On, at, both.”
The dogs are all inside again and settled in for the night, and we both seem to be drawing out the nighttime routine. It’s taken us way too long to put a few dishes away, and then I have him stop in front of his bookshelf on our way upstairs. Asking him to tell me which ones he loved most or is looking forward to reading. I give him my phone and have him make a list of his favorites so I can download the audio versions to listen to when I’m gone.
We shower for so long that the hot water begins to cool, and even then we seem to be fine with using our own body heat to stay warm. This morning felt like a quick goodbye kiss in comparison to this drawn-out affair, the physical version of “You hang up first.” The entire time I’m being pulled in two different directions by two sides of myself. The side that is struggling to get me to stay is weak from disuse, but it’s surprisingly tenacious.
“Imagine this every night,” it pleads as I moan into Bennett’s mouth, his hips pressed between my thighs. But a stronger voice is insisting that it’s only this good because it’s desperate. That an end date makes everything more intense, and without it, complacency takes over and things will just hurt more in the end. Best to enjoy it at this level while I can. Don’t think about tomorrow.
Hours later as we’re tangled together under the duvet, Bennett pulls me tighter and says what I need him to say.
“I don’t want you to leave, Mar, but I know why you have to.” I honestly don’t know if he actually knows or if he just thinks he does. Hell, he could just be saying it for my benefit, but I love him at this moment for saying it. “But for the record, I’m not going anywhere.” Translation: I’m here when you want to come back. Not if you want to come back, but when .
“Have I told you how happy I am that you found me, Bennett?” I murmur into his chest.
“You may have mentioned it once before.”
“I should probably have told you every day while I’ve been here.”
“You have, in different ways,” he says, kissing my head. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“Tell me something good about what you do.”
I take a deep breath, and I tell him about the earthquake survivors in Pakistan and then about the brothers in Ukraine, and once I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop telling him about all the good I’ve seen in the midst of death and destruction. How even when I think about how nothing can make me smile again, someone manages to do that.
“I tend to forget how regular people on the ground respond. Seeing us there brings them hope in a way not much else does. Even when our governments move on to the next conflict, seeing us covering something gives people that extra push to keep going. Seeing the resilience of humans can be… inspirational.”
“Maybe you need to focus on that more?” Bennett says quietly.
“On the hope?”
“In the hope you help give to people. I can’t imagine how exhausting it is to maybe feel like you’re the only one, or at least one of very few, who cares. But also focus on showing the resiliency of people who have been put through unimaginable hardships.”
“It’s just hard. Sometimes it takes days of shooting things to finally get to someone. And then it’s hard knowing that people see bombed-out or burned buildings and don’t seem to care so it takes a body or evidence of suffering. Hope is so buried sometimes.”
“So give it up and open a livestock glamour photography studio. I know a few heifers that would just love you to moooove into that field.” The way he committed to that pun has me laughing so hard my laugh morphs into snorts.
“Yeah, the pigs would probably love it too.” And now he’s laughing with me.
“I’ll probably be able to make a few bawks with the chickens too.”
“Yeah, doesn’t seem like a baaaad way to make a living.”
“It would be udderly ridiculous,” I manage to get out despite the fact I can barely catch my breath.
“Don’t be such a neighsayer .” The emphasis he puts on “neigh” has me snorting again, and we spend the next five minutes laughing.
When we finally pull ourselves together, I bury myself as far as I can into his arms and just focus on matching my breathing with his. My eyes are heavy, but I don’t want to give in to sleep yet. I let my thoughts wander to the day Bennett found me. I’m having a hard time understanding how that was only five days earlier. It’s an escape from reality, I tell myself. This isn’t real life, this can’t be real life. Still, I’m not ready to go back to my reality just yet, and every passing minute I’m in Bennett’s arms I’m having a harder and harder time reminding myself why I have to. A tear slips from my eye, and I press my face harder into Bennett’s chest and inhale. I feel his arms tighten ever so slightly, keeping me close, even in sleep.