Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hallie
B en was just about to kiss me, right? My brain runs it over and over again as we all hang by the floating swim dock. My sisters, Allie, Jordan, and Molly are hanging on to the side while Emma, Jeremy, Julie, Ben and I sit up on top of it. Everyone else is chattering around me, but I hear almost none of it while my brain tries to make sense of what just happened.
My entire body erupts in goosebumps when Ben whispers in my ear. When did he get here? He was just on the other side of the raft.
“You okay, Hal?”
“Totally fine!” I say just a touch too loudly, before standing up and practically throwing myself into the lake. So completely cool, Hal. Super graceful. I groan inwardly. I glance back at the dock and see Ben looking straight at me with a playful grin on his face.
“Jerkface,” I mutter under my breath, before swimming over to Molly and my sisters to join whatever conversation they’re having. But their argument about which is number one in the definitive ranking of Taylor Swift albums fails to hold my attention—it’s 1989 , duh. There is no other answer—when Ben is so there with his stupid blond hair and his stupid sky-blue eyes and his low-slung board shorts showing off his perfect fucking six pack and the smirks he keeps tossing at me and I hate him for whatever is it he thinks he’s doing right now.
Except I don’t hate him at all because what I am is turned all the way on by him and all his perfection, and I hate that I am because I don’t know what it all means, and I am absolutely the person who needs to know what it all means.
By the time everyone is ready to swim back to shore, I am fed the fuck up. I want to disappear into my room and curl up in bed with a romance novel where the girl may be harboring weird and confusing feelings for her best friend who is suddenly acting all swoony and strange, but all the confusion is worked out by the end, and everyone lives happily ever after. That’s the world I would like to live in tonight, please and thank you.
We all wrap ourselves in towels, grab our clothes, and go inside for the night. Emma, Molly, Julie, and I all have rooms upstairs while Ben and his friends are in one of the wings off the great room. The girls go straight up while I detour into the kitchen to grab my e-reader and my water.
“Looking for this?” Ben is standing in the kitchen leaning up against the big granite island, my e-reader in one hand and my water tumbler in the other.
“I am, actually. I just need to fill up my water and then I’m going to bed. I’m exhausted.”
He pushes himself off the island and walks towards where I stand in the kitchen doorway. “I already filled it up for you.”
“But I need…”
“Extra ice, I know. I filled the ice all the way to the top, just the way you like it.”
How does he know that?
“Okay, well, thanks for doing that for me.”
“I like doing things for you.” He hands me the cup and my e-reader. “By the way, I checked to see what you’re reading, and good choice. Chapter twenty-seven is my favorite.” Then he kisses my cheek and saunters away into his wing, calling, “Goodnight, Hal,” over his shoulder.
I race up the stairs and drop my towel and water before flipping open my e-reader and navigating to chapter twenty-seven and Fuck. Me. Chapter twenty-seven, it turns out, is a very hot shower sex scene…and how the hell did he know that? And now I’m picturing Ben reading this scene and picturing his face and did he get all hot and bothered over it just like I did and…Nope. No. No way.
I snap my e-reader shut and toss it onto the bed. I take myself to the bathroom to drown myself in my shower which will be, sadly, sexless, and pray that my dreams tonight won’t be haunted by my friend Ben and his blue eyes on mine and his hands on my waist and whether he actually did almost kiss me tonight in the lake and how a tiny, traitorous part of me wishes that he had.
I stumble downstairs at eight thirty the next morning towards the smell of coffee and cinnamon. As expected, Rachel is already up and icing the cinnamon buns she must have just taken out of the oven. She has made cinnamon buns at the lake for as long as I can remember, the smell of them our alarm clock, pulling us all out of bed and into the kitchen. I never eat cinnamon buns anywhere except for here. But the smell of them anytime during the year instantly conjures up summer mornings in this house when Rachel and I are the first ones awake, taking a few minutes together in the cozy warmth of the kitchen before everyone else wakes up and chaos descends.
I must make a sound because she turns towards the kitchen doorway and grins at me.
“Morning, honey. I’ve been waiting for you. Sleep okay?”
Not really, thanks to your son winding me up and then leaving me with a kiss on the cheek and a casual goodnight and I’m really glad I packed my vibrator charger because otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten any sleep at all . I can’t say that to her, obviously, so I settle on, “I always sleep well here,” which is usually true.
I walk over and kiss her on the cheek and then go straight to the coffee pot, reaching into the cabinet above for a glass cup to pour coffee in and stick in the freezer for a while so I can make iced coffee.
“Oh, your coffee is in the fridge, Hallie,” Rachel says as she rummages through a drawer for a frying pan.
“What coffee?”
“Ben said to tell you that he made coffee yesterday and put it in the fridge for you so it would be cold by morning. Oh, and there’s milk already in it. He said you would want iced coffee but don’t like cold brew and wouldn’t want to make it with instant. He got Splenda for you on his way up here too. Should be on the top shelf of the cabinet by the fridge.”
Seriously?
I open the fridge and right in front of me is a tumbler bearing a sticky note that reads “ Hallie, Caffeinate yourself .” Then I open the cabinet next to the fridge and see the box of Splenda packets. I just stand there, frozen in place. I’ve been thinking about iced coffee with milk and one Splenda since I opened my eyes this morning, but he made this coffee yesterday. Is he magic?
“Hallie?”
I whip around, coffee in one hand and a Splenda packet in the other, wondering how long I’ve been standing there considering whether Ben is actually a wizard. I have no clue what my face is doing, but whatever it is, it makes Rachel grin at me before nudging me aside to get the eggs she has obviously been waiting to take out of the fridge.
“Looks like our Ben knows just what you like,” she says, cracking eggs into a bowl.
“No shit,” I mutter under my breath, more than a little thrown off and not nearly caffeinated enough to make sense of this.
She just laughs and takes the coffee and sugar packet out of my hands, opening the top of the tumbler to add the ice and Splenda herself. She pops in a straw and hands it back to me, kissing me on the head and going back to her breakfast prep.
“So, how are things going at the firm? I know it hasn’t been that long since you closed on the house, but you girls must be so excited to be finally hitting the ground running. Jules has been keeping me updated, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to you about it.”
Oh, hello anxiety, my old friend, it’s fucking terrible to see you again.
Between the gala and the weirdness with Ben, I’ve been able to shove all my angst over the firm and what to do about it to the far recesses of my brain. But with Rachel’s question, it all comes roaring back. My stomach tightens, and my shoulders tense up as I consider what to say. I must pause a little too long because Rachel is looking at me with concern.
“Everything okay with the firm, Hallie?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s fine. Everything is okay. It’s just been a lot these past couple of weeks.”
She gives me an unimpressed look.
“That’s an evasion if I ever heard one.” Turns out Rachel did not earn the title of Best Mom Ever by being stupid.
“It has been a lot. Really. For me especially.”
“I’m not going to pry even though I’m dying to, because it’s our first morning here and that’s always been a special time for you and me. But you know you can talk to me about anything, right? I might not have given birth to you, but you’re mine just as much as Julie is.”
“Thanks, Rachel,” I say, filled with gratitude for her and this quiet morning.
She squeezes my hand. “Okay then. Let’s get to it. I’m putting the eggs on now. Will you go wake up Ben? He made me promise not to let him sleep through breakfast this year.”
Ever the night owl and extremely not a morning person, Ben sleeps through first morning breakfast more than he makes it. Knowing it pisses him off to miss cinnamon buns, and maybe just a tiny bit eager to see him this morning, I grab my coffee and pad over to his room.
I knock on his door and wait, but there’s no answer. I don’t hear any movement from inside either. Knowing he’s probably still fast asleep, I yell his name, knock one more time, and walk in, expecting to have to haul him out of bed. His bed is empty. The sheets and blankets are rumpled and twisted, and it gives me a rush of satisfaction to think that maybe he spent the night tossing and turning just like I did. That thought is barely through my head when the ensuite bathroom door opens and Ben comes out in a cloud of steam.
I never quite understood the phrase “rooted to the spot,” but suddenly, I do. I should turn around and leave, but I can’t get a signal from my brain to my feet to get them moving. Ben is rubbing a towel over his wet hair, and he is naked except for a white towel wrapped low around his waist. He’s covered in water droplets, and I follow their path with my eyes as they roll from his chest, down his muscled abs, following the light dusting of hair that disappears into his towel. I don’t know if it’s the towel, or the fact that he’s mostly naked and dripping wet. Or because his hair is a wild mess from the towel. Maybe it’s that I haven’t had enough coffee and this is basically a scene ripped straight out of one of my books, but everything Ben has going on right now is really…doing it for me. God.
“My eyes are up here, Hallie.”
I snap my eyes up to meet his. Whatever I’m feeling must be written all over my face because the smirk on Ben’s face disappears. His gaze that was playful a second ago changes and turns darker as he takes me in. Our eyes are glued together, and his are intense in a way that makes me itchy and needy and so damn aware of Ben and his body and the woodsy scent of his body wash. Without even realizing what I’m doing, I take a step forward. He holds a hand out to stop me.
“Not yet,” he says in a low voice.
That wakes me right up. “Not yet what?”
“Just, not yet.” His voice takes on a commending edge, and I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I stop all the same.
“I’m going to put some clothes on,” he says, his voice back to normal. “Tell my mom I’ll be out in a second.”
I leave his room and close the door behind me, my heart hammering in my ears. I pause and take a deep breath to steady myself before going back to the kitchen. By the time I get there, Julie, Molly, and Emma are sitting around the big kitchen table, coffees in hand. I take a seat with them, and before long, everyone else joins. My mom gives me a hug over the back of my chair and takes a seat next to my sisters, who, per usual, immediately start carrying on about something that is going on at Jo’s office and some friend drama Hannah is having. My dad comes in with Steven, already talking about the boards they are replacing on the dock later. Allie and Jordan stumble in with their arms around each other, the beard burn on Allie’s neck making it crystal clear what they just got up to. Jeremy squeezes into the seat next to Emma, who turns bright red and pointedly ignores him, which seems to amuse Jeremy. And Molly and Julie are alternating between bickering over god only knows what and giggling over something on Julie’s phone.
I’m not in the mood to engage with any of it, the scene with Ben still running through my head like a song on repeat. And then the man himself strolls into the kitchen, kissing his mom on the cheek, pouring his own coffee, and plopping himself next to me. He kisses me on the cheek too.
“Morning, Hal, did you find your coffee?” He is all smiles and easy-going energy, as if we weren’t wrapped in a charged stare-off over his naked chest just minutes ago.
I have emotional whiplash. I don’t know how to deal with this Ben, who can switch so seamlessly from darkened stare to cheerful boy next door.
“Um, I did, thanks. How did you know what I would want?”
“I told you, Hallie girl. I see you.”
This time when he says it, I realize that I’m starting to believe he really, truly does.